Learners’ reading between the signs in the English second language classroom

Background: In South Africa, developing criticality among learners is essential for their careers in school and outside school. However, knowledge and understanding of critical literacy within the schooling context is unclear, with only patchy guidance available for teachers.Objectives: An intervention project was set up to discover how community signs could be used as a pedagogical tool for teaching learners to be critical readers. The focus of the study was teaching English second language learners to use language as an instrument for creative and critical thinking.Method: In this ‘study within a study’, the learners’ role has been elevated to that of researchers. As ‘researchers’, the learners collected community signs from around their township and conducted interviews with community members. They analysed the signs and interview transcripts using Fairclough’s method of critical discourse analysis. The social semantic theory was used to anchor this study.Results: The first attempt at being critical readers was the categorisation of data. Three categories that formed broad themes were observed. The learners’ responses gave insight into their own ‘processes’ of reception and processes of production of the signs. The results suggest learners developing an ability to read signs as instantiations of township discourses.Conclusion: Teaching critical literacy awareness can be achieved when teachers use texts drawn from familiar contexts. The study contributes to knowledge on how unconventional texts can be used in the classroom to develop criticality among learners.

Reflection on peer reviewing as a pedagogical tool in higher education

Previous research has emphasized both the importance of giving and receiving peer feedback for the purpose of active learning, as well as of university students’ engagement in reflection to improve learning outcomes. However, requiring students to explicitly reflect on peer reviewing is an understudied learning activity in higher education that may contribute to the utilization of peer-feedback and promote further learning. In this study, we suggest reflection on peer reviewing as one approach to providing a platform for students to engage in reflective practices and for stimulating active learning in higher education, and to make that learning visible to the educator. We examine 26 undergraduate students’ reflections on peer-review to identify categories of reflection and what students have learnt from the peer reviewing process. Our findings reveal six different categories of reflection suggesting students’ active engagement in learning and pointing to the ways educators can direct and instruct students how to reflect. We discuss how these findings can inform university lecturers in the use of reflection upon peer reviewing as a pedagogical tool in higher education.

ONLINE GRAMMAR CHECKERS VERSUS SELF-EDITING: AN INVESTIGATION OF ERROR CORRECTION RATES AND WRITING QUALITY

Background and Purpose: In order to compete with native speakers, EFL and ESL students are under more pressure to produce native-like academic papers. This has led to more reliance on online grammar checkers, but these can be ineffective with regards to identifying and giving feedback on particular grammatical forms, phrasing and issues relating to style. Language learners may not be effectively correcting these errors. Hence, this study aims to examine the effectiveness of one online grammar checker, grammarly.com, with that of self-editing. Methodology: This case study employed a descriptive approach to data analysis. 199 essays were collected from undergraduates at four universities in Kyushu, dated from April, 2019 to January, 2020. 99 essays were proofed by an online grammar checker, while 100 essays were self-edited. The English proficiency level of the participants was at the lower to intermediate range (i.e., TOEIC 300 to a TOEIC 500). The online grammar checker Grammarly was utilized by all participants to minimize issues relating to feedback. In the analysis of data, the complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) of the essays was assessed in order to examine the significant changes between the first and other drafts, and the types of errors produced. Findings: Results showed that there were no significant differences found in terms of the methods of editing, although the participants who employed online grammar checkers had better results. It was also shown that there were no significant differences in terms of syntactical complexity with either method of editing. There were fewer errors committed by the participants who self-edited, but there were no significant differences in the edited drafts with regards to errors/100 ratios, error-free clauses, and error-free clause ratios. The study showed marginal differences between the two methods of proofing but indicated that online tools can be useful for identifying certain grammatical errors. Contributions: This paper argues that educators need to work more with EFL learners on the editorial and proofing process, but online grammar checkers may be a useful pedagogical tool to help low-proficient L2 learners. Keywords: Writing quality, editing, online grammar checkers, proofing, syntactical complexity. Cite as: Long, R. (2022). Online grammar checkers versus self-editing: An investigation of error correction rates and writing quality. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 7(1), 441-458. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol7iss1pp441-458

The Impact of Using Twitter as a Pedagogical Tool on Improving Writing Skills of English Language Education Students

This study was a qualitative research method focused on a case study approach. This study aimed to find out the impact of pedagogical Twitter on improving the writing skills of English Language Education students at Universitas Pendidikan Muhammadiyah (UNIMUDA) Sorong. The sample of this study was 27 students of the English Language Education Study Program in the academic year 2020/2021. The sampling technique of this study used a purposive sampling technique. Invalidating the data, I used methodological and investigator triangulation. The instrument of this study had validated by expert judgment invalidating the data. The data of this study had collected through students writing text, tweets from Twitter, and interviews. After collecting the data, I used Brown’s rubric score to analyze students’ writing text, and tweets from their Twitter accounts as a pre-test and post-test. The interview item became the last instrumental in exploring the impact of Twitter on improving students writing skills. The analysis found that Twitter became an effective tool in enhancing students’ writing skills. The result showed from five categories of Brown’s assessing writing skills: students writing content of 83.33%, the organization was 81.48%, grammar structures of 85.19%, vocabulary had 82.41%, and mechanism had 100.00%. The result concluded that Twitter was more influential in improving students writing skills. The average of each category was an outstanding category. In short, Twitter became an effective pedagogical tool in helping students to improve their writing skills. In addition, Twitter has functioned as social media, but it has integrated into the teaching and learning process. Keywords: Twitter, Pedagogical Tool, Writing Skills.

