A Sociomaterial Perspective of the Challenges of Implementing the Communicative Approach in Saudi State Schools

Despite its dominance in the field of teaching English as a second/foreign language, the implementation of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach continues to be challenging and problematic. A similar set of constraints – including but not limited to challenges related to educational cultures, contextual and conceptual factors, and lack of authentic materials and facilities – have been reported as factors hindering CLT implementations in many contexts. Language teaching and learning materials and facilities are crucial elements that have been found to affect communicative language teaching implementation. However, the issue of how those material elements can affect CLT implementation has rarely been the focus of research in CLT implementation studies. In this paper, the researcher examines the effect of language teaching and learning materials on teachers’ ability to teach communicatively. Thus, informed by sociomateriality this paper attends to a gap in the literature about how material elements of the curriculum hinder the implementation of the communicative language teaching approach in the Saudi context. The data examined in this study were collected through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the findings indicated that material elements in the curriculum exerted agency and power, hindering teachers’ ability to teach communicatively and learners’ ability to improve their learning experiences. The report concludes with practical implications related to the complexity of curriculum development and implementation and the emergent nature of such processes as webs of entangled human/nonhuman relations that give rise to education.

INNOVATIVE TEACHING METHODS IN A CULTURE INTEGRATED ENGLISH LANGUAGE COURSE

The relevance of the study is dictated by the demand of the state for training competitive specialists who are ready to maintain an intercultural dialogue in their professional field. The main goal of modern language education is the development of innovative integrated courses that enable students to enrich their subject knowledge and to master the ability to use this knowledge at the international level. This article considers Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to be promising ways of implementing the integrative approach into the education system. Many methodologists and linguists have proven the effectiveness of interconnected teaching foreign languages and cultures, resulting in the selection of a culture-based course designed in English as an object of the research. With a view to developing students’ professional foreign language competence and enriching subject knowledge, the educational process includes using digital tools provided by museums around the world (the State Hermitage Museum, the Louvre Museum, the British Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Gallery, The Vatican Museums), as well as the tasks based on these authentic resources. The study reveals that digital archives, online art collections, ‘Virtual Visit’, audio and video resources are valuable sources of authentic materials that can be used in the process of professionally oriented English teaching.

Incorporating Socially-Relevant Teaching Strategies in the Online TESOL Classroom

Conducting online TESOL class is always both a challenge and opportunity for teachers to effectively support English language learners. Specifically, this study explores socially relevant teaching strategies to facilitate an engaging and equitable online classroom for educators with ELLs with diverse backgrounds. This research contains online language teaching strategies in the context of multicultural environment. Overall, three strategies are elaborated. One strategy is organizing whole-class discussion and various activity based on learners' cultural background. The second strategy is choosing and using socially relevant teaching materials with online technology, including neutral and authentic materials and giving learners timely prompts. The third strategy is counteracting inequitable relationships in society and in class, managing student emotions to create supportive relationships among students and the teacher. These strategies expand literature on how to conduct online program that are relevant and sustaining for culturally and linguistically diverse adult language learners.

Researching Into the Use of Real-Life Materials in Language Learning Apps

The study reported in this chapter investigates how mobile language apps facilitate the learning of L2 Chinese, focusing on the use of real-life materials in the design of HANZI – a mobile app specifically developed for this study. Guided by the pedagogy of using authentic materials in language learning and some key design principles of language mobile apps, this chapter explores beginner Chinese learner experiences of mobile-assisted Chinese language learning. It is a qualitative-led case study with multiple datasets including descriptive statistics from 111 survey responses, student focus group discussions, and teacher interviews. The analysis reveals that real-life materials can promote learners' motivation, personalised learning, and social interaction, which improve language proficiency. Such materials should be included in language activities in both digital and print media because they are central to overcoming the challenges of learning Chinese characters.

“Are You Ready?” Revisiting Needs Analysis for ESP Online Conversation Course

It is common to be found in an ESP class where the students are not fully engaged in the learning activities due to their lack of interests toward English. To attract the ESP students’ interests, authentic materials and meaningful activities need to be provided. Online learning can bring authentic materials to ESP students and give them meaningful activities as they can interact with native speakers of English through many online platforms. To fit the students’ online learning situations to their learning experiences, as well as the materials and activities to be given, a needs analysis should be carried out. The study focuses on discovering the ESP students’ preparedness in performing an online English conversation course by conducting a needs analysis. Questionnaires were given to 82 students and an interview was performed with 17 students to gain the data. The data collected in the form of percentages were analyzed by describing them qualitatively. From the analysis, it can be concluded that the ESP students were prepared to join the online English conversation course.

