Bücher der Reihe English Language Education

With a Foreword by Hugh Starkey and Audrey Osler, and Afterwords by Graham Crookes, Hilary Janks and Allan Luke, this book promotes critical language education and illustrates how a critical agenda can be enacted in English language education in real classrooms. It presents four cases located in primary and secondary schools in the province of Buenos Aires in Argentina in contexts that can be characterised as vulnerable or difficult. It describes the possibilities, challenges and limitations of this critical agenda using students' drawings, posters, leaflets, artwork, classroom activities and conversational data as foundation, and including the voices of local teachers in their classrooms. Importantly, these teachers used teacher-made, locally produced, critical post-method materials, described by the author of those materials in one of the chapters. In this way, the book offers a unique balance of researcher, teacher and materials writer voices. These materials are included in the book and can help language teachers around the world to introduce critical perspectives in their specific contexts. The book is appealing to researchers, classroom teachers, teacher educators, and materials writers and developers interested in critical language education. 

This book discusses how to approach critical literacy in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. It responds to the concerns of educators who get enthusiastic about teaching critical literacy, but become perplexed when they start reading about its theories. This causes some to avoid it altogether and leads others to argue for practicing it without theory. The book argues that both positions should be reconsidered and capitalizes on the notion of praxis, a notion introduced by Freire to explicate the various subtle connections between theory and practice.  The book instills the theoretical assumptions of critical literacy with as little jargon as possible, with many practical illustrations. It will be of interest to graduate and undergraduate students, language teachers, program and material developers, researchers, and educational policy makers.

This volume discusses how the use of technology creates opportunities for effective teaching practice and illustrates ways to apply innovative and stimulating ways to engage and interact with students on-line. This research-led book brings together teaching practice and case studies and provides a comprehensive understanding of how technology can enhance teaching and learning through English as medium of instruction. It helps to further the understanding of challenges that language teachers and learners may experience, and provides suggested solutions to address these challenges. It also reflects on the use of technology trough case studies and practical tasks. This book brings theory and practice together and it informs research and classroom practices. It will therefore be of great value to teachers in training as well as to those already working or researching in the field.

This monograph is to investigate practical applications and contributions of self-regulated learning (SRL) to second/foreign language (L2) writing from sociocognitive and sociocultural perspectives. It showcases a comprehensive and updated review of conceptual and methodological issues of SRL and the state-of-the-art research on its applications to L2 learning and teaching. This volume further elaborates the design and results of a large-scale project which conducts observational and intervention studies investigating SRL strategies in L2 writing. This book reveals that a cross-disciplinary understanding of SRL strategies plays a crucial role in advancing theoretical functions of SRL and in extending its applications to L2 education in general, and L2 writing in particular. This book makes significant contributions to developing and validating new conceptual frameworks and tools for evaluating multidimensional structures of SRL strategies and self-efficacy in L2 writing; elucidating the interplay of personal, behavioral, environmental and psychological factors with SRL strategies and writing performance; and presenting an effective self-regulation instructional model for nurturing L2 learners' motivation and confidence to strategize, reflect and succeed in writing.Teng has established herself as one of the prominent scholars in the discussion of self-regulated learning strategies. Her contribution to the fields of L2 writing and strategic learning are undeniable. This monograph is an excellent showing of how her endeavors to bring established theories from educational psychology to applied writing research have progressed over a number of methodologically rigorous studies. It should be required reading for anyone with an interest in cultivating strategic writers not only in the Chinese context but worldwide.   Nathan Thomas, UCL Institute of Education 

This book explores teachers' cognitions about the teaching of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) and their teaching practice, as well as factors influencing the formation and reformation process of their cognition. Taking stock of Bakhtin's dialogism as the theoretical framework, the authors argue that the formation and reformation of teacher cognition is a dialogic process. A systematic analysis of participating teachers' cognition formation and re-formation process suggests the highly individual nature of teachers' cognitions. EFL researchers and teachers, teacher educators, teacher education policymakers, university administrators and EFL textbook writers could draw on the findings of the study to provide better resources to implement the teaching of EFL writing more effectively.The study has adopted a mixed-methods approach, whose quantitative results show the patterns and differences of teacher cognition among teachers of different backgrounds and with different schooling, education and working experiences. The qualitative findings show in detail teachers' cognition formation and reformation processes and the factors contributing to such processes, revealing convergence and divergence of teachers' stated cognitions, with a focus on the discrepancy between teacher cognition and teaching practice. These are useful lenses through which researchers and teachers will find significant implications for offering EFL writing instruction more effectively.

This volume highlights unique features of L2 teachers' motivation, autonomy and career development in Far East counties (including Japan, South Korea and China), using diverse methodological research approaches incorporating both quantitative and qualitative paradigms. While much of current research focuses on students' psychology, this volume looks into EFL teachers' motivation and autonomy. Both discussions of theoretical issues of teacher motivation and autonomy and practical, classroom-based investigations are included and written to appeal to researchers, as well as applied teacher audiences. The theoretical chapters give readers a solid grounding in the issues of interest to the field. The practical chapters offer cutting edge insights and can also serve as templates on which postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers can base future studies. This helps the book to offer a dual service to the research community, addressing both issues of theorization of research and the practice of conducting research investigations.  

