The purpose of this study was to examine the writing performance and motivational beliefs of students who were identified by their school district as English language learners. The study included 880 students (463 girls; 417 boys) in grades three to eight who wrote an informative/explanatory essay on information technology and completed a motivational survey assessing their intrinsic, extrinsic, and self-regulation incentives for writing. Ninety-seven percent of students’ scores on the writing measure did not meet grade-level proficiency for writing, girls received higher scores than boys, and writing scores generally increased across the six grade-levels. A majority of students agreed that intrinsic and extrinsic incentives drive their writing behavior, but only 38% of students indicated that self-regulation incentives had such an effect. Gender was not related to students’ motivational scores, but scores for the three motivational incentives declined from lower to higher grades. Recommendations for future research and suggestions for classroom practice were provided.
2025-10-10
International students bring academic, cultural, and economic value to universities around the world. However, adjustments for these students can be difficult as a result of culture shock, resulting in early exit from the university. In order to help inform university personnel on how to better assist international students, this study examines the interpersonal, psychological, and physiological symptoms of culture shock of three Korean international graduate students at a large public university in the southwest United States. Data were collected through three interviews and seven weekly online journals. The findings uncovered the existence of culture shock for each of the three participants to differing degrees at various times throughout the semester. In particular, a comparatively higher incidence of interpersonal and psychological culture shock symptoms compared with physiological ones was displayed, thus showing strong support for theories that conceptualize culture shock as individualized in nature. In addition, the data revealed that personal characteristics, family, religion, and exercise all played a role in the participants' abilities to cope with culture shock. The results of this study could help universities better understand and support international students, ensuring that the university can benefit from the unique value these students bring to campus.
The authors applied Bruner’s tenets of learning and Knowles’s Adult Learning Theory to investigate Chinese English Language Teaching (ELT) teachers’ perceptions of their in-service Professional Development (PD). In this mixed-methods study, 60 participants were recruited from six secondary schools in China to complete a survey. Quantitative results from the survey indicated that the respondents perceived no significant difference between the influence of overseas PD and that of domestic PD on teachers’ English teaching competence and on their students’ English learning outcomes. Qualitative findings highlighted that the participants expected future ELT PD to be practical, discipline-specific, language skills focused, innovative, and virtual-delivery-friendly. It should be noted that expectations of PD to be discipline-specific and virtual-delivery-friendly are new to the existing literature, which deserve more attention and further investigation.
Before enacting a full implementation of English Medium Instruction (EMI), instructors have made attempts to integrate English as a component of instruction in discipline-specific university courses in Taiwan. However, little is known about the implementation of this practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which English was used in discipline-specific university courses, what reading strategies students used to cope with their language challenges, and what techniques instructors used to support students’ reading. Data were drawn from a survey of more than 2,600 freshmen and sophomores, regarding their learning experiences in disciplinespecific courses, in six colleges of one comprehensive university in Southern Taiwan. The results showed that the majority of students could not understand required reading of English textbooks or complete reading assignments. Lecturing in English and answering exam questions in English were not widely practiced. Although reading English textbooks was still challenging to students, the ways teachers helped students and how students read on their own were reported, as food for further thought. Study findings support recommendations for ways in which EFL practitioners, subject instructors, and curriculum designers can take into account students’ English needs in their content courses.
In contrast to the plethora of research on teachers’ beliefs and practices to implement communicative language teaching (CLT), research into in-service primary school teachers’ beliefs has earned less focus to evaluate its impacts on their instructional and evaluation practices, particularly in Malaysian ESL context. This qualitative study intended to mitigate the knowledge gap by investigating prevalent communicative language teaching practices in the primary schools in Malaysia. Analysis of our survey and interview data reveals some common problems that affect the proper implementation of CLT. Although teachers faced challenges and had their shortcomings, they endeavored to integrate various instructional and assessment practices to improve students’ competency on all four language skills. The study also highlights some key issues which may provide practical implications for the application of CLT in Malaysian primary schools.
The training of non-native English speakers in professional communication in English is a challenge faced in many fields. Herein we describe a course that we have developed to enhance writing and oral communication proficiency for early stage science and engineering Ph.D. students in this area. The course has been taken by approximately 750 students and has received generally favorable reviews. We have focused on the professional needs of our target audience, seeking to train them in how to write scientific journal articles efficiently, and how to generate attractive and clear posters for or give strong oral presentations at scientific conferences. Necessarily, these goals require some consideration of language skills like grammar, syntax and style, but scientific writing places a premium on conciseness and students need to learn how to tell a compelling story within the rigid constraints placed upon them by the structure of a scientific research paper. Our course is built around a series of lectures complemented with small tutorial groups where much of the learning takes place. We probe for improvement in student understanding throughout the course, thus permitting us to make minor adjustments if needed as we proceed. While this course was designed for science and engineering graduate students we believe that its format should be easily adaptable to satisfy the needs of other professions.
It is widely accepted that effective communication between different social groups and cultures requires not only knowledge about English as a language, but also competence in communicating with different cultures. Intercultural sensitivity is described as one of the elements that comprise an individual’s intercultural communication competence, and it is linked to non-judgemental attitudes such as accepting, understanding and respecting cultural differences. Yet, it has been reported that mainstream EFL practice may not place enough emphasis on intercultural communication development. With an aim to promote the growth of students’ intercultural sensitivity, as part of their intercultural communication competence, we developed a set of activities that used a short story about cultural differences. A post-lesson questionnaire revealed that most students identified and commented on the cultural differences between the characters in the short story. While some students were more likely to judge differences from the perspective of their own culture, most students showed an awareness of such differences as they are, with several attempts to understand the differences from a perspective outside their own culture. We believe these activities succeeded in allowing students to reflect upon themes and situations related to their intercultural sensitivity by comparing and contrasting cultural differences in discussion, analysis and reflection, and it may be of interest to EFL teachers in various contexts.
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was one of the greatest psychologists of the twentieth century who, together with his close colleagues, Leontiev and Luria, created a new field of psychology: cultural-historical psychology. They proposed a solution to the crisis between theory and methodology in empirical research. Undoubtedly, he gained worldwide fame due to this contribution. Beginning with an introduction to Vygotsky’s life, educational background, and academic experience, this paper briefly narrates his great achievements in the field of psychological research, as well as the historical development of his thoughts. However, due to Vygotsky’s premature death, his thoughts are often misinterpreted by academia. Through an interview with Professor James Lantolf, a distinguished linguist from Pennsylvania State University, adjunct professor at Xi’an Jiao Tong University and pioneer in contemporary research on Vygotsky’s thought, this article addresses the confusions of scholars in understanding his theoretical underpinnings.
The COVID pandemic has forced English language teachers in the United States to adapt face-to-face courses to online learning interfaces. Since the March 2020 transition, teachers have struggled with a variety of elements of the process of converting courses. As instructors across all disciplines have learned, not all face-to-face lessons work in online classes. Additionally, teachers have discovered difficulties providing rich interactive experiences in a format that does not naturally foster social connections. Teachers also need to overcome elements of online learning that are particularly challenging for English language learners (ELLs). We propose that English teachers can benefit from models that already exist, one for online learning, the community of inquiry (CoI), and one for designing courses, universal design for learning (UDL), after using these models in our postCOVID-19 online classes at the University of Florida English Language Institute (UF ELI). This paper examines these models and shows their utility in the online English language classroom. We provide a practical list of eight design questions to help teachers needing a quick transition between traditional and online formats and examples for using the questions to plan lessons and activities.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns across the globe, many English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners swiftly switched to teaching fully online. This paper explores students’ perceptions of the durations and types of interactions in online synchronous lessons that focus on teaching technical oral presentation and report writing skills, as well as the benefits and challenges that students experience. The data were collected from a group of 18 Computing Engineering students who completed a post-course survey approximately 3 weeks after the course completion. The results of this study reinforce the importance of instructor, cognitive, and social presences in an online learning community. Despite the challenges that students may encounter in online lessons, students still find online education beneficial if instructors support students before, during, and after lessons, and are able to use technologies to effectively scaffold materials with adequate instructorstudent and student-student interactions to engage students in learning.
Unlike face-to-face classes where physical presence is a given, the lack of “real” interpersonal connections to establish a strong social presence in online teaching and learning experience affects student learning. Students tend to feel isolated and disengaged. This paper explores how I sought to create a supportive environment for my students reading a critical thinking and communication module for community leadership during an Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) experience amid the pandemic last year in 2020. Using the Community of Inquiry framework as a lens to reflect on how well I established social presence in the online environment, I thematically analysed student qualitative feedback on their learning experiences. This investigation also serves as an inquiry into the effectiveness of the dialogic scaffolding pedagogical framework I adopted for the module. Moreover, this study compliments a reflection on the impact of my teaching philosophy that students are social learners before they become independent learners. I believe that students learn not as isolated beings, but as active members of a community; what they learn and how they make sense of knowledge depends on the social context in which they learn. The findings revealed the effectiveness of the application of dialogic scaffolding principles, which focuses on the orchestration of talk to scaffold student learning and co-construct understanding. With a socio-constructivist view of teaching, many tutors could consider their classes of students as communities of participants in learning. The paper concludes with recommendations for strategies that tutors can adopt to establish a supportive environment for physically separated communities of learners.
This case study explored Chinese undergraduate EFL students’ attitudes to and perceptions of an online English public speaking course, which employs a virtual flipped classroom model and MOOCs during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Since all classes were moved online, a previously flipped public speaking course integrated with MOOCs was converted into a virtual flipped classroom. All 25 participants of the study were undergraduate students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field. Zoom, Blackboard, and QQ instant messenger were platforms utilized in instruction. There were weekly two-hour Zoom meetings with learning activities using MOOCs on Blackboard. The study collected and corroborated results from multiple data sources, including surveys, focus group discussions, student presentation videos, and the instructor’s reflective teaching journals. Data was analyzed using Charmaz’s (2006) grounded theory. Survey results indicated that the 25 participants generally felt positive about the virtual learning environment. Students strategically adapted to all three digital platforms (Zoom, Blackboard, and QQ instant messenger), the MOOCs, and the flipped classroom model. They were engaged in exploring a variety of digital platforms, online learning resources, remotely collaborating with peers and interacting with the instructor. Incorporating MOOCs in a virtual flipped classroom allowed for application of theory into practice under the instructor’s supervision, which maximized the students’ speaking and learning opportunities. Recommendations for ELT practitioners and further research are also provided.
The coronavirus pandemic has meant universities have had to rapidly adjust their courses to online-only learning environments. While much English Language Teaching (ELT) research in recent years has focused on both blended learning and distance learning programs, these studies mostly included students who had opted for distance or blended learning courses and teachers who were given time to prepare for such types of courses in advance. The current situation allows us to explore ELT strategies in the context of a sudden and unexpected shift to digital format only. Specifically, we employ the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison et al., 1999) to examine teacher and student perceptions of digital ELT strategies in two English language learning courses that were taught at a German university as part of a graduate degree programme in English. Our findings suggest that although students and teachers initially struggled with the move from face-toface lessons to digital teaching and learning, they adapted and got more accustomed to many of the changes over time, but that digital interaction remains incomparable to ‘real’ interaction. We also found that although the CoI framework served as a helpful tool in data analysis, it could not account for all aspects relating to online learning, such as the need for pastoral care. We suggest a split of social presence into two categories as proposed by Kreijns et al. (2014) would go some way towards addressing this, but further research in this area is needed. Finally, we provide recommendations for practitioners and ELT teachers in the hope that they may be of help to those new to online teaching.
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