scholarly journals English teachers’ attitudes toward their new roles promoted by English-as-an-international-language pedagogy

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Rahimi ◽  
Maryam Pakzadian

Teaching English as an International Language (EIL) has gained significant ground in recent years. However, the successful implementation of EIL pedagogy largely depends on teachers’ attitude toward EIL. As such, exploring teachers’ attitudes toward principles of EIL pedagogy is of paramount significance. To this end, we examined teachers’ attitudes toward their new roles promoted by principles of EIL pedagogy. Four major findings emerged. First, teachers still consider native accent the correct model. Second, participants were not aware of their role as promoters of intercultural competence, and culture was not a planned part of the curriculum. Third, the teachers were mostly passive consumers of commercial textbooks instead of being critical users of instructional materials. Fourth, the majority of participants were not critical users of teaching methodologies. The implications of our findings for language teacher education in the contexts of EIL are also discussed.

RELC Journal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Shih Huang

Corpora are essential tools in the teaching of English as an international language (EIL). With the advent of high-powered computers, online corpora have been developed with the potential to transform how EIL is taught both inside and outside the classroom, since anyone with a mobile device and internet access can now take advantage of numerous corpora databases. But applying computer corpora to language pedagogy also requires teacher mediation; moreover, the issues involving the lack of corpus integration in either the EIL language classroom or teacher training programmes are both challenging and complex. Nonetheless, there is hope that empowering teachers with the necessary tools, skills, and knowledge in using online corpora will lead to the day when corpora resources and their use are no longer the exclusive preserve of researchers and reference material developers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Kim Hua Tan ◽  
Atieh Farashaiyan ◽  
Rahman Sahragard ◽  
Fatemeh Faryabi

The position of the English language in the world has recently underwent an enormous shift. The global spread of English has altered its status from being a homogeneous and standard language spoken by a few powerful countries into an international language or lingua franca spoken by a wide variety of speakers around the world (Llurda, 2014). The unprecedented global demand, use, and appropriation of English as an international language (EIL) necessitates a profession-wide response to English language learning, teaching, teacher education, assessment, and policy. The international status of English and increase in the number of EIL learners require a teaching agenda that incorporates pedagogical approaches that teach English based on EIL principles (Matsuda, 2017). The current study attempts to discuss the implications of EIL on issues related to language pedagogy, such as culture and intercultural competence in EIL, native-like competence, English teachers in the EIL pedagogy, language assessment in EIL and EIL teacher education. The studies show that EIL as a means of intercultural communication in a wide range of contexts calls for a reconceptualisation of language pedagogy It is concluded that despite the extensive discussions on the role of students’ first language culture for EIL learners, English textbooks and classrooms continue to rely on the target culture and ignore the students’ own culture. Therefore, EIL has yet to be fully incorporated language education despite extensive studies that have been conducted on its role.


2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 423-433
Author(s):  
Mateja Dagarin-Fojkar ◽  
Mirjam Grahut ◽  
Darija Skubic

<p style="text-align:justify">Foreign language teaching in the Slovenian educational context begins in the first grade (age 6). Many studies report a lack of qualified teachers at this stage of learning around the world and numerous authors emphasise the misconception that basic linguistic and didactic knowledge of teachers is sufficient for teaching children. All three Slovenian public universities are aware of this problem and offer pre-service and in-service programmes for (student) teachers who want to specialise in teaching English to young learners. In the present article, we focus on the subject-specific teacher competences for teaching English in the first three years of primary education; namely, linguistic, subject didactic and intercultural competences. We explore teachers’ self-assessment of these competences and their perception of certain elements pertaining to them. The study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) What subject-specific competences do teachers consider essential for teaching English in the first cycle of primary education? (2) To what extent do teachers believe they have developed certain subject-specific competences? (3) What are teachers’ attitudes toward certain subject-specific competences that the teacher needs for teaching English in the first cycle of primary education? The results of the quantitative survey, in which 100 teachers participated, show that teachers perceive their subject didactic competence to be the most developed and their intercultural competence to be the least developed. Moreover, they consider that a basic level of English is not sufficient for teaching English in the first grades.</p>


2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 423-433
Author(s):  
Mateja Dagarin-Fojkar ◽  
Mirjam Grahut ◽  
Darija Skubic

