School of Education

Language Education and TESOL

Postgraduate Student Conference

Tuesday 3 July 2012

11-14 Blenheim Terrace

Programme and abstracts

The talks will be in Blenheim Terrace Rooms 1.17, 1.16 and G.15.

Refreshments and a vegetarian buffet lunch will be available in G.11.

Welcome

9.30 James Simpson 1.17

Room 1.17 1.16 G.15

Chair Omar Al Sawafi Jean Conteh Fadhel Abdullah

Time Speaker and Title Speaker and Title Speaker and Title

9.45

Phuong Anh Nguyen Using blogs in teaching writing for English-major students at Vietnam National University Hanoi

Ali Al Qahtani Intercultural Contact and L2 Motivation for Undergraduate Saudi Students in the UK

Arwa Gandeel English Language Teacher Beliefs and the teaching of Speaking: The story of a first-year English Language teacher

10.15

Kwengnam Kim Online role-playing games and Korean children’s vocabulary and reading skills

Samyia Ambreen Collaboration of primary school children in mixed ability groups

Manisha Dak Exploring language through the medium of films

10.45 Tea/coffee (G. 11)

11.20

Azita Farhadi Writing and multimodality in weblogs

Nitchaya Boonma Low proficiency students in the Thai tertiary context and their motivation to learn English

Yosra Abdelkareem Sudanese English language teachers’ beliefs about educational research

Guest lecture

12.00

Ivor Timmis (Leeds Metropolitan University)

Spoken language research and ELT: where are we now?

1.17

1.00 Lunch (G. 11)

Room 1.17 1.16

Chair Samyia Ambreen Simon Borg

Time Speaker and Title Speaker and Title

1.45

Li Ming Understanding the impact of INSET on Chinese EFL teacher change

Kyung-Min Nam Children’s understandings of different writing systems: Korean alphabet Hangul and Roman alphabet English

2.15

Muhammad Asif Linking Theory with Practice: English Language Student Teachers during the Practicum in Pakistan

Fadhel Abdullah Adapting the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to the Local Context

2.45

Nasrin Al-Tuwairesh Listening, meta-cognitive awareness-raising and deliberate practice in a Saudi tertiary EFL context

Lin Zhu Classroom Interaction in Chinese ELT Classrooms

3.15 Tea/coffee (G. 11)

Room 1.17 1.16

Chair Muhammed Asif Martin Wedell

Time Speaker and Title Speaker and Title

3.45

Yu Bai A Corpus-based Study of the Functions of Sports Metaphors in British English

Naoko Sanryo How writing is assessed differently by Japanese teachers of English and English native speaking teachers, and what lies beneath

4.15

Irfan Rifai Investigating students’ conflict talk in Indonesia

Omar Al Sawafi Continuous Assessment reform in the Sultanate of Oman

4.45 Conference close

‘Spoken language research and ELT: where are we now?’ Ivor Timmis Leeds Metropolitan University In recent years, corpus research has produced a wealth of insights into spoken language, but the impact of these insights on ELT materials has been rather inconsistent. In this paper, I will outline some of the findings about spoken lexis and grammar which seem to be of potential relevance to ELT practitioners. We will then discuss the sociocultural and pedagogic reasons why these findings have been slow to filter through to ELT practice. We will also critically examine some materials which have attempted to focus on spoken language. Finally, I will suggest ways in which future research could help us to deal with spoken language more consistently and confidently. Our guest speaker, Dr Ivor Timmis, is Reader in English Language Teaching at Leeds Metropolitan University where he teaches on the MA in ELT and supervises PhD students. His main research interests are the analysis of spoken language and the relevance of corpus findings for ELT.

