Category: PDFs

PDF #18 – Content-Based Instruction A Relevant Approach of Language Teaching

This is an approach in which the teaching is organized around the content. Likewise, the principles of this approach are heavily rooted on the principles of communicative language teaching since they involve an active participation of students in the exchange of content.

This article reflects upon Content-Based Instruction as a relevant language
teaching approach, its background, the definition of the concept, and its principles. Moreover, the article reports on this method’s distinctive characteristics and its main models. Additionally, a lesson plan on this method with its materials is provided. Finally, a set of conclusions and implications is also discussed.

The focus of a CBI lesson is on the topic or subject matter. During the lesson students are focused on learning about something. This could be anything that interests them from a serious science subject to their favorite pop star or even a topical news story or film.

They learn about this subject using the language they are trying to learn, rather than their native language, as a tool for developing knowledge and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language. This is thought to be a more natural way of developing language ability and one that corresponds more to the way we originally learn our first language.

While CBI can be both challenging and demanding for the teacher and the students, it can also be very stimulating and rewarding. The degree to which you adopt this approach may well depend on the willingness of your students, the institution in which you work and the availability of resources within your environment. It could be something that your school wants to consider introducing across the curriculum or something that you experiment with just for one or two lessons. Whichever you choose to do I would advise that you try to involve other teachers within your school, particularly teachers from other subjects. This could help you both in terms of finding sources of information and in having the support of others in helping you to evaluate your work.

After reading this article you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #17 – Non-native-speaker teachers and English as an International Language

English non-native-speaker teachers – This article reviews the recent literature on English as an International Language (EIL), taking into consideration the main implications of such literature for English language teaching. Relevant research on non-native-speaker (NNS) teachers is discussed, together with their role in the context of the global need for English language teachers, specially in EFL countries.

Are you a non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) who is new to the community of global teachers and concerned about speaking a first language other than English? Or have you been teaching for a while now but have experienced certain obstacles in the workplace or during job-hunting? As a German-born English instructor currently teaching in Japan, I understand this. I would like to highlight some of the advantages of non-native English speaking teachers, including the unique knowledge and skills that we can bring to the ESL/EFL classroom!

Spelling skills

Depending on your mother tongue and your native language system (and therefore how easy it was for you to learn English), your spelling skills might be even better than a native English speaker, because you spell words from knowledge, instead of feeling. This also adds the soft skill “attention to detail” to your resume!

Clear pronunciation

Again, depending on your native language, and that of your students, your pronunciation may be clearer and easier to understand for your students than, let’s say, a thick Australian or American accent. As an NNEST, you are pronouncing words carefully.

After reading “English non-native-speaker teachers” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #16 – A Case Study Assessing Students’ Perceptions and Learning Outcomes of Classroom Teaching Versus On-line Teaching

Students Perceptions and Learning – Action research has grown in popularity throughout the past two decades (Harkavy,Puckett, & Romer, 2000; Fleming, 2000). It is becoming a more accepted tool for teachers to assess their own teaching strategies and reflect upon their effectiveness. McNiff (1999) defined action research as the name given to an increasingly popular movement in educational research that encourages teachers to be reflective of their own practices in order to enhance the quality of education for themselves and their students.

McNiff continued that action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry that can be used in school-based curriculum development, professional development, and school-improvement schemes. Schmuck (1997) extended on teacher self-reflection and stated that “when educators strive to reflect on their past, present, and future actions and engage in solitary dialogue, their perspectives of work mature” (p. 8). McNiff concluded that action research actively involves teachers as participants in their own educational improvement.

Mettetal (2001) provided a seven-step outline to develop a classroom action research project. These steps included statement of the problem, review of literature, research strategy, data gathering, data analysis, taking action, and sharing the findings. The following sections discuss in detail how this author addressed these steps in a case study in which student perception of an online classroom environment and a traditional classroom environment were assessed along with the corresponding learning outcomes.

As indicated by Mettetal (2001), the statement of the problem for a classroom action research project should include a question related to student learning. Incorporating aspects of online and traditional classroom teaching could benefit both students and teachers if the learning outcomes are comparable. Little research exists on the evaluation of student perception of on-line versus traditional classroom learning environments and their corresponding learning outcomes, in particular, when the course material was to be delivered simultaneously by the same instructor.

After reading “Students Perceptions and Learning you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #15 – Hickey, Raymond Productive lexical processes in present-day English

Lexical Processes in English – The theme of lexical change in present-day English is a fruitful field of study. Examining such change reveals many aspects of the lexicology of English, the kinds of processes which are to be found there, the internal organization of the vocabulary of the language and, significantly, it reflects the contemporary society which uses the language.

Lexical change also tells us about the typological options available in the language and how these are used creatively by its speakers. In order to illuminate these various aspects of the subject, the present study will consider a representative amount of lexical material which illustrates on-going changes of recent years.

One might say that words are the building blocks of language: words make up sentences, which make up paragraphs, which make up stories, and stories allow us to communicate with one another. We often take the existence of words for granted, but they didn’t just spring into being. There are many processes that allowed the words we use every day to be formed and that allow new ones to be formed even today. On this page, we will take a look at how words work and how they are made. The most common of these lexical processes include affixation, compounding, and conversion.

