Culturalist to Interculturalist Orientations in Language Education: One Professional and Personal Journey from Student, to Teacher, to Teacher Educator

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Bryan Meadows
Keyword(s):  
Classroom Practices ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Teacher Formation ◽  
Personal Journey ◽  
Culture Teaching ◽  
Professional Journey

The purpose of this paper is to chronicle the shift in how language educators are thinking about culture teaching between culturalist and interculturalist orientations. This transformation is intertwined with my own personal and professional journey from language student to language teacher and to teacher educator. I detail specific classroom practices consistent with the interculturalist orientation. In reading this journey, junior educators can reflect on how one’s ideology of teaching is closely linked with one’s personal and professional trajectory. That is, life experiences outside of language teaching intersect with our teacher formation to make us the teachers we are at present.

scholarly journals The Challenges Facing the Foreign Language Teacher Educator: A Proposed Teacher Education Model for EFL

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Carol Goldfus
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Declarative Knowledge ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
The One

As a result of the multi-cultural classroom in the 21st century, language teacher educators face new challenges; for example, young learners and those with language-based difficulties. In order to respond to these evolving needs, a new professional approach that combines theoretical knowledge with practical application is proposed. This approach targets what it is that teachers should know about literacy acquisition in at least two languages - a mother tongue and, in this case, English. The contribution of this proposed model to language education is to produce a teacher with declarative knowledge and research tools on the one hand, as well as the ability to cope with a heterogeneous classroom in a multicultural society on the other. This paper also intends to show how pre-service teacher education would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach with a combination of declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge with all teaching being ‘science-based practice’.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nelta.v16i1-2.6125 NELTA 2011; 16(1-2): 1-12

Innovation in Teacher Development

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 260-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Widdowson
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
Teacher Development ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Teacher Role ◽  
Language Teacher Education ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Micro Level

All of the issues dealt with in the preceding sections of this volume clearly carry with them implications for language teaching and call for a reconsideration of the teacher role, the nature of pedagogic competence which such a role requires, and how people might be most effectively prepared to enact it. In the case of national curricula, as discussed in Section 1 of this volume, whatever proposals are made at the macro-level of educational policy depend for their effectiveness on the interpretation by teachers at a micro-level of pedagogic practice and their abilities to carry out the proposals. So whatever is proposed for language education as policy carries clear implications for language teacher education as well. This might seem to be all too self-evident, but it is easy to cite instances where policy decisions have been made and proposals imposed without taking such implications into account.

scholarly journals Turkish Language Teacher Metaphors of Pre-service Teachers According to Their Perceptions

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Mehmet Fatih Özcan
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Arithmetic Mean ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
The People ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Faculty Of Education ◽  
Turkish Language

The aim of this study is to determine the pre-service teachers' perceptions related to teacher / Turkish language teacher concepts through metaphors. The study group consists of first and fourth grade undergraduate students from Department of Turkish Language Teaching of Faculty of Education of Ağrı province and graduate students from Turkish Language Education in 2018-2019 academic years. The research data was collected with open ended questions. With the questions as “How do you think the concept teacher can be expressed with different words? Why?” related to teacher concept, “What is the first reaction and the first sentence you hear from the people when you tell them that you are a Turkish language teacher/study in the department of Turkish Language Teaching?” related to Turkish language teacher concept, and “What are the three words that you think of when Turkish language teacher is mentioned?” related to Turkish language teacher concept, preferability levels of the metaphors were determined with frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean and standard deviation; and t test was used to determine the difference between gender and views of the participants according to grade. According to the results obtained from the study, it was determined that the participants presented both positive and negative metaphors related to the questions. While a high number of positive metaphors such as educator / instructor, leading / guide / leader and father / mother, compassion, laborer, friend, honest, self-sacrificing, hope are produced, negative metaphors such as Hope killer / hangman and expropriator are also produced. Of the metaphors produced about the Turkish language teacher, the first four came out as silver-tongued/ calligraphic, grammar, book and poet / poem. In addition, metaphors like Unemployed and With Poor Turkish/Short-tempered were also produced.