The Use of Online Authentic Reading Materials In Online Reading Class

Education in Indonesia, as the large-scale power of the has to be compelled the continuity of teaching activities during the COVID-19 pandemic online learning. It inspires teachers to choose a suitable material to fulfill students’ needs and interests in teaching language. The appropriateness and well chosen authentic materials used by teachers in a context of reading have to cover meaningful content in which those are relevant. Thus, this study attempts to investigate those authenticity used as well as teachers’ challenges in implementing online authentic reading materials in online reading class of higher education. The study is a qualitative. The subjects are three EFL teachers of higher education that teach General English and English for Specific Purposes freshmen for two semesters. The data collection techniques are observation and interview. In analyzing the data, this study uses Ary et al. (2010) theory: familiarizing and organizing; coding and reduction; interpreting and representing. The findings revealed that authenticity is considered as the pivotal thing since, in this case, English is taught as foreign language. The authentic materials can be said its prevalence by measuring each authenticity based on three areas including SLA (Second Language Acquisition), language pedagogy and ICT (Information and Communication Technology). It could establish the applied authenticity to the language learning design materials, especially learning English language. Moreover, The challenge was about the materials, students’ interests, classroom activities and classroom interaction occurred among teachers and the students.

Role of authentic materials in training future managers for intercultural communication through content and language integrated learning

Consideramos o papel dos materiais autênticos no processo de preparação dos futuros gestores para a comunicação intercultural através da aprendizagem integrada de conteúdo e linguagem. O objetivo é analisar o papel dos materiais autênticos na preparação para a comunicação intercultural. Análise da literatura científica e técnicas de diagnóstico, questionários, testes e métodos de processamento de dados estatísticos foram utilizados como métodos de pesquisa. Descobrimos que os materiais autênticos têm efeito positivo na preparação para comunicação intercultural, pois facilitam o estudo de culturas estrangeiras. Preparar futuros gestores para a comunicação intercultural aumenta a eficácia dos alunos em um espaço de língua estrangeira. Os materiais autênticos imitam a atmosfera da comunicação intercultural na universidade. A preparação de futuros gestores para a comunicação intercultural através da aprendizagem integrada de conteúdo e linguagem ajuda a superar barreiras psicológicas na aprendizagem de língua estrangeira e cria um ambiente mais saudável na comunidade estudantil.

A Sociomaterial Perspective of the Challenges of Implementing the Communicative Approach in Saudi State Schools

Despite its dominance in the field of teaching English as a second/foreign language, the implementation of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach continues to be challenging and problematic. A similar set of constraints – including but not limited to challenges related to educational cultures, contextual and conceptual factors, and lack of authentic materials and facilities – have been reported as factors hindering CLT implementations in many contexts. Language teaching and learning materials and facilities are crucial elements that have been found to affect communicative language teaching implementation. However, the issue of how those material elements can affect CLT implementation has rarely been the focus of research in CLT implementation studies. In this paper, the researcher examines the effect of language teaching and learning materials on teachers’ ability to teach communicatively. Thus, informed by sociomateriality this paper attends to a gap in the literature about how material elements of the curriculum hinder the implementation of the communicative language teaching approach in the Saudi context. The data examined in this study were collected through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the findings indicated that material elements in the curriculum exerted agency and power, hindering teachers’ ability to teach communicatively and learners’ ability to improve their learning experiences. The report concludes with practical implications related to the complexity of curriculum development and implementation and the emergent nature of such processes as webs of entangled human/nonhuman relations that give rise to education.

Exploiting Tagline Slogans as Authentic Materials in English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) Classroom

Tagline slogans are aggressively used in the marketing field to promote specific products or services to consumers. However, they are least used as authentic materials in the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language (ESL) class. The too-brief structure embodying tagline slogans makes them difficult to be exploited to be used as materials for teaching and learning processes. Studies on the use of tagline slogans in ESL speaking lessons are still scarce, making it inconclusive to fully comprehend why they are underutilized as opposed to the other authentic materials. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the reasons for such ill preference towards the employment of tagline slogans as authentic materials in speaking lessons from the view of English for occupational purposes (EOP) students. The qualitative data of this study was obtained from seven participants who had utilized tagline slogans in their class presentations. The findings show that tagline slogans are less preferable due to inappropriate words or sentence structures used, presenters’ inefficient explanation resulting in the audience’ misunderstanding and suitability issues with context. Even though there lie limitations in using tagline slogans as authentic materials, with the right selection, they could act as a platform to improve learners’ shared world knowledge in particular and their productive skills of the target language in the long run. This study has unearthed the case against the use of tagline slogans in speaking lessons from the lenses of EOP learners and at the same time has provided lessons learned on how tagline slogans could positively nurture learners’ speaking skills.

The ‘hookability’of multimodal impact captions

The use of captions has grown in recent years in both traditional and new media, particularly in terms of the diversity of style, content, and function. Impact captions have emerged as a popular form of captions for hearing viewers and contain rich multimodal information which is employed to capture viewer attention and enhance engagement, particularly in situations where there is competition for viewer attention. Drawing upon relevance theory, we argue how impact captions could effectively attract and hold visual attention owing to their balance between processing effort and contextual effects. This exploratory study employs a dual-task paradigm and uses authentic materials and viewing situations to further examine the ability of multimodal impact captions to attract and retain overt visual attention amongst a small sample of TV viewers. Our results provide novel insight into the apparent highly individualised efficacy of impact captions, where we identify several variables of interest in participants’ viewing behaviours. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s contributions, limitations, and an outline for future work.