Students’ intercultural sensitivity development through telecollaborative Chinese language learning on Zoom: a case study of Irish students at the beginning-level of Chinese language

This descriptive study presents the first research cycle with four synchronous telecollaborative language learning sessions on Zoom between Irish and Chinese teenagers. Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) post-questionnaire results show that the mean of interaction enjoyment scale is the highest compared to the other four categories, which implies that telecollaboration provides an enjoyable and authentic environment for Irish adolescent learners to experience communication with native speakers. However, low averages of ISS categories indicate some factors are at play such as short telecollaboration duration and potential technological issues. The gap between the previous needs analysis and current findings demonstrates that participants probably underestimated the challenge of engaging with Chinese native speakers, which would suggest that more scaffoldings and preparations are required for beginning-level learners before and during telecollaborations.

Path Planning Generator with Metadata through a Domain Change by GAN between Physical and Virtual Environments

Increasingly, robotic systems require a level of perception of the scenario to interact in real-time, but they also require specialized equipment such as sensors to reach high performance standards adequately. Therefore, it is essential to explore alternatives to reduce the costs for these systems. For example, a common problem attempted by intelligent robotic systems is path planning. This problem contains different subsystems such as perception, location, control, and planning, and demands a quick response time. Consequently, the design of the solutions is limited and requires specialized elements, increasing the cost and time development. Secondly, virtual reality is employed to train and evaluate algorithms, generating virtual data. For this reason, the virtual dataset can be connected with the authentic world through Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), reducing time development and employing limited samples of the physical world. To describe the performance, metadata information details the properties of the agents in an environment. The metadata approach is tested with an augmented reality system and a micro aerial vehicle (MAV), where both systems are executed in an authentic environment and implemented in embedded devices. This development helps to guide alternatives to reduce resources and costs, but external factors limit these implementations, such as the illumination variation, because the system depends on only a conventional camera.

Situating east Indonesia's EFL Learners attitudes toward the extensive listening practices

Learning English as a foreign language is very challenging for both teachers and students in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara of Indonesia. The challenges are primarily caused by their lack of exposure to the authentic environment of English. In dealing with this phenomenon, the appropriate listening practices expect to help the learners to obtain and construct their knowledge of English as well as to acquire more comprehensible input. This article reports an investigation on the EFL learners� attitudes toward the extensive listening practices. It applied mixed-method research procedures involving 55 students of the English language and education program of Universitas Katolik Indonesia Santu Paulus Ruteng. The data were collected through a survey coupled with Focus Group Discussions with 15 participants. This research revealed that the learners' attitudes are identified into two main categories called positive and negative attitudes. In this case, 38 % of the participants have positive attitudes toward extensive listening practices and 62% of the participant reflected the negative attitude toward the extensive listening practices. Learners with a positive attitude had a very strong awareness of the significance of listening skills in L2 learning. To improve their listening skills, they develop their listening practices outside the classroom consistently. Meanwhile, learners with negative attitudes were categorized as dependent learners who practiced their listening skills during the listening course only. This group of learners was less aware of the significance of listening skills in L2 learning and their listening practices were highly dependent on the teachers' instruction. It showcased that both of the learners� internal and external factors were strongly contributed to this poor extensive listening practices.� The EFL teachers are then strongly suggested to strengthen the learners� awareness on the significance of Listening Skills in L2 learning as well as design more instructed extensive listening practices outside the classroom.�

MICROSOFT TEAMS AS A TOOL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY AT UNIVERSITY

Рассматривается понятие и принципы дистанционного обучения. Определяется значение интернет-технологий для изучения иностранного языка. Характеризуются функциональные возможности онлайн-платформы Microsoft Teams. На основе анкетных данных анализируется опыт дистанционного обучения в Тюменском государственном университете в рамках дисциплины «Иностранный язык» на базе MS Teams. Проводится соотношение между инструментами MS Teams и параметрами занятия по иностранному языку. Определяются значимые для изучения иностранного языка функции платформы, а также возникающие трудности. This paper presents the concept, principles of distance education and its relationship with the terms online-learning and e-learning. The author determines the importance of Internet technologies for foreign language learning and the formation of foreign language communicative (often professionally oriented) competence as the main task of this subject. The article gives the reflections of the functionality of the Microsoft Teams online platform to create a unique online learning environment. The issue is addressed by analyzing the survey data on learning foreign languages online via the MS Teams at the University of Tyumen. The specific objective of the study is to juxtapose the MS Teams tools with the parameters of organizing classes in foreign languages such as interactivity, multimedia, the implementation of the learner-centered approach, the teaching and learning materials used, teaching methods and forms, the creation of an authentic environment and the formation of various types of speech activity. In addition, the study defines the most significant MS Teams functions, in particular, storing educational materials, having feedback, video communication (online-meetings), working in teams and channels, MS Teams tests, working with co-editing files etc. The author identifies the difficulties that arise (namely technical, psychological, physiological, methodological difficulties and problems in perceiving information), their possible causes and ways to overcome them. The article ends with conclusions on how MS Teams integrates into the foreign languages learning process.

