A Case Study of the Effectiveness of Online Graduate Teacher Education in TESOL

A cadre of school teachers took part in three semesters of online coursework to earn TESOL certification. They participated in a hybrid university math course and a face-to-face summer institute on effective teaching of math to English learners. Participants took pre and post-tests aligned to Common Core elementary mathematics content and the Praxis Test for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. They were observed teaching a math lesson in the beginning of the project to evaluate effectiveness in TESOL instructional strategies. A follow up observation was conducted the following semester. Both observations were scored using the sheltered instruction observation protocol (SIOP Model). Assessment and observation results indicated statistically significant growth in content and pedagogical knowledge and application. A qualitative analysis suggests flexibility in the form of online and hybrid courses, financial support, and practical application of new concepts to current practice are key factors in successful professional development for practicing teachers.

Promoting Prospective TESOL Educators' Critical Reflection Through the 4D Framework

Within the field of teacher education, the significance of promoting critical reflection is highlighted by scholars because it is generally believed that teachers engaging in critical reflection are more able to examine bias, challenge embedded assumptions, and take actions toward educational justice. In the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), there is a growing interest in the cultivation of educators with critical reflection ability. In this chapter, the authors introduce a set of effective tools by which worldwide pre-service TESOL educators can practice critical reflection. The sets include a 4D framework and a worksheet. By incorporating this tool into learning and future English teaching lives, pre-service TESOL educators can be involved in continuous cycles of high-level critical reflection. Through learning on their own reflections, teachers can gain new insights, improve teaching skills, and ultimately, create a more just society for students.

Flipping the Script on the Language Teacher/Researcher

Standard language ideologies, hierarchical language structures and resulting ethnic and racial inequalities have long been reinforced within and by means of the TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) field. These standards and structures echo the colonial history of forced language assimilation and indigenous erasure, a history that in many ways continues today. This chapter proposes language learning and ongoing reflection on the language learning process as a critical framework that English language teachers and researchers should adopt and apply to their work. When teachers and researchers take on the language learner identity inside and outside of classroom/research spaces, they equip themselves to dismantle rigid power structures in TESOL, transforming the colonizer narrative into one of decolonization, collaboration, and equity.

Bērnu latviešu valodas attīstība artikulācijas, normu un lingvistiskās vides šķēršļu joslā

The history of civilization and our historical contacts lie not only in archaeological digs. Linguistics studies have both a historical and a powerful modern dimension with a significant impact on the future. The Latvian language is an undoubted national value in Latvia, and it should be valued since birth, at least in this country. It is a means of strengthening thoughts and ideas for children, a means of building their worldview, a stimulus for enriching their knowledge, creative activity, and, ultimately, civic thinking. The facts of language history and the traces of language contacts are also found in children’s language; for example, children are more likely to learn sounds that can be found in most languages of the world, while the sounds specific for each language are more difficult to learn for speakers of other languages. This time, I describe such creative linguistic activities of children that remind us of linguistic relationships and older forms and fit into our historical development. I have already analysed the examples observed in children’s Latvian, which, in adult language, we have transformed throughout history, but which very directly show the common grounds of the Baltic languages. For example, the historical change in vocalism known in Latvian phonetics, the sound change determined by the consonant /n/, is not inherited; it appeared in the Latvian language when in > ī, un > ū, an > o [uo], en > ie as a result of historical changes. When we compare Latvian words with Lithuanian, examples can be found: krītu < krintù, jūtu < juntù, protu < prantù, pieci < penkì, arī rankà > roka, etc. The change kind of lives in Latvian children’s language because we can hear examples of it: tinšu kamolā ‘tīšu kamolā’, pint matus ‘pīt matus’, un pinšu bizi ‘pīšu bizi’, dzint bārdu ‘dzīt bārdu’, uzmint uz kājas ‘uzmīt uz kājas’. These are variations of the change mentioned above, and these families had no relationship or other close contact with Lithuanians. Also, an example of simplification has been observed when, alike to the historical loss of consonant /d/, e.g. nīd-a – nī(d) -st-u, a child made a similar change: līd-a – es pašlaik jau lī(d)-st-u `lienu`. In reference to conversations between children and their parents, this article mentions Lithuanian formant -iuk and Latvian affix -uk- that are used to form masculine diminutives, whether the primary word is masculine or feminine. Problems in pronunciation of Latvian and Lithuanian only opening diphthongs ie and o [uo] not common in other languages are also described along with the reminder of play languages of children speaking Latvian or southern part of Zhemaitian subdialects as a signal that children perceive ie and o [uo] as monophonemes in contrast to biphonemic character of other diphthongs. Children learn languages gradually, first memorising the dominant, most frequently heard elements of language, e.g. maybe: es lasu, tu lasi, es nāku…, but why tu nāc? Why not tu nāki or even tu nāci (pres.), thus demonstrating a naturally perceived once occurred change of the consonant k into c in front of the lost front vowel? Maybe the intensity could be escalated by saying, Tu mani ļoti mīli, bet es tevi mīlu ļotāk! Education is an objective necessity, and language skills are important for learning. The five-year-old Eiženija understands this very clearly: “Jaunība ir jauns bērns. Jaunībā ir jāmācās, jo savādāk paliks vecs un neko nezinās.” (‘Youth is a young child. You have to learn when you’re young, because otherwise [one] will grow old and know nothing.’) This article focuses solely on the results of pre-school speech records and parental surveys and highlights the impact of the linguistic environment as a contributing or preventing factor.