***

Using blogs in teaching writing for English-major students at Vietnam National University Hanoi Phuong Anh Nguyen The emerging utilization of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) in teaching and learning has offered language teachers alternative tools and resources to support the existing pedagogical practice. Thanks to their interactive learning space, easy establishment and convenient management, blogs have been incorporated into language learning classrooms including writing classes. They have shown their potential in expanding language study and learning community outside the physical classroom and enhancing the language awareness and development of learners. Based on the lack of appropriate interaction among students in the writing process and the requirement to promote learner autonomy in my context, I considered using blogs to support my future practice of teaching writing at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University Hanoi. Following Jolly and Bolitho’s (1998) framework in designing writing materials, I designed a writing lesson using blogs then evaluated it according to peer feedback and self-assessment. Initial evaluation showed that blogs are potentially valuable tools for writing development and peer feedback for my learners; however, their use entails the need to address issues regarding motivation, individual differences, practicality and the appropriateness of the task to suit students’ ability.

***

Intercultural Contact and L2 Motivation for Undergraduate Saudi Students in the UK Ali Al Qahtani Communicating with people from other cultures using English (direct Intercultural Contact) and/or encountering English cultural artefacts (indirect Intercultural Contact), e.g. English television programmes and web pages, gives English learners purpose and meaning to study the language. Students who have had numerous Intercultural Contact (ICC) experiences have had the chance to experience authentic communication in English either directly or indirectly. This in turn gives them a sense of themselves as being an actual English user in the future, and consequently might boost their motivation for learning English, as they begin to see themselves in terms of an ‘Ideal L2 Self’ in which they are English users. On the other hand, students who have had few ICC experiences possibly lack the experience of being English users, and they might be motivated to learn English because they feel that they ‘ought to’. This study draws on a contemporary model of L2 motivation research, the L2 Motivational Self System, and aims to investigate whether experience of Intercultural Contact of new arrival Saudi undergraduate students has an impact on how their L2 motivational behaviour progresses during their first year in the UK. In this presentation I discuss the background to the study and its methodology.

***

English Language Teacher Beliefs and the teaching of Speaking: The story of a first-year English Language teacher Arwa Gandeel To understand what teachers do in the classroom we need to gain insight into the beliefs that shape their work. This presentation describes the beliefs and the practices of a novice English language teacher in teaching speaking. ‘Rana’ teaches English language to students in a Saudi University. She started working as a teacher after she gained her BA in English Language in 2011. She started her job with neither any formal teacher education nor sufficient teacher training. Rana’s case study includes five interviews and three class observations. The first two interviews were conducted to learn more about Rana’s background information and basic beliefs. Then, after each of the three class observations, a post-observation interview was conducted to gain deeper insights into her beliefs and to give her the opportunity to explain the rationale of her classroom teaching practice. Discussing beliefs and classroom practice with teachers helps them to reflect on their beliefs and practice, which contributes to their career development. Rana reflected on many of her educational beliefs about herself as a teacher, her teaching, her educational context and her students. Also, she explained the rationale of her educational practice: teaching speaking, feedback and ways of dealing with students.

***

Online role-playing games and Korean children’s vocabulary and reading skills Kwengnam Kim (Angela) This paper describes an investigation into whether playing the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) RuneScape can support Korean children’s English learning. It argues the potential affordances of RuneScape in learning of English vocabulary and reading skills. This is part of a doctoral project that analyses the English text learners would encounter when playing RuneScape and using observation, attempts to describe vocabulary and reading strategies they tend to use whilst playing. In this presentation I illustrate my research contexts and methodology. I sampled five elementary students (1 female and 4 male, aged 10-11) in a private English institute. Each participant played RuneScape for 30 minutes per session, for 9 to 14 sessions. The texts that participants encountered whilst playing, retrieved using a screen recorder, formed my first dataset. Data were classified into 7 categories: generally-used vocabulary, lexical phrases, RuneScape vernacular, lexis specific to computer games, chat speak (acronyms and abbreviations), emoticons and reduplication. Observation data were divided into two main categories: vocabulary strategy (sub-categories; looking up dictionary and guessing meaning with verbalising) and reading strategy (sub-categories; clicking, thinking aloud, verbalising, translating and typing).

