Abstract
Intensive English programmes (IEPs) are college and university units that provide international students with academic English instruction for the purpose of admission to the host ...institution. IEPs are colonial endeavours: they commodify and promote a language with a traceable colonial history that is reinforced through modern structures of knowledge distribution within higher education. Reliance on colonial architectures limits creativity and enforces hegemonic structures upon a field that tends to manifest more social justice orientations. This article argues that the position of IEPs allows them to contest their colonial nature through conscientious, incremental change. It considers the core activities of the IEP ecology (i.e. instruction, discipline, profession, business, and service), looking at how each facet may be utilized to enact a decolonial option. These interventions lend themselves to goals of decolonial projects by reducing bias and hegemony in how IEPs approach language and are positioned within the field and their host institution.
The present work focuses on examining the strategy of cognitive trips and the Arabic language teachers’ training needs of such a strategy when teaching Arabic language courses in the Saudi Arabia ...Kingdom. To achieve the objective of the study, and check whether this strategy is used in lesson planning, lesson teaching, or lesson assessment, a descriptive approach and a questionnaire have been adopted. The researchers used a number of statistical tools, and chose a purposive sample, which consists of (58) Arabic language teachers from Saudi Arabia Kingdom. Results have shown that the training needs of Arabic language teachers for implemining the strategy of cognitive journeys while teaching Arabic language courses came in the following order: the area of lesson planning with 63.8%, lesson implementation with 60.3%, and then evaluating the lesson with 56.9%. Besides, the strategy of cognitive trips that has been applied on learners needs to be used virtually, and to maintain its origins. Finally, the researchers have recommended identifying the strategy of knowledge trips and employing it in the educational process. The researchers have further suggested to provide laboratories equipped with smart devices and the Internet, and to encourage teachers to have intensive training to master the strategy of knowledge trips, and adopt it as an effective method of teaching. They have further suggested to arrange training courses all over the kingdom to improve teacher’ educational results.
Recent years have witnessed a shift in empirical investigations of language learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) from quantitative studies examining the ways in which WTC antecedents co-act and ...contribute to communication, treating the concept as a stable characteristic, to a mixed-methods approach that allows the examination of stable behavioral tendencies and dynamic changes brought about by contextual variables. The rationale behind this study comes from the assumption that more profound understanding of motives underlying learners’ readiness or reluctance to speak may help create classroom conditions that facilitate communication, thus contributing to linguistic attainment. More specifically, the study represents an attempt to tap factors that shape advanced learners’ WTC during conversation classes in four different groups of students. Each time, the data were collected by means of self-ratings (i.e. indications of the level of WTC on a scale from −10 to +10) and immediate reports (i.e. questionnaires including closed and open-ended items). A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that the extent to which WTC fluctuated was impacted by a range of contextual and individual factors. It was enhanced in particular when students were given the opportunity to communicate with familiar receivers in small groups or pairs on topics related to personal experiences.
Utilizing the German residential allocation and residency obligation policies, which can be regarded as a natural experiment, we investigate the causal effect of the local supply of language courses ...on refugees' labor market integration. By restricting refugees' initial and post-arrival regional mobility, these policies allow us to circumvent the potential problems of initial and post-arrival residential selection. Moreover, we examine the intermediary outcomes - language proficiency, language course completion and certification, and contacts with natives - through which the local opportunity structure of language courses shape refugees' economic integration. Our results reveal that the local supply of language courses positively affects refugees' employment probability, and this effect persists over the duration of stay. We further find that greater supply of language courses in the assigned county increases probability of learning the German language, completing the course and receiving language certificates. From a policy perspective, our findings imply that the local provision of language courses should be considered in refugees' residential allocation to facilitate immigrants' integration. This is because limited access to such courses can delay host country language learning, language certificate obtainment, and labor market entry, thus slowing the integration of recently arrived immigrants.
This study investigated the functions of gesture in teaching and learning grammar in the context of second language (L2) classroom interactions. The data consisted of video‐recorded interactions from ...a beginner‐ and an advanced‐level grammar classroom in an intensive English program at a U.S. university. The sequences of talk‐in‐interaction selected for sequential analysis involved gestures that are used by teachers for explaining English temporal concepts, and those by students to respond to their teacher's gesture. Our analysis revealed that teachers and students repeatedly used deictic gestures and metaphoric gestures in the classroom, which can become important interactional resources for instruction as well as assessment of student learning. Furthermore, students effectively used gestural catchments to demonstrate their understanding of temporal concepts and to construct interactional alignments with their teachers. These findings suggest that gesture is an important element of interactional competence for teaching and learning in L2 grammar classrooms.
