Tertiary EFL Practitioners’ Beliefs and Attitudes Towards Professional Development in the Area of Assessment and Testing–An Exploratory Study

Professional development of teachers, the greatest strength of any educational institute, implies advancement of pedagogical, assessment and success standards. All teacher education activities whether during the pre-or/and in-service phases, should aim to bring about teacher change which refers to the procedures targeting reform in teacher beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, self-awareness, skills and practices. Since teacher beliefs and attitudes serve as an integral part of the process to comprehend how teachers conceptualise, approach and practice their work, change in teacher practices generally precede a change in teacher beliefs and attitudes. In the background of the paucity of scholarship about tertiary EFL practitioners’ beliefs and attitudes about their professional development, in general, and in assessment, testing and evaluation, in particular, the present study mainly based on interview data collected from 10 tertiary EFL teachers working in three tertiary educational institutes in Saudi Arabia aimed at exploring tertiary EFL practitioners’ philosophies and attitudes towards their PD in assessment and testing to get better insight into language teachers’ training needs. It is hoped that the findings of the study will create awareness among novice as well as experienced teachers and help their respective institutions in having better understanding about the various dynamics of teacher PD in assessment and testing.

Motivation: Up and down: Implementation of a motivational model and assessing the results

The opportunity to enroll in a foreign university skyrockets the motivation of many students. However, a huge number of these students eventually find themselves, in the midst of their studies, to unsure that they will even be able to graduate. This article focuses on the causes of demotivation for these students and aims to find a solution to this problem. Our study relies on previous research conducted by H. Douglas Brown, Zoltan Doernyei, Natalie Ness, Penny Ur, Desley I. Watson-Raston, and others. This article contributes to this literature by, first, looking into the causes of motivation loss among foreign students studying the English language in Russia, and second, by proposing certain tactics that could be put into practice in the classroom. By conducting our research over the last year and a half, we have come to several conclusions. According to our observations, authentic materials, along with the freedom for students to choose study topics and the way assignments are presented determinately increases not only student motivation but also improve learning results in speaking and writing. In our research, we tried to use a big variety of research methods. These included focus and control groups, general and individual questionnaires, video essays, and classic tests.

The Impact of Classroom Management on Students’ Communication Skills in English Language Classrooms

The way the teacher manages and controls the classroom plays an important role in enhancing students’ learning abilities. Teachers apply different styles of classroom management based on their attitude to student development and learning, each of which can have different effects on students. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of classroom management on students’ communication skills in English language teaching. Interventionist style, Interactive style and Non-Interventionist style are considered based on Wolfgang and Gleickman theory as three types of classroom management styles. The study population was all female secondary high school students in Iran, Bojnourd city in the academic year 2019-2020. The classroom management style of English language teachers was measured by using the Wolfgang and Gleikman Classroom Management Questionnaire in a sample of 20 teachers. Based on the results of the data analysis, the students of the interaction oriented teachers have higher and stronger communication skills compared to the students of the interventionist teachers.

Book Review: Advances in Questionnaire Design, Development, Evaluation and Testing

Book Review: Advances in Questionnaire Design, Development, Evaluation and Testing. Beatty, P. C., Collins, D., Kaye, L., Padilla, J. L., Willis, G. B., & Wilmot, A. (Eds.). (2019). Advances in Questionnaire Design, Development, Evaluation and Testing. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-1-119-26362-3, December 2019, 816 Pages.

Assessing the Role of Selective Fossilization Hypothesis in Determining Fossilizable Phonetic Errors in Tunisian EFL Learners’ Oral Output

Fossilization is said to be a distinctive characteristic of second language (L2) learning (Selinker, 1972, 1996; Han, 2004). It is the most pervasive among adult L2 learners (Han and Odlin, 2006). This linguistic phenomenon has been characterized by cessation of learning, even though the learner is exposed to frequent input. Based on the findings of the MA dissertation of the first researcher which is about ‘phonetic fossilization’ and where she conducted a longitudinal study, Han’s Selective Fossilization Hypothesis (SFL) is used to analyze the obtained fossilized phonetic errors in relation to L1 markedness and L2 robustness with a particular focus on fossilized vowel sounds. This is an analytical model for identifying both acquisitional and fossilizable linguistic features based on learners’ first language (L1) markedness and second language (L2) robustness. The article first gives an overview of the theory of Interlanguage and the phenomenon of fossilization. Then, it introduces SFL. This is an attempt to study fossilization scientifically. In other words, it tests the predictive power of a developed L1 Markedness and L2 Robustness rating scale based on Han’s (2009) model. The present study has pedagogic implications; it is an opportunity to raise teachers’ awareness on this common linguistic phenomenon.

The Effect of Collaborative Prewriting Discussions on L2 Writing: Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF)

The present study essayed to investigate the impact of collaborative pre-writing discussions on three aspects of writing skill namely, complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF). To reach this goal, 60 intermediate male EFL learners ranging from 22 to 28 years at Shahid Beheshti Language Center in Tehran, Iran participated in the study. For the purpose of homogeneity, the standardized English Proficiency Test (Preliminary English Test) was administered to 88 students and they were divided into two intact experimental and control groups. The experimental group, which was divided into six groups of five was exposed to and performed on a-40- minute essay writing tasks held two sessions per week lasting ninety-minutes for ten weeks with collaborative pre-writing discussions. Moreover, the students in experimental group were required to complete a questionnaire at the end of the study to find out about their feelings regarding prewriting discussions prior to writing in L2. The control group received the same materials and teacher as experimental group, except for, there was no collaborative pre-writing discussions to write the essays. After the raters were trained and familiarized with the rating process, the essays by both groups were collected and scored holistically based on the assessment measure provided to the two raters. In order to provide plausible answers to the research questions posed above, a series of one way ANOVA was employed to evaluate the participants' overall performance in the two conditions. The results indicated that collaborative pre-writing discussions were superior to mainstream methods. Thus, the findings can have an immediate implication for EFL teachers and practitioners who are searching for cutting edge ways of developing EFL learners' writing performance.

Modern methods of assessment for young learners: research perspectives

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to submit papers to be included in a special issue titled “Modern Methods of Assessment for Young Learners: research perspectives”. Assessment has been placed at the center of the research and teaching activity over the last decades highlighting the need for employing tools of alternative and authentic assessment in the classrooms. According to Moon (2000), “assessment seems to be something that most teachers spend a lot of time doing. So it is important to consider what it is, why we do it, what kinds of information it provides, and the decisions that might be taken based on that information.”(p. 148). Thus, this special issue aspires to provide a collection of original research-papers which will facilitate an understanding of the multidimensional context of assessment, focusing on assessment methods implemented within young learners’ (4-11 years old) classrooms in the 21st century.

Investigating teachers and students’ perceptions of written corrective feedback in the context of tertiary education in Oman

This paper focuses on written corrective feedback in the testing context of the English language foundation program at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. In more detail, in response to the encountered testing problem that involves variability in written corrective feedback and, as a consequence, inconsistent evidence of student position in relation to their improvement in writing and ways to achieve it, the authors discuss the ways teachers respond to students’ writing, the type of feedback they deliver, and the strategies they adopt to provide their feedback. The reported study uses mixed methods research methodology, and is grounded on the understanding of giving feedback to students as a social action that is implemented in specific cultural, institutional, and interpersonal contexts with a purpose to accomplish educational and social goals. The participants of the study are foundation program students and English language teachers representing the multicultural teaching community of the Centre for Preparatory Studies at Sultan Qaboos University. The results of the study reveal that written corrective feedback is by no means unanimous among all students and teachers. Diversity in the teachers’ background yields a corresponding diversity in the way it is perceived, provided, and interpreted. Undoubtedly, teachers’ ultimate goal, in any context, is to help students improve their writing skills in all respects, be it in form, content, or organization. Yet, its effectiveness in improving students’ writing remains inconclusive.