Using Feedback in ESL and EFL Asynchronous Online Environments

Researchers and practitioners' interest in finding more effective ways to provide instructional feedback in order to help second language learners in online environments has increased. The majority of studies found evidence about effectiveness of written and oral feedback to improve student's writing in a target language when they enroll in online courses taught in English. However, some studies also found limitations of both types of feedback when they provided for second language learners. Therefore, researchers and practitioners investigated benefits of other types of feedback and among them is audio feedback. The purpose of this chapter is to overview instructional capabilities of written, oral and audio feedback and how they can support ESL and EFL students in asynchronous online courses. This chapter also discusses when and how to provide different types of feedback when ESL and EFL students are enrolled in online courses taught in English.

Teaching English Grammar in a Hybrid Academic ESL Course

This study investigates whether hybrid instruction has a positive effect on the development of students' knowledge of English grammar and editing skills, as well as whether learners have positive perceptions of the hybrid design. The study was conducted in two sections of an English grammar and editing skills class. One section was designed as a hybrid course, while the other was a traditional face-to-face (f2f) class. To determine the effectiveness of hybrid instruction, a quasi-experimental design with a pre- and posttest was employed. To investigate learner perceptions of the hybrid design, learners completed a questionnaire and participated in a focus group. The results indicate that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of their knowledge of English grammar and editing skills after the treatment. The learners had positive perceptions of the hybrid design and also offered some suggestions for improving course effectiveness.

Embracing Computer Corpora in the Language Learning Classroom and Using It in Your Classroom

Among the many facets of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), studies using computer language corpora have risen to considerable prominence in research agendas. The author argues that corpora are useful tools for practicing teachers. However, the myth that “corpus-based research is too complicated to be useful for teachers” (Conrad, 2009) prevails in pedagogical contexts. This chapter strives to dispel that myth by synthesizing a wealth of research and their accompanying pedagogical applications. Secondly, it shares specific pedagogical activities to implement corpus data in classroom teaching. These corpus-informed classroom strategies provide concrete examples that will assist TESOL/TEFL teachers in making their coursework authentic and therefore more meaningful to students learning language.

The Pitfalls and Promises of Electronic Portfolio Assessment With Secondary English Language Learners

This chapter discusses the pitfalls and promises of electronic portfolio assessment for English language learners in high school classrooms in the United States. In a three-year federally funded program designed to improve academic performance among culturally and linguistically diverse students at an urban high school in Honolulu, Hawaii, the author implemented electronic portfolio assessment (EPA) into academic English and heritage language classrooms. This chapter delineates how EPA was developed to enhance academic and linguistic abilities of adolescent ELLs while embracing their multifaceted and hybrid identities. It also presents both challenges and benefits that teachers and students experienced in the process of EPA. It concludes with suggestions for developing and implementing EPA for English language learners in similar contexts.

Understanding Idiomaticity in CALL

The primary aim of this chapter is to investigate the effectiveness of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) technologies, tools, and resources for figurative language in general and idiom learning in particular. The secondary aim is to explore the CALL training practices affecting the attainment of idiomaticity in English as a second or foreign language. Idiomaticity training is anchored in an online methodology of idiomaticity teaching that takes into account learners' interests and active involvement. Such focus is particularly useful for the purposes of diagnosis and achievement, and the research to date is a promising start to further work on idiomaticity. The chapter provides recommendations for idiomaticity training-and-teaching as well as time-tested practices for further theorizing and research. It is hoped that the practices and recommendations explored here will spur on more research in this vein. Pedagogical and research implications are also discussed.

A Theoretically Informed Approach to Collaborative Writing in EAP Contexts Using Web-Based Technologies

This chapter examines the need for a theoretically-informed approach to collaborative English for Academic Purpose (EAP) pedagogy and research. It discusses the relevance of online collaborative learning in EAP and the call for a theoretically-informed facilitative framework to guide the use of online collaborative writing tools to sustain learning communities and language learning. It establishes the importance of virtual learning communities as catalysts for online collaboration and discusses the need to examine technological affordances, adopting an ecological perspective to inform curricular design. The chapter examines the relevance of the Community of Inquiry model and its three presences: cognitive, social and teaching, as a theoretical basis to inform a facilitative framework to design online collaborative EAP writing tasks. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the interactions of these three presences, details on how they can inform online EAP collaborative writing practices and the need for future research in this area.

¿Eres un Gamer?

This chapter sheds light on the potential impact of CALL theory and practice on the language and identity socialization of transnational children when educators imagine and promote interaction beyond the classroom. The authors focus specifically on the educational trajectories of 1) children returnees, who were born in Mexico, at some point in their lives moved to the U.S., and then returned to Mexico and 2) international migrants, born and many attended school in the U.S., and then moved to Mexico as a result of repatriation and/or deportation (Zúñiga & Vivas-Romero, 2014). The authors advocate creating blended affinity spaces (Przymus, 2016) at schools where youth can meet and play digital role-playing games, discuss game-ecology literacy development within these spaces, detail the implementation of such spaces in schools, and share game screen shots, blog posts, and the perspectives of transnational students that support this kind of learning within the EFL environment.

The Usefulness of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as Tools for Promoting Second Language Acquisition

The purpose of this chapter is twofold (1) to review the benefits of online videogames for promoting second language acquisition (SLA), specifically massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and (2) to present new research that seeks to explain why and how MMORPGs may be beneficial. The findings from the research indicate that MMORPGs are beneficial to SLA primarily because they provide opportunities for interaction in the target language through participation in collaborative problem solving tasks. The results of the research presented in this chapter show (1) that the requirements of input and output for successful gaming allow for a type of interaction in which the focus on language form leads to modified-output, (2) that players have opportunities to negotiate input as a means of completing in-game tasks, and (3) that in-game tasks are similar to instructional tasks that are believed to be beneficial for SLA in the context of a classroom.

Beyond Determinism and Instrumentalism

The primary goal of this chapter is to review two dominant theories of technology and propose a new direction of theory and practice for teaching and learning of English as an additional language. I describe this new direction as a cultural theory of technological mediation. The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first section, I review some dominant theoretical approaches in the literature on CALL. In the second section, I discuss two theories of technology: technological determinism and technological instrumentalism. In the third section, I argue that both determinism and instrumentalism have remained as dominant theoretical approaches in the field of CALL. I discuss why both of these approaches are problematic. Then I propose an alternative to these theoretical approaches. I conclude the chapter by providing three pedagogical principles and a set of heuristic questions that may be helpful for language teachers and language-education researchers.

Flipped Learning in TESOL

Flipped learning is an innovative educational model in which content that is traditionally presented in class is completed at home, and in class, students work on applying what they have learned at home to engage in interactive and collaborative activities. Over the past five years, flipped learning has found a strong voice within the field of the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), as evidenced by the rapid increase in conference presentations, research, and publications noting its implementation. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of the flipped learning approach within English language instruction. Included is a discussion of flipped learning's evolution and an analysis of current research that identifies areas of consensus, issues, and controversies. Finally, the authors offer six recommendations for implementing flipped learning in English language classrooms and conclude with future directions for inquiry into flipped learning in TESOL.