Author: gustavorernesto

PDF #41 – Brazilian Accents of English An International Attitude Study

Brazilian Accents in English – We live days in which the English language is being used by peoples from many parts of the globe, 80% of them are non-native (Crystal 2006) and use the language to a diversity of intercultural encounters (Seidlhofer 2011).

This reality has demanded a decentralization of the symbolic ownership of the English language. We, researchers on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), believe that taking the native Standards as the only target reveals a restrictive and outdated approach when it comes to our students’ needs.

It is in this context that studies are being developed aiming to build up to the recognition of the legitimacy of non-hegemonic Englishes. As the accent is considered the first and most powerful aspect of language to provoke reactions to language variations (Jenkins 2007), this research is going to investigate the attitude of 18 foreign speakers of English towards 2 samples of a local Brazilian accent of English.

The relevance of this study is in the reflections prompted by the data for the linguistic authorship of the Brazilian speakers of English starting from the accent. This conceptual effort is congruous with the issues addressed by a revolutionary critical pedagogy, decentralized of its whiteness, self-reflective and sensitive to the needs of others (Scheyerl 2012).

After reading “Brazilian Accents in English” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #40 – Theory and Practice in Applied Linguistics

1 – Indigenous Middle Belt Peoples and their Hausa Neighbours: Linguistic Right, Politics and Power in Nigeria Adegboye Adeyanju

2 – Relationships between Reading Span Tasks and L2 Learning: Possibilities for Concern Involving Construct Equivalency Cem Alptekin & Gülcan Erçetin

3 – The summarising function of university Engineering lectures: a cross-cultural perspective Siân Alsop & Hilary Nesi

4 – The role of (meta)linguistic awareness in cross-linguistic interferences of L3
English Tanja Angelovska

5 – Online Language Choice and Identity: The case of 3arabizi, Salafi English, and Arabic Robert Bianchi

6 – An Analysis of the Washback Effect of TEM-4 on Teaching of English Majors – Taking Beijing Sport University as an Example Han Bing, Tian Hui & Liu Lirui

7 – The variability of lexical diversity and its relationship to learning style. Paul Booth

8 – Idea Generation in L1 and FL Writing Esther Breuer

9 – The emergence of Applied Linguistics in France – investigated through its scientific Journals (1962-2012) Danielle Candel

10 – Test-taker familiarity and speaking test performance: Does it make a difference? Lucy Chambers & Evelina D Galaczi

11 – A study of formulaic language in Chinese EFL learners writing at university level Jiaoyue Chen

12 – The role of context in forming young learners’ attitudes and motivation to
learning French Louise Courtney

13 – Students’ rights in higher education classrooms: An exploration of tutors’
beliefs and their turn-taking practices Doris Dippold

14 – The Story of Young Jae: JSL learning experience of a Korean School Age Sojourner in Tokyo Sachiyo FujitaRound

15 – ‘I don’t want to talk about the bullshit’: Foreigner talk and the Quest for
Authenticity Shuang Gao

16 – Black College Students: Their Motivation and Anxiety Levels Regarding Foreign Language Acquisition

After reading “Theory and Practice in Applied Linguistics” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #39 – Peace Corps TEFL TESL Teaching English as a Foreign or Second

Teaching English as a Foreign Language- TEFL/TESL: Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language is for Volunteers who are currently teaching or who are about to teach English. It is a practical guide for the classroom teacher.

The manual describes procedures and offers sample exercises and activities for a wide range of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, whole-class, small-group, and individual participation, classroom testing and preparing students for national examinations.

It covers a great variety of teaching situations, primary and secondary schools and college, the office or workplace, school and work settings which have limited facilities for instruction and those which provide ample support, any geographical or cultural setting where Peace Corps Volunteers may be found.

Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) refers to teaching the English language to students with different first languages, typically used to imply that the English Language Learner may have already learned more than one language, prior to learning English. TEFL can occur either within the state school system or more privately, at a language school or with a tutor.

TEFL can also take place in an English-speaking country for people who have immigrated there (either temporarily for school or work, or permanently). TEFL teachers may be native or non-native speakers of English. Other acronyms are TESL (teaching English as a second language), TESOL (Teaching English to speakers of other languages), and ESL (English as a second language, a term typically used in English-speaking countries, and more often referring to the learning than the teaching).

Students who are learning English as a second language are known as ESL (English as a second language) or EFL (English as a foreign language) students. More generally, these students are referred to as ELL (English language learner) students. Some of these terms are not in widespread use outside of the materials of providers of various programs and materials.

After reading “Teaching English as a Foreign Language” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #38 – Esayas Teshome Taddese – The Practice of Teaching Speaking Skills the case of three Secondary Schools in Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia

Teaching Speaking Skills – The primary purpose of this study was to explore the practice of teaching speaking skill in selected secondary schools in Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, the research used descriptive survey research design.The participantsof the study consist of 11 (9 male, 2 female) secondary school teachers and 272 grade 9 students.

Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation were the data collection tools. The data analysis, interpretation and discussion of the findings indicated the practice of teaching speaking skill depends on few interactive activities named group discussion; brainstorming and pair work with little follow up discussion on the side of the teachers.

The balance between the accuracy and fluency aspect of speaking skills lacks equilibrium with more emphasis placed on accuracy practice. The factors that challenge the practice of teaching speaking skill include large class size, use of mother tongue during discussions, inhibition and fear of making mistake on the side of the students and shortage of practice time.

After reading “Teaching Speaking Skills” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #37 – Jack C Richard and Theodore S Rodgers – Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching 

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching is designed to provide a detailed account of major twentieth-century trends in language teaching. To highlight the similarities and differences between approaches and methods. This model is presented in Chapter 2 and is used in subsequent chapters. It describes approaches and methods according to their underlying theories of language and language learning; the learning objectives; the syllabus model used; the roles of teachers, learners, and materials within the method or approach; and the classroom procedures and techniques that the method uses.

This new edition is an extensive revision of the first edition of this successful text. Like the first edition, it surveys the major approaches and methods in language teaching, such as grammar translation, audiolingualism, communicative language teaching, and the natural approach. This edition includes new chapters on topics such as whole language, multiple intelligences, neurolinguistic programming, competency-based language teaching, cooperative language learning, content-based instruction, task-based language teaching, and the Post-Methods Era. Teachers and teachers-in-training will discover that this second edition is a comprehensive survey and analysis of the major and minor teaching methods used around the world.

Teaching a foreign language can be a challenging but rewarding job that opens up entirely new paths of communication to students. It’s beneficial for teachers to have knowledge of the many different language learning techniques including ESL teaching methods so they can be flexible in their instruction methods, adapting them when needed.

Keep on reading for all the details you need to know about the most popular foreign language teaching methods. Some of the ones covered are the communicative approach, total physical response, the direct method, task-based language learning, sugguestopedia, grammar-translation, the audio-lingual approach and more.

After reading “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #36 – Debusmann, Ralph – An Introduction to Dependency Grammar

Many linguists consider Dependency Grammar (DG) to be inferior to established phrase structure based theories like GB (Chomsky 1986), LFG (Kaplan & Bresnan 1982) and HPSG (Pollard & Sag 1994). The aim of this article is to remedy this state of affairs by seeking to make those unconvinced of DG perceive the benefits it offers. To this end, section 2 makes the reader acquainted with the basic concepts of DG, before section 3 sets the theory against phrase structure based theories, arguing that it has considerable advantages in the analysis of languages with relatively free word order (e.g. German, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Russian). Section 4 describes
Duchier’s (1999) DG axiomatization as a prototypical example of a DG that separates dependencies and surface order. Thereafter, section 5 proceeds with an overview of current Dependency Grammar formalisms and section 6 rounds the paper up.

Modern Dependency Grammar has been created by the French linguist Lucien Tesniere (1959), but as Covington (1990) argues, DG has already been used by traditional grammarians since the Middle Ages. The observation which drives DG is a simple one: In a sentence, all but one word depend on other words. The one word that does not depend on any other is called the root of the sentence.

I think an introduction to Dependency Grammar has an undeniable advantages for describing languages with a higher degree of word order variation than English. But these advantages can only crop up if one lifts the constraint of projectivity and treats surface order separately from dependency. An argument by Rambow & Joshi (1994), stating that no well-behaved parsers for such DGs exist and that for this reason, non-projective DGs are hampered, can be turned down by mentioning recent advances (e.g. Bröker 1998, Duchier 1999, Jarvinen & Tapanainen 1997) alone.

You can find more PDFs on other important ESL subjects in the the PDF section of this website.

PDF #35 – Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov – Review – Second Language Teaching and Learning in the Net Generation

In the field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), the term “Net Generation” has been clearly defined by Prensky (2001), who states that Net Generation members are “digital natives” since they “[have] spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age” (p. 1), all of which make them different from the baby boomer generation.

For those who are eager to learn more about the language learning needs and necessities of the Net Generation, the edited book by Oxford and Oxford (2009), entitled Second Language Teaching and Learning in the Net Generation is a must-read resource. Since most of the contributors to the book are second and foreign language instructors as well as researchers, almost every chapter of the book describes empirical studies involving different innovative technologies and state-of-the-art tools, offering pedagogical ideas, effective strategies, and useful suggestions on how these technologies could be applied to enhance language teaching and learning.

Surprisingly, however, while the book emphasizes the use of technology in foreign and second language learning, only two chapters include images of the types of technology described (Wimba voice chat, and discussion board; video-based conferencing software Waveasy). For readers who have only recently started integrating and using technology, the inclusion of images could help see or imagine the mentioned technology and/or tools as students engage in activities. Additionally, URL addresses of software and programs (e.g., SL; university-based learner-friendly blogs) have not been provided either, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, for educators to use these resources and techniques in different classroom settings. Currently, interested readers will have to find information about the mentioned software or the website URLs themselves. Although techies (those who are technologically savvy) might be familiar with most of the resources and websites provided in the chapters, for both tech-aficionados and tech-novices, the absence of URLs could be a slight inconvenience.

After reading “Second Language Teaching and Learning” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.