scholarly journals Why Only Focus on One Variety of English? A Problem in EIL Teaching in Vietnam

Author(s):  
Hang Thi Nhu Mai

Although research has proposed the urgent need of exposing learners to World Englishes for enhancing learners’ intercultural competence, Standard English, which is either British English or American English, still remains dominant in English language classrooms in the Vietnamese context. This qualitative-designed case study aims to explore Vietnamese higher-education teachers’ explanations for the reasons behind and their perspectives towards embracing World Englishes in English language classrooms. The study employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from five Vietnamese lecturers. The participants’ answers were recorded before being converted into an Excel sheet. A Coding Process of Inductive Analysis (Cresswell, 2002) was adapted to analyze data. The results indicated that the factors including fixed materials, limited classroom time, teachers’ previous training in Standard English (SE) for their degrees, and learners’ favor of SE accounted for the main use of Standard English in language classrooms. Interestingly, however, all of the participants agreed that increasing knowledge of World Englishes is substantially necessary for successful intercultural communications. Moreover, learners are supposed to keep their identity in international encounters through their own English accents while still ensuring mutual intelligibility. The study drew on an implication for teachers to take an active role as transformative intellectuals in classrooms to make the EFL teaching process meet Vietnamese learners’ goals and needs.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Fofo Lomotey ◽  
Gifty Emma Gyima-Aboagye

<p>The classroom is a place where teachers and their pupils or students engage in interaction in order to promote effective learning. Such interactions can follow different patterns, and one such pattern is the IRF (initiation-response-feedback) exchange structure, developed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975, 1992). This study examines the use of the IRF exchange pattern as a pedagogical tool in the English language classrooms of some Basic Schools in Pokuase, a town in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. It investigates the way teachers and pupils initiate, respond to, and provide feedback for effective language acquisition. In order to achieve this objective, a qualitative case study was adopted to analyze 11 hours and 40 minutes of classroom recordings and 100 minutes of interview data. Results regarding the IRF structure show that the various acts within the initiation move included nomination, directing, and prompting; the acts in the response move were replying and reacting, while the acts within the feedback move were acceptance, praise, criticism, and expansion. This result is an indication that there were more initiation and feedback acts than response acts, suggesting the teachers dominated the use of the exchange pattern, leaving the pupils to only provide responses. Results of the teachers’ role indicate that they are engaging in teacher talk as a way of providing explanation, organizing the lesson, and redirecting learners in the interaction. The teachers also provided prompt guidelines by creating conducive environment for the learners to be able to write, read, also provided specific and individual feedback to either correct learners’ language input or to encourage them to learn more. Based on the results, it is argued that teachers, especially at the basic level, should endeavour to employ the use of the IRF pattern because it has the potential to contribute a great deal to ESL teaching and learning.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0845/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTONIO TAGLIALATELA

Research on the incorporation of the emerging English as a lingua franca (ELF) paradigm into English language teaching has flourished in recent years, foregrounding the necessity of translanguaging practices. However, despite the growing awareness of ELF, teachers still struggle to determine whether and how to adhere to the emerging paradigm. In particular, the authenticity of ELF teaching methods in the English language classroom has not been sufficiently addressed, and therefore, needs to be revamped. The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it explores the aspect of teachers’ ELF awareness in English teaching practices as well as the importance of incorporating authentic ELF materials into the classroom to help learners become ELF-aware and, consequently, competent intercultural speakers. On the other hand, it helps English language teachers, specifically those who have no or marginal exposure to ELF to reflect on the subject they teach, challenging the dominant World Englishes paradigm.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Benjamin Baguio Mangila

This study was conducted to primarily investigate the language practices of two bilingual Filipino teachers in English language classrooms. It made use of the qualitative case study guided by Hymes’ methodological approach of the ethnography of communication. The findings of this study revealed that teachers made use of code-switching in teaching and they code-switched for several pedagogic purposes. In sentential-level analysis, the results showed that several code-switching acts were made by teachers in classroom discourse. Intra-sentential, inter-sentential, and intra-word code-switch types were most commonly used by teachers while extra-sentential code-switch was not used in their classroom discourses. In pedagogic-functional level analysis, the results revealed that the teachers frequently used code-switching mostly for instructional or content acquisition. The findings also showed that teachers sometimes code-switched for reformulation and facilitation but they rarely code-switched for language acquisition and habitual purposes. This study recommended that a similar study be conducted to gather sufficient data on class interactions through utilizing intensive classroom observations to deepen investigation on teachers’ language practices. Furthermore, it also recommended that other methods like interviews could also be done to gather teachers’ viewpoints about when and why they code-switch and their attitudes toward their use of code-switching in second language classrooms.


