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| Subject: Final version | |
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Author: Luciano Valadares |
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Date Posted: 14:40:02 08/23/10 Mon 1- What is the role of theory and previous studies in the article. The first article chosen “A case study on foreign English teachers’ challenges in Taiwanese elementary schools” (article 1) mentions the little work done on the field of teaching language abroad. Three teachers, from South Africa, are sent to a town in Taiwan to teach English in a secondary school. After some time, they started to face some difficulties with the students and also problems understanding the culture. The article refers to two important previous studies, which support the research. One of them is by Verity´s (2000): “…she documented her sense of lost expertise as a novice teacher in the Japanese context. Although she was a well-established teacher in her home context, Verity felt much stressed from having to cope with unfamiliar administrative demands such as large classes in Japan.” The other is conducted by Gingerich (2004) .From her studies she concludes that: “…the knowledge that teachers bring from their home context (general pedagogical knowledge) and how this knowledge is utilized and transformed in the new context to develop a set of knowledge needed for English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teaching (pedagogical content knowledge), which involves arriving with a plan and making adjustments…” “Her study also “highlights the need for teachers to understand the multiple contexts surrounding their work, including that of the classroom, the school, and the larger society (pedagogical context knowledge).” The theories mentioned in the articles are being used to clarify and bring a new light on the teacher’s report, explaining with previous experiences some of the teachers feelings as shown in some examples: “Amy: “I’m a very sensitive person. When students misbehave, I sometimes think that” Are you misbehaving because I’m black? (field-note, 2006/12/05). “I don’t understand why people want American accents here” (field-note, 2006/12/28) May: “I hate teaching phonics.” or “Teaching this stuff is so boring” Ivy’s: The Grade 2 can’t understand my instruction because of my accent? That’s not true. Language itself is a problem to these kids.” These reports prove the consistency, veracity and relevance of the former studies. The ESL teachers in the new environment did not seem to adapt to the culture of the new country, to the school’s policies and yet, they did not seem to be at ease with unfamiliar situations. With a careful analysis and examination of the theoretical literature previously published, the teachers might have been more prepared to face the new challenges and problems which arouse with the students in the classroom and also might have been better prepared to deal with their own feelings of inadequacy in a new environment. We also conclude that the role of the theory, although relevant is not enough to fully assist these teachers in their practice as teachers abroad, as the author states in the discussion: “To function more effectively in the Taiwanese context, they need to be equipped with more what Gingerich (2004) terms pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogical context knowledge”. To be more specific, they need to make adjustments to address the learning need of their students and gain more knowledge about the classroom, school, and societal contexts.” What the study is saying is well stated by the author: “ The current study is an attempt to address this gap in the literature” The second article chosen, “ From Principles to practice: Teachers´ uptake of principles from instructed language learning to plan a focus on language form in content lessons”(article 3) mentions the extensive work done on the field of second language research but also mentions “few descriptive accounts detailing the ways in which this input has been used by secondary content teachers to plan for student’s language and content needs.” The research was developed in a New Zealander school, after realizing the problems both, native and non-native students were having with English language. These problems were related to the understanding of English language meaning in depth which resulted in difficulties in other subjects, and also difficulties in producing academic writing work. As it says on the article: “Many secondary students, not just new learners of English, need informed language-oriented pedagogy that benefits native speakers as well as non native speakers.” On article 3, differently from article 1, the researchers rely on the theory published, which is the basis to trigger the whole project, as we can understand from the statement below: “This paper…“examines the ways in which teachers draw on their knowledge of second language acquisition to distil principles that provide a link between a language and content needs analysis and the subsequent design of an unit of work” Throughout the text the author mentions the need to search for assistance in previous work, building an interconnection between theory and practice before establishing an action plan. Many of the theoretical material covered in this area was utilized : “At the beginning of the study each participant was given a Project Manual containing summaries of the theoretical input covered in the TESSOL program”. The constant revision of their action was based on teacher’s perception of various student’s needs, and also the constant reflection, pause and reference to previous studies, as it says on the text: “To find new direction for their pedagogical action, they paused in their discussion and turned for assistance to the literature - the summaries of articles in the Project Manual”. The theories mentioned in the article assisted in the set up of the work, during the work and also on the results interpretation, all of it being crucial to the article as a whole. In conclusion, the role of theory was to provide a framework in which the research was carried out and also to work as a bridge linking previous knowledge with practice. 