English Language Studies - Science topic

I don’t prefer typos and would rather ensure everything is correct!!

Very valuable contribution from Bulcsu Szekely; imo, AI is quietly disrupting higher education’s administrative, teaching, learning and research activities:

AI tools are being used to provide adaptive and automated assessments, practice opportunities, personalized tutoring and feedback and content recommendations. In addition, AI tools are being used to generate content, write code, resolve accessibility issues, reconfigure writing processes and detect plagiarism.

AI tools are used to provide self-service chat bots, flag at-risk students, recommend courses, increase motivation and predict student performance.

AI tools are being used to sift through large data sets to identify patterns, build models, recommend relevant articles and prepare manuscripts for publication.

AI tools are being used to crunch data on recruitment, admission and retention, to aid in decision-making processes and to assess productivity and performance.

Conclusion:

Furthermore, higher education institutions Imre Fekete must carefully assess how AI will affect the labor market in the future. This analysis should lead to a rethinking of all educational pathways to prepare students for a hybrid labor market in which AI will play a significant role.

________

If art interprets our dreams, the computer executes them in the guise of programs.

― Alan J. Perlis, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

@Pernelle Lorette Sorry to disturb but I wonder whether you have got access to the cloze test by professor Yuan. I'm looking for such a proficiency test.

In my opinion, it will depend on to what extent the language learner would like to view how the language works. I would say that if we opt to view language from the perspective of medium/tool in conveying messages or communication; incorporating structural grammar and IC analysis are beneficial to use the grammar correctly within the exact communication function to deliver the correct message by the encoder to the decoder.

MY dear

According to my point of view and in relation to the Iraqi situation

maybe no more than 30 percent

warm regards

I hope the following link could help you:

On another note, Alleen and Don Nilsen’s The Language of Humor (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is hot off the press. We have developed a PowerPoint to accompany each of the twenty-five chapters of the book as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction & Humor Theories Chapter 2: Humor in Anthropology & Ethnic Studies Chapter 3: Humor in Art Chapter 4: Humor in Business Chapter 5: Humor in Computer Science Chapter 6: Humor in Education Chapter 7: Humor in Gender Studies Chapter 8a: Humor in Geography I (International Humor: Books, Conferences and Organizations) Chapter 8b: Humor in Geography II (International Humor: Examples and Discussion) Chapter 9: Humor in Gerontology Chapter 10: Humor in History Chapter 11: Humor in Journalism Chapter 12: Humor in Law Chapter 13: Humor in Linguistics Chapter 14: Humor in Literature Chapter 15: Humor in Medicine and Health Chapter 16: Humor in Music Chapter 17: Humor in Names and Naming Chapter 18: Humor in the Performing Arts Chapter 19: Humor in Philosophy Chapter 20: Humor in Physical Education Chapter 21: Humor in Politics Chapter 22: Humor in Psychology Chapter 23: Humor in Religion Chapter 24: Humor in Rhetoric and Composition Chapter 25: Humor in Sociology We’re sending you a PowerPoint indicating how humor is important to your particular discipline. Please let us know if you would like to receive any of our other humor-related PowerPoints (see above). Thanks. Don and Alleen Nilsen don.nilsen@asu.edu alleen.nilsen@asu.edu .

Look out for vacancies on The Linguist List https://linguistlist.org/career/search/. If you know which researchers have projects on these topics that you are interested in, write to them to introduce yourself. It's also worth asking your PhD supervisor about this.

I agree with Robert Trevethan and I had much the same reaction to the original factor analysis. I think the bottom line is that if you do conduct a pretest, you should use better procedures (including an oblique rotation) and not expect an exact reproduction of the earlier results.

It will help if you use a suitable and powerful qualitative research software as Atlas.ti (https://atlasti.com/) or equivalent. This software allows you to introduce and research large amounts of text, written or oral, images, videos, etc. Then, you can select diverse research techniques, including frequencies, correlations, modulations, structures, and several other tools.

Dear Dr. Houda Boumediene ,

This link Demonstrates development critical thinking through teaching english:

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/ninamk/critical-thinking-skills

There's a plethora of teaching approaches you may utilize. First, I would like you you to consider looking at these elements: student and teacher's access to technology, student and teacher's readiness to use the technology ( platform, software and apps). Some approaches include, collaborative learning by using breakout session available in zoom or Bkackboard, active learning through short polling or short quiz using Multiple Choice Questions. You may also use different applications such as Nearpod, Kahoot, Padlet, Quizlet, and Edmodo among others. You may use gamification to engage students in the lesson avtivities.

