Teachers play a vital role as key stakeholders in the educational process. They have comprehensive insights into specific challenges that schools encounter, and their perspectives can provide ...in-depth presentations on particular issues faced within schools. This study investigated the perceptions of Saudi K-12 teachers on the use of technologies in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). A mixed-method study was conducted in 13 K-12 schools in the southern part of Saudi Arabia to investigate teachers' perceptions of using technologies in teaching and learning EFL. The study involved 35 teachers, both male and female, who teach English at different levels in K-12 education. Quantitative data were collected through questionnaires (n = 30) and analyzed quantitatively. Qualitative data were collected through interviews (n = 5) and analyzed thematically. The study found that Saudi K-12 teachers generally have positive perceptions of the use of technologies to teach English in their classrooms. They believe that technologies can improve student motivation, engagement, and achievement. They also believe that technologies can give students access to a wider range of resources and help them develop 21st-century skills. The study also identified some challenges to the use of technologies in Saudi K-12 education, such as lack of teacher training, limited access to technology, and cultural factors. However, the study also provided valuable insights into the criteria that teachers use to choose technologies to teach English in Saudi Arabia. The findings of this study have implications for the development of technology policies and practices in K-12 schools. The findings also provide valuable insights for teachers and researchers who are interested in the use of technologies in EFL in general and K-12 education in particular.
English is essential for national development involving the tourism sector. Unfortunately, it just serves as a foreign language in Indonesia, resulting in low speaking performance. This study ...observed stakeholders' and community's efforts to boost English-speaking fluency in the tourism object zone. It was a qualitative case study through interviews, document analysis, and photos in collecting the data. The research was done in Tana Toraja and Bulukumba regency of South Sulawesi province by involving stakeholders. The findings show that Stakeholders and local society are regularly active in training on the use of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), such as English for tour guides, hotel services, selling handicrafts, etc. Stakeholders also introduce and train the use of various kinds of Artificial Intelligence to improve English skills, such as "Google translation". The government localized a village which was named "Tourism English Village," where the local people try to speak English as much as possible. This study contributes to the second language acquisition acceleration in foreign language countries and promotes some tourism object zones in Indonesia..
This study evaluated elementary school EFL textbooks (We Can Series) from the perspectives of male and female teachers in Saudi Arabia. A quantitative approach was used, with data collected through a ...questionnaire. The questionnaire, adopted from Alharbi (2017), consisted of 49 items arranged into five textbook evaluation criteria: layout and design, textbook objectives, language methods and activities, language skills, and general evaluation. The questionnaire was administered online using Google Forms to 51 primary school teachers. The results of the study revealed that the primary-stage textbooks are efficient in terms of layout and design. The objectives are stated and highlighted in each section, all language skills are included, there are an appropriate number of activities and exercises, and there are instructions beside each part of the content. However, the study also found that the book's objectives, exercises, skills, and teaching methods are inappropriate for learners' needs at these levels; the number of lessons allocated each week is insufficient for the book's content; there is no logical progression between topics; and supplemental materials such as test models are not available. Additionally, there was a lack of cohesion and sequencing between textbooks in the "We Can Series." In light of these results, the researcher suggested some recommendations for addressing the drawbacks of the EFL primary school textbooks. These recommendations include: revising the objectives and exercises to better align with learners' needs; increasing the number of lessons allocated each week; providing a logical progression between topics; and developing supplemental materials such as test models. The study concludes that the We Can Series has the potential to be an effective EFL textbook series, but that some revisions are necessary to address the identified drawbacks. The recommendations made by the researcher should be considered by the publishers of the We Can Series in order to improve the textbooks and make them more suitable for use in Saudi Arabian elementary schools.