2- Do the article writers provide readers with some sort of justification for their work? After having read and analysed the articles chosen, we feel that the article writers surely provide the readers with justification for their work. From the very beginning, we can notice on the abstract presented in both works, that they immediately foretell what the research intends to discuss. The abstract serves then to introduce the main idea of the work, giving the most important facts in order to justify their study, as we can see on the lines below . Article 1: by Cheryl Wei-yu Chen, Yuh-show Cheng “… many people from English-speaking countries go to foreign land to work as English teachers.” “…there is little research on these teachers’ teaching-abroad experiences. The current study is an attempt to address this gap in the literature.” “…They also confronted various problems…” “The study calls for a better preparation for foreign English teachers…” Article 3: by Susan Grey: “… there are many native speaker students whose learning difficulties are linguistic in origin and require a language-oriented pedagogy in all curriculum areas.” “… there are few accounts documenting the ways in which these have been used by secondary content teachers.” “This paper describes the ways in which a pair of secondary content teachers used principles in an action research project to focus on form when planning a task-based lesson sequence.” In the introduction, the authors start to develop their justification by presenting the problem, followed by the official statements and previous researches announcements which were published concerning the case in study. This is done after the author has presented a vast theoretical argument based on previous research made by many experts on the subject analysed. After that, the authors claim the need of such a study since there is a substantial lack of publishing on this subject, which makes his/her work relevant, valuable and original. Article 1: “Intercultural team teaching,… are well documented in the literature (e.g., Aline and Hosoda, 2006; Crooks, 2001; Park 2007).” “While many studies have documented how team teaching is practiced between these two groups of teachers (e.g., Luo, 2006, 2007), team teachers’ voices are rarely heard. Even rarer is a documentation of foreign English teachers’ experiences in the local context.” “The current study, based on the experiences of three foreign English teachers working in the Hsinchu Program, is an effort to offer such an account.” Article 3: “ This section examines the need for form in secondary school curriculum planning and theoretical input for such an approach.” “There is extensive theoretical input from second language research that teachers might draw on for such planning. However, there are few descriptive accounts detailing the ways in which this input has been used by secondary content teachers to plan for students’ language and content needs.” “…educational systems are challenged to develop language-oriented pedagogy that benefits native speaker as well as non-native speaker students.” “The New Zealand national curriculum, for instance, argues that each teacher needs to provide specific guidance with the specialist vocabulary, the reading demands, and appropriate ways of conveying knowledge in each subject area (Ministry of Education, 2007).” “This paper uses and extends the view of form proposed by Ellis et al. (2002) which incorporates phonological, graphological, lexical, and grammatical form to include discoursed aspects of language. This focus beyond the level of the sentence to text structure is critical for the language demands of academic writing.” After having presented the arguments and spoken about the theoretical literature in which the researches are supported, the authors start to develop the work explaining its purpose, as seen: Article 1: “The current study is a qualitative case which focuses… schools. It is part of a larger study which examines… team teaching.” Article 3: “As co-ordinator of one such programme and a former secondary content teacher, I wanted to examine…in their teaching. … I was interested in the relevance of input for secondary content teacher.” From now on the writers also explain the methods used in the researches, the findings achieved and the conclusion of their works. 3- How do the article writers validate their own thoughts and conclusions? The writers validate their own thoughts and conclusions studying, reading, going to workshops and observing researcher’s works that bring them support and knowledge to produce and empower their own studies and experiences. That is to say, they can get their own conclusions based on data collections and consequently they focus on the recurrent issues that need to be improved. The article one focus their studies on the spread of English as the global language. Because of this, as they said, “many people from English-speaking countries go to foreign land to work as English teachers.” This article is based on the study conducted by Gingerich (2004). She observed the problems and difficulties that three English teachers from South Africa had in their classes. It is part of a larger study which examines local and foreign English teachers’ collaboration and professional development in intercultural team teaching. To write the article, data were collected via different methods including: interviews, questionnaires, classroom observation, field notes, research journals and document inspection. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed for further analysis. In addition, writers follow all the steps mentioned above, they will analyze the data and information, aiming to solve problems or at least try to settle them. In this article they noticed the deficiencies related to the teachers and gave solutions to be followed. It was said that for students to gain maximum benefits of intercultural team teaching, the participating foreign teachers need to be better prepared for the challenges they may face in an unfamiliar educational system. Snow (2006) states that foreign English teachers should be encouraged to reflect on their teaching regularly so that, their teaching is guided by more informed decisions. In the case of the Hsinchu Program (Taiwanese program), this reflection can take many forms, such as engaging in casual conversations about the lesson they taught together with their team-teaching partners, writing a reflective journal and exchanging it with their partners and conducting action research to investigate a certain aspect of team-teaching. It is hoped that with better preparation and continued professional development, foreign English teachers can thrive and contribute their teaching expertise to the foreign land. In the article 3, the author demonstrates her worry about students that are learning English through immersion in the mainstream curriculum. According to her, there are many native speaker students whose learning difficulties are linguistic in origin and require a language-oriented pedagogy in all curriculum areas. After Reading her article, we can say that Susan Gray develops a work with a validity character. She uses not only her words, but she tries to justify with other authors words or with words of people who has a credit position in society. She also searches and quotes other theories that could dialogue with the one she works with. To justify her central arguments, she quotes authors like Ellis, Fisher, Westerman, Pica among others. Quoting Pica’s words while justifying her work: “ … he observed when considering data from a wide range of content-based classrooms where the target language was English that students’ language production was ‘fluent, but linguistically inaccurate` (p. 343); attention in the class was directed to meaning rather than form.” And explain that in her paper: “uses and extends the view of form proposed by Ellis et al. (2002) which incorporates phonological, graphological, lexical, and grammatical form to include discoursal aspects of language. This focus beyond the level of the sentence to