Earticle

ESL/EFL learners are found to be less capable of generating strong reasons in support of their English theses due to different rhetorical traditions. To help students compose more effective arguments, the present study investigated the effectiveness of one heuristics based on classical rhetoric, stasis theory, for helping EFL novice writers to develop persuasive reasons in composing argumentative essays. The results show that participants’ essays exhibit considerable gains in the quality and range of reasons, particularly, with regards to a shift from minor, less important reasons to cogent, reader-based ones. Also, students’ responses to the evaluation questionnaire in respect to the usefulness of this approach reflect the same trends as in the textual analysis.

Thirty years ago, Edward Said (1978) strongly criticized western scholars for “essentializing” the “exotic other.” The “Orientalist” that Said described was complicit in a “discourse of power” that helped to enable Europe’s exploitation of the Middle East and America’s control over parts of the Far East. Postmodernists and post-colonialists of today share Said’s concern with neo-colonialism and seek to protect others from harmful stereotypes. Meanwhile, the field initiated as contrastive rhetoric, now often called intercultural rhetoric, commenced when Kaplan (1966) discovered different organizational patterns in the English essays of five groups of international students. Though initially oversimplified, the field began with an explicitly pedagogical purpose: to help second language learners write better English academic essays. This paper will examine how Said-style criticism of “Orientalists,” exercised by postmodernists and post-colonialists, has both helped to positively refine generalizations, biases and methodologies and simultaneously inhibited researchers and practitioners from further developing this pedagogically promising field of research in East-Asia.

In this study, we investigated to see whether any significant differences exist in the reported use of reading strategies of Iranian EFL and Indian ESL readers when they are performing a reading comprehension test. Participants were 190 college students (96 Iranian students and 93 Indian students, who completed a Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) designed for discerning the strategies readers report using when performing a reading comprehension task. The results of this study revealed that both Iranian EFL and Indian ESL students displayed awareness of almost all of the strategies included in the survey in a similar pattern while reading academic texts. With respect to the differences in strategy use among both groups, Indians reported more awareness of the use of cognitive, support and total reading strategies than Iranian students while no significant difference reported in using metacognitive reading strategies. These results can contribute to the clarification of some of the differences and similarities between EFL and ESL readers in employing some strategies and the necessity of reading strategies instruction in both contexts.

Demonstrative NPs and pronoun it can be used to maintain coherence and refer back to the ideas mentioned earlier. However, there is quite limited research on such phenomena in L2 writing. This study explores the anaphoric demonstrative NPs and pronoun it, with Chinese Learner English Corpus as the data source. Altogether 203 compositions from ST3 and ST4 have been selected and subjected to data analyses so as to answer three questions: whether language proficiency differentiates the level of recapitulation; whether the learners of lower proficiency prefer using pronouns because they are less marked; whether the frequency of pronoun it, on the whole, is much higher than that of the other anaphors. The results reveal that the learners’ ability of recapitulation displays a spiral increase and that the selection of the anaphors is not affected by markedness but by cross-linguistic influence and the use of L2 chunks.

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of three types of input-based tasks for teaching polite request forms to Japanese learners of English: the monocomponential type (affective oriented activities alone), the monocomponential type (referential oriented activities alone), and the polycomponential type (referential oriented and affective oriented activities). Treatment group performance was compared to control group performance on pre-, post-, and follow-up tests comprising a discourse completion test and an acceptability judgment test. The results reveal that the three treatment groups outperformed the control group significantly and that there was no significant difference among the three treatment groups. The lack of significant difference among the three treatment groups suggests that processing of the target features through the pragmalinguistics-sociopragmatics connections is more important, regardless of the task type, and that effective learning occurs even with one activity involving the pragmalinguistics-sociopragmatics connections in teaching L2 request downgraders.

