The sudden global outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 has led to thriving online teaching, including the teaching of languages, across the world. As the online teaching of English-as-a-foreign-language ...(EFL) in Chinese universities is facing new challenges, EFL teachers have been positively exploring new solutions. To understand how EFL teachers were coping with the challenges, we set up this research as part of a larger study to examine EFL teachers’ cognitions about online teaching in response to the disruption of normal teaching plans. We did so by taking a qualitative approach through analyzing in-depth interviews with three EFL teachers from a Chinese university. Through thematic analysis we found that teachers had clear cognitions about features, advantages, and constraints of online EFL teaching and that they acquired information and communication technology (ICT) literacy through understanding students’ learning needs, online teaching practice, and the necessity of integrating traditional classroom teaching methods into online delivery. We conclude this study with a discussion on its pedagogical implications for similar contexts or colleagues facing similar challenges in other parts of the world.
In this paper, a qualitative study was conducted on Jennifer, an EFL teaching professional at the tertiary level in a Chinese context, to investigate her cognitions regarding her professional ...development and accompanying facilitating factors in her journey from a novice teacher to a teacher leader with Borg’s model of language teacher cognition as the conceptual basis for subsequent analysis. Jennifer’s written overview and verbal narration in interviews of her journey in professional development were gathered following guiding protocols. Collected data were processed with thematic analysis in NVivo 12. Findings suggest that Jennifer has clear cognitions about how she learned and improved, i.e., the positive changes, in her professional journey and the facilitating factors that mediated her improvement and progress. These facilitating factors were found to include her teaching experience, in-service training, administrative promotion, drawing wisdom from reading Chinese classics, and constant reflection upon her English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching, etc. The implications of the present study for language teacher cognition researchers, English language teacher educators, and EFL teachers in the Chinese context were also discussed.
With the flourishing of positive psychology, there is a heightened emphasis on the value and significance of engagement. Although recent years have witnessed the growing interest in learner ...engagement with feedback in L2 writing, little attention has been towards understanding the role of teachers in fostering their students' engagement. To fill this gap, our exploratory study examined the effects of teacher scaffolding on EFL learners' engagement with teacher written feedback. Anchored in a high school in mainland China, our study employed a mixed-methods design, collecting data from multiple sources (i.e., questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, teacher written feedback, and first as well as revised writing samples) over a semester. The findings revealed that the teacher adhered to the key tenets of positive psychology and implemented positive pedagogical practices to facilitate students’ revision. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed that with teacher scaffolding Chinese high school EFL learners actively engaged with teacher written feedback from affective, behavioral, and cognitive perspectives. Our study concludes with the important pedagogical implications.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The anxiety that accompanies English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) listening comprehension is difficult to detect and access. Such anxiety will prevent the students from actively and strategically ...participating in the listening process. This qualitative study aims to explore teachers' cognitions about the sources of students' anxiety during their EFL listening in the classroom in a Chinese tertiary context. The participants' cognitions were elicited through in-depth pre-observation interviews, consecutive classroom observations for one semester, and stimulated recall interviews after each classroom observation. The study found that 16 sources organized into four categories contributed to EFL listening anxiety, among which students' unfamiliarity with cultural backgrounds and topics in the category of input played a prominent role. Pedagogical implications for reducing EFL listening anxiety are also discussed.
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