Developing Communicative Competence of Tertiary Level Engineering Students through De Bono’s Lateral Thinking Tool Design

The lack of informed knowledge about listening subskills and their relationships has hindered the development of the diagnostic English language track assessment (DELTA) in three participating Hong Kong universities. This study investigates English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' listening proficiency development in understanding different spoken genres in the Hong Kong Chinese tertiary contexts. It aims to: i) identify the subskills and/or cognitive processes that underlie student performance on the DELTA listening component; ii) examine the difficulty levels of the DELTA listening subskills, and, consequentially, their hierarchical order; iii) investigate the impact of text type on difficulty level and the hierarchical order of the subskills; and iv) infer principles underlying the development of listening proficiency in the Hong Kong tertiary education contexts. A multi-method approach was employed for data collection and analysis. The primary quantitative data were derived from the DELTA listening component items answered by 2830 Chinese ELF learners who studied in their first or second year in the DELTA participating universities in the 2013-14 academic year. The item pool included 207 multiple-choice questions (MCQ) from 33 texts of three text types – conversation, interview and lecture. Each MCQ is intended to measure a particular listening subskill, including: 1) identifying specific information (SSK1); 2) understanding main idea and supporting ideas (SSK2); 3) understanding information and making an inference (SSK3); 4) interpreting a word or phrase as used by the speaker (SSK4); 5) inferring the attitude or intention of the speaker (SSK5); and 6) inferring the speaker's reasoning (SSK6). By adopting inter-related Rasch analyses using Winsteps and Facets, all test items were calibrated and analysed to determine their difficulty measures and their respective difficulties across the three text types. Qualitative Stimulated Recall Protocol (SRP) discussions were then conducted with 62 examinees of varying estimated listening abilities one month later, in a simulated test situation, where the test-taking process was video-recorded and the participants were asked to recall and to verbalise their thought processes and strategies they used to answer each question. The SRP results reveal an array of both cognitive processes and test-taking strategies in the listening comprehension and test-answering process. Firstly, various combinations of cognitive processes were utilised by both the high and low ability examinees to answer questions targeting the same listening sub-skill; however, the dominant cognitive process that was reported to have been used to answer each question corresponded with the particular listening subskill intended by DELTA item writers. Secondly, an array of test-taking strategies best identified as elimination, and guessing, were reported as used by examinees during the test. While this finding might not be surprising given the exam-oriented atmosphere prevailing in Hong Kong secondary school education, it alerted the researcher to scrutinise the validity of the DELTA listening component. The most striking observation from the listening test analysis is that, the DELTA listening subskills are measurably separable from each other, and a hierarchical pattern is established. In terms of their interaction with text type, the results showed that SSK1 and SSK6 were, respectively, the easiest and the most difficult subskills, whereas the hierarchical orders of the other four subskills varied across the three text types. More generally, these findings provide empirical evidence for the proposition that EFL listening comprehension is composed of multiple listening subskills, which operate interactively and interdependently in the listening process. The results regarding the difficulty level and the hierarchy of listening subskills corroborate the findings of prior research that low-level processing, such as identifying specific information, poses less challenge than high-level processing, such as summarising and inferencing. Because of the complexity in the interaction between text type and listening subskills, it is difficult to identify an overarching hierarchical order of the six listening subskills across the three text types. A general pattern, however, is that the difficulty increased from SSK1, SSK2 to SSK6 irrespective of the text type, and this corresponds to the general subskill hierarchy. The study will benefit teachers and students with diagnostic profiling and bridge the gap in diagnostic test design with targeted items of appropriate difficulty for predicting learners' listening development. It will extend second language acquisition theory with a hierarchical trajectory of listening proficiency growth. Limitations and future research recommendations are discussed.

Language learning involves not only acquiring the linguistic forms and structures but understanding how language is used appropriately in different socio-cultural contexts. It is believed teaching of speech acts can help foreign language learners enhance their competence in language use and enable them to communicate with native speakers successfully (Hymes, 1974; Searle, 1969; Wolfson, 1989; Yu, 1999). In the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, English textbooks play an important role for those students who receive their language inputs primarily from textbooks (Kim & Hall, 2002). Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the appropriateness of speech act presentation in the elementary English textbooks with respect to English language instruction in Taiwan. Two adjacency pairs of speech acts (compliments/compliment responses and requests/request responses) in seven series of elementary English textbooks were scrutinized to see whether adequate information regarding these two speech act pairs was properly delineated. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore elementary school English teachers' awareness of cultural-specificity in language use. The findings show that compliments, compliment responses, requests and request responses were not adequately presented in the elementary school English textbooks. The speech act presentation in the textbook did not mirror precisely the native English speakers' interaction norms and seemed to inaccurately represent the actual language use. Results from teacher interviews indicate that English teachers did not seem to equip themselves with sufficient and adequate knowledge of cultural-specificity in language use, which may be adverse for language learners. These findings suggest that textbook designers properly integrate speech acts into elementary school English instruction, and teachers further develop professional knowledge in pragmatics to facilitate their English teaching to elementary school children.