I wonder why you are carrying out this study?

What questions are you trying to answer, through examining social media language from different speakers in this way?

Why are these questions interesting?

If you are clear about your own answers to questions like these, you will be better placed to judge which analytical methods are likely to be appropriate.

Yes, I also agree with Farangis. Which standard? Notice that in former years the Ministry of Education in Singapore used to use the term 'standard English' in its English language curriculum for schools. However, in recent years it has reduced the use of the term 'standard English' and instead refers to 'internationally acceptable English.' That, I suppose, refers to English language production (speech and writing) that would be understandable to an international audience, say at a conference or business symposium.

But then of course you have to try to define "internationally acceptable English." I once asked a senior official at the Ministry of Education in Singapore if it was 'internationally acceptable' to pronounce the word 'international' without a /t/ sound (approximately like 'inner national'). The official (with a PhD from a UK university) said 'no'. "Well," I said, "that is how Hillary Clinton (who was then US Secretary of State) pronounces it. Are you saying that the top diplomat in the United States doesn't speak internationally acceptable English?"

Hi Monique Bernardino , here's one I developed for L1 / L2.

Abdulla

Hi,

The following are some criterion we need to consider while adapting or modifying authentic materials.

1.Adaptation should facilitate instruction

2.Adaptation should encourage learning

3 .Adaptation should focus on learners

4.Adaptation should ensure relevance

5. Adaptation should prompt flexibility

6. Adaptation in terms of motivationality

For details please read:

Ebrahimpourtaher, A., & Hamidi, E. (2015). Authenticity and adaptation in EFL materials. International Archive of Applied Sciences and Technology, 6(2), 34-9.

Although IELTS is the most popular standardized international English proficiency test globally, despite the enormous success of the exam, it is not suitable for all.

When I read this question, it reminded me of an article I read written by Chris Moore from Specialist Language Courses. He used the example of nurses to demonstrate that IELTS is not suitable proficiency test for everyone.

"IELTS can’t demonstrate that nurses are able to communicate effectively in a healthcare environment. IELTS was designed to test academic English, ie the English someone needs to study in Higher Education – and it still does this today, particularly the IELTS Academic papers. However, IELTS really doesn’t have much relevance at all to how nurses use English at work.

Reading about biological patterns, animal rights, or the influence of the media on children may be interesting, but it doesn’t help a nurse help a confused and distressed patient any better."

Hi! I saw your question and it is interesting as a research topic.

As you may know, people from south of Algeria are not really familiar or interested in French language, compared to Arabic. So many of them struggle with the French language after going to university and studying scientific branches in French (French is like the science language in Algeria). Many of my friends changed their majors or dropped out because of the French language barrier and the insults they received from their peers and students regarding their low language skills in French.

It is worth probing into this issue more.

Hello! Have you ever tried https://storybird.com/? It's a very inspiring platform where you can write visual stories in seconds.

I think that you can say that the interviews were conducted in Chinese, because it was the native language of the participants and you wanted to have answers that were as rich with detail as possible.

You might say that the answers were also analyzed in Chinese, but that sample quotes were translated to English for presentation in this paper.  Working with Chinese-speaking colleagues, I have done qualitative analysis this way and had no objections from reviewers.

Remember that in Grounded Tyeory, you will likely need to re-interview the participants several times.

It might be better to do your survey first, with quantitative analysis, and then construct your interview protocols based on the quantitative analysis.  Then you might use theme analysis rather than Grounded Theory.  

Political cartoons

I think sort out outcomes (what is the extent of this education to be learnt by the students) and follow outcome based education approach. Everything else will fall in place. I hope it helps! 

Hi, Guillermo Rivera

Your  way of showing the difference between EFL and ESL seems sounds. Here is my way of looking at the differences:

1-Teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) typically take place in a foreign country, usually with students from the same country. In contrast, English as a Second Language (ESL) classes takes place in an English-speaking country, with students from all different backgrounds.