Author(s):  
Nasser Alasmari ◽  
Amal Alshae’el

English is now the most frequently used language worldwide. In academia, English has become “a hyper central language” millions of students are learning for various reasons. As such, pedagogists, academicians, and language teachers seek new tools and teaching methods to help English language learners reach high proficiency levels. The use of drama as a teaching/learning tool in English language classrooms is one proposed method, justifying this study to investigate the effects of teaching English language through drama, thus deciphering the advantages of this experience and possible challenges it may pose. Data was gathered via an English language test and classroom observations. Results showed that the use of drama develops participants’ language skills, especially the communicative ones such as interactions and conversations, and yields higher proficiency levels as it motivates them to become more engaged in the learning process. These participants also displayed more responsibility and self-reliance; thus, much learning took place. These results confirmed the general claim that introducing drama activities in language classrooms positively supports language acquisition. However, introduction of such a tool presented a few challenges as well, such as the learners’ problems of L1 interference, embarrassment, and inhibition, as well as issues related to the unpredictable and open-ended nature of drama. This paper presents more implications of the findings that necessitate further research to gain a more comprehensive account of drama use in language classrooms and thus overcome the challenges presented.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibel Sert ◽  
Yonca Özkan

AbstractUpon the advocacy of the integration of English as a lingua franca, namely ELF, into English language teaching, some scholars (Hino & Oda, 2015) have focused on its possible implications for classroom settings. Implementing ELF-informed activities in an elementary level classroom within a norm-based educational setting, this study aimed to enable students to experience these activities, and explore their pre and post views regarding Standard English, the concepts of good English, and my English. In addition, it also investigated students’ preference for their educational setting after the implementation. The implementation took seven weeks and the activities were created by the researchers. Within a mixed method design, qualitative and quantitative data were collected via semi-structured interviews and two statement lists. The findings indicated that the majority of the students enjoyed the activities and their pre and post views regarding Standard English, good English and my English differ from each other. However, a substantial number of them preferred to be educated with Standard English in their language learning process. Findings also revealed that potential reasons behind this preference may be the domination of norm-based approach in their context, personal interests and prime objectives, and norm-based exams.


2021 ◽  
Vol VI (IV) ◽  
pp. 34-41
Author(s):  
Hina Iqbal ◽  
Muhammad Saeed

Academic writing plays a pivotal role in developing research proposals. The present study aimed to explore the grammatical errors that M.Phil/PhDs scholars commit in academic writing. The present study employed a qualitative case study designed to explore the challenges in the English language faced by the M.Phil and PhDs scholars. The 20 Ph.D. and 36 M.Phil scholars were selected by busing purposive sampling technique. Data were collected by using two self-developed semi-structured interviews protocol. Thematic analysis approach was employed for data analysis. The findings revealed that all the participants reported that correct use of tenses was a big hurdle that entailed the other grammatical mistakes and reduced the report quality because all the lexical aspects are linked with these mechanics. The study recommended that English language courses be offered to postgraduate, M. Phil and Ph.D. scholars to learn the technical aspects of the language and provide students with online interactive programming.


GERAM ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-72
Author(s):  
Fauzul Etfita ◽  
Sri Wahyuni

Teaching materials are a set of tools or facilities that contain materials, methods and evaluations used by teachers or lecturers in learning. So far, the teaching materials released by several developers have rarely been in accordance with the needs of Mechanical Engineering students, where some of the teaching materials available still use general English. In this study, in order to compile an appropriate teaching material, researchers have conducted a needs analysis. Needs analysis is a fundamental aspect for English language lecturers for specific purposes (ESP) in identifying information or the main needs of students and investigating areas of student shortages. In line with this statement, this research is a case study design that aims to determine the needs of mechanical engineering students in learning English through Padlet at the Faculty of Engineering in the 2019-2020 academic year. The data in this study were collected from researcher observations, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 40 students and two English language lecturers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The results revealed that speaking and writing are the main focus of English skills in the Mechanical Engineering department and listening along with reading are the next English skills needed than others.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zelenková ◽  
Dana Hanesová

Abstract The aim of the authors is to respond to the growing demands on the intercultural competence of university teachers due to intensified internationalization pressures on higher education, especially due to the growing number of students and teachers’ international exchanges. They report on an intercultural course design responding to this need, presenting a case study from Slovakia. First, they define the need of intercultural competence of university teachers, especially those teaching in English-medium study programmes. Then they share a) findings from a needs analysis preceding the design of a new curriculum for an intercultural competence course (ICC) at Matej Bel University (MBU) with three aims (development of linguistic, cultural and pedagogic competences); and b) results from action research during piloting the ICC course. A comparison of 2011 and 2018 surveys pointed to the growing dominance of the English language, including an increasing command of English by MBU teachers. The ICC curriculum, tailored to the pre-identified teachers’ needs, proved to be a feasible way of facilitating their intercultural competence. Its implementation revealed persistent prejudices and difficulties associated with overcoming them. It also confirmed a significant deficit in preparing university teachers for their role as intercultural mediators in English-medium courses.


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