DEVELOPMENT OF VERBAL CREATIVITY BY BILINGUAL AND ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN KINDERGARTEN TO 8TH GRADE SCHOOLS

Bilingualism has long been within the scope of creativity studies that investigate creativity and problem solving. This study aims to explore the possible effect of bilingualism on the verbal creativity of English language learners. Participants from a bilingual and an English as foreign language teaching program within the same school were selected as an experimental and a control group respectively to compare verbal creativity. A series of creative English writing tasks designed by the authors were assigned to a total of 86 third grade (aged 7–8) students. Both the English as foreign language group (N = 42) and the bilingual group (N = 44) were subject to assessment and evaluation in terms of verbal creativity. The two cohorts completed the same creative writing tasks that were then assessed by a board of five English teachers from the same school who were trained by the authors to assess verbal creativity using a Student Product Assessment Form. An independent samples Student’s t-test was conducted and descriptive statistics of both cohorts for 9 of the assessment form were analyzed. The results showed that the students on the bilingual program outperformed those on the English as foreign language program in terms of verbal creativity. The study offers implications for English language teaching in primary schools with reference to developing creative verbal language skills at early ages.

An exploration of the structural and colligational characteristics of lexical bundles in L1–L2 corpora for English language teaching

Multi-word expressions are formulaic language universals with arbitrary and idiosyncratic collocations. Their usage and mastery are required of learners of a second language in achieving naturalness. However, despite the importance of multi-word expressions to mastering a second language, their syntactic architecture and colligational possibilities have received little attention in English language teaching (ELT). This study examined lexical bundles, a type of multi-word expressions, to understand their structure and co-occurrence possibilities with other syntactic elements. It was aided by an automated frequency-driven approach using two corpora, the British component of the British National Corpus – a first language (L1) corpus – and a purpose-built Nigerian Media Discourse corpus – a second language (L2) corpus. Two items of lexical analysis software were used to extract three-word lexical bundles with a minimum of 50 frequencies per corpus. The syntactic structures of the identified lexical bundles were determined, and their in-corpus usages were analysed for their colligational characteristics. Results showed that both corpora had instances of general and genre-specific lexical bundles (LBs) with varying frequencies. Five categories of lexical bundles with different structural patterns and peculiar colligational characteristics were identified in the study. Since lexical bundles are more frequently found in both L1–L2 texts, mastering how they are used will further enhance the teaching of English as a second language. The teaching of lexical bundles as a multi-word expression is therefore recommended in ELT as a way of enhancing learners’ proficiency and naturalness in English.

BOLAÑOS GARCÍA-ESCRIBANO, Alejandro et alii. Media Accessibility in Modern Languages and Translation en e-Expert Seminar Series: Translation and Language Teaching, vol. 4. Córdoba: UCO Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-84-9927-590-1. 40 pp., 255 min. Vídeo.

Reseña del videolibro Bolaños García-Escribano, Alejandro; Veroz González, María Azahara; Ogea Pozo, María del Mar. Media Accessibility in Modern Languages and Translation en e-Expert Seminar Series: Translation and Language Teaching, vol. 4. Córdoba: UCO Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-84-9927-590-1. 40 pp., 255 min. Vídeo.

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.

VEITH, NICOLA, Hacia el Puerto de la Felicidad. La emigración alemana a Sierra Morena y Andalucía en el siglo XVIII. Sevilla: Fundación Caja Rural Jaén, 2021. ISBN: 978-84-1201-233-0. 395 pp.

Bolaños García-Escribano, Alejandro; Veroz González, María Azahara; Ogea Pozo, María del Mar. Media Accessibility in Modern Languages and Translation en e-Expert Seminar Series: Translation and Language Teaching, vol. 4. Córdoba: UCO Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-84-9927-590-1. 40 pp., 255 min. Vídeo.

Communicative activities to enhance oral production in the EFL classroom

Introduction. Speaking is considered one of the most difficult skills to be developed in class when teaching a foreign language. Therefore, teachers need to look for alternatives to enhance learners’ oral production. In this regard, Communicative activities (CA) play a fundamental role in language teaching due to the fact they provide them with opportunities to use language as in real situations. Objective. The main goal of this research is to provide a general overview of Communicative activities to enhance oral production in the EFL classroom. Methodology. This article was based on the qualitative approach. A descriptive - documentary research was carried out through an extensive bibliographic literature review about the main principles of the Communicative Approach, communicative activities, types of CA, and speaking. Results. Results from the reviewed research investigations show that they are quite useful for teachers and learners since CA facilitate learners’ oral production employing the interaction among classmates and teachers. Conclusion. Besides, Communicative activities encourage learners to develop their language competencies due to the dynamic in which these activities are carried out in the EFL classroom.