scholarly journals Discursive Representations of Digital Artifacts in an EFL Classroom: Analysing Discursive Voices of Pre-Service Teachers of English

Author(s):  
Oleksandr Kapranov

The present article presents and discusses a study that seeks to analyse discursive representations of digital artifacts in the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) by pre-service EFL teachers (henceforth – participants). The study involves a corpus of argumentative essays on a range of topics in EFL didactics written by the participants and their respective control group which is comprised of non-teacher EFL students. The analysis of the corpus of essays reveals that whilst there are discursive representations of digital artifacts that are shared between the groups of participants and controls, there appear to be discursive representations of digital artifacts that are group-specific. These findings and their linguo-didactic implications are further described in the article.

Author(s):  
Makiko Kato

The present paper reports part of a larger project investigating the effectiveness of explicit instruction of writing a summary to Japanese learners learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Given that the process of producing a written summary involves both understanding the source text and producing its gist succinctly, the present study examined if helping learners to understand the text would help them to improve the quality of the summary they produce. A total of 25 Japanese high school EFL students who took part in the study were divided into three groups. The first group (n = 8) and the second group (n = 9) were experimental groups, where the first group was given L1 translation, and the second group was provided the L1 glossary. The third group (n = 8) was served as a control group, who did not have any support material. To examine the longitudinal nature of the effect of writing a summary with L1 clues, they were asked to write a summary once a week for five weeks, using different texts each time. The summaries were assessed by three different raters. The results showed that three groups were different in the quality of the summaries they produced. Overall, the summaries of the students who were given L1 glossary improved more compared with the other two groups. The paper concludes with several suggestions for EFL teachers teaching summary and for the researcher who is interested in the current topic.


Author(s):  
Oleksandr Kapranov

This article presents and discusses a study that aims at establishing how self-mentions are used by pre-service teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in their argumentative essay writing. The study examined a corpus of argumentative essays written on a range of topics in EFL didactics by a group of pre-service EFL teachers (hereafter – participants). The corpus involved two rounds of argumentative essays written by the participants and their respective controls (nonteacher EFL students). The frequency of self-mentions in the corpus was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM 2011) in terms of raw values, and the computer program WordSmith (Scott 2008) as normalised data per 1000 words. The results of the quantitative analysis revealed that the frequency of the self-mention we decreased, whereas the frequency of the self-mention I increased in the second round of essays. These findings and their linguo-didactic implications are further discussed in the article.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
Moslem Fatollahi

<p>Sight translation is the oral translation of a written text and is a mixture of translation and interpreting. Sight translation is a widely-used activity in translation training programs. Yet, this mode of translation has rarely been applied as a reading instruction technique in Iranian EFL instruction context in spite of the growing interest in using sight translation in language teaching and learning. This study aims at investigating the effect of sight translation on the reading comprehension ability of Iranian undergraduate EFL students. This is a quasi-experimental study involving treatment. To this end, four reading comprehension classes involving 70 learners were divided into two groups, with the experimental one receiving reading instruction with sight translation exercises and the control group receiving reading instruction without sight translation exercises. The posttest results revealed that the experimental group performing sight translation exercises in classroom outperformed the control group who had not engaged in sight translation. This study has implications for ELT instructors and learners in an Iranian context as they can use sight translation exercises as an effective technique for improving the reading comprehension ability of their learners.</p>


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ammar Mohammed Ahmed Mudawy

The study aims at suggesting effective methods and techniques that could improve English as a foreign language EFL students’ performance in writing skills. The researcher uses the descriptive, analytical method. Four tools were adopted pretest, post-test, supporting program, and a questionnaire for teachers for collecting data. Twenty-five students in Holy Quran University, Sudan, were chosen purposively, and thirty EFL teachers at a university level were randomly selected as a sample for the study. Ninty percent of the teachers agree on the suggested program and techniques. The findings of the study indicate that: using varied techniques and activities in pre-writing stage promotes students’ performances in writing, integration of reading and writing skills in the classroom improves students’ writing skills, as well as encouraging extensive reading outside the classroom promotes students’ performance in writing skills. Accordingly, the researcher recommends that: teachers should focus on the prewriting stage through different activities as well as reading and writing should be used in an integrated way in-class writing to guide the writing process.


Author(s):  
Luiza Ciepielewska-Kaczmarek

The following factors have contributed to arising new target groups in teaching foreign languages: the European Union’s claim concerning the multilingualism of its members, migrations, common mobility. As a consequence of this situation new handbooks for teaching and learning foreign languages have appeared on the market. Thus, the teacher is often confronted with the necessity of choosing the handbook, which is most adequate for the needs of a particular group of learners. The present article aims at defining the criteria of handbook selection in the light of the latest trends in foreign language teaching methodology.