text structure is critical for the language demands of academic writing.” Here, once again, when she says: “…proposed by Ellis et al (2002)” she is looking for theoretical justifications. Another important point is that she not only substantiates the principles of the research, but she also defines specific terms as in “Sardo Brown (1993, p. 63) defines teacher planning as ‘the instructional decisions made prior to the execution of plans during teaching`.” Defending her affirmation that many secondary students, not just new learners of English, need informed language focused planning and that each of the secondary learning areas has its own language, she demonstrates that there are other authors that said that, so she puts it in parenthesis “(Bullock Committee, 1975; Vollmer, 2006)” and continue explaining that educational systems are challenged to develop language-oriented pedagogy that benefits native speaker as well as non native speaker students. It is relevant that the author still points out that the research area is relevant: “there is renewed interest in earlier work in language across the curriculum issues which guided teachers to focus on the reading and writing demands in their subject areas (for example, Davies and Greene, 1984; Lunzer and Gardner, 1979; Morris and Stewart-Dore, 1984 and the Council of Europe’s current project on Languages of Education).” Another point used to give validity to her work is the mention of the New Zealander national curriculum: “it argues that each teacher needs to provide specific guidance with the specialist vocabulary, the reading demands, and appropriate ways of conveying knowledge in each subject area (Ministry of Education, 2007).” The author also searches for the words of the Ministry of Education that English language learners will ‘‘need explicit and extensive teaching of English vocabulary, word forms, sentence and text structures, and language uses” (Ministry of Education, p. 16). And in the conclusion was shown the principles chosen to assist teachers in their instructional decision and the way teachers have put principles into practice, using a descriptive account. This validates her research showing teachers experiences in their own teaching as well as those of their students. And she justifies: “The descriptive account also enabled a critical examination of the theoretical input in one TESOL teacher education programme teachers in the study used principles as a pivot between the needs analysis and subsequent planning and as the criteria for selecting and sequencing the learning activities.” So, the author always underlies her words through theoretical ones, doing this she transmits the idea of being a good researcher and get readers´ confidence. 4- How important is the description of procedures and methods adopted in the study being reported. The description of procedures and methods adopted in the study is very valuable since it is the main source for the credibility of the work. To be trustful the researchers must rely their study on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence. With this data the authors can provide evidences for their utterances. The detailed explanation of procedures and methods adopted in the research tells how the author intends to deal with the issue presented as well as provides the work plan and describes the necessary activities to achieve the ultimate goal of the project. It also allows others researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them in other studies. Article 1 is a research based on a qualitative study. The data collection had begun in August , 2006 and lasted until June, 2007. The study focused on three South African teachers’ performance in the classroom, their background information and their previous professional experience. After analysing the data collected the authors conclude that the common problem suffered by those three teachers was their doubt on their accent. It was also showed how ironic was the hiring procedure of the Taiwanese School. In other words, those three teachers were hired for being considered English native speakers, and so they had also suffered for not sounding genuine native speakers. Therefore, the only conception accepted by Taiwanese people was that English speakers need to sound like Americans. One important fact that happened during the research period was the prejudice suffered by the two black teachers in relation to the students and some co-workers. May and Ivy were the only two black female teachers in the Hsinchu Program during the school year of 2006. May was very upset that School C was turning Ivy down; Mei-ling remarked that May accused Ivy’s colleagues of being racist in one of their casual conversations. In one informal conversation with the first author, May also talked about her sensitivity towards racism in these words, “I’m a very sensitive person. When students misbehave, I sometimes think that ‘Are you misbehaving because I am black?” (fieldnote, 2006/12/05). This incident may have interfered in their work discouraging one of then to continue teaching in Taiwan. The final conclusion that the authors had taken is that to students in Taiwan benefit from this program, (which hires foreign English teachers) the teachers should be more prepared to deal with unfamiliar situations in a new environment. Article 3 reports the use of the qualitative research tradition based on Silverman´s (1993) teachings. The author used, as she said: “a hybrid methodology adapting guidelines from case study research (Merriam, 1998; Stake, 1995, 2000; Yin, 1984) and from action research ( Cohen et al. 2000; Elliot, 1991; Ellis, 1997b; McTaggart, 1997) to make visible the activity of planning. The theoretical input and conceptual tools of the TESSOL programme provided the materials for planning.” On dealing with the qualitative research it is important that the procedures are well detailed and analyzed. The results achieved will have a greater impact on the research conclusion than they would have in a quantitative one. Being in contact with the language provides the students with the ability of communicating well and making themselves understandable, but not to use the form correctly, mainly because in the class meaning is privileged rather than form. The studies show that most students of English (even native speakers) don’t know surely how to manage the differences between written and spoken language. So, the attention is called for the responsibility teachers have while helping the students to overcome these difficulties. The conclusion of this article is that teachers should not take students’ knowledge for granted and the form of a language is something that should always pointed out as a part of the language as important as grammar or meaning. References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_psychology#Quantitative_methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method http://www.meaning.ca/archives/archive/art_how_to_write_P_Wong.htm [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: Final version | marilia | 17:21:17 08/23/10 Mon |
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