Does Developmental Education Reform Help or Hinder the Success of Language Minority Students? An Exploration by Language Minority, ESOL, and Foreign-Born Status

Community colleges may face challenges supporting the unique needs of language minority (LM) students whose primary language is not English. Florida provides a unique context for examining whether LM students who are considered underprepared for college-level coursework benefit more from traditional developmental education programs in reading and writing, or reformed programs that allow most students to accelerate or even bypass developmental requirements while providing additional support services. Utilizing statewide data from firsttime-in-college students at all 28 Florida College System institutions, we use an interrupted time series design with an analysis of heterogenous effects to compare first year coursetaking outcomes in English before and after Florida’s developmental education reform for LM versus non-LM students. We also consider the intersecting identities of LM students by further disaggregating results based on whether students took high school courses in English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL), and for native-born versus foreign-born students. The findings suggest that while the reform’s benefits are similar for LM and non-LM students overall, there are importance differences among LM subgroups which indicate that ESOL and foreign-born students may benefit most.

The onomastic possibility of renaming the Sepedi and Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) language names to restore peace, dignity and solidarity

The study embraced the onomastic possibility of renaming the Sepedi and Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) language names that have caused and are still causing onomastic confusion to the first language (L1) speakers of the language under scrutiny, and also to the speakers of other languages. The study was conducted in 2019 at five selected South African universities – University of Johannesburg, University of South Africa, University of Limpopo, University of Venda and Tshwane University of Technology – which offered the language under investigation as an L1 module. In addition, language experts (practitioners) at the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) and its sub-structures and the National Department of Arts and Culture, including Limpopo and Gauteng Department of Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation, were also involved in the study. Quota sampling was used to select all the 267 participants in the study. The study found that both Sepedi and Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) language names are rejected by onomastic principles of naming an official language. An overwhelming majority of the participants opined that this language should be renamed, with the anticipation that the new name will bring peace, unity and solidarity to the L1 speakers of Sepedi.

Who did what to whom, and what did we already know?

This paper reports on an experimental investigation of what second language (L2) learners and heritage speakers of Russian know about the relationship between word order and information structure in Russian. The participants completed a bimodal acceptability judgment task, rating the acceptability of SVO and OVS word orders in narrow-focus contexts, under neutral prosody. Heritage speakers behaved like the control group of baseline speakers, preferring SVO order in answer to object questions, and OVS order in answer to subject questions. In contrast, L2 learners preferred SVO order regardless of the context. While the heritage speaker group was more proficient than the L2 group, proficiency alone cannot account for differences in performance: specifically, with regard to acceptance of OVS order for subject narrow focus, heritage speakers improved with proficiency, but L2 learners did not. It is proposed that heritage speakers have an advantage in this domain due to early age of acquisition (cf. Montrul, 2008). This finding is consistent with prior literature on narrow focus with heritage speakers of other languages, and suggests that this phenomenon is not particularly vulnerable in heritage languages.

A Comparative Study of the Motivations to Teach Chinese Between Native and Non-native Pre-service CSL/CFL Teachers

The present study compared the motivations to teach Chinese between native and nonnative pre-service teachers of Chinese as a second/foreign language (CSL/CFL). The participants included 325 native and 325 non-native Chinese-speaking pre-service CSL/CFL teachers registered in the Masters in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (MTCSOL) programs; the teachers were asked to complete a 24-item questionnaire. Two major findings emerged. First, a similar six-factor teacher motivation was observed for both the native and non-native teachers. Second, the two groups showed non-significant differences in their ratings of the importance of cross-cultural value, intrinsic value, altruistic value, and fallback career choice as types of motivation but differed significantly in their ratings of extrinsic value and social influence. These results highlight the differences and similarities in the motivation of the second language teacher and offer insights into the variables at different levels that might influence the motivation of the second language teacher. Teacher motivation is advised to be taken into account in the training and administration of CSL/CFL teachers to alleviate the problems of teacher shortage outside China.

Supporting Practitioner Inquiry in Teacher Education: Opportunities and Challenges in ESOL Contexts

Formal preparation and professional development with an explicit focus on the teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) is essential. Thus, teacher preparation programs play a vital role in meeting this pressing need. Practitioner inquiry has the potential to be a powerful anchor in clinical field experiences for teacher candidates working with emergent bilingual/multilingual students (EB). The purpose of this paper is to present practitioner inquiry as a promising pedagogical practice for teacher education, drawing from examples of implementation in an elementary, preservice teacher preparation program that leads to state credentialing in ESOL. Opportunities and challenges related to the use of this practice with teacher candidates, as well as recommendations, are discussed. Keywordspractitioner inquiry, professional development, teacher education, English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), bilingual/multilingual students

Development of pragmatic competence among L2 learners

Although compliments and compliment responses seem to play an important role in discourse of second language (L2) classrooms (Khaneshan & Bonyadi, 2016), the influence of virtual exchanges on enhancing the use of compliment responses remains unexplored. Twelve L2 learners of English from Poland met in groups for six weeks, via video conferencing, with Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidates from a university in the USA. During online sessions, the L2 learners’ primary focus was on discussion in English regarding assigned TED Talks. Data analysis consisted of statistical analyses using SPSS on Likert-scale questions while open-ended responses were coded using NVivo 12 into researcher-created categories. In addition, transcripts were analyzed. It is evident from this study that L2 learners have opportunities to utilize virtual exchange to develop L2 pragmatic awareness related to compliment responses.