***

Collaboration of primary school children in mixed ability groups Samyia Ambreen Students in primary classrooms work in groups labelled as ‘higher ability’ and ‘lower ability’. These groups are assigned on the basis of their assessment levels in numeracy and literacy. While learning the same lesson in classrooms high achievers and low achievers cannot work together due to differentiated instructions, although ability group is not the only way to foster differentiation in lessons. In my PhD research I am interested in exploring the dynamics when students with mixed abilities work together in a group in primary classrooms. The proposed method is Action Research (AR), which aims to create practical knowledge which may help people in their lives. The project will be collaborative research with the class teacher in one or two primary schools. I intend to observe primary school children in mixed ability group classroom settings and analyse collaboration among high ability and low ability students. In order to refine the research design I have made some observations of children working in mixed ability groups in two primary classrooms and in this presentation I will share the initial findings of my fieldwork and their implications for the main study.

***

Exploring language through the medium of films Manisha Dak The use of films in the classroom has become more popular now than ever before. There is no doubt that films offer tired teachers and classes a big motivating push. Films present language in a way that is often more natural than that found in course-books. The fantastic visual context aids understanding and boosts listening, and students just simply love them. This presentation aims at sharing some activities based on films that teachers can use effectively in their classrooms and get as much out of them as possible. It will also highlight how it is possible to integrate other subjects while using films to teach English.

*** Writing and multimodality in weblogs Azita Farhadi This research examines the lexico-grammatical patterns of the multimodal texts produced in an Omani EFL student-writer’s weblog (blog). To this end, three questions were posed to find out about 1) the field, the subject matter, 2) tenor, the participants and their role relationship, and 3) mode, the channel of communication, of the language and visuals used in the multimodal environment of weblog. Advances in technology and emerging virtual environments such as facebook, weblog and twitter, have made writing ever more multimodal: language is only one of the resources to construct meanings when communication is happening online. This does not undermine the role of language in meaning making but stresses that many other semiotic resources are involved in the communication process. Thus, to understand how student-writers exploit the linguistic features along with the audio-visual resources offered by weblogs to construct meanings, I adopted a Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistic framework. In this framework, the features of the social context (field, tenor and mode), where language along with other semiotic features are functioning were investigated. The provisional analysis shows that the linguistic aspect of language can integrate with the semiotic features and contribute to meaning making. This analysis may provide a better insight into how meanings are constructed in an Omani EFL weblog.

***

Low proficiency students in the Thai tertiary context and their motivation to learn English Nitchaya Boonma This study investigates how English learning motivation of low proficiency students in the Thai context could be improved during a semester. Based on the principles of self-determination theory, which holds that learners’ motives for studying can become more intrinsic and powerful if teaching is felt to satisfy their basic human needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, a teaching intervention was designed and applied to a cohort of 354 first year students on a university remedial English course. To help low proficiency students see value in and have positive perceptions towards English language learning, students’ reactions to the teaching intervention were monitored using questionnaires, feedback sheets and interviews. Preliminary analysis of the data indicates that there were significant differences between motivation to learn English of students in the intervention and non intervention groups. Qualitative data from students’ feedback also reinforced the questionnaire results, indicating an increase in students’ motivation and showing that students were satisfied with their classroom learning and they experienced increases in their knowledge gained from the class. Implications are drawn for how English language teaching in the Thai context can be made more motivating.

***

Sudanese English language teachers’ beliefs about educational research Yosra Abdelkareem Nowadays, considerable attention is directed towards the importance of research in education. Teachers are said to need to be engaged in research (i.e. by doing it) and/ or with research (by reading it) since research engagement has beneficial professional and intellectual consequences on practitioner researchers. However, it has been found that not many teachers are actually engaged in and with research. There are various reasons and sometimes barriers that contribute to this poor engagement in research, and teachers’ attitudes towards research is in need of exploration. This presentation concerns my current Critical Study, in which I investigate English language teachers’ beliefs about educational research. Two instruments of data collection are employed; questionnaires have been given to teachers in order to investigate the extent to which English language teachers are research-engaged. After that, semi-structured follow-up interviews will be conducted with some questionnaire respondents. The study is conducted in Khartoum, capital of Sudan. The subjects are teachers who teach general English language courses at state and private Sudanese universities.