Teaching to, with, and Against the Test: Language Teaching and Teacher Identity Under Institutional Neoliberalization

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-326
Author(s):  
Enmou Huang
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Public Middle School ◽  
Teacher Identity Formation ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Focal Language

Abstract Neoliberalism has emerged as a keyword that captures some core features of global economic and educational reforms in recent years. This paper reports a linguistic ethnographic study of how a Chinese language teacher was engaged with neoliberal discourses on language education in and out of the classroom in a suburban public middle school in China, with an attempt to illuminate the complexity of language education in a neoliberal context. The analysis shows three general identity positions—as an opponent, a conformist, and a pragmatist—across the identification trajectory of the focal language teacher through the fieldwork period, in relation to neoliberal exam-oriented education and her various ways of engaging with exam discourses in her language classrooms. This inquiry argues for the perspective of unpredictability and complexity as an alternative that goes beyond the current “deterministic neoliberalism” in understanding the dynamics of neoliberalization in language education, language teaching, and teacher identity formation.

scholarly journals Constraints on innovation in English language teaching in hinterland regions of China

2020 ◽  
pp. 136216882097985
Author(s):  
Neil Murray ◽  
Antony J. Liddicoat ◽  
Gavin Zhen ◽  
Penny Mosavian
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
English Language ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Eastern China ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Chinese Government

Since the start of the twenty-first century, English has come to be seen by the Chinese government as a linchpin of its continued economic and political influence. Its resultant efforts to promote innovation in English language teaching align with the aspirations of a population, many of whom regard competency in English as a determiner of opportunity and success in their careers, and thus a vehicle through which to provide a good quality of life for themselves and their families. However, despite government-driven initiatives to improve English language education, change has been slow to materialize, especially outside of the main urban areas of Eastern China. Here, we report on a study that sought to explore the constraints governing attempts by teachers of English to innovate in universities located in some of the so-called ‘hinterland’ regions of Southwestern China. Key determinants that emerged, and which we discuss, included time pressure and competing priorities; scepticism towards new ideas; lack of investment in resources; the primacy of the textbook; students’ language proficiency; and opportunities for professional development. Together, these findings indicate the need for a change of culture if innovation is to be welcomed, both in principle and in practice, as a driver of positive change in the teaching of English in these universities. Teachers, their line managers, and university senior managers need to feel willing and able to engage freely in constructive and informed discourse, and in doing so consider recalibrating institutional priorities, thereby helping reconcile the pressures and tensions currently experienced by English language teachers and which impede progress.

ACTUAL ISSUES OF THE STATE LANGUAGE TEACHING

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 43-47
Author(s):  
Xalima Yuldasheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
The State ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Future Leaders ◽  
Human Spirituality ◽  
State Language ◽  
Formal Style

This article analyzes the current issues of teaching the state language and solutions of teaching problems. Especially in the system of higher education, the meaning of scientific methodsand terms is revealed that bring students closer to the language of their specialization. Particular attention is paid to the importance of language education for the development of human spirituality and the improvement of methods of teaching languages. The higher education system prepares not only qualified specialists,but also future leaders. Future leaders will need to master and master formal style literacy. Therefore, a deep study of the official style -the Munshaot language is required. It is important to pay attention to documents that belong to a person, institution, enterprise

Verstaanbaarheid als interactioneel en contextgebonden fenomeen

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Ellen Simon ◽  
Chloé Lybaert
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Second Language Education ◽  
Communicative Success ◽  
And Migration

Abstract As a result of growing mobility and migration flows, the number of non-native speakers of Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands have gradually increased over the past decades and so have the number of people enrolled in Dutch as a Second Language education. While there is huge variation in the profiles of these non-native speakers, they almost exclusively have in common that their Dutch sounds, in some way and at some stage, accented. In line with worldwide trends in foreign language teaching, the pronunciation goal in Dutch as a Second Language education has shifted from native-like to intelligible. Indeed, the notion of intelligibility has become prominent in language teaching and assessment. In this paper, we discuss the complexity of this notion and set it off against related terms like ‘comprehensibility’ and ‘foreign accent’. Through a literature review, we argue that intelligibility is an interactional and context-sensitive phenomenon: it is as much a responsibility of the speaker as it is of the listener or conversational partner(s) in general, whose attitudes will have an impact on the intelligibility and thus on the conversational flow and communicative success. After reviewing literature on the intelligibility of Dutch as a Second Language, we end by formulating some promising lines for future research.