 

2-English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) require two different strategies for teaching for a number of reasons. Most people don’t know the difference between the two and don’t consider the difference when they set out to teach English. It’s important to know what each one is so that the different needs of the students can be met.

 EFL is where the teacher teaches English to students in a country where English isn’t the native language. For example, a Chinese student learning English in China would fall under this category. 

On the other hand, ESL is where English is taught to students in a country where English is the primary language. An example of this is where a Chinese student is learning English in Australia. The difference between ESL and EFL might seem little at first, but they do require very different teaching strategies to meet the aims and objectives of the students.

Regards

To my mind, cohesion and coherence are less related to collocation than to aspects such as the following:  text organization, discourse markers and other types of signposting, move patterns in texts, lexical chains, use of topic and supporting sentences, and  reference words and phrases. Of course a number of these areas do include collocations and fixed phrases, but collocations are not the main part of what needs to be learnt in relation to cohesion and coherence. 

Having said that, collocations permeate virtually all the text types that one would need to translate. If we see texts as being on a continuum from conventional to creative, the texts that are closer to the conventional end of the continuum are likely to contain more collocations than texts at the creative end. However, unless a writer is self-consciously avoiding standardized expressions and word combinations, set phrases and collocations will continue to play a role.

The challenge for the teacher is to pick out collocations which a student is likely to need to use a lot and to anticipate the problems that he/ she will have with these collocations. I have seen many well-meaning collocation lists for Spanish learners of English that contain collocations that the student can already produce perfectly. 

Another issue when translating is to recognize when the writer is being more "conventional" and falling back on standard collocations and when (s)he is trying to be more creative, perhaps by combining words with one type of semantic prosody, with words that have another in order to produce particular rhetorical effects, such as shocking people or signalling irony. For example, "he has committed a number of good acts", where the standard association of  commit with nouns like murder or suicide, immediately signals to the observant, proficient reader that the writer is not completely at one with the actions that have been performed. A good translator would have to be aware of this in order to find a translation that produces the same effect. For a Spanish translator, this would be easy on the face of it, as (s)he could translate literally with "ha cometido" in order to produce a similar  "prosodic clash". However, if (s)he is not aware of the effect that the writer is trying to create, (s)he may opt for a more usual verb collocation of "acto", such as "hacer" o "realizar", and the rhetorical effect would be lost in translation.

Learners could benefit from courses which raise issues related to the role of semantic prosody in collocation. Dominic Stewart's book "Semantic Prosody a Critical Evaluation", with its healthy doses of scepticism, would not be a bad place to start, along with works by Stubbs, Sinclair and Louw among others. Louw's work, particularly "Irony in the text or insincerity in the Writer. The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies " and "Contextual Prosodic Theory: bringing prosodies to life",provides a refreshing counter to Stewart's scepticism. I disagree with some of his arguments, but we need people like Bill Louw with their unflagging passion and enthusiasm to get things moving.

Hello Bahia Dhwai,

The need for a  practical set of standards for evaluating teachers' reflections and effectiveness can guarantee that teachers have the proper qualifications for teaching. These standards should address a number of issues such as teachers' pedagogical and/ or  content knowledge , quality of instruction,  classroom climate , classroom management skills, teacher beliefs, and professional behaviors. Naturally, for evaluating the quality of teachers' reflections on their practices, you need to use qualitative methods of data collection such as interview, questionnaire, observation,  retrospective commentary, etc. By contrast, for a quantitative evaluation you need to use analytical methods like discourse analysis techniques. The following links can hopefully provide you with the related literature you are looking for.

Best of luck,

R. Biria

I believe in Communicative Language Theory (CLT) meaning that the FIRST goal of learning a language it be understood.  So at lower levels of learning, I think that there should be some toleration, as long as meaning is clear.  Too much emphasis on micro-level grammar can be demotivating for learners of low proficiency

Perfecting grammar can be a focus at higher levels of learning.

For the record, most native speakers do not use perfect English grammar, particularly in spoken communication.  

X-parameters represent a new category of nonlinear network parameters for high-frequency design (Nonlinear vector network analyzers are sometimes called large signal network analyzers.[1])

X-parameters are applicable to both large-signal and small-signal conditions, for linear and nonlinear components. They are an extension of S-parameters[2] meaning that, in the limit of a small signal, X-parameters reduce to S-parameters.