Higher Education Students’ Reflective Journal Writing and Lifelong Learning Skills: Insights From an Exploratory Sequential Study

Reflective journal (RJ) writing has been recognized as an effective pedagogical tool for nurturing students’ lifelong learning skills. With the paucity of empirical work on the dimensionality of reflective writing, this research sought to qualitatively analyze students’ RJ writing and design a generic reflection scheme for identifying dimensions of reflective thinking. Drawing on the theoretical scheme, another aim was to design and validate a questionnaire to measure students’ perceptions of their reflective writing experiences. The last aim was to quantitatively measure the link between perceived reflective writing and students’ tendency to use RJs in their future careers and personal lives. This exploratory sequential research included the following steps: First, experts’ review and analysis of 1312 RJ entries were attained. This step led to the design of a theoretical scheme of reflective writing and a 31-item questionnaire, used to gather data from 171 students (second-year pre-service teachers and third-year health managers). Partial Least Squares analysis corroborated the structure suggested by the theoretical scheme: two timelines–reflections regarding the current course assignments and those related to the student’s future development. Students’ tendency to use reflective skills in their future professional lives was highly connected to their long-term reflections, including learning experiences linked to academic, professional, personal, and multicultural development. The current study’s suggested validated generic scheme can be adapted and integrated into different curricula, thereby possibly increasing the potential of infusing RJ instructional strategies into higher education curricula, improving the quality of reflection in student journals, and promoting lifelong learning skills.

A Paradigm for Global Student Interactions Through Digital Technologies in a Post-COVID Era

The widespread outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced almost every aspect of our lives to shift to online modalities. One outcome of the pandemic was to effectively establish digital learning as a major system for education. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the development and implementation of a web-based resource for college instruction. The foundation for this pedagogical tool is sociocultural learning theory. This instructional tool has been deployed with over 2000 students to date. Its successful employment with college students in India and the USA is outlined, and suggestions are included for its generalized use to other content and courses.

Game-Based Learning in Higher Education

The technological developments and innovations have thrown open many challenges in the field of higher education. We are growing up in a society of digital natives who are exposed to the digital environment from their birth. Of late, the focus has shifted from traditional teaching methods to finding innovative ways and means to engage the students. Competence building instead of rote learning is the need of the hour. In order to prepare the students to face the challenges of the real world and make them future ready, it is important for higher educational institutions to focus on imparting to learners 21st century skill sets such as creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking, amongst others. Game-based learning is gaining momentum and is becoming a popular pedagogical tool as it is learner-centric and fosters creativity.

Critical Ethnography in a Language Classroom

The chapter discusses a critical mini classroom ethnography as a pedagogical tool for educators working with multilingual learners in K-12 or adult settings. Critical classroom ethnography and culturally responsive instruction in language teaching are discussed. For practicing language educators, a questionnaire, an interview guide, and a reflection template are offered. For pre-service teachers, a structured observation template is included. The suggested tools are discussed in relation to equitable and inclusive educational practices to help develop critical ethnographic skills as they pertain to critically reflective observation which can be utilized by all teachers. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the mini classroom ethnography's use by a candidate in a language teacher preparation program in the US led to the process of critical and linguistic self-reflection and transformation towards becoming a more culturally responsive and inclusive practitioner.

Promoting Privacy Considerations in Real-World Projects in Capstone Courses with Ideation Cards

Nearly all software built today impinges upon end-user privacy and needs to comply with relevant regulations. Therefore, there have been increasing calls for integrating considerations of compliance with privacy regulations throughout the software engineering lifecycle. However, software engineers are typically trained in the technical fields and lack sufficient knowledge and support for sociotechnical considerations of privacy. Privacy ideation cards attempt to address this issue by making privacy compliance understandable and actionable for software developers. However, the application of privacy ideation cards in real-world software projects has not yet been systemically investigated. The effectiveness of ideation cards as a pedagogical tool has not yet been examined either. We address these gaps by studying how teams of undergraduate students applied privacy ideation cards in capstone projects that involved building real-world software for industry sponsors. We found that privacy ideation cards fostered greater consideration and understanding of the extent to which the projects aligned with privacy regulations. We identified three main themes from student discussions of privacy compliance: (i) defining personal data; (ii) assigning responsibility for privacy compliance; and (iii) determining and exercising autonomy. The results suggest that application of the cards for real-world projects requires careful consideration of intersecting factors such as the stage at which the cards are used and the autonomy available to the developers. Pedagogically, ideation cards can facilitate low-level cognitive engagement (especially the cognitive processes of meaning construction and interpretation) for specific components within a project. Higher-level cognitive processes were comparatively rare in ideation sessions. These findings provide important insight to help enhance capstone instruction and to improve privacy ideation cards to increase their impact on the privacy properties of the developed software.