Small class size is often used as an indicator of quality in higher education, and some research suggests that instructors in smaller classes more often use activities that are learner-centered and ...that involve physical and mental activity on the part of learners, such as group work, simulations, and case studies. However, we have little information on how instructors change their pedagogical practice when they teach in large- versus small-class settings. In this study, we examine alignment between intended and enacted teaching strategies, or initial plans and specific ways in which instructors reported altering their teaching in the context of a university policy shift to smaller classes. Furthermore, we examine instructional challenges in this shift to call attention to professional development needs of small-class teaching and to best leverage the benefits of such activities for student performance and retention.
The purpose of the article is to determine the role of critical thinking and unconscious competence in the implementation of effective communication during group discussions, debates and dialogues. ...The necessary conditions for creating an effective educational environment conducive to the development of students’ conversational skills are demonstrated. An educational experiment was conducted with the participation of 75 third-year students from the School of BLINDED, BLINDED, during which the students practiced both critical thinking and unconscious competence in the process of group discussions. The conducted survey at the beginning and end of training, was determined the degree of use of critical thinking skills and unconscious competence in the process of finding answers to arguments during debates, discussions and disputes. The results of the surveys showed that in the process of speaking, critical thinking skills are used more often (79%) than unconscious competence (21%), but at the same time, students considered that unconscious competence (81%) is more effective in debates and discussions, than critical thinking (19%). It was concluded that critical thinking skills are easier and faster to learn to participate in a constructive discussion than the skills of unconscious competence, the development of which must take place in an authentic learning environment for a longer period. The results of the study confirmed that the participation of students in the conversation class increased their ability to analyze, critically evaluate, argue, unconsciously respond and understand the interlocutor. Therefore, it is important to invest additional efforts and create conditions for open, flexible and comfortable communication of students using modern pedagogical methods aimed at developing students’ thinking skills of a higher order. The findings can be useful in the field of language teaching, psychology, and linguistics, as well as become the basis for the development of new curricula using collective discussions.
This article shares a participatory action research project about the use of technology, specifically online Indigenous language courses, to learn and teach Indigenous languages. The research ...collaborators are the NETOLNEW "one mind, one people" Partnership, 7000 Languages, and two Indigenous Partners who have created courses with 7000 Languages: the Hase' Language Revitalization Society and the Prairies to Woodlands Indigenous Language Revitalization Circle (P2WILRC). Together we consider (a) how Indigenous Nations and organizations create and implement online courses for their languages and (b) what community-led interventions could make these efforts more effective. We position our work together as decolonizing and transformative praxis toward the continuance of Kwak?wala, Michif, and other Indigenous languages.
This article enters the debate about the complex and dynamical nature of second language acquisition (SLA) by discussing and commenting on Pallotti’s critique of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory ...(CDST). Pallotti’s critique brings to the fore the argument that, due to its anti-reductionist stance, CDST research fails to observe three fundamental research criteria, namely that research should (1) construct models, (2) make generalizations and falsifiable predictions and (3) adopt clear empirical approaches. While Pallotti does not explore research already moving SLA beyond anti-reductionist approaches to complexity and dynamism, the debate can be advanced by examining research doing exactly this. This article aims to evaluate the extent to which Processability Theory (PT) – a theory of second language (L2) processing that advocates reductionism for the sake of theory construction – meets Pallotti’s criteria for researching L2 complexity and dynamics. By discussing Pallotti’s – and PT’s – criticisms of CDST, the article outlines the implied research criteria and delineates how PT meets these criteria by (1) its bidimensional design, (2) its generalizations and falsifiable predictions for development and variation, and (3) its operationalization of constructs. Findings from a longitudinal study of L2 English are presented. These findings elucidate that, by meeting the criteria, PT can reveal the predictable, implicational development of processing complexity in eight learners and the patterned, dynamical interaction between development and variation in the trajectories of two of these learners. The article concludes that PT fulfils Pallotti’s (2022) criteria and, by a reductionist approach which models SLA as multidimensional, it can generate what CDST cannot; dynamical and complex L2 systems which progress in predictable stages, with well-defined constraints on variation, including DST-defined constraints. The article closes by discussing the implications of PT’s approach for future research on L2 complexity and dynamics.
Although the effects of different types of written corrective feedback (WCF) have been examined in great detail, learners’ revision behavior in response to WCF has not been systematically ...investigated. The current study compared students’ classroom revision behaviors when they worked in pairs and when they worked individually. It further compared the effects of students’ collaborative and individual revision of teachers’ indirect WCF on accuracy development in their subsequent writing. A total of 36 learners of English as a second language (ESL) completed four timed essays over an 8-week academic session. The instructor provided indirect WCF on students’ essays, and the students revised their writing either individually (the self-correction group) or in pairs (the pair-correction group). The students’ revision behavior was analysed in terms of the correctness of revised errors. The accuracy of their writing was analysed in terms of the number of error-free T-units and the total number of errors for each 100 words. The findings indicated that the pair-correction group corrected their errors at a higher rate of accuracy than the self-correction group. Both groups showed significant improvement in the accuracy of their writing after receiving feedback during the 8-week session; however, no difference in improvement was found between the self-correction and the pair-correction groups.
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