Classroom Enjoyment: Relations With EFL Students’ Disengagement and Burnout

As learner burnout and disengagement affect the functioning and performance of college learners and can also influence future career-related well-being, they can be an issue for higher education organizations. Conversely, the discipline of language education has experienced an emotional turn, primarily triggered by Positive Psychology, and the scholars and students have been affected by various emotions. One of the seldom mentioned constructive emotions concerning learners’ disengagement and burnout is enjoyment in learning a foreign language, as has been demonstrated by literature reviews. It is important to note that this review helps scholastic institutions and policymakers in the scholastic community to take into consideration the role of constructive emotions, specifically enjoyment, and their constructive influence on language education in diminishing learners’ challenges in the learning process.

Infusing Critical Thinking Skills into Argumentative Writing: A Study of Chinese College College Learners

Argumentative writing plays an important role in higher education with college students needing to know how to compose persuasive arguments for academic and career purposes. While writing an argumentative essay, Chinese college students not only face the challenges of the activity itself but also the difficulties of writing in a foreign language. To facilitate their argumentative writing, a revised six-element argumentative model based on Toulmin’s framework infused with critical thinking skills was taught to 30 students in an English course at a Chinese Teacher-training University. Using an argumentative essay test in a pre- and post-test design, it was found that the students’ holistic argumentative writing ability significantly improved after the intervention. However, the students’ ability to rebut remained weak.

Psychological Factors of EFL Students on Speaking Performance

This research aimed to explore the psychological factors that caused college learners felt hard in delivering speaking performance. This study was conducted to the fifth semester English program students at IKIP PGRI Pontianak. The 37 students were chosen as the participant of this study which was obtained by doing purposive sampling. It was chosen since the problem occurred in IKIP PGRI Pontianak specifically at the fifth semester students. The research design used in this research was descriptive qualitative and quantitative design. The data were taken from online questionnaire and semi structured interview of students. The questionnaire was employed to find out the dominant factor. The other tool of collecting data was students’ semi structured-interview. It was used to support the questionnaire data. The researcher revealed that the psychological factor including anxiety, shyness, lack of confident, lack of motivation, and fear of making mistake were some factors that influenced students’ speaking performance. The researcher investigated that between five aspects, the dominanat factors influenced the students’ speaking performance was anxiety with the mean score (2,06). They worried to do speaking performance. Another factor were shyness, lack of confident, lack of motivation, and fear of making mistake, those factors hindered learners to practice their speaking ability in front of the class. The conclusions of this research were students feel anxious and afraid of making a mistake when they did speaking performance. This study suggested that the lecture should aware those factors affected students’ speaking performance in the class.

The Effectiveness of Communication-Oriented Pronunciation Instruction and Students' Perception

The purpose of this study is intended to empirically examine whether or not communication-oriented pronunciation teaching affects the English segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation improvements of Korean college learners, as well as their English speaking ability. The students who participated in this study were 26 college students, all of whom were taking an English pronunciation clinic course at a local university. Three types of pre and post-tests were conducted to find out how communication-oriented pronunciation teaching influenced the learners’ pronunciation. Namely, tests of consonant and vowel sound recognition, reading aloud tests, and picture description tests.First, a total of 40 questions were given as pre-and post-pronunciation recognition evaluations to find out how accurately the students perceived the sounds of consonants and vowels. In addition, the students’ voices were recorded as they read dialogue readings both before and after the evaluation, in order to examine the degree of improvement of the segmental and suprasegmental features. Finally, the students were asked to describe certain pictures before and after the course to see if there were any beneficial effects regarding their pronunciation of English.The findings showed that communication-oriented activities led to significant improvements, but only on the consonant recognition tests, not on the tests with vowels. The results from the reading aloud tests also demonstrated that the communication-oriented activities helped students to improve suprasegmental elements, such as stress, intonation, and rhythm. Moreover, there was a significant improvement in the speaking ability of the students, from which I can infer that communication-oriented activities have a positive effect on improving the students’ suprasegmentals, as well as their speaking ability.

What do College Learners Think of Synchronous Learning?

Advancements in educational technology and improvements in the internet’s connectivity has increased the interest of universities in e-learning worldwide. Unlike many institutions around the world, the traditional form of teaching in Albania before the Covid-19 pandemic was face-to-face where both lectures and seminars were attended physically in the classroom. However, the Covid-19 pandemic imposed on them the necessity to move from auditoriums to e-learning immediately without any preparation. This paper aims to investigate the Albanian learners’ attitudes and perceptions of synchronous e-learning during the second semester of the 2019 – 2020 academic year. A survey consisting of 15 questions was distributed to a total of 168 undergraduate and graduate learners in 2 public universities in Albania. Results from the study showed that the learners preferred face-to-face learning over synchronous learning. The lack of motivation, low level of interaction with their instructors and peers, and the feeling of isolation were their main concerns. Meanwhile, the learners appreciated the fact that e-learning helped them to improve their computer and internet skills. It is also less expensive and more comfortable than the traditional mode of teaching and learning.