Month: May 2017
A Comparative Corpus Study on the Use of Academic Hedges and Boosters in Applied Linguistics
Hedges and boosters are two types of linguistically important strategies employed in academic writing. While hedges and boosters have been widely explored, previous studies focus on targeting the use of hedges and boosters in journal articles and conference papers in linguistics, computer engineering, second or foreign language teaching and learning. The investigation of Taiwanese students’ …
A Tree-Based Chart for Visualizing Programming for Problem Solving
Programming for solving problems has been an important skill in computer programming education. However, most of the assessment for the skill tends to emphasize on the product of programming rather than the process of programming. Considering students’ process of programming may gain insight into the understanding of students’ difficulties and their performance, this study incorporates …
Across Disciplines, Cultures and Technologies: An Item Response Theory Approach to Assessment of Learning
In the process of educating for change, we must strategically design assessment to examine how well our students are learning. This subject is important but easily neglected by educators or misrepresented in the education field. This research applied Item Response Theory (IRT), a contemporary measurement theory that models the relationship between the probability of an item …
Analyses of Non-Native Preservice English Teacher Verbal Interactions on COLT Part B Scheme
This exploratory case study aimed to identify the characteristics of instruction by non-native preservice English teachers seeking to obtain an English teacher certificate in Japan. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has mandated that the teaching of English should take place principally in English from 2020. This requirement will place greater …
Bringing Persuasive Design Into the Development of Mobile Interactive Media for Road Safety Education in Young Children
Parents become an important part in giving knowledge about road safety to their children due to a time limited in the academic year of teachers. Apart from its attractiveness, the animation is a powerful tool to demonstrate a graphical scene for the children to understand the impact of their behaviour. Moreover, the mobile interactive media …
Blended Learning for In-service Teachers’ Professional Development: Lessons from the Experience of a Singaporean Chinese Language Teacher Educator
Traditional face-to-face workshop is a common avenue for the professional development (PD) of in-service teachers. Chinese Language (CL) teachers in Singapore also attend such workshops frequently. Research has however shown that such workshops often failed to establish sustained learning and produce little impact on teachers’ practice, as well as students’ achievement. To address this efficacy …
Blended Learning and Total Engagement – Posters that Teach
Electronically-mediated technologies are prohibited from use in a major assessment component of a blended learning subject. This subject employs a multidisciplinary problem-based approach to explore international issues and perspectives using a rich blend of face-to-face, electronically-mediated, individual and team-based activities. The assessment is a role-play simulation which occurs during the second half of a year-long …
Changing Writing Classrooms through Group Dynamics
Literature Circles in an EFL writing classroom is an under-explored area where learners, through collaborative learning, are able to enhance the skills necessary for writing academic essays. By redesigning the traditional roles of Literature Circles to accommodate different aspects of academic writing, this approach, through interaction and collaborative dialog, develops the skills of EFL writers. The …
Cross Cultural Representation in Pakistani’s EFL Textbooks
The spread of English language as an international language has increased the numbers of its non-native speakers more than its native speakers all over the world .It has arisen the issue of the possession of this language. This study aims at describing and exploring and the type of cultural content found in English Language textbooks …
Crafting Digital Strategies: Empathy, Technology and Design Education
The 2009 research “Designer of 2015” presented by the AIGA, a series of competencies were outlined for future designers and its impact in design education. Among these, the research mentions experiences, systems, and services as new trends in design education, going beyond the creation of single design artifacts but the generation of multilevel strategies. Others, …
Dealing with Unexpected Experiences: Transformative Learning of Japanese Pre-Service Teachers During the Teaching Practicum
In the current Teaching Licensing program accredited by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, students who plan to become English teachers are required to have two to three weeks of in-service training at junior or senior high schools. This teaching practicum is central to the curriculum and provides extremely rich experiences that lead …
English as the World’s Lingua Franca and Task-based Strategic Competence
A common theme in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research is to focus on pragmatics and accommodation with regards to turn-taking, the status of the interlocutors, and contextual usage. There is less research available that is oriented towards the usage of ELF regarding spoken directives for task-specific purposes. As opposed to conversational English, such …