They help overcome a key challenge in RF engineering, namely that nonlinear impedance differences, harmonic mixing, and nonlinear reflection effects occur when components are cascaded under large signal operating conditions. This means that there is a nonlinear and as such non-trivial relationship between the properties of the individual cascaded components and the composite properties of the resulting cascade. This situation is unlike that at DC, where one can simply add the values of resistors connected in series. X-parameters help solve this cascading problem: if the X-parameters of a set of components are measured individually, the X-parameters (and hence the non-linear transfer function) can be calculated of any cascade made from them. Calculations based on X-parameters are usually performed within a harmonic balance simulator environment.[3]  

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-parameters).

Have a look at REF-N-WRITE scientific paper writing tool. This tool allows you to import text from previous papers relevant to the subject area in MS word. While you are writing your paper, you can just search for similar statements from other authors and inherit their vocabulary and language to improve your paper. It also comes with a library of academic phrases that you can readily use to polish your paper. Here is the link for the site.

They have some nice tutorials here.

Dear Gary Evans,

It is often stated that language is a fortress ; it must be attacked from different sides using all possible means. Using translation as a pedagogical tool is no more an out of place, inappropriate teaching strategy. In point of fact, learners' speed and performance in translating into and out of  a targeted  language can provide  the teachers with a solid ground for evaluating learners'  comprehension  of the language they are learning. However, as professor Nation (2010) states, language teachers should create a balanced use of what he calls four strands in the classroom; namely, meaning focused input, language focused learning, meaning focused output, and L2 fluency development. Clearly, translation is one of the effective techniques for fostering the first two strands; however, for the next two strands , the time-on-task principle calls for spending a maximum amount of time on L2  language use in real time.

Best of luck,

R. Biria

Hi, dear colleagues 

I thank all of you for your great comments.

Best wishes

Dear Sanan,

Thank you to all for the answers provided. I really appreciate them

Hi Laura, there are also some recently funded projects on AR. We have just received one entitled REDESIGN.

best,

stella

Personally, I would say that if you struggle with the TOEFL test, you would also struggle with writing an English-language thesis.

Dear María,

I have some experience in peer-tutoring programs for language learners, but no at experimental design research, if that is your request. If you want I can provide some insigts on a two-year experience perido administering such a program.

My five cents

Jorge

Hi Reza,

In my view, merely asking students why they have given a particular response can be very useful for getting data about how students perform specific comprehension tasks, but it does not usually provide much information about reading strategies per se. For example, many teachers, including myself, have used this strategy to good effect in order to see the mistakes that students are making when performing true/false, multiple choice or matching tasks in common exams like the Cambridge ESOL Main Suite exams or the IELTS. However, in and of itself, probing students on their answers to such tasks gives little information about what they were doing when they were reading the text.

I think it is important to distinguish between reading strategies per se and strategies for answering comprehension questions. Comprehension questions, if well -made, can provide us with information about the product of reading (i.e. if students have understood parts of the text or not)  but not the process, and questions about why a particular answer was chosen can inform us about the process of answering the comprehension question but not, usually,  about the reading process itself. 

I am aware that comprehension questions are often used  in reading training courses to get learners to apply different strategies. However, precisely because they are designed to get learners to use certain strategies, they are not a reliable means of finding out what students usually do when they read. For example, a learner performing a paragraph or sentence reinsertion task, will be forced to focus on textual organization to get the right answer. However, that does not mean that the learner normally uses this strategy when reading.

As I said in my previous answer, introspective and retrospective protocols can provide information on the reading process. However, there may well be other techniques which could be used instead of or together with protocol analysis. Hopefully, other researchers can provide information on this.

I think that discursive reality can be supported with virtual reality, not only in an English class. Virtuality facilitates teaching in certain ways.  Good to take advantage of it in a good way.

Karwan Mustafa sir's remark is worth appreciable

Peer review is a form of feedback that students look forward as it involves their buddies. However, the feedback has to be constructive and our guidance is vital in this sense. Attached are articles that may contribute to your literature.

Hi Martin,

I have not come across any research specifically focused on EAP or English language instruction in small groups or one-on-one. One of the few articles that mentioned small groups and EAP was Cunningham (2014). When I expanded my search to include small groups or pairs in EAP or ESL, I was more successful.  By looking at articles on effective group work, perhaps you can gain insight into a class with only a few students.