*** Understanding the impact of INSET on Chinese EFL teacher change Li Ming This presentation outlines my current doctoral study which aims at understanding the nature of teacher learning and change under the impact of an in-service training (INSET) course. From the existing literature on INSET evaluation, INSET impact comprises of teachers’ cognitive change and its effect on teachers’ teaching practice. My research concerns include what teachers learn, what cognitive change they experience and to what extent such changes inform their teaching behaviour. My research context is a three-phase INSET course for secondary EFL teachers in Chongqing, China. My research assumption is that teacher learning in INSET settings can be explored ethnographically in case studies with multi-methods and the constructivist description can interpret the nature of teacher change during and beyond the INSET course. In this presentation I will briefly introduce the concepts employed in my study and the proposed research methodology.

***

Children’s understandings of different writing systems: Korean alphabet Hangul and Roman alphabet English Kyung-Min Nam Many children become literate within a new environment in which different language systems exist. Recent studies have been looking at children’s early script-learning across languages in diverse contexts. However, there is still little in-depth research on what children know about different writing systems and how they understand and develop them. This study aims to investigate how Korean EFL children understand two different scripts, Korean alphabet Hangul and Roman alphabet English. Both Hangul and English are alphabetic scripts consisting of vowels and consonants, but Hangul has its own unique orthographic characteristics, and is unlike other alphabetic scripts. Its alphabetic letters are fixed into a syllable block with the same size as a Chinese character, and there is a close match between letters and sounds (i.e. shallow orthography). In order to gain rich insight into children’s understandings of Hangul and English based on orthographic similarities and differences between the two scripts, the participating children will take part in peer teaching sessions as a major methodology of this study. In this presentation, background literature on children’s script learning, characteristics of the Korean alphabet Hangul, research questions, research methodology as well as ethical considerations in research with children will be discussed.

***

Linking Theory with Practice: English Language Student Teachers during the Practicum in Pakistan Muhammad Asif The present work discusses the pedagogical practice of English language student teachers during the practicum in Pakistan and its relationship to what they (claimed to) learn during the preparatory coursework. The student teachers were enrolled in a two-year pre-service MA Education programme which aimed to prepare them to teach English at secondary level. The analysis suggests that there were differences in the professed beliefs and practices of ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ of English among teacher educators and the student teachers. There was no consensus on which approaches/methods of teaching the student teachers would be practicing during the practicum. Further, the school context exercised a strong influence on the pedagogical choices of student teachers during the six-week practicum.

*** Adapting the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to the Local Context Fadhel Abdullah The common European Framework of Reference for Languages could be the most reliable framework to indicate the levels of the language proficiency of the language user. It consists of six levels based on describing what the language user can do with language. Many international exams match their levels/grades to those levels of the CEFR. However adapting it into the teaching framework of an institution is not an easy task. In my presentation, I will present the procedures we followed for adapting the CEFR to our local context during my work as the head of the English department in a private language school in Yemen, and how we came up with our own framework for English teaching in the institute. I will review the main challenges we faced, the solutions we applied, the result of a 1-year pilot, and the final version of the adapted framework that the institute is currently using. We managed to succeed, and I believe that this can be applied and can succeed in other contexts as well.

***

Listening, meta-cognitive awareness-raising and deliberate practice in a Saudi tertiary EFL context Nasrin Al-Tuwairesh This presentation will report on research into the contribution of meta-cognitive awareness-raising and deliberate practice to the development of the listening abilities of EFL university students in Saudi Arabia. I will first describe the background and context of the study. Then the focus will be on the two major concepts that informed the study, meta-cognitive awareness-raising and deliberate practice. I will then describe the research design that was used to investigate the use of these concepts in the teaching of EFL listening and mention some of my preliminary findings.