Expressing Jamaican Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom
We will present lessons learned and techniques developed over a period of twelve years teaching Japanese to West Indian university students at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. Over this period the Japanese programme has developed from a set of introductory courses to a full minor programme, and has …
Factors Impacting on Teacher Cognition and Teachers’ Approaches to Language Teaching in Japanese High Schools
An investigation of cognitive factors that impact implementation of Communicative Approaches to Language Teaching, CALT, by public high school teachers in Osaka, Japan. Furthermore, it examines factors that would enable implementation of CALT. The experiences, beliefs and knowledge of 46 teachers were investigated using a questionnaire. Of those, 4 were invited to participate in semi-structured …
Expressing Locality in Learning English: A Study of English Textbooks for Junior High School Year VII-IX in Indonesia Context
This paper intends to investigate the transfer of English language to Indonesian students of junior high school in a multicultural setting. As a locus of discussion, the investigation problematizes English textbooks “Real Time: An Interactive English Course for Junior High School Students Year VII-IX” which signify the imbalance accounts of cultural elements as highlighted by …
Developing Global Leadership Skills with Model United Nations (MUN)
This paper summarizes the symposium contributions as they were presented at the Asian Conference on Language Learning held in Kobe: (1) Lori Zenuk-Nishide, MUN and Opportunities in Japan; For 15 years, the author has used MUN an EMI curriculum with Japanese students and continued this as Conference Organizer for NMUN Japan in 2016. MUN and …
I Am Afraid of Learning English: The Interplay between Anxiety and Learning Experience on Indonesian Senior High School Students Academic Performances
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of learning experience and anxiety on senior high school students’ academic performance in Indonesia. A small-scale of quantitative research was done using convenience sampling. Two kinds of data collection administered were questionnaire and students’ academic record. 40 items of Likert scale questionnaires were distributed to …
Investigating ‘Interest’ Development of Indonesian Students in an MA TEFL Programme in Learning English as an L2
This study contributes to the understanding of interest development in second language learning. It describes the conditions which trigger students’ situational interest in learning English as a second language, and how temporary situational interest contributes to the development of more stable individual interest. The data are gathered from Indonesian students on an MA Teaching English …
Japan Away from Japan: The Tehran Supplementary Japanese School
How can my multi-racial children maintain and even improve their competency in their heritage languages? This is a common struggle in any multi-racial families as in most cases their daily life outside the home is carried out in one of the languages of theirs. Particularly, in the case of the biracial families of Japanese and …
Learning Growth and Attitude of Students Exposed to Prolonged Non-Contractual English Intervention Program
This study is quasi-experimental in nature which utilized an intervention program sponsored by the US Embassy through the English Access Microscholarship Program to help develop the language skills of the students. Fifty (50) students ranging from 13-20 years old who have economically disadvantaged backgrounds and show low performance in English skills (speaking, reading and writing) …
Massive Open Online Challenges in Education: Using Various Analytics to Evaluate the Success of a MOOC
The world today is witnessing an increasing interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This new form of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) is in the spotlight, particularly when it comes to the topic of the evolving nature of higher education learning. Advocates of MOOCs propose that open courses are being celebrated because they reach an unlimited …
Motivational Changes and Their Effects on Achievement: Japanese High School English Learners
This longitudinal study investigates (a) changes in Japanese high school English learners’ motivation over the 3 years of high school, and (b) whether their motivational changes over the high school years predict achievement at the end of high school. A questionnaire was developed drawing on the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (Gardner, 1985) and the self-determination-theory scale …
Promoting Cross-Cultural Communication and Student Reflection Through Speaking Logs
Many Japanese students enter university having had little to no interaction with native or foreign speakers of English outside of their classroom. In a university with international students there lies an opportunity for students to come into contact with people around their age from all over the world, creating the chance for intercultural exchange. However, …
Scaffolding L2 Readers: How Can We Grow Them Into Autonomous Life-Long Learners?