I hope this helps.

Don

References

Cunningham, C. (2014). ‘Keep talking’: Using music during small group discussions in EAP. Elt Journal, 68(2), 179-191. doi:10.1093/elt/cct097

In Spain, the  adult ESL market is not as buoyant as it used to be, but there is still a lot of work available, at least for experienced teachers. However, I can see several clouds on the horizon. Firstly, companies are depending more on online courses and on blended learning, i.e. mixing face to face classes with online lessons. Secondly, recent measures like the introduction of bilingual education schemes are bound to improve the overall level of students' English in the long run, making it less necessary for them to receive classes as adults  in order to conduct professional tasks in English. Thirdly, younger adults are becoming increasingly aware of the possibilities of maintaining or improving their English level on their own through films, TV series, the Internet etc. Finally,  the competition from other languages, e.g. Mandarin, and other training needs ,e.g. information technology, may erode demand for English classes. However, my prediction is that teachers and language schools will survive if they are able to offer increasingly specialized courses.

Business English classes will need to address the need of specific companies or departments within companies far more closely than most language schools are doing now. All too frequently, teachers get away with offering general "conversational" English with a little bit of "business" thrown in, because the HR departments responsible for evaluating the classes don't  demand any more than this. In the future, some companies will become aware of the need to specialize in order to offer courses that are useful for students with a higher level of English, and others will need to be made aware of this need by more forward-thinking schools. 

EAP teaching at Spanish universities is a potential growth area for two reasons. Firstly, more universities are offering or looking into the possibility of offering courses taught through the medium of English. As a result, teachers will need specific courses to enable them to give lectures in English. Secondly, English for Research Publication Purposes will need to be developed if Spanish academics wish to get more work published in international journals. However,  this potential for growth will not be realized with current levels of  financial investment.

Stephen has given a fairly concise answer to this, your answer is basically there. One alternative is to be much more specific, and take natives of Beijing, for instance, who have been learning Mandarin in schools since year X. Research I have been involved with has had to say fluent speakers of X dialect. It's quite complicated, as pointed out above.

Japanese is more homogeneous only to an extent. Quite a few of the dialects are mutually intelligible, but they are actually quite different in some key areas. Other dialects, such as Aomori or Okinawa, can be very different from what one would consider to be "standard" Japanese.

Dear Katalin Fenyvesi:

you have certainly introduced an insightful issue. I think the following links may helpful.

Best regards,

R. Biria

We have to accept that in use of English around the world, there are many variations, including both variations in pronunciation, and even variations in word choice and grammar.

To a native speaker who has NOT traveled extensively, these differences will likely be seen as correct versus incorrect.  But I think that the more enlightened view is that considerable variation is OK, particularly in verbal English.  

Written English may be a more complex question, depending on where the writing is to appear.  In social media, plenty of variation is still OK.  In scholarly or Journalistic writing, there are more precise definitions of what is correct.

A study on Socio- cultural images and the role of the language in reading Quran.

or

The importance of sound patterns and intonations in reading Quran in the context of learning a new language.

Flight, drive, force,energy ,electric -like this many words can be said. Any Cambridge or Oxford book on grammar can list them

Hi Kenn,

There is quite a bit of research that suggests positive results from using literature in ALL language learning...including the ESL context.  Judith Langer (1991, 1995, 1997, 1998) (among many others) has studied this in L1 students as well as L2 Acquisition and found that there are benefits in terms of increased metalinguistic awareness as well as positive attitudes toward literacy, stronger written and aural comprehension, and increased performance in grammatical and lexical usage.  I have included one of her reports below...Although this report deals with younger children, her work has also focused on learners at other ages through the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement.  Her work is not alone.

Warrick Elley's work from the 1980s (e.g., Elley, W.B., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). the impact of reading on second language learning. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 53-67), Steve Krashen's advocacy for reading as a strategy (e.g., Three roles for Reading from 2003...I include this below since it is hard to find AND, Rodrigo, V.,Krashen, S. & Gribbons, B. (2004). The effectiveness of two comprehensible-input approaches to foreign language instruction at the intermediate level. System, 37, 53-60), and many others have found positive benefits for the use of literature (e.g., Jim Cummins, 2011. See below; Avalos et al ,2007, see below; G. Garcia, 2003, Meier, 2003; Wong, 2001).