Words themselves are made up their own smaller building blocks, called morphemes. There are two overarching kinds of morphemes: inflectional and derivational.
1. Inflectional morphemes can change the state of a word (as in the case of superlative morphemes -er and -est), or change the meaning, as when morphemes are added to show plurality or possessiveness, along with many other functions. Inflectional morphemes also include the internal vowel changes that sometimes occur when certain words change from singular to plural or change tense: foot to feet, ring to rang, and so on.

These inflectional morphemes include the endings -ing, -s (used with verbs or nouns), -ed, -en, -‘s, -er, and -est.

2. Derivational morphemes are affixes (prefixes or suffixes) that work to change the lexical meaning or part of speech of a word.
Some examples include the addition of -ment to the verb argue to create the new noun argument, or the addition of the prefix
un- to a work like bend to create the word unbend, which has a lexically different definition than the original word.

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

PDF #14 – Krashen’s Five Proposals on Language Learning Are They Valid in Libyan EFL Classes

Five Proposals on Language Learning – The most remarkable theory which aims to offer an overall explanation for SLA is Krashen’s Monitor Theory. As documented by the professional literature, although it has received a great deal of criticism, this theory has had a great influence on all aspect of second language research and teaching since the 1980s. Krashen’s theory seems to be attractive to many language teachers all over the world. Based on my experience as an EFL teacher and researcher, I attempt to provide a critical analysis of the theory’s five main hypotheses and the applicability of these proposals in foreign language contexts.

Theory

Which language teaching methodology brings the most benefits to learners in terms of communicative and linguistic competences? This is a question linguists, educational researchers, and teachers continuously ask without reaching a concrete consensus. Perhaps the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach is the preferred response of educators and practitioners. However, do our communicative teaching methods really foster communication practice in the classroom? Is it important to label our teaching approach with a specific name? In this article, I intend to move beyond this label and suggest instead five methodological elements that can be easily implemented in diverse socio-educational contexts. These teaching features correspond to five of the thirty components of the Sheltered Instruction and Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model, which has been adopted in many schools around the world. Because a thirty-component teaching model may become quite overwhelming for teachers and students, a five-feature teaching proposal is herein suggested.

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

PDF #13 – Androutsopoulos, Jannis Bilingualism in the mass media and on the internet

Bilingualism in mass media and internet – In Spanglish, a Hollywood movie released in late 2004, the mixed code usually referred to as Spanglish is conspicuous by its absence. The movie’s title turns out to be a metaphor for the cultural conflicts that arise when a Mexican housekeeper moves in with an Anglo family – and an eye-catcher that exploits the increased media interest in Spanglish for promotion purposes.

Current examples of the marketing of Spanish/English bilingualism in the US are not hard to fi nd. Language mixing is no doubt part of the symbolic capital that lifestyle magazines like Latina (the ‘Magazine for Hispanic Women’) and rap stars like N.O.R.E. (‘Oye Mi Canto’) sell to their audiences. Beyond the US, music with bilingual lyrics thrived in the 1990s, ranging from Algerian rai to African hip-hop, from Bollywood soundtracks to Korean pop.

While popular music audiences ‘seem more receptive to music using other languages than their counterparts of 20 years ago’ (Bentahila and Davies 2002: 190), other sorts of bilingual media messages look back to an even longer tradition, such as multilingual advertising (Piller 2003) and the use of English in the fringe media of youth subcultures, which Hess-Lüttich (1978) has termed ‘bilingualism as a style resource’. Research findings on various other sites of media discourse strengthen the impression that linguistic diversity is gaining an unprecedented visibility in the media scapes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.

These observations indicate a gradual shift in the sociolinguistic condition
of a domain that has traditionally been dominated by ideologies and practices
of monolingualism. Historically, the monoglot and standardized linguistic
habitus of the mass media results from their primary institutionalization as
agencies of construction of the nation-state.

After reading “Bilingualism in mass media and internet” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #12 – Croft, William Constructions and Generalizations

Goldberg’s Constructions at work makes an important contribution to the understanding of syntax by developing analyses for specific grammatical constructions from a usage-based constructional perspective and critically comparing generative analyses to them. It is argued here that some of the analyses that Goldberg offers may still be problematic (although they are superior to the generative alternatives), and in other cases, Goldberg can strengthen her defense of constructional analyses by offering a sharper critique of the generative alternatives.

Constructions at work (CW ) offers an alternative approach to grammar, one familiar to readers of this journal. Part I of CW  provides a fine introduction to the constructional, usage based approach to grammar, along with a critique of several generative analyses. Goldberg is doing important and valuable work in confronting analyses in the generative framework, in Part I and elsewhere in CW. The central theme of Constructions at work (CW ), as outlined in the
introduction, is the phenomenon of linguistic generalizations.

