Earticle

The field of pronunciation has never been short of controversies which are often expressed in various ways in the curriculum. In many ESL countries, if pronunciation is explicitly taught, it is usually done with a rigid adherence to native norms, despite professions to the contrary. This paper argues that with the growth of English as a local, regional and global lingua franca in countries like Malaysia, traditional pronunciation models need to be critically re-examined, and a shift from the native speaker to the highly competent L2 speaker of English be considered. Reporting on a study undertaken in Malaysia, the paper discusses the ways in which proficient speakers of English modify their pronunciation patterns to attain greater intelligibility. In this way, the article explores new ways of investigating intelligibility and pronunciation needs, and concludes by highlighting the significance of the findings with respect to conceptual, empirical and pedagogical issues.

Recent studies of Japanese EFL student writing have revealed characteristic weaknesses in a variety of language areas: compositions that were organized as one extended paragraph, a discourse structure that appears illogical to a native speaker reader, a lack of credible support or an overreliance on an emotional response to the topic. This study collected English writing samples from a cross-section of Japanese high school and college learners and considered them in terms of a native speaker’s expectations. Features such as composition organization, paragraph structure, transition signals, vocabulary, collocations, and style were analyzed across a wide range of language proficiency with the aim of identifying students’ difficulties in writing and exploring how these are resolved in tandem with English language development. Writing samples were collected from six levels of Japanese EFL learners and a group of native speakers. These were compared and any specific problem areas or patterns which may be generally applicable to Japanese students were identified. The results revealed that some features develop naturally and others require conscious learning under formal writing instruction. Possible implications of the results are discussed as they pertain to assisting teachers in creating a more precise and effective composition writing curriculum.

This paper investigates the nature of the mismatch caused by culturebased differences in perceptions and expectations of L2 teaching and learning style preferences between Irish English teachers and Chinese students in the learning setting. A survey was conducted which included questionnaire, interview and class observation at two language institutes in Dublin, Ireland. The findings suggest the mutual awareness of the ‘cultures of learning’ be required. It is mutual responsibility to gain intercultural understanding so as to ensure effective teaching and learning outcome. Teachers ought to develop awareness of their learners’ culture of learning including their needs, wants, capacities, potentials and learning style preferences to meet learners’ expectations and to foster their guided style-stretching. In the meantime, Chinese students also need to learn to develop sense of cultural sensitivity to reflect their own learning styles and strategy use to gradually adapt to the Irish school culture. Finally appropriate bridging strategies are recommended to native English-speaker teachers who are engaged in teaching Chinese ESL learners in their home institutions.

Demotivation in English language learning was investigated, using Vietnam as a case study, with three main foci: (i) the reasons (i.e., the demotives) underlying demotivation; (ii) the degree of influence of different demotives; and (iii) students’ experiences in overcoming demotivation. Using stimulated recall essays from 100 university students of their foreign language learning experiences, the findings indicated that demotivation was a significant issue for EFL learning, and a framework for discussing different sources of demotives was developed. While some categories of demotives occurred more frequently than others, no category appeared to be more or less difficult to overcome. Rather, students’ awareness of the role English language and their determination to succeed were critical factors in overcoming demotivation

Textbooks used in the teaching of writing in English often expose EFL students to paragraphs and essays, which exclusively adhere to English rhetoric. Imposing this sort of rhetorical form as absolutes, teachers of writing require the students to explicitly state the thesis statement in the beginning, followed by the topic development and conclusion. This imposition is motivated by Kaplan’s (1966) assertion that students from different cultures need to be made aware of rhetorical conventions of the language they learn in order for them to be able to inculcate the new rhetoric different from their own rhetorical hometowns. Nevertheless, despite its laudable pedagogical intentions to raise student’s cultural and rhetorical awareness in English, traditional contrastive rhetoric has been criticized because of many reasons. Regrettably, despite severe attacks directed to traditional rhetoric, teachers of writing in EFL contexts still cling to it and employ it as a framework for teaching writing, and thus are not well informed about new directions that contrastive rhetoric has taken hitherto. This article reviews previous research of contrastive rhetoric, and discusses new directions contrastive rhetoric has taken. It also discusses pedagogical implications of these new directions for literacy pedagogy.

There is growing evidence to show a strong and positive correlation between language proficiency and vocabulary size. However, the study of vocabulary size of ESL learners and the implications for developing language proficiency is limited. This paper reports an exploratory study which aims to a) find out the English vocabulary size of the ESL primary and junior secondary school students, and b) evaluate the extent of perceived vocabulary gap among these students with reference to the school levels and types of school. Two primary schools and two secondary schools, with a total of 449 students, took part in the L_Lex of the Lingua Vocabulary Tests v2.01 (Meara, Milton & Lorenzo-Dus, 2001) and the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1990). Results have shown that these ESL learners have small vocabulary size and impoverished vocabulary knowledge. Although perceived vocabulary gap does exist when measuring the vocabulary size, students at higher level of schooling, i.e. with longer English learning experience, do not necessarily possess a larger vocabulary size than those at junior levels. Systematic vocabulary development and curricular and instruction measures which take into the account of vocabulary size and knowledge of the ESL learners are suggested in order to tackle individual differences observed across school levels or between school types.

This paper aims to find out teachers’ and students’ opinions of the use of the mother tongue in the EFL classroom as opposed to the monolingual method which has been adopted in educational institutions in Indonesia. The study also investigated the teachers’ and students’ decision making of when to use L1 in their teaching and learning activity in the classroom. The findings revealed that the majority of the teachers and students believe that English should be used to the fullest. Nonetheless, much as they desire to maintain the maximum use of English, the mother tongue is still present in their classroom practice in different settings.

This article investigated one English policy in Taiwan by shedding light on the recruitment of English teachers. The Taiwanese government has assigned English Educational Military Substitutes to assist early English education due to the lack of qualified English teachers in rural districts since Taiwan implemented the national English education in elementary schools in 2001. The government praises this policy as realization of educational equality because the introduction of the English Educational Military Substitutes aims to minimize the educational gap between urban and rural districts. In this paper, specific attention was given to the extent to which this language policy benefits the economically disadvantaged (or advantaged) groups. Data for this paper are drawn primarily from governmental documentation and reports from the Ministry of Education. Critical Applied Linguistics (CALx) both as a theory and a method provided the tools to examine the data. Analysis of the data indicates that this policy doesn’t serve the interests of English disadvantage groups as it claims but benefits the economically privileged groups.