Actually, Krashen's 2004 book, The Power of Reading: Insights from Research, (published by Heinemann) is a good review in L1 and L2 as is Lindsay's  Children's access to print material and education-related outcomes: A meta-analysis published by Learning Point Associates and Slavin and Cheung's 2005 review in Review of Educational Research (volume 75).

Hope this helps. 

I do not know what you mean by "SVC" but I think that this is just an example of a typographical error, i.e. leaving out "to." 

Because of the extensive sharing online and high work tempo in many places of employment, I am seeing more and more errors on news stories that SHOULD have been caught by proofreading or copy editors.

Hi Rabiah,

There are a number of articles that employ MLU for looking at the L1 population and even some for bilingual preschoolers.  A fine resource are the archival journals of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research may be the best of those journals for what you are looking for. Laurence Leonard has published a number of articles dealing with the use of MLU and other measures with SLI monolingual and bilingual children (Leonard & Finneran, 2003; Leonard, Eyer, Bedore & Grela, 1997;  2003; Wong, Leonard, Fletcher & Stokes, 2004; as has Thomas Klee ( Klee, Schaffer, May et al, 1989  ; Wong, Klee, Stokes, Fletcher, Leonard, 2010).  Wong and Fletcher in  Hong Kong have as well.  Judith Johnston has a very interesting article in this journal in 2001 as well. I think these may help. I hace included several PDFs

My experience is the opposite.  I have often seen students who did not want to speak in a foreign language because they did not want their peers to judge them as being inadequate, i.e.using the language incorrectly.

Children learn what they live. Language is learnt best by children in the environment they get exposed to for at least all the hours that they are awake. If the accent is too strong American, then they maybe influenced by the American accent. And if it is Australian accent, then it is the same here.

It really depends on the type of instruction they are given (program, module), the amount of time they spend per week in the foreign language class, and the motivation and attitudes of the students in the class. In immersion situations where English is used daily, students might find it really easy to pursue an academic degree in an English-speaking country, for they feel at ease with the language and have the necessary confidence to embark upon such a long journey. 

Check out the prosodylab aligner by Kyle Gorman and Michael Wagner

Info and tutorial here:

code on github:

Dear Abdul (is this the correct form of address?),

I am intrigued by your question. It seems to suggest that lexicalist approaches are not generativist. I am not sure why you'd say that. My impression was that within a generativist approach, there are lexicalist camps (taking the position that every morpho-/phono-syntactic properties are projected from terminal nodes) and there are constructivist camps that might take the construction as primary.

In any case, "father-daughter dance" might be derived via Incorporation. If we start with an NP [dance [PP of father and daughter] ] , the PP can incorporate into the head of the NP to give the requisite compound.

I haven't touched syntax for some time, so my account is likely to be problematic, but I hope it's helpful.

Best,

Lian-Hee 

Sentences, clauses, and phrases are all different types of word groups.

These two readings from Oxford Dictionaries might help: 

a) Sentences: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/sentences

b) Clauses: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/clauses

c) Phrases: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/phrases

This is also interesting and easy:

Anna:

I never used this test before, so I looked up what's available in RG that I hope would be useful to you.

Best regards,

Debra

I will share them with you ,  inayat, 

these are my papers on CDA:

I haven't used SPSS for a long time and I am assuming that you still need to input the data in what is called wide format. If I understand your research design, you need to set things up with with each row representing a participant and columns representing:

ParticipantID  Rating01  Rating02 Speaker Gender Age

One other problem is that you have two dependent variables, which means that you need to do a MANOVA (or two ANOVAs, with a correction for multiple tests).

I think that the first thing is to follow Labov's work. I would also try to find journals in sociolinguistics in which you can find some ideas and thoughts, e.g. Journal of Sociolinguistics, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josl.2014.18.issue-2/issuetoc.

I hope this helps

The only way to improve reading is to read more, selecting work that is appropriate for your ability.  The only way to improve your writing is to write more. 

If you read and write a lot, you will get better, even if you do not receive outside feedback.  

As a teacher, help your students find things to read and write that are fun (student-centered).  

I would be very cautious about using the term 'amazing', in support of an examination, and would be interested to know exactly what warrants such a superlative commendation. 