***

Classroom Interaction in Chinese ELT Classrooms Lin Zhu It is widely recognized that classroom interaction serves a significant purpose in second language learning. However, in the language classrooms of Chinese states schools, neither peer-interaction nor teacher-student interaction is practised sufficiently. During my MA program, I have realized that cultural factors (including teacher’s beliefs about language teaching, students’ expectations of a good student, learners’ experiences of learning their mother tongue) and economic factors (including the physical environment of the classroom and numbers of students in each class) may have beneficial or detrimental influences upon interaction in a second language classroom. In my presentation, I will discuss factors that inhibit classroom interaction in Chinese state schools and introduce ways to improve the quality of classroom interaction in terms of question behaviour, feedback, choice of language etc.

***

A Corpus-based Study of the Functions of Sports Metaphors in British English Yu Bai Previous research into English sports metaphors has mainly focused their ubiquity and use in American English, while research on sports metaphors in British English has been hardly touched on. According to Callies (2011), there is variation in English sports metaphors in national varieties of English. To take one example, in the culture of American youths, baseball metaphors are often used euphemistically for the degree of sexual intimacy achieved in a relationship (Markovits and Hellerman 2001), while this is not the case in the culture of British youths. Thus, there is a need to study sports metaphors in British English as well. This study will attempt to focus on the functions of sports metaphors in British English. More precisely, this study will be carried out with the help of Halliday’s three metafunctions of language in human communication (1985) and Goatly’s thirteen common metaphorical functions (1997) using corpus techniques. Callies, M. (2011). Widening the goalposts of cognitive metaphor research. In M. Callies, W. R. Keller and A. Lohöfer (eds.) Bi-directionality in the cognitive sciences: Avenues, challenges, and limitations, 57-81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goatly, A. (1997). The language of metaphors. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold. Markovits, A. S. and Hellerman, S. L. (2001). Offside: Soccer and American exceptionalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

***

How writing is assessed differently by Japanese teachers of English and English native speaking teachers, and what lies beneath Naoko Sanryo My critical study investigates how differently Japanese teachers of English and non-Japanese teachers from English dominant countries identify errors for assessment in the writing of Japanese high school students. From my experience, native English colleagues tend to focus on the content and Japanese teachers on accuracy (spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.). Even when assessment criteria are shared, we sometimes rate differently. In this study three Japanese teachers and three native English speaking teachers who have experience of teaching Japanese students in Japan rate students’ written work according to a set of criteria I have provided. After analysing their scores, I will interview them about their perception of errors and beliefs about assessment writing. In the presentation I will briefly explain how I became interested in this issue, my methodology, some setbacks that I have faced, and how I am gathering the data. I will talk about my findings so far, and will encourage your comments.

***

Investigating students’ conflict talk in Indonesia Irfan Rifai Conflict is seen disrupting and even threatening human beings, physically or mentally. However, conflict is also considered a useful way to build people’s identity and to acquire skill in negotiation. An interesting idea about conflict study is that it is heavily influenced by the dynamic interplay of social environment, such as the availability of discourse and other social factors. Discourse is often used as a tool for conflict termination, mediation and prevention. However, Discourse is also regarded as a source of conflict and violence. In this presentation, I am examining how conflict is constructed by the discourse of disputants, how social factors (ethnicity, social class, gender, etc.) contribute to conflict talk, and what disputants’ perception of conflict talk is. To uncover the problems, discourse and narrative analysis are employed. Discourse analysis is used to reveal the role of discourse in conflict talk while narrative is employed to uncover the disputants’ perception about conflict talk. The study of conflict talk is important particularly in my home country, Indonesia, as it will give better understanding to possibly reduce the dangerous risk of conflict talk and to create such a programme in conflict resolution or language socialisation.

*** Continuous Assessment reform in the Sultanate of Oman Omar Al Sawafi This presentation will focus on providing a brief introduction to the reform of continuous assessment in schools in the Sultanate of Oman. In this overview I will briefly talk about the shift from the old educational system to the current one which resulted in the introduction of continuous assessment. The presentation will highlight the main feature of the continuous assessment system. It will also shed light on challenges that teachers of English face in implementing continuous assessment. I will also talk about my own experience in observing the system as a supervisor of English teachers.

***