Author(s):  
Setya Resmini

ABSTRACTThe issue of using first language (L1) in teaching English has always been a controversy in the field of teaching and learning English.  The purpose of this study was to investigate the English as Foreign Language (EFL) students’ perceptions towards the use of L1 (Bahasa Indonesia) in the English classroom. In this study, the descriptive qualitative method was employed.  The participants involved in this study are 40 EFL students in the second semester who learn General English in IKIP Siliwangi. A questionnaire which consists of 15 questions was distributed to the participants to gain primary data. To support the data from questionnaire, observation also conducted in the classroom. The findings reveal that the teacher’s use of bahasa Indonesia brought positive/negative perceptions towards students. The students give negative perception towards the teacher’s use of bahasa Indonesia in General English classroom. However, the students also recognized the advantages and disadvantages of the teacher’s use of bahasa Indonesia in the classroom.Key words: EFL; students’ perception; first language (L1); foreign language


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-202
Author(s):  
Elias Bensalem

This paper reports on a study of how a group of tertiary level EFL teachers perceived and used mobile devices in their teaching and personal learning. One hundred and fifty teachers (66 female, 84 male) from public universities in Saudi Arabia completed an online questionnaire. Results showed that the majority of participants used mobile devices and applications in their teaching and learning. Survey data showed that the vast majority of teachers had positively perceived and frequently used mobile technologies in their teaching and personal learning. In addition, there was a correlation between teachers’ use of mobile technologies in their teaching and their use in learning. There was also a correlation between how teachers perceived the value of mobile technologies in learning, and how they use them in their teaching.


Author(s):  
Laily Maulida Septiana Harti ◽  

The ever-growing ideology of English as global language has brought significant effect to education. Moving from the want to learn the language, English literacy has become the need. Learning English thus becomes an urge, especially in English as Foreign Language (EFL) context. Teaching English needs to go over teaching the elements of the language itself, but more to encouraging learners to be able to negotiate meaning in their purposeful interaction. In EFL teaching and learning setting, various studies focusing on the pedagogy have been conducted. This study is, indeed, leading to the pedagogy of English, focusing on the resources that teachers can utilize to create a conducive environment for learning and building the students’ reservoir. In addition, the concept of space in educational setting has given a valuable contribution to carry out pedagogical approach multimodally. This paper examines the employment of multimodal classroom in an EFL university context in Indonesia to develop students’ reservoir of English. How multimodality and the use of technology provide affordances and possible constraints to the teaching and learning process is as well presented according to published researches on the same field of study.


ExELL ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Kapranov

AbstractThis article introduces and discusses an empirical investigation that aimed to establish how pre-service teachers of English (hereinafter “participants”) framed their perceptions of Canvas, a learning management system (LMS), in their studies of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In the present study, the participants and their respective controls (i.e., non-teacher EFL students) were requested to write a short reflective essay associated with the use of the LMS in their EFL course. All participants and the control group used Canvas as their LMS. The corpus of the participants’ and controls’ reflective essays was analysed qualitatively by means of framing analysis. The results of the qualitative framing analysis revealed that whilst there were similarities in the participants’ and controls’ framing, the corpus of the participants’ essays involved instances of framing that were specific to the participants’ perceptions of Canvas. These findings and their linguo-didactic implications were further presented in the article.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Al LHassan ◽  
Nadia Shukri

The present study intended to investigate the effect of utilizing Learning Management System (LMS), Blackboard® on enhancing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) female students’ satisfaction in the Saudi context. It is found that the effectiveness of utilizing the supplementary materials on Blackboard® is leading up to EFL students’ satisfaction. Since, Blended Learning (BL) model could stimulate a classroom setting with activities that are carried out under flexible and engaging manner. The sample consisted of ninety-eight students from proficiency level -104. The data of the study was collected using a questionnaire to identify students’ level of satisfaction. The results revealed that students’ satisfaction was apparent as their positive responses outweighed their negative responses mainly in terms of richness of learning resources, opportunity to interact in foreign language, appropriateness and variety of content, and ease of using Blackboard®. Based on the results, the study recommends considering the positive assets and challenges to plan the future of both teaching and learning English language effectively. The study suggested several areas to be investigated in the future such as examining the motivational behavior of both the teachers and the students and finding out the factors that will affect the environment of BL in EFL.


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