Generative grammar posits a Universal Grammar containing a set of general grammatical properties that are hypothesized to be innate. In other words, the generalizations are already given. The fundamental problem with the UG approach to grammatical structures is that in fact grammatical generalizations are highly variable across languages. If grammatical generalizations are not innate or even universal, then they must be learned.

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

PDF #11 – English as a Global Language and its role in Japan

English as a global language

English a Global Language in Japan – In Japan, English is largely neutral and its popularity along with its importance is more the result of economic factors as opposed to imperialistic or democratic motives. English is now spoken by about 1 billion people all over the planet which encourages more people in Japan to learn English as a tool for international communication.

The interest in studying the English language is growing in Japan. I can respect the opinions stated by Wardaugh, Phillipson and Crystal; however, I would like to state from my perspective that English in Japan has economic benefits. English has been described as anything from an imperialistic language by Phillipson that is forcing other languages to disappear to even being a neutral language as described by Wardaugh in which it belongs to no specific political, cultural or religious group.

In my view, English has become the language of opportunity in Japan. For many Japanese people, knowing English has opened the doors to many job opportunities from high tech industries to working at luxury hotels among other economic gains. In terms of Crystal’s statement of English as democratic, I find it to be rather complicated. There are aspects of the English grammar system that show different moods of politeness in relationships that do not make English democratic.

Japan and English: neutral, imperialistic, or democratic?

In this section, I will discuss about the economic gains of English for Japan as well as how Japanese society deals with the widespread use of English to its own society’s benefit. Kennedy(2004:70) writes about objectives of English language planning, and lists “to enable trade/technology exchange” as a reason for a country such as Japan to study English and he mentions “to communicate with contacts world-wide”as a language policy objective for Japan.

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

PDF #10 – Come What May The History and Future of the English Subjunctive

The History of the English Subjunctive – Many native English speakers (myself included), when first studying a Romance language, are quite surprised and confused by the sheer diversity of inflectional endings that Romance verbs display. While the richer morphological distinctions between different gender and number combinations is not entirely unfathomable due to the somewhat similar distinctions in forms of “be”, particularly fascinating or frustrating – the choice of adjective highly variable depending on who you ask – is the additional inflection multiplying factor of grammatical mood.

The subjunctive mood, which is of interest for this paper, tends to be particularly difficult for learners to grasp due to its seeming absence from English (as opposed to the imperative mood, which is used, albeit in morphologically less rich forms, similarly in English as to the Romance languages). In fact, in secondary school-type introductory courses, it is often
claimed that English simply has no analog to e.g. the Spanish subjuntivo or Italian congiuntivo.

While these claims are not true, they reflect the intuition many English speakers have that the subjunctive mood exists in only an impoverished form in present-day English. In this paper, I investigate the historical developments leading to this conception of the English subjunctive mood, examine the modern usage of explicitly marked subjunctive constructions, and make some cautious predictions regarding the future development of the English subjunctive, or lack thereof. I conclude that English has, since its earliest days, been losing the tendency towards and the observable artifacts of subjunctive expression and will likely continue to do so.

The history of the English subjunctive, particularly the form expressed through inflectional morphology, has been characterized by declining visibility since Old English times. Many expressions that would previously have been inflected in the subjunctive mood have been replaced with modal auxiliaries and other devices with analytic tendencies. Many of the forms that remain, however, show productive use, unique syntactic constraints, and special semantic properties.

After reading “The History of the English Subjunctive” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

PDF #9 – M.A.K. Halliday – Towards a Language-Based Theory of Learning

A Language-Based Theory of Learning – Despite the fact that educational knowledge is massively dependent on verbal learning, theories of learning have not been specifically derived from observations of children’s language development. But language development is learning how to mean; and because human beings are quintessentially creatures who mean (i.e., who engage in semiotic processes, with natural language as prototypical), all human learning is essentially semiotic in nature.

We might, therefore, seek to model learning processes in general in terms of the way children construe their resources for meaning- how they simultaneously engage in “learning language” and “learning through language.” A number of characteristic features of language development, largely drawn from systemic-functional studies of infancy, childhood, and early adolescence, offer one possible line of approach towards a language-based interpretation of learning.

When children learn language, they are not simply engaging in one kind of
learning among many; rather, they are learning the foundation of learning itself. The distinctive characteristic of human learning is that it is a process of making meaning-a semiotic process; and the prototypical form of human semiotic is language. Hence the ontogenesis of language is at the same time the ontogenesis of learning. Whatever the culture they are born into, in learning to speak children are learning a semiotic that has been evolving for at least ten thousand generations.

But in some cultures, including those comprising the Eurasian culture band,
during the past hundred generations or so the nature of this semiotic has been
changing: A new form of expression has evolved, that we call writing, and
following on from this a new, institutionalized form of learning that we call
education. Children now learn language not only in home and neighborhood
but also in school; and with new modes of language development come new
forms of knowledge, educational knowledge as distinct from what we call common sense. At the same time, the process of language development is still a continuous learning process, one that goes on from birth, through infancy and childhood, and on through adolescence into adult life.

After reading “A Language-Based Theory of Learning” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.