This study investigates the impact on extemporaneous English-language first drafts by using Google Translate (GT) in three different tasks assigned to Chinese sophomore, junior, and senior students ...of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) majoring in English. Students wrote first in Chinese (Step 1), then drafted corresponding texts in English (Step 2), and translated the Chinese into English using the 2016 GT version (Step 3), and finally compared their self-written (SW) English texts drafted in Step 2 and their GT English texts translated from the Chinese texts in Step 3. Both English drafts were analyzed using two types of online computational assessments to compare and evaluate grammatical components of writing quality and lexical features. Results indicate that the GT English texts presented a number of components of significantly higher writing quality than those of students' SW texts, by having more words, fewer mistakes in spelling and grammar, and fewer errors per words. In addition, there were more advanced-level words in the students' GT texts than in their SW ones. A follow-up questionnaire survey indicated that EFL students found satisfaction with using Google Translate in their English writing, especially in finding vocabulary items and enhancing the completion of English writing.
The importance of developing intercultural competence as one of the key competences in today’s rapidly changing and multicultural society has been spoken of often. The requirement of preparing ...interculturally competent communicators has therefore become one of the goals of today’s foreign language education. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the practice of fostering intercultural skills in teaching English as a foreign language at Slovak secondary schools. The findings of the research, including observations of lessons, interviews with teachers, as well as analysis of teaching materials, reveals that the development of intercultural competence is still not integrated into foreign language education in Slovakia.
This semi-structured interview study seeks to describe Chinese teachers’ understanding and concerns about the use of play in supporting young children’s English learning. Eight English as a foreign ...language (EFL) teachers of children aged between 3 to 8 years were involved, including both local teachers and international teachers. Findings reveal that because of the unique feature of EFL learning, structured play-based learning was mainly discussed and favored by teachers. Although teachers showed an inclination of separating learning from play, they believed that play serves a supporting role in maintaining students’ interest and motivation in English learning, which is especially crucial important for young children. However, teachers are concerned that play’s benefits would be considered being neutralized when children get older from parents’ perspectives which will eventually negatively impact teachers’ teaching practices. Teachers also face the barriers of balancing the gap between child’s language abilities and cognitive development in EFL teaching. The findings and discussions raise implications for researchers and practitioners to rethink how to define play. A broader definition of play-based learning will help balance both the needs for academic teaching and the benefits of incorporating play, as well as provide implications for integrating play pedagogy in public school systems.
Given the circumstances of the global pandemic, universities around China and across the globe have suspended face to face (F2F) classes and transitioned to emergency remote teaching (ERT). ...University students in China have been the first to go through the whole semester’s ERT including College English, a compulsory language course for almost all the first- and second-year students of non-English majors. This article adopted a mixed-methods design, a survey followed by a qualitative visual method, gathered data on students’ experience about ERT of College English and presented an investigation into detailed interactive process of the classes. The data analysis on the learners’ engagement and the feedback from the learners provided a summary of the key threads of ERT classes. This study demonstrated that students held an extrinsic goal orientation, which did not differ from their face-to-face learning experience. ERT granted students more opportunities for interaction with their instructor and peers, while collaboration among students were limited. The research results can be connected to the larger fabric of global language teaching in crisis context, provide empirical lessons to educators, and help instructors with their future decision-making about technology-supported activities.
This study was set to prepare and validate the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Foreign Language Class (AEQ-FLC) for use in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). The AEQ is largely ...used and validated with different cohorts of students in different domains. However, despite its need for valid measurement instruments to serve the increasing interest in researching second language emotions, the language classroom is a domain that has been largely overlooked in the validation project. To fill this measurement lacuna, data were collected from 748 Iranian EFL learners, and the collected data were submitted to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The CFA results indicated that the psychometric properties of the AEQ-FLC could be substantiated, and that its structure was invariant across gender and learning context. The implications for the use of the AEQ-FLC in both research and practice are discussed.