Living With Ambiguity: Toward Culture Exploration in Adult Second-Language Classrooms

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roumiana Ilieva
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Second Language Education ◽  
Culture Teaching ◽  
Language Classrooms

On the basis of personal experiences with immigration and current conceptualizations of culture in anthropological and culture teaching literature, this article outlines an approach to cultural instruction in adult second-language education, named "culture exploration," which calls for the recognition of ambiguity embedded in cross-cultural encounters. Culture exploration consists of employing techniques of ethnographic participant observation in and outside the classroom and holding reflective, interpretive, and critical classroom discussions on students' ethnographies. It is argued that through culture exploration students can develop an understanding of humans as cultural beings, of the relationship between language and culture, and of the necessity of living with the uncertainty inherent in cross-cultural interactions. Through this process of naming their experience of the target community culture and reflecting on it, it is hoped that students will be in a position to develop their own voice and will be empowered to act to fulfill their own goals in their new environment.

Developing annotation solutions for online Data Driven Learning

ReCALL ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascual Pérez-Paredes ◽  
Jose M. Alcaraz-Calero
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Online Data ◽  
Analysis And Design ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Youth Language ◽  
User Friendly

AbstractAlthough annotation is a widely-researched topic in Corpus Linguistics (CL), its potential role in Data Driven Learning (DDL) has not been addressed in depth by Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) practitioners. Furthermore, most of the research in the use of DDL methods pays little attention to annotation in the design and implementation of corpus-based/driven language teaching.In this paper, we set out to examine the process of development of SACODEYL Annotator, an application that seeks to assist SACODEYL system users in annotating XML multilingual corpora. First, we discuss the role of annotation in DDL and the dominating paradigm in general corpus applications. In the context of the language classroom, we argue that it is essential that corpora should be pedagogically motivated (Braun, 2005 and 2007a). Then, we move on to deal with the analysis and design stages of our annotation solution by illustrating its main features. Some of these include a user friendly hierarchical and extensible taxonomy tree to facilitate the learner-oriented annotation of the corpora; real-time graphics representation of the annotated corpus matching the XML TEI-compliant (Text Encoding Initiative) standard, as well as an intuitive management of the different data sections and associated metadata.SACODEYL (System Aided Compilation and Open Distribution of European Youth Language) is an EU funded MINERVA project which aims to develop an ICT-based system for the assisted compilation and open distribution of multimedia European teen talk in the context of language education. This research lays emphasis on the functionalities of the application within the SACODEYL context. However, our paper addresses similarly the needs of potential multimedia language corpus administrators in general on the lookout for powerful annotation assisting software. SACODEYL Annotator is free to use and can be downloaded from our website.

scholarly journals Innowacyjność w edukacji językowej a profesjonalizm nauczyciela

Neofilolog ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 28-41
Author(s):  
Krystyna Droździał-Szelest
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Teaching Profession ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Computer Assisted Language Learning ◽  
Based Instruction ◽  
Task Based Instruction ◽  
Learning Language

Innovation in language education, just as in any other discipline, is connected with changes whose primary goal is to make the process of language learning/language teaching more efficient. Examples of such innovations include, for instance, task based instruction, computer assisted language learning or the use of portfolio as a means of assessment.Innovation implies a new, qualitatively different perception of the language learning/ language teaching process, roles of teachers and learners, use of materials etc., hence it is believed to constitute a challenge for language teachers and their professionalism. The present article is an attempt to answer the question whether and to what extent the language teaching profession is actually prepared to deal with innovation.

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