Identification of the Gaps between Actual Performance and Expected Performance of English Teachers at Elementary Level

Teachers hold central figure in the propagation of effective education in educational milieu. The present study attempted to explore the key performance indicators (KPIs) of English teachers working in government schools at elementary level of education. The KPIs were identified and determined by examining the gap between their existing performance and their expected level of proficiency. The study focused its attention to evaluate the gap in English teaching domain only. The data was collected and analyzed quantitatively in this survey oriented descriptive research. A total number of 200 students and 40 teachers were restricted as the sample of the study taken from 04 tehsils of district Bahawalpur. Furthermore, data was collected by developing and administering 02 instruments i.e. questionnaire and classroom observation. The data taken from observation checklist was quantified to obtain empirical results of the investigation. The findings of the study revealed significantly huge gap between the existing and desired level of teachers’ proficiency. This gap was relatively apparent in teachers’ language proficiencies as well as instructional capabilities. Majority of the teachers couldn’t demonstrate the optimal standards of English teaching due to multifaceted factors. Furthermore, study revealed that there is dire need of target oriented instructional workshops and teacher trainings to be arranged for teachers to get the maximum outcomes.

Exploring EFL Teachers’ Perspectives on Sources of Challenges in Writing Classroom

This mixed-method study explores Saudi EFL teachers’ perspectives on students’ writing competencies and their concerns regarding the writing challenges, particularly in relation to EFL teachers, learners, and textbooks. The study sample consisted of 139 female EFL teachers working in Saudi Arabia. Data was gathered using a questionnaire composed of three sections: demographic information, 15 close-ended items, and three open-ended questions. The findings revealed that Saudi students’ writing skills are poor and fall below expectations. The results mainly showed their lack of vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, transition words, legible handwriting, logical paragraph arrangement, concept flow, and genuine and supportive examples. The first open-ended question results revealed that these EFL teachers highlighted ten issues as negatively impacting the quality of students’ writing. The second open-ended question results showed eleven potential sources of these challenges related to learners. Finally, the results of the third open-ended question revealed six factors focusing on problems associated with textbooks potentially exerting a negative influence on the quality of students’ writing. The study concludes with some practical recommendations and suggestions for further research.

A Showcase Study on ELF-oriented Classroom Practices in a General English Course

The lingua franca status of English in transcultural settings questions the orthodox pedagogical principles and mainstream approaches of English language teaching. To mirror the relationship between English as a subject matter and English as a globalised sociolinguistic phenomenon, some scholars call for revisiting the conventional approaches of pedagogy. Still, the response to the call for a transition from the monocentric methods of English language teaching is slow. Teachers have multiple concerns about how to incorporate a global dimension into a general English language course for undergraduates. The present study aims to address this gap by offering a practical example of how to address English as a lingua franca phenomenon in a general English language course. The study showcases classroom practices for raising awareness of today’s complexity of English use as a worldwide lingua franca. Ten Saudi undergraduates at a Saudi university participated in the study. The study shares the participants’ critical reflections on what they have learned from the course. Analysis of the participants’ reflections reveal that approaches based on complexity theory increased their familiarity with English linguistic diversities, developed their transcultural awareness and improved their ability to cope with English functional and contextual diversities. It is hoped that this showcase study can provide some guidance for the further implementation of a global dimension in other contexts.

ELT & Social Media in Covid-19 Era: A Case Study

In March 2020, with the increasing confirmed cases of COVID-19 pandemic in the State of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti Cabinet decided to suspend face-to-face teaching in all schools and universities. The following month the Ministry of Education and Higher Education adopted Online instruction in both public and private educational institutions. The current quantitive research aims at examining the implementation of social media by Kuwait University students and potential implementation of high-tech facilities in language learning. About 400 male and female students from the English Department were surveyed. The researcher used SPSS to analyze students’ responses of the questionnaire. The findings demonstrated a substantial increase in the use of SM because of COVID-19. Questionnaire respondents illustrated positive attitude towards the implementation of SM. The future of SM in Kuwait is promising. The study recommends that education institutions, public and private, adopt various SM platforms to sustain and develop the teaching process.

Towards Effective Interpreter-Mediated Biblical Sermons in English and Kiswahili in the Tanzanian Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches: Any Challenge or Complexity Faced by the Church Interpreter?