Diskursna je kompetencija odlučujuća komponenta u strukturi komunikacijske jezične kompetencije te uključuje sposobnost uspostavljanja kohezije i koherencije pri proizvodnji tekstova. Uz izricanje i ...nizanje propozicija u smislenu cjelinu, proizvodnja teksta podrazumijeva i uporabu određenih jezičnih sredstava čija je funkcija eksplicitno označavanje odnosa između dijelova teksta. Ta se jezična sredstva uglavnom mogu obuhvatiti terminom interaktivni metadiskursni označivači (Hyland 2005). Ključni je aspekt ovladavanja stranim jezikom na razini B2 prema ZEROJ-u sposobnost stvaranja dobro strukturiranih i koherentnih, duljih tekstova. Koherentnosti teksta može doprinijeti primjerena uporaba interaktivnih metadiskursnih označivača zato što oni mogu nadomjestiti nedostatke na razini tematske strukture ili učiniti jasnijim odnose među propozicijama. Ovaj rad proučava osobine uporabe interaktivnih metadiskursnih označivača inojezičnih govornika engleskoga i njemačkoga jezika na razini B2 prema ZEROJ-u. Sudionici su istraživanja izvorni govornici hrvatskoga jezika prosječne dobi 19,63 godina (SD = 1,244) koji su engleski ili njemački jezik učili kao prvi strani jezik. Zadatkom pisanja prikupljen je korpus argumentacijskih eseja koji sadrži 82 teksta po jeziku. Ti su tekstovi analizirani s obzirom na uporabu interaktivnih metadiskursnih označivača, a primijenjena je Hylandova (2005) klasifikacija u kojoj se razlikuju označivači prijelaza, označivači okvira, endoforički označivači, dokazivači i tumači. Za analizu je upotrijebljen alat Sketch Engine, a za statističku obradu podataka dobivenih kvalitativnom analizom program SPSS 20. Učestalost uporabe označivača okvira, prisutnost izraza tipičnih za višu razinu komunikacijske jezične kompetencije, raspon pojedinih skupina interaktivnih metadiskursnih označivača te udio neprimjereno uporabljenih izraza upućuje na bolju ovladanost interaktivnim metadiskursnim označivačima u skupini inojezičnih govornika engleskoga jezika u odnosu na govornike njemačkoga. Uporaba izraza za označavanje redoslijeda koraka u argumentaciji u sudionika obiju skupina otkriva određene nedostatke s obzirom na sposobnost globalne organizacije teksta. U pojedinih se sudionika neovisno o jeziku uočava uporaba izraza tipičnih za govorni registar. Analizom tekstova sudionika može se samo utvrditi, no ne i obrazložiti slučajeve neprimjerene uporabe interaktivnih metadiskursnih označivača. Bolje bi razumijevanje ovladavanja interaktivnim metadiskursnim označivačima bilo moguće ostvariti uvidom u kognitivne procese korištenjem psiholingvističkih metoda istraživanja tijekom ili nakon zadataka pisanja.
Discourse competence is a very important component in the structure of communicative language competence and it refers to the ability to design texts. One important aspect of text production is the appropriate use of interactive metadiscourse markers. This paper studies the use of interactive metadiscourse markers by Croatian foreign language users of English and German at the B2 level according to the CEFR. Using a writing task as an instrument, a corpus of argumentative essays containing 82 texts per language was collected. The texts were analysed with regard to the use of interactive metadiscourse markers using Hyland’s (2005) classification. The qualitative and the quantitative analyses were conducted using The Sketch Engine tool and the SPSS 20 program respectively. The frequency of the use of frame markers, the presence of expressions typical for higher levels of communicative language competence, the range of types of interactive metadiscourse markers, and the proportion of inappropriately used expressions indicate a better mastery of interactive metadiscourse markers by foreign language learners of English. The use of expressions to indicate the order of steps in argumentation by the participants of both groups reveals certain shortcomings with regard to the ability of the global organization of the text. The use of expressions typical of spoken language can be observed among individual participants, regardless of their language. A better understanding of the mastery of interactive metadiscourse markers and especially the problems they pose would be possible through gaining insight into the text production process using psycholinguistic research methods during or after the writing tasks, given that the analysis of the participants’ texts can only identify, but not explain, cases of the inappropriate use of interactive metadiscourse markers.
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