This edited volume offers an insightful theoretical conceptualization of issues central to 21st century foreign language learning and teaching. Drawing on research results obtained in the fields of pedagogy, social psychology and sociology of education, this book provides a comprehensive practical exploration of issues experienced by researchers in Poland and in Europe, and which can easily find far-reaching implications in other educational contexts.Part I, Focus on the Teacher, includes seven texts discussing topics relevant to teacher initial and in-service education, as well as the functioning of foreign language instructors in educational systems. The eight contributions included in Part II, Focus on the Learner, explore learner-internal and learner-external factors that affect the effectiveness of the language learning process. The exploration of key contemporary topics and the wide range of methodologies applied make this book of high relevance to Second Language Acquisition scholars, teacher educators, teachers, and language education policy makers.

This volume discusses how the use of technology creates opportunities for effective teaching practice and illustrates ways to apply innovative and stimulating ways to engage and interact with students on-line.

This edited volume examines a number of topics related to the roles of individual and contextual factors in English as second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) settings by presenting chapters across the three sections of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, teacher and learner research, and research into the roles of technology. The book has a focus on practical actions and recommendations related to individual and contextual factors in ESL/EFL, with a specific concern with issues of cognition, metacognition, emotion, and identity, and offers perspectives from a diverse range of international education settings. For teachers of ESL/EFL, the effective recognition and integration of individual and contextual factors into the classroom may represent a significant challenge. This is often the case in those settings where native English speaking teachers work in foreign language contexts where they may have limited understanding of local cultures and languages, or where language instructors have class groups that are culturally and linguistically diverse. In these, and similar, contexts, the types and extent of individual and contextual factors impacting on language learning may challenge both learner and instructor expectations of what an effective and supportive classroom is. While such a situation offers numerous opportunities for learners and teachers to expand their knowledge of themselves and each other, it also presents the possibility for ineffective teaching and learning to occur. It is within this framework that the book presents the latest theoretical, pedagogical, and research perspectives from around the world, thereby providing a resource for all stakeholders with an interest in the roles individual and contextual factors play in the English learning process.

Teacher Beliefs as a Complex System: English Language Teachers in China

This book examines teacher agency in implementing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum reform in the Chinese university context.

This book offers insight into the spread and impact of English language education in China within China's broader educational, social, economic and political changes.

This book presents the multiple facets of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in higher education across various academic disciplines, an area that is expected to grow constantly in response to the competitive global higher education market.

This book presents original, empirical data from quantitative and qualitative research studies in the field of language learning aptitude, ability, and individual differences. The book contributes to the field both by verifying and contesting existent findings and by exploring novel approaches to devising research in the subject area.

This book explores an area that has been somewhat overlooked in the literature to date - the current status and future trends of English education in Oman. It offers a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the subject and explores areas of English education in Oman that have, until now, been little investigated.

This book explores the influence of high stakes standardised testing within the context of South Korea. This book follows the test activity of a group of Korean university students preparing for the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) and posits a revised model of the influence of testing on learning.

The chapters, written by internationally recognized language teacher educators and TESOL specialists, introduce the reader to key language skill areas (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, writing, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary) and explain how each skill area can be taught in a principled manner in diverse language learning contexts.

English-medium universities around the world face real challenges in ensuring that incoming students have the language and literacy skills they need to cope with the demands of their degree programmes.

This book fills the need for a text that integrates Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into English for Specific Purposes (ESP).

This volume accentuates how ELT materials can be a mediation of capitalizing on moral and cultural values, which are more locally-grounded in respective Southeast Asia (SEA) countries.

By drawing on international studies, the book brings together diverse ESP practices and aspects of relevant issues in the development of ESP programs, teachers and learners in a coherent fashion.

This practitioner-based book provides different approaches for reaching an increasing population in today's schools - English language learners (ELLs).

This book presents original, empirical data from quantitative and qualitative research studies in the field of language learning aptitude, ability, and individual differences. The book contributes to the field both by verifying and contesting existent findings and by exploring novel approaches to devising research in the subject area.

This book focuses on appropriate English for Academic Purposes instructional concepts and methods in the Japanese context. All the research included was conducted in Japanese university settings, thus shedding new light on the effective implementation of EAP teaching and learning activities with Japanese learners of English.

This book explores an area that has been somewhat overlooked in the literature to date - the current status and future trends of English education in Oman. It offers a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the subject and explores areas of English education in Oman that have, until now, been little investigated.

Unlike most studies on languages in education, which take a neutral, de-contextualized stance, this volume take a pluricentric view of the English language by positioning it in relation to its varieties, as well as to other languages in the country.