Interpretation is considered to be one of the most challenging professions in the world. This is due to its involvement of several abilities beyond language competence. Church interpretation is done predominantly by the untrained volunteering interpreters who in return, face a number of challenges. This paper examined the stakeholders’ perceptions towards the interpretation challenges facing the church interpreters by drawing examples from Charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the Tanzanian context. The study was conducted in Dar es Salaam, one of the largest commercial cities located in the Eastern Coastal regions of Tanzania in Africa. Data were collected through observation, interviews, questionnaires, and focus group discussions. It was found out that church interpreters encountered numerous challenges due to a lack of linguistic competence, experience, and professional training. Some of these challenges include; lack of enough biblical knowledge, difficulties in pronunciation, the use of difficult vocabulary, and poor preparations. It is recommended that church sermon interpreters should be provided with professional training in Translation and Interpretation Studies.

Building Inner Motivation among FL Learners in the Age of Education Globalization with the Help of New Technologies

The main aim of this article is to present essential information concerning the correlation between building students’ inner motivation and using modern technologies for teaching and learning purposes. Mixed research was conducted including questionnaires, tests, lesson observation sheets, and focus group interviews. The respondents were divided into three age categories. However, all the students agree that lessons using modern technologies significantly affect the level of their internal motivation to work independently. The role of teachers is significant, as they should constantly deepen their knowledge in this field and teach their students how to use new technologies effectively.

Using Nominalization in Scientific Texts; A Practical Review of the Related Studies

Many scholars have focused on using the nominalization over the scientific discourse. On the other hand many scholars have focused on the historic origins of nominalization in scientific discourse (Banks, 2005); realizing the grammatical metaphor in modern prose fiction (Farahani & Hadidi, 2008). Furthermore, Susinskiene (2009) examined the influence of verb-based nominalization to cohesion over the history texts. Baratta (2010) examined moreover using the nominalization in the writing performance of six undergraduate students. Finally, Wenyan (2012), examined the role of nominalization in the English Medical Papers (EMP) created by native English speakers and Chinese writers. These investigations have focused the vital role of using the nominalization in the skillful arrangement of academic discourse. Nevertheless, the realization between discipline specificity and nominalization is not focused a lot. In the current paper, the researcher tried to review the nominalization use and related studies which have been conducted in this regard. Hopefully, results of the current investigation is useful for a number of people who can benefit the results namely students of applied linguistics who want to understand the related studies about nominalization, researchers who want to conduct their studies of nominalization and interested people to applied linguistics.

The Role of Lexical Chunks in Writing and Its Implications for College English Teaching

Lexical chunks are considered as composites of form and function and they are the ideal units of language learning and teaching. This study aims to review the role of lexical chunks in writing and discuss its pedagogical implications for college English teaching. Through reviewing the related research on lexical chunks, it is found that most of the research supports that lexical chunks play vital role in improving fluency, accuracy and idiomaticity of English writing. In view of these findings, this study suggests that it is necessary and feasible in Chinese universities to apply the lexical approach to English teaching, divert students’ attention to larger segments of texts and cultivate students’ awareness of lexical chunks. However, this study is just a bibliographic review of the research on lexical chunks and doesn’t conduct any experiment on the application of lexical approach in classroom and its effects on English writing.

A Case Study on the Development of Chinese EFL Debaters’ Argumentative Competence

This study aims to explore and analyze the argumentative competence of Chinese debaters by observing the fallacies they made in one semester’s English debate course. The 8 rounds of debates are selected, of which three teams participated in 2 of the prepared debates and 2 fixed impromptu debates respectively. It is evident that of the five categories of fallacies, relevance-related, sufficiency-related and acceptability-related fallacies were the most common fallacies compared with structural-related fallacies and rebuttal-related fallacies. In prepared debate, the debaters’ argumentative skills in relevance, sufficiency, acceptability, structure, and rebuttal improved but in impromptu debate, this trend did not exist, revealing the debaters’ argumentative competence was unstable and varied from team to team.

What Impact Does A Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Approach Have on Vocabulary Acquisition?

This paper aims to investigate the efficacy of a CLIL-focused approach on vocabulary acquisition in a 2nd year college photography course taught entirely in English. In the first year the course was taught, many students reported difficulties with the specific vocabulary related to photography, a lot of which falls outside the top 2,000 words in the General Services List (West, 1958). Therefore, in the second year, a dedicated CLIL approach was adopted and implemented. Students (n=24) were given a vocabulary quiz on the first day of class and the same quiz on the last day of class. Results clearly indicated that a CLIL-focused approach to teaching vocabulary is extremely effective.