This study examined the effects of listening strategy training for EFL adult listeners, both on their listening processing and production. The participants were two classes of Taiwanese college students; one class received a 14-week strategy training integrated into their EFL listening class, whereas the other served as a comparison group. The data were collected via multiple measurements. Listening proficiency tests, a selfrated listening proficiency scale, a listening strategy questionnaire and a listening learning activity questionnaire were pre-tested and post-tested with both groups. In addition, rflective journals were employed in the treatment group to explore learners’ strategy development over time. The results showed that there were significantly positive changes in using listening strategies and in their engagement in self-directed learning activities for the treatment group. Although no significant differences were found in listening proficiency tests results, treatment group students self-rated themselves as having gained significantly more in their listening performances than those in the control group. Furthermore, the treatment group also reported better orchestration of their strategy use in dealing with their listening tasks and learning processes. Discussions on these multiple measurements and their results were also presented. This study demonstrates that strategy training can bring positive effects both on learners’ learning process and to their listening performance, and its findings may shed light on listening strategy training research.

It has long been assumed within traditional pedagogical practice that error feedback is necessary for learners to progress in their acquisition and use of second language (L2) in more target-like ways. Providing feedback in class is not a simple or clear-cut process as there are many different types of feedback and each type can have a specific effect on learners’ errors. This observational study addressed the following issues with regard to corrective feedback and learner errors: (1) the effectiveness of different types of interactional feedback, (2) the types of feedback that lead to learners' successful uptake, and (3) the categories of errors (e.g., phonological, grammatical, lexical) native English teachers prefer to provide feedback on. Two native English teachers and twenty-eight English as a Second Language (ESL) students at two levels of proficiency, beginners and intermediate, were observed during class. Teacher-student and student-student interactions were recorded during the lesson and individual teacher interviews were carried out after the class observations. The analysis of the data revealed the most frequent types of interactional feedback with intermediate learners were explicit correction followed by metalinguistic clues, clarification requests and recasts. With the beginner students, the most frequently used feedback type was explicit correction, followed by clarification requests, and recasts. This study also showed that repetition and metalinguistic feedback always led to successful uptake. Finally, teachers preferred to correct mostly phonological errors. These results have implications for ESL teachers and teacher educators.

English is rich in multi-word lexemes, such as idioms, proverbs, and other fixed expressions that might be stumbling blocks for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Providing a theoretical background and a pedagogical rationale for inclusion of proverbial expressions, this paper presents some activities with proverbs for language teachers, particularly EFL teachers, to make their classes more lively and exciting. The paper suggests, at the end, that adding variety to the classroom activities might contribute to the learners’ consciousness-raising that will in turn increase their language proficiency in general and proverbial knowledge in particular.

This descriptive analysis of two teachers’ and 32 3rd Year high school students’ perceptions of codeswitching during classroom instruction reports that codeswitching in Chemistry and Geometry is a resource in making knowledge more comprehensible to the students than when only English is used. Through survey questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussion and 220 minutes of class observations, the results show beneficial effects in teaching and learning of highly technical s subjects. However, this study also argues that frequent codeswitching in highly technical subjects can be detrimental to the learners because it can cause confusion in the students’ understanding of difficult concepts. Moreover, this study highlights implications for the “English Only” policy for instruction that seems impractical and ineffective in countries where English is the second or foreign language. The findings present strong indications that codeswitching by teachers should not be construed as incompetence in English proficiency because codeswitching is a bilingual speaker’s skill, not a disadvantage.

Currently, there is increasing recognition of the fact that the beliefs individuals hold are the best indicators of the decisions they make during the course of everyday life (Bandura, 1986). Substantial research regarding language learners’ explicit and implicit beliefs has been conducted in diverse language teaching environments. The present research was undertaken to understand the learning beliefs of PRC learners studying for a Nursing diploma course in Singapore. Our aim was to use a biographical approach to understand learner beliefs and examine the transformation of these beliefs as the learners undergo changes in their learning environment. In analyzing the biographies of these learners, we also tried to establish a connection between two kinds of change: change in the learning environment and change in the learning beliefs. In this study, students in their first and second years of a nursing diploma course in Singapore were interviewed using semistructured interviews. The paper presents our analysis of two interviews keeping the focus of this description on the changes in beliefs about language learning which correlate with changes in the learning environment. While we have reconstructed the narratives, our intention is to focus on the transformation of beliefs of these learners.

Theoretical rationale and research evidence from L1, ESL and EFL supports the relationships between reading and writing as well as the advantages of encouraging students to read as much as possible to enhance their writing ability. This paper gives details of a 15 week reading experiment with a group of Thai EFL learners who were encouraged to read and, by the end, were then sub-divided for statistical analysis on the basis of their reading amounts. Designated ‘high’ and ‘low’ groups, this represented the volume of their exposure to comprehensible input. All subjects had their essay writing abilities measured every five weeks throughout the entire engagement with simplified reading books. Research results along with a discussion of the results provide theoretical as well as unique characteristics of lowability learners and reasons why their writing abilities did not improve despite additional reading involvement over the four months.

Findings from a few studies seem to indicate that weblogs have positive effects on learners by inducing them to think critically (Huffaker, 2008; Woo & Wang, 2009). In view of this recent interest, this paper aims to analyse the extent of bloggers and non-bloggers’ critical thinking (CT) and how different weblogging strategies affect bloggers’ CT. Forty four tertiary students participated in this study. The bloggers’ posts and nonbloggers’ written copies from the study were coded according to Newman, Webb, and Cochrane’s (1996) CT model. In order to compare bloggers’ writing reflections, four strategies were applied as follows: (a) blogging within a group with no feedback or extra influence, (b) blogging within a group with groupmates’ comments, (c) sharing ideas with groupmates in the Sharing Corner at the weblog space before blogging individually in their own group, and (d) blogging to reflect on the groupmates’ comments received. The results indicated that in promoting CT, blogging is seen to be more effective than traditional writing particularly if bloggers receive their group members’ comments.

The main objective of the present study is to examine the relationship between different social psychological variables on the one hand and proficiency on the other. We have found a significant correlation between scoring for exact responses versus acceptable included responses, suggesting the Cloze procedure would well be appropriate for use with non-native speakers. Except for the medium of instruction, resentment motivation and class-room anxiety, all other variables, namely age, sex, socio-economic status, exposure to English, schooling, attitude towards English-speaking Bangladeshis, attitude towards English, integrative motivation, instrumental motivation, manipulative motivation and parental support are significantly correlated with the Cloze scores. Cloze has shown a significant positive correlation with socio-economic status. This indicates that the learners who are from the lower rungs of society have not done well in the Cloze test even though they have a positive attitude towards English-speaking Bangladeshis and also have realized the importance of English in obtaining a better education and good jobs. Those students who have performed better have come from “high socio-economic statuses” and do not sustain positive attitude towards English-speaking Bangladeshis and also view English unfavourably. Those who come from good and English medium schools are generally from higher socio-economic statuses; therefore, there is a high co-relationship between socio-economic status and schooling. The results of our present study confirm that schooling is the most significant predictor of achievement and proficiency in second language learning.

This article reports on a study that evaluated Japanese university students’ attitudes towards Japanese English and inner circle English pronunciation, with the aim of gauging their level of acceptance of Japanese movie star Ken Watanabe as an English pronunciation role model. Students completed an online questionnaire that assessed how attractive, comprehensible and achievable they found Watanabe’s English pronunciation in comparison to a British and an American actor’s speech. The results of the study indicated that respondents regarded Watanabe’s pronunciation as being significantly less attractive, but more comprehensible and achievable than that of the other two actors. No significant differences were observed between the responses for the inner circle speakers. Watanabe’s Japanese English pronunciation appeared to be perceived as somehow inferior to that of the British and American speakers by participants, and this seems likely to be the main obstacle preventing the adoption of Watanabe as a pronunciation role model by Japanese students of English.