A critical component of L2 reading ability is reading fluency. One natural approach to L2 fluency development is to approximate the process of L1 acquisition (through exposure to large amounts of comprehensible input), by means of extensive reading (ER), whereby readers are provided with a wide selection of materials in different genres and topics graded …
Special Filipino Curriculum (SFC): A Technology Oriented Curriculum for Foreign Language Students
The technology-oriented curriculum aims to develop a program for foreign language speaking students of Filipino. Its objective is to look into their needs; enumerate the competencies that shall be developed by the curriculum; and evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum of Special Filipino Class (SFC) to the students. Teachers and students of SFC in Saint …
Syntactic Variety and Writing Quality: An Investigation on EFL Students’ Argumentative Writing
The variety of syntactic structure of sentences has regarded as an important indicator of sentence fluency and writing proficiency. However, previous research on the relationship between syntactic variety and text quality has failed to reveal consistent patterns. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship of a single measure of syntactic variety with the quality …
Teachers’ Attitude toward Journal Writing
Teachers have many tasks that they should do. So, they must be professional in teaching. One of the ways to be professional is to know how to think critically toward their teaching. They should know how to reflect their teaching to help them to know about their strength and weakness in teaching. Based on the …
Teachers’ View on the Use of Portfolio Assessment in Secondary Schools In Indonesia
Having been undergoing several changes in a decade, the concept of students’ evaluation system in Indonesia has significantly transformed. In this regard, portfolio assessment has been taken into account as an alternative way to measure students’ development based on the process and result of learning. However, lack of familiarity with this kind of assessment, followed …
Teaching English Academic Writing Skills through the Flipped Classroom Model and Team-Based Learning
In recent years, there has been increased interest of flipping the classroom, a student-centered instructional model that makes classwork done at home via lecture videos and homework done in class. The ultimate goal of the flipped classroom is to enable students to spend more face-to-face class time working with the teacher or peers on creative, …
Teaching Writing Through Clustering Technique
Teaching writing is considered as the most difficult skill. However, one of the objectives of teaching English in secondary school in Indonesia, especially for writing skill is students are expected to be able to write descriptive text well and accurately. Therefore,an EFL teacher needs appropriate strategies in teaching writing to achieve this objective. One of …
Teaching How to Think and How to Write: Realities and Suggestions on Writing Instruction in English Education in Japan
The current Course of Study of Japan manifests that an objective of “English Expression” is to evaluate facts and opinions from multiple perspectives and to communicate with others through good reasoning (MEXT, 2009). In reality, a survey revealed that 43.6% of national and public high school seniors were at the bottom of A1 level of …
The Challenges of Teacher-Mediated vs Computer-Mediated ESL Instruction
Technology is changing at an unprecedented rate, and without the proper machinery in place, one stands the risk of being left behind. Previously called computer-assisted language learning, it has been replaced with the familiar terms such as e-learning and the learning management system (LMS). To what extent do ESL teachers need to be involved in …
The Competency Development in Practical Skills by Hand-On Activities for Industrial Education Students (Electrical Engineering Learners)
This study was aimed to developed learning competency in practical sessions by using Hand-on activities. The tools used to collect data were a questionnaire, assessment test and Delphi technique. The purposive sampling of this study were 80 senior students in Electrical Engineering Education from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. The Delphi technique sampling groups …
The Development of a Model to Promote Predict, Observe, Explain Strategies for Teaching about Electrical Circuits
The purpose of this presentation is to present a model to promote predict, observe, explain strategies for teaching about electrical circuits. Vocational educational students preparing to be electrical technicians often have misconceptions about electrical circuits. Yet, knowledge of such circuits is basic to the training of electrical technicians. This presentation will outline a model developed …
The Implementation of Teacher’s Motivational Strategy in EFL Classrooms
This study aims at describing how EFL (model) teachers in Junior High school, Senior High School, and Vocational High School under FISS educational program, generate student’s initial motivation in learning EFL, identifying the strategies done by those model teachers to maintain student’s motivation in learning EFL, and revealing how those model teachers encourage positive retrospective …
Toward the Cognitive Analysis of Non-Native Speakers’ Handwriting in Japanese with iPad and LMS
Tablet computers have gathered attention in classrooms in Japanese university. Apple’s iPad is the most popular among several varieties. BeeDance is a learning management system (LMS) for iPads created by a Japanese company to facilitate active participations of learners. In this study, cognitive analyses of non-native speakers’ Japanese handwriting are examined through the uses of …
The Use of Sibelius Software in Learning Counterpoint at the Music Department of Indonesia Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta
As a subject for Music students, counterpoint contributes to the ability to create a melody. Students must pay attention to the rules applied in counterpoint when they make a melody. It considers the flow of the melody in vertical and horizontal line (interval) and a musical texture of the melody. In making counterpoint melodies, students …
Web 2.0 Tools in Teacher Training Programs in a Multilingual Setting: Searching, Selecting and Using Information
The aim of this submission is to present the findings of a research conducted in Catalonia,a multilingual region in the north of Spain, aimed to gather data about the use of web 2.0 tools in academic writing among future primary and pre-primary teachers. The research focuses on two main issues:a) the criteria on which their …