<p style="text-align: justify;">Foreign language teaching in the Slovenian educational context begins in the first grade (age 6). Many studies report a lack of qualified teachers at this stage of learning around the world and numerous authors emphasise the misconception that basic linguistic and didactic knowledge of teachers is sufficient for teaching children. All three Slovenian public universities are aware of this problem and offer pre-service and in-service programmes for (student) teachers who want to specialise in teaching English to young learners. In the present article, we focus on the subject-specific teacher competences for teaching English in the first three years of primary education; namely, linguistic, subject didactic and intercultural competences. We explore teachers’ self-assessment of these competences and their perception of certain elements pertaining to them. The study seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) What subject-specific competences do teachers consider essential for teaching English in the first cycle of primary education? (2) To what extent do teachers believe they have developed certain subject-specific competences? (3) What are teachers’ attitudes toward certain subject-specific competences that the teacher needs for teaching English in the first cycle of primary education? The results of the quantitative survey, in which 100 teachers participated, show that teachers perceive their subject didactic competence to be the most developed and their intercultural competence to be the least developed. Moreover, they consider that a basic level of English is not sufficient for teaching English in the first grades.</p>


Author(s):  
Will Baker

AbstractEnglish as a lingua franca (ELF) research highlights the complexity and fluidity of culture in intercultural communication through English. ELF users draw on, construct, and move between global, national, and local orientations towards cultural characterisations. Thus, the relationship between language and culture is best approached as situated and emergent. However, this has challenged previous representations of culture, particularly those centred predominantly on nation states, which are prevalent in English language teaching (ELT) practices and the associated conceptions of communicative and intercultural communicative competence. Two key questions which are then brought to the fore are: how are we to best understand such multifarious characterisations of culture in intercultural communication through ELF and what implications, if any, does this have for ELT and the teaching of culture in language teaching? In relation to the first question, this paper will discuss how complexity theory offers a framework for understanding culture as a constantly changing but nonetheless meaningful category in ELF research, whilst avoiding essentialism and reductionism. This underpins the response to the second question, whereby any formulations of intercultural competence offered as an aim in language pedagogy must also eschew these simplistic and essentialist cultural characterisations. Furthermore, the manner of simplification prevalent in approaches to culture in the ELT language classroom will be critically questioned. It will be argued that such simplification easily leads into essentialist representations of language and culture in ELT and an over representation of “Anglophone cultures.” The paper will conclude with a number of suggestions and examples for how such complex understandings of culture and language through ELF can be meaningfully incorporated into pedagogic practice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (35) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Gabriela Marques-Schäfer ◽  
Danielle De Almeida Menezes ◽  
Sonia Zyngier

O presente artigo investiga o(s) conceito(s) de competência intercultural de alunos de graduação de cursos de formação de professores em inglês e alemão. Nesse sentido, graduandos do primeiro e quarto ano de inglês e alemão de uma universidade federal do Rio de Janeiro responderam a duas versões de um questionário construído de tal forma que permitisse aos alunos formular indutivamente o que eles entendiam como competência intercultural e como eles poderiam auxiliar seus futuros alunos a desenvolver esta competência. As respostas foram submetidas à análise de conteúdo e os quatro grupos foram comparados. Os resultados mostram que os graduandos de inglês e alemão que participaram desta pesquisa apresentam perspectivas diversas sobre competência intercultural. Uma das razões pode ser atribuída à sua formação educacional.


Author(s):  
Leena Kuure ◽  
Maritta Riekki ◽  
Riikka Tumelius

Nexus analysis is becoming increasingly employed in a variety of research fields. It is seen to be particularly suited to exploring complex and changing phenomena. It entails a mediated discourse perspective to social action and interaction. In discourse studies, this involves switching the perspective from language to social semiotic meaning making in its full spectrum not only here and now but at the same time reaching across more distant spatial and temporal orientations. As the tradition of nexus analysis is still young there are no established interpretations of how to conduct research with an interest in such complexities in flux. This paper presents a review of studies in which nexus analysis or mediated discourse analysis has been applied in research related to language pedagogy and language teacher education. The review shows how research in the field is in emergence and the interpretations concerning the theoretical-methodological underpinnings vary to some extent.


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