Este artigo trata do ensino da ILA no contexto da educação básica e pública brasileira por meio de uma prática pedagógica desenvolvida com base na utilização de textos literários, no caso o conto The Happy Prince (1888) de Oscar Wilde. O objetivo deste trabalho é oferecer um relato dessa prática pedagógica, bem como reflexões acerca do benefício da utilização da literatura no ensino da ILA. A justificativa é pautada sobre a descrença dos professores quanto à utilização de textos literários frente ao ensino da ILA. Importantes teóricos na área da linguagem e ensino, como Violetta-Irene (2015), Corchs (2006), Brumfit & Carter (1996), Festino (2011), entre outros, subsidiaram os apontamentos teóricos dessa pesquisa. Os resultados evidenciam que é possível um ensino de língua por meio do texto literário, já que este oferece um ensino mais contextualizado, reflexivo, crítico, motivador, e que desenvolve as aptidões linguísticas dos alunos ao mesmo tempo em que enriquece seu conhecimento social, histórico e cultural.

In countries where learning English as a Second Language (ESL) is made compulsory, yet it is actually a foreign language to many learners, problems occur among learners. Language is the reflection of culture itself as the language can shape the society. Problems in language learning may occur due to several barriers. Firstly, cultural barrier is one of the barriers that is difficult to resolve. The barriers may influence the motivations to learn. The aim of this study is to investigate cultural barriers and motivation issues that might influence the process of learning English. 69 respondents participated in this quantitative study. The instrument used is a survey and it has 3 parts; 1) demographic profile, 2) culture and language learning and 3) motivation and language learning. Findings reveal that cultural barriers and motivational issues do have influence on learners’ language learning. Findings of this study bear interesting implications towards the teaching and learning of English as second language. 
 
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The prominence of teacher motivation in teaching practices and behaviors and its impact on student achievement is widely recognized in educational psychology. Nevertheless, English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ motivation and the factors influencing its development appear an uncharted domain. The following study attempted to explore EFL teachers’ motivation in relation to intrinsic interest, goal setting, and teaching effectiveness. The sample comprised 127 Iranian EFL teachers with their students (N= 500). The teachers were asked to complete a battery of two questionnaires. To assess teacher goal-setting and intrinsic interest, the researcher utilized the 'Teacher Self-Regulation Scale (TSRS)' designed by Yesim, Sungur, and Uzuntiryaki (2009). To gauge teacher motivation, 'The Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers' designed by Fernet (2009) was employed. In the present study, this questionnaire was translated to Persian and then the translated version was validated in the Iranian context to pave the way for future studies on teacher motivation in Iranian context. To measure language teachers' performance and success in language teaching, the researcher employed the 'Characteristics of Successful Iranian EFL Teachers Questionnaire' (CSIET) designed and validated by Moafian and Pishghadam (2009). The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that there were relatively strong interrelationships among the three variables (intrinsic interest, goal-setting, and job motivation). All of them were positive and significant predictors of teacher success, and intrinsic interest exhibited the highest impact. It was also found that intrinsic interest positively influenced job motivation. The SEM analysis also indicated that go Article visualizations: al-setting was positively influenced by both intrinsic interest and job motivation.

This work undertakes a study of Hausa Interference on English Language Teaching: The Case of Some Selected Schools in Bauchi State. For many years, there have been expressed concerns about the problems faced by most of Hausa native students in learning English as a second language. The problems of teaching English language are not recent issues but, have existed since the introduction of the subject in the school curriculum. However, Hausa affects the usage of English in terms of phonology, which has to do with sound (e.g. /p, v/ which is replaced by /f/ & /b/ in Hausa) morphology, is the word formation process, grammar, semantics and syntax. Therefore, the focus of this study is to investigate how the use of prepositions in Hausa and how they affect the use of English. A preposition is a word that expresses the relationship of one word with another. But people tend to misuse the use of these prepositions. This is because of the influence of mother tongue interference (Hausa) when speaking English as a second language. This study investigated the errors committed by Hausa native students on the use of prepositions, by use of questionnaire and test in some selected Bauchi State secondary schools, Nigeria.