Short Teacher Responses in the EFL Classroom: A Corpus-Approach Assessment

Teacher’s positive feedback in the form of immediate succinct response is an indispensable motivational factor crucial to students’ oral production and classroom participation. The present study was intended to assess the range and authenticity of teacher responses used by a number of Russian teachers of English in everyday classroom interactions. The study adopted theCorpus Approachas a reference tool to verify the research data against a Corpus-driven evidence that isto examine and assess the authenticity of the most frequent responses given by the study participants (21 practising EFL teachers working in Orel, Russia, most of whom are graduates of Orel State University, andwhose teaching experience ranges from 11 to 25 years). The results indicated that the phrases the teachers used in the classroom differed from those native speakers use in similar authentic environment. The analysis revealed that the teachers did not resort to clear and concise positive reinforcement often enough to stimulate the students’ engagement. In addition, a finite list of highly authentic TRs was recommended for more frequent use in ordinary EFL classrooms and among would-be English teachers. Overall, both teachers in the field and trainee teachers need to be more informed on how and in what particular way to encourage their students’ classroom participation.

The Multi-dimensions of Teachers’ ICT learning

Todays’ teachers should respond to their students’ learning need in this digital era, but frequently they do not know how to operate technology. This situation imposes teachers to survive and grow through self-learning and learning method discovery instead of relying on formal training. This study aims to explore how teachers survive and perform their self-learning. The data are collected from an interview with a senior teacher from higher education institution and twenty-six senior high school teachers’ written responses. The data show that ICT learning requires the integration of affective, social and cognitive functioning through the process of adaptive learning from authentic environment, individual continuous and group learning. The study shows that teachers are potential adaptive learners, who learn from diverse everyday situations. They are engaging in situated learning process. ICT learning workshops are not the only platforms where they can learn ICT. On daily basis, the teachers learn from other more competent teachers, teachers learning communities and their own students

The Effectiveness of Total Physical Response (TPR) on Teaching English to Young Learners

This article through two teachers’ cases, namely, observation of two teachers’ classes and interview with them, interview with their students and their students’ parents, attempts to investigate the effectiveness of TPR as a classroom technique with young learners and to explore how teachers use TPR and to identify some of the challenges of using it in practice. All the findings are discussed referring back to the relevant literature review and context. The findings of observation indicate that the TPR technique is a good way on the basis of games, role-play, storytelling and pair works with the physical actions. It also finds some potential factors that contribute to TPR’s challenges in practice, such as the use of traditional method, training constraints, students’ low English proficiency, the lack of authentic environment and exam-oriented assessment. The findings from the various angles obtained seem to be very similar to those reported earlier by literature review. This study also makes a contribution to the existing literature in terms of the providing insights into the attitudes toward English education for parents or students, and the lack of parents’ supervision to some extent that they have influenced on the TPR. Importantly, through a systemic introduction of TPR in this study, it is useful to help future teachers to implement TPR methods into their young learner teaching. The results of this study can also help me to reflect on my own teaching approaches and support other teachers working in my college.

Formation of communicative competence in a professionally-oriented foreign language course in higher education: issues and recommendations

The aim of a professionally-oriented English language course is to develop students’ communicative compe-tence, English language linguistic competence, in particular, that supports students’ professional expertise. In this paper, the main issues of the formation of communicative competence in a professionally — oriented English language course at the university level are discussed. The data is drawn from the survey conducted among undergraduate and postgraduate students in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (N=48, mean age 26.5) who have taken the course. The survey results revealed that although students hold a positive attitude towards the course, they did not show some sufficient improvement of linguistic skills after the course completion, and more than 33 % of respondents rarely or almost never used the acquired English language skills for their fur-ther professional development. In this paper, I argue that to reach the intended learning objectives of the course, there is a need for university teachers to create a more «authentic» environment in order to involve students in creative and engaging classroom activities.

Flavor perception of wine is unchanged during commercial flight: a comparative field study

Background: It is generally accepted that the human perception of flavor and odor is altered in low-pressure environments such as airplane cabins. This has been demonstrated in several simulation studies, but never in a field study conducted in an authentic environment, and never using wine as the object of study. Methods: We performed a comparative field study composed of two wine tastings. The first tasting was conducted on board an aircraft flying at standard cruising altitude and the second tasting was conducted at ground level. Subjective taste experience and current mood were evaluated through a validated questionnaire. The study was reported according to the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guideline. Results: The study included 22 participants, none of whom had any special training in wine tasting. No statistically significant difference in experienced flavor intensity was found between the high and low altitude tests, with median aromatic intensities of 5 (interquartile range 3.5-6.0) and 5 (interquartile range 4.0-6.5) respectively, measured on a 9-point hedonic scale. Additionally, there was no detectable difference in several other taste parameters. Conclusions: These findings suggest that even though experimental studies have demonstrated that senses of taste and smell may be suppressed on commercial flights, the subjective wine tasting experience of non-professionals in real life testing may not be affected.