From what I have anecdotally gathered, from conversations with my old students who have been employed as examiners, and from EFL professionals who have prepared students for this exam, the examination administration is a very hit-and-miss procedure, marking is at best unreliable, and examiner training is a farce. 

It would be interesting to see whether there are any reliability or concurrent validity data to enable us to make a formal judgment of the test, but until then, I remain unimpressed. 

Hi Ji

I would like to encourage you to read about survey design (i.e. Questionnaires in second language research: Construction, administration, and processing (2nd ed.). London: Routledge). This may help you in choosing the best survey you are after. 

All the best

I think the influence of parents on their children attitude towards things in general is crucial. I have seen in my school that if parents don't care about learning, students also don't care too much.

You might also want to talk to Elisabet Tiselius who looked at deliberate practice and interpreting.

Interesting question. On the first hand, students these days seems unable to handle digital contents especially educational contents. whereas they are quite expert using contents related to social media. Students are unaware or inefficient in exploiting digital contents for their learning especially in Arab world.

On the other hand, majority of the teachers are unable to exploit this digital sources because of unfamiliarity of today's technology. Both teachers and learners are affected in different situations

Hi Quyen Vo,

Writing skill can be improved over time. If at least one learner in the peer group has first-hand experience with using corpora as a tool to double-check the language use, s/he will prove to be highly beneficial for the peer assessment. Using corpora by the learner to help check his/her own language use on top of relying on the teacher's written feedback can be an effective tool for improving the writing skill and it should be incorporated in the peer assessment process.

I hope my answer is somewhat relevant.

Cheers!

As an English teacher I can list the following reasons:

1)      learners’ different starting point to learn language, which leads to the next reason

2)      Individual differences – ( e.g. I assume for introverts it’s harder to communicate than for extroverts)

3)      Lack of speaking practice

4)      Lack of reading for pleasure/ lack of input

5)      The complex patterns existing in mother tongues different from English

6)      Lack of learner’s motivation, confidence

In foreign language teaching two approaches of reading is recognized: intensive reading and extensive reading. Intensive reading approach deals with short texts under a teacher’s guidance for detailed understanding. The Intensive reading technique is reading for a high degree of comprehension and retention over a long period of time. Extensive reading deals with relatively long texts. Steiner (1995) chief inspector for English at Israel ministry of education, in her booklet “Reading for Pleasure” lists following benefits of extensive reading: a) enhances world knowledge, b) accounts for one-third of vocabulary growth, c) promotes reading as a lifelong activity, d) builds vocabulary, e) builds structural awareness, f) improves comprehension skills, g) promotes motivation, h) encourages pupils to read fluently and use all the strategies, i) encourages pupils to progress through different levels of text and monitor their own progress, j) provides with an enjoyable reading experience.

Here are three papers on Japanese ESL learners' use of silence in class. None of them appear to be related to mainstream classes but I hope they give you some ideas.

Ted Pedersen and students (U. of Minnesota) have implemented many algorithms for computing semantic similarity in WordNet. Many of these involve shortest paths in the WordNet hierarchy, as well as incorporating work of others. Following the link below will provide an entry point for many of these algorithms.

From my research in the Japanese context (which might be similar), I'd say that time and funding for professional development would be a big motivating factor. In contrast, time-wasting duties/admin/meetings can drag morale down. Korea is a Confucian Heritage country, so it might be worth researching the influence of senior/elder colleagues on the morale of younger (Korean) members of staff. This also influences the way students and parents regard teachers. Non-Korean staff would probably have different beliefs and might get frustrated by some of these cultural norms.

Pienemann processability theory (2007) and Clahsen (1998) show stages of grammatical development to begin with. Then, you can observe the grammatical structures through one form of language production such as oral presentations, or essays. Quantitatively then you can observe correct and erroneous structures. Crafting a test is a good idea after all the reliability and validity work :)

First, there is no natural progression from a receptive to a productive stage; students cannot learn the words productively with limited input over a short period of time. 

Second,  focusing on the learners’ awareness of combinatorial processes is essential. For instance, introducing, measuring, and using one’s knowledge of prefixes, suffixes, and root words in which the combination of these morphemes results in concrete meaning.

Third, the process of understanding morphological combinations is a complex one, in which it is difficult for learners to maintain their interests.