This is the right answer for Q1 -- Work Group Two

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Subject: This is the right answer for Q1

Author:
Vivi

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Date Posted: 08:41:04 08/22/10 Sun

Hi, Group!
Sorry, the answer I posted before was imcompleted. Here follows the right one. Please make any correction if you think its necessary!

English is a global language widespread all over the world. that's why many people from English-speaking countries go to non English-speaking Countries to teach English. Cheryl Wei-yu chen and Yuh-show Cheng reported that there is just little research about native English teachers teaching abroad experiences.So they decided to to do a research on this area.
According to the authors the number of people from English speaking countries going to non English-speaking countries to teach has increased a lot, and those people face many problems related their different background . They mention two researches who have coducted studies about this matter. the first one is Verity's (2000)who was a well established teacher in her home context which documented her sense of lost expertise as a novice teacher in Japanese context.The second one is Gingerich (2004) who studied three American teachers in Lithuania and developed a knowlege base for teachers who are native speakers of English and teaching in international settings.
Cheryl wei-You Chen and Yuh-Show Chen based their studies on a program in Hsinchu, a city of Taiwan, where foreing English teachers have been hired to practice team teaching with local Eglish teachers in all the public elementary shcools since 2001.They focus their studies on three South African teachers, and the challenge faced by them with cultural diferences.

Diane Malcolm In her study, �Reading strategy awareness of Arabic-speaking medical students studying in English�, different from Cheryl wei-Yu Chen and Yuh-Show cheng in � A case study on foreign English teachers� challenges in Taiwanese elementary schools, found a great number of literature in the area of reading strategies awareness.
According to Diane, recent reading strategy research has moved away from its ESL base into EFL settings, and much of the studies remain on comparing reading practices of less versus more proficient readers. These studies often imply that pedagogic intervention in English classes can help �correct poor readers� strategies knowledge, enabling them to deal effectively with the academic reading they will face later. However what actually happens outside the English class is less studied.
Diane Malcolm mention some authors whose researches contributed in this area.(Carrellet al., 1998; Cohen, 1998; Mokhtari and Sheorey, 2008; Pressley and Afflerbach, 1995) argued that readers in both L1 and L2 have been characterized as more metacognitively aware, in that they are better able to think about the reading process and to draw on the planning, monitoring, goal-setting and assessment strategies that comprise metacognitive skills (Carrellet al., 1998; Cohen, 1998; Mokhtari and Sheorey, 2008; Pressley and Afflerbach, 1995). However, as discussed in Afflerbach et al. (2008), reading success depends on both a command of those reading skills such as vocabulary recognition and phonological awareness that facilitate rapid In L1 reading research, the ability to use metacognitive skills effectively is widely recognized as a critical component of skilled reading� (Grabe, 1991, p. 382).Skilled decoding, as well as the strategic ability to solve reading problems and the knowledge and experience to know when to apply them. Particularly when L2 reading is considered, research has addressed the issue of whether reading comprehension difficulties relate to incomplete or effortful decoding skills due to lack of language ability rather than lack of strategic awareness. One focus of studies conducted over the past few decades has been determining the extent to which second language reading ability depends on first language reading ability or second language proficiency (Alderson, 1984; Anderson, 1991; Bernhardt and Kamil, 1995; Carrell, 1991; Clarke, 1980; Lee and Schallert, 1997;Olshavsky, 1977). These studies have provided evidence that a low level of familiarity with the second language appears to ��short-circuit� reading ability, forcing readers to a more basic, word by word approach to decoding text, and disabling the use of their already developed L1 reading strategies. The exact nature and extent of L2 knowledge required to permit full and fluent reading strategy use remain to be determined, but it is clear that factors other than language proficiency level contribute to reading success. Bernhardt and Kamil (1995), for example, found that about half of the variance in reading performance of English/Spanish L1/2 participants in their study could be accounted for by L2 knowledge and L1 literacy combined, while the other 50% could be attributed to other factors. The important elements of skillful reading include not only the ability to decode text rapidly, accurately and fluently (at the orthographic, lexical, structural and textural levels) but also background and world knowledge or schemata, reading experience, interest, cognition, motivation, and reading purpose (Grabe and Stoller, 2003). Other researchers have emphasized the importance of vocabulary knowledge as a crucial element of effective reading (e.g., Alderson, 2000; Block, 1992; Grabe, 1991; Laufer, 1997; Nation, 2001; Stanovich, 1980).

The author studied a group of 160 students at a medical University in Bahrain and compared academic reading strategies use of readers at a varying initial English proficiency level an year of study. While all students reported high use of strategies overall, significant differences were found in reported use of metacognitive strategies in general and specific strategies related to translating from English to Arabic. Students of low initial English proficiency and those in their first year reported translating more, while upper year students translated less and used more metacognitive strategies.

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