For a language beginner there are many methods of attaining the goal of learning a second or foreign language, one of the most useful ones of which is to make a comparison in sentence structure between one's own native tongue and a second or foreign language. A learner will find out that there are some differences and similarities between the two languages by means of comparison, through which he/she will feel learning a foreign language is not so difficult as he/she imagines and give birth to a strong desire to learn a foreign language. For a Chinese speaker who is learning English as a foreign language, she/he may make great strides in English through the comparison of sentence structure between the two languages. On the other hand, this way can help the English speakers not only better understand but feel more at ease in Chinese learning as well. The overall purpose of this study is to seek to compare Chinese to English in basic sentence structure, including inflections, problems in subject-verb agreement, etc., to guide both the English beginners to take interest in English and the English speakers feel an interest in Chinese, and to facilitate successfully acquiring their aim of learning a second or foreign language.

Developing adequate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academic writing skills is of paramount importance for students’ success in higher education in Oman. The traditional teaching approaches adopted in writing courses often lead to students’ disengagement, however. Although several studies have examined students and teachers’ perceptions of flipped instruction in various EFL courses, no study has examined the impact of flipping on students’ engagement in writing courses. This practice-based research project, where the instructor was the researcher, explored the impact of flipped teaching on 57 General Foundation Program (GFP) EFL learners’ behavioural, cognitive, emotional and agentic engagement in academic writing in a higher education institution in Oman, and the variations that exist in students’ engagement according to gender, age, English language proficiency and technology skills. The study adopted a mixed-methods design and used a student engagement questionnaire, focus group interviews and participant observations to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics and deductive and inductive analytical procedures were used to analyse the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The study presents new practicable knowledge about the implementation and implications of flipped instruction for Omani EFL students’ engagement in academic writing at the GFP level. It proposes flipping as an instructional approach which helps to address GFP students’ lack of 4 behavioural, cognitive, emotional and agentic engagement in writing courses in the Omani context. Behaviourally, students in the flipped classroom experience increased effort, improved concentration levels, persistence, communication and collaboration, and amelioration in their attitude to class attendance. It is reasonable to conclude that learners undergo cognitive growth and develop self-regulatory strategies and meta-cognitive awareness. At the level of emotional engagement, learners initially experience negative emotions such as anger and frustration, and then more positive emotions such as contentment and increased interest in the subject as they adapt to the flipped teaching-learning model. Flipping also seems to influence students’ autonomy and ability to ask questions and express opinions. It appears, however, that this approach does not influence students’ capacity to contribute to their own learning resources and activities. This study makes a valuable contribution to knowledge about students’ engagement in EFL writing courses. It revealed that a strong positive correlation exists between students’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement, and that a positive correlation exists between students’ technology skills and linguistic proficiency and several aspects of their engagement. The study demonstrated, however, that no correlation exists between gender and age and students’ engagement in the flipped classroom. Furthermore, this practice-based research indicated that although flipped instruction helps to address the problem of students’ disengagement in writing courses in our context, factors such as students’ linguistic proficiency and technology skills should be taken into consideration before implementing this instructional approach in the current setting.

: There are many methods applied by educators in teaching languages in the world. Some of them believe that traditional classroom method is considered the best, while others prefer to implement new way of teaching, using computers to assist students in learning a language. This new method is known as Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). However, not all students who are good in using computers succeed to do self-study. Such students failed to enjoy Life on the Screen , it is not about computer, it is about people and the relationships into which they enter with machines and, first of all, with themselves through computer-mediation (Debski ,1997, p. 29). To review and consolidate ideas and conditions that can be the obstacles and drawbacks to the CALL application; Debski and Gruba did a project-oriented computer assisted language learning (PrOCALL) at the University of Melbourne in two second semesters (12 weeks each) over the years 1998 –1999, involving many languages (Chinese, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, and English as Second Language (ESL)). The result of their ProCALL project is that CALL is proven to be beneficial to tertiary education at the University of Melbourne, this success takes place both within the group of students who have both advanced and low computer skill. Australia, for example, starts to insert CALL in the curriculum, although it is limited to year 12 students only. It is a good start. Australia’s policy proofs that CALL is beneficial in schools, it means that CALL is not only beneficial for tertiary education at the University of Melbourne, but also in Victoria. This paper will also discuss about crucial matters like integrating this sophisticated technology to suit the curriculum and the importance to attract the interest of big softwares companies to invest money in CALL projects. Key words : CALL, ProCALL, Australia, The University of Melbourne

