English Language Teaching

This study set out to investigate Korean in-service secondary English teachers' perspectives on the National English Ability Test (NEAT) with the hopes of addressing some of the issues and concerns that may have resulted in its downfall. Data was initially collected from 86 Korean in-service high school English teachers using an online survey, and followed up with semi-structured discussions in focus groups. The results revealed that the majority of teachers in this study felt that the NEAT could positively affect English education in South Korea; however, at present, key aspects of the education system have not been adequately prepared to deal with the requirements of the new test. This lack of preparation has led to skepticism and resistance, with fears of negative washback outweighing and undermining the potential positive washback of the new test. This has caused a split in support for its current implementation with 47% of teachers supportive, 44% unsupportive and 9% uncertain. Although respondents had major concerns over the current state of affairs, through further analysis of the data, future directions emerged that could assist in mitigating or eliminating worries in the implementation of the NEAT, and/or similar future tests in both the South Korean and other language learning contexts.

Using focus groups and semi-structured interviews, data were collected to investigate Korean in-service  English  teachers’  attitudes  toward  the  appropriateness  and  possibility  of  adopting  a  communicative  language  teaching  approach  within  the  South  Korean  secondary  school  system.  The data revealed that many teachers are in favor of CLT, however various obstacles stand in their way  of  classroom  implementation.  This  study  first  addresses  the  six  prominent  constraints  that  teachers reportedly face when trying to use CLT approaches, and examines why these difficulties are negatively affecting the possibility and appropriateness of communicative language teaching being applied. Several of the problems articulated suggest that the communicative approach may not currently be appropriate for Korean secondary English classes; therefore, possible solutions to these problems are suggested, as well future directions that may make communicative language teaching more suitable in the South Korean context.

We begin this chapter by reviewing the scholarship on teacher metacognition in order to situate our study within the larger discourse and understanding of teachers as metacognitive professionals. We then relate this to what we see as the role of language teachers in the complex social ecology of language classrooms. The study we report in this chapter is part of a larger project designed precisely to explore these notions with language teachers. We investigate the extent to which language teachers can be said to engage in metacognitive thought and action, and examine salient developmental mechanisms that shape this capacity for language teacher metacognition. Throughout, we take a situated and dynamic perspective of teacher metacognition in line with recent calls from both general and language education for a more developmental orientation of studies of the work and lives of teachers (Dörnyei and Kubanyiova 2014; Richardson, Karabenick and Watt 2014). It is our position that exploring the tensions between language teachers’ metacognition and their classroom practice can help address the links between language teachers’ inner lives, their teaching, and their students’ L2 learning, thus contributing new insights for our field.

In this study we set out to investigate the role that the phenomenological manifestations of teacher agency in second language (L2) instructional practices play in teacher identity formation. Using classroom observational data collected from public-sector L2 teachers (N = 4) over a year-long period, we explicitly adopt a dynamic perspective to examine what the exercise of agency in the L2 classroom might reveal about developmental processes in teacher identity. We report on salient and representative critical classroom incidents in which teachers exercised agency, then examine how and why this situated adaptivity was enacted by the teachers. Our data indicate that phenomenological manifestations of teacher agency are representations of the capacity to enact classroom practices in accordance with teachers’ own values, beliefs, and goals within the teaching contexts in which they find themselves. We then extend this in a blueprint that outlines dynamic pathways of autobiographical reasoning that culminate in unique identity narratives. Teachers’ agency was deliberately integrated into each teacher’s identity through the formation of analytical narratives that consciously legitimized experiences in the context of their classrooms, their communities, and the circumstances of their teaching. We discuss the contribution of our findings in relation to this domain of L2 research.

This paper presents and examines the suitability and effectiveness of an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) course entitled 'Developing Effective Teacher Talk' which was designed to meet the occupational needs of Korean secondary English teachers, and also satisfy the aims of the institutional administration and the Korean Ministry of Education. In order to investigate the suitability of the course, feedback data was collected through surveys as well as oral feedback meetings with Korean in-service secondary school English teacher trainees, course instructors, and administrators over the course of 6 one-month intensive training programs at Korea's largest provincial government-supported training center. Further survey data was collected from in-service teachers one month after the completion of the course to investigate its overall effectiveness. Criteria within existing literature were used for systematic review and critical examination, and this included investigating to what extent learners, course instructors, and administrators were satisfied with the course; and to what extent the learners' teacher talk was affected. The results of this investigation found that the 'Developing Effective Teacher Talk' course satisfies various key internal and external evaluation criteria components and thus, may serve as a positive model for similar courses around the world.

This study explored the influence of instructor's written direct/ indirect comprehensive corrective feedback on intermediate Kuwaiti university students' writing accuracy. It also examined the subjects' opinions regarding the impact of the provided types of feedback on their motivation. In order to reach this end, a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods were implemented. The informants of the current study were 134 intermediate undergraduate Kuwaiti university students. The participants were randomly divided into five groups. These five groups involved a control group and four treatment groups. The control group did not receive any type of feedback. The treatment groups received different types of treatment. The participants of the first treatment group received direct feedback. The participants of the other three treatment groups received different types of indirect feedback, underlining only, underlining in addition to metalinguistic comments and underlining in addition to face to face conference. All the participants had to generate 7 writing tasks in nine weeks. After submitting each writing task, the treatment was provided then each participant had to generate a new draft of the same writing. In week nine the participants had to generate a new piece of writing. The Findings of the current study highlighted the importance of direct written comprehensive corrective feedback in improving the writing accuracy in revision tasks. In addition, a significant short-and long-term effects of direct written comprehensive on improving the grammatical accuracy of the participants of the current study were found. Furthermore, the participants of the current study have reported their dire need to receive written direct comprehensive feedback as they believed it was the most effective type of feedback and it had a great impact on their motivation.