Subtitle refers to the time-synchronized text on a video that translates the spoken audio to another language. This research deals with the effect of watching subtitled video material on the vocabulary acquisition (incidental) of the Filipino learners of English as a second language with an emphasis on the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The study was participated by 100 university students in a private higher education institution in the Philippines. The study used a pretest and posttest design in which the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale developed by Paribakht and Wesche was employed. The results show that there is a significant difference between the pretest and the posttest performance in vocabulary acquisition in terms of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants. The findings imply the integration of subtitled video material in the teaching of vocabulary in Philippine classrooms because of its effectiveness which, up to this point, is not yet realized.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an educational approach in which the target language is used as the medium to learn and teach both content and language. The widespread interest in CLIL can be seen in the increasing popularity of adopting it as a viable approach to promoting both content and language learning in Europe (Garcia, 2017; Ioannou Georgiou, 2012) and many English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) countries, for instance- Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam (Lee & Chang, 2008).In this paper, we show how informational picture books are quality CLIL materials. The engaging narrative writing and meaningful illustrations in such books convey accessible factual and content knowledge, an important feature in line with CLIL-related goals. The powerful text-illustration synergy in picture books provides a supportive platform upon which to develop learners' language skills as well as to expand subject knowledge. Next, informed by CLIL theories and practices, a CLIL pedagogical framework is proposed to provide a simplified representation of the complexity and scope of the CLIL instructional sequences and content. The framework strives to achieve a balance between the content and language components in CLIL lessons. Based on the framework, a sample CLIL lesson is provided with instructional examples of how teachers could incorporate an informational picture book into their lessons to scaffold students' development of language, content knowledge, and learning skills. It is hoped that the framework and activities presented will encourage primary subject and language teachers in Taiwan and serve as a springboard for them to incorporate informational picture books in their CLIL lessons.

Mastery of the English grammar is an intricate subject. Conventional teaching and learning of the English grammar have found to be an arduous task for teachers and a lacklustre one for students. The traditional pen and paper method often cause second language (L2) learners to become unmotivated in understanding this important element of the language. Thus, it is critical to provide L2 learners with the motivation to engage learning grammar in a more meaningful and purposive process. An ideal way to provide such learning experiences is through the use of language games that accommodate L2 learners’ desire to grasp grammar rules in an enjoyable way. To fill the gap for a purposive and meaningful grammar-based language game, Worchitect, a card-based game that focuses on (English) parts of speech is developed. The card game poses players/learners with questions that will foster their understanding of the rules of grammar for them to play the game and accumulate the highest scores possible. This game provides a constructive reinforcement to L2 users as it allows for the English parts of speech (and grammar) rules to be deductively attained. Furthermore, Worchitect is highly marketable as it is suitable for learners of various language proficiencies; for language teachers to be used as reinforcement or the actual learning activity; for parents who are looking to spend quality time with their children; and for any language enthusiast.

EFL(English as a Foreign Language) learners tend to choose translation strategies in their English learning process. This study aims to examine the potential relationship between English language proficiency and EFL learners’ use of translation strategies, displaying the differences in the use of translation strategies between students at higher level of English language proficiency and those at lower level of English language proficiency. An ITLS questionnaire (The Inventory for Translation as a Learning Strategy) designed by Liao Posen (Liao, 2002：159-161)was distributed to 190 students in Southwest Jiaotong University who had taken the national English language proficiency assessment—CET-4(College English Test Band 4). Based on Independent Sample T-test, the results show that significant differences were found between the proficient EFL learners and the limited English proficient learners in some of the uses of translation strategies, and lower achievers were more likely to adopt translation strategies in English learning. According to Pearson Correlation Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis, this research also found out that the use of translation to enhance English-language abilities was negatively correlated with English language proficiency and could best predict the negative performance of English language proficiency assessment. Implications for the role of translation strategies in EFL learning are discussed.

Literature on English Language Teaching (ELT), particularly in ELT curriculum in Indonesia, suggests a paradigm shift in the role of teachers from being a curriculum implementer to becoming a curriculum developer or curriculum maker. This thesis examines the perspectives of ten English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Padang, West Sumatra province, Indonesia, on how they negotiate their practices and ELT curriculum guidelines within their sociocultural contexts. Within the dilemmas and tensions, the teacher participants have creatively negotiated with the curriculum mandates.

The current research investigated the impact of cooperative language learning (CLL) approach on English language proficiency of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The participants were 150 intermediate female EFL learners who were randomly selected from various private English language institutes of Tehran, Iran. First, FCE (First Certificate in English) test was administered to all 150 participants as a means of homogenization which brought down the number of the students to 135. Then, the homogenized participants were taught English through CLL approach for 20 sessions, each for 90 minutes. A pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design was employed to investigate the impact of CLL approach on English language proficiency of the EFL learners. The results were analysed through a one-way ANOVA and paired-samples t-test statistics. The outcomes revealed that CLL has a significant positive effect on English language proficiency of EFL learners. Article visualizations: