Students often struggle throughout the reading process and are not aware of how they are reading.... more Students often struggle throughout the reading process and are not aware of how they are reading. While reading instruction dialogue has been around for many years, it has mostly focused on traditional face-to-face methods of modeling and feedback. Technology can play a role in reading instruction by offering teachers and students the option of using video to help motivate students to read, to showcase student readings, as well as to show students what they are doing as they read. This study will present and review strategies using readingcasts, dramatic read-alongs, digital booktalks, recorded video of students reading for feedback, and video feedforwarding.
This study focused on identifying EFL teachers' perceptions on the use of ICT in their teaching. ... more This study focused on identifying EFL teachers' perceptions on the use of ICT in their teaching. A number of 42 EFL teachers from two state universities in Indonesia were involved. A closed-ended questionnaire based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) ) was distributed and interviews were conducted. The findings revealed that 31 teacher users were found to have high motivation to use ICT because they believe that it is important in ELT as it makes learning enjoyable, interesting, and effective, among other constructive outcomes. Meanwhile, even though the other 11 teacher non-users were aware that the use of ICT is becoming more essential nowadays, their motivation remains low. Their barriers were rooted from the lack of training and support, either financial or non-financial, from their work environment. Therefore, these barriers should become a priority for institutions to overcome, considering that ICT provides unlimited sources of information in ELT and teachers must be prepared to face new challenges in education and technology that are present today.
This paper aims at accentuating and exploring the effect of using electronic portfolio (EP) platf... more This paper aims at accentuating and exploring the effect of using electronic portfolio (EP) platform in providing corrective feedback (CF) on EFL students' overall and microcomponential writing performance. Moreover, by conducting a semi-structured interview, the study seeks to obtain students' attitudes towards the use of EP in three aspects, namely awareness, work/activity, and pros and cons. A total of 34 intermediate EFL students ranging from 20-25 years of age participated in this study. While students in the experimental group (N=17) received their corrective feedback via EP, the control group's (N=17) writing assignments were corrected using traditional paper-and-pen portfolio. An EP platform was designed using DOKEOS environment during eight instructional sessions.
Assessing oral skills in relatively large Business English classes seems a most formidable task f... more Assessing oral skills in relatively large Business English classes seems a most formidable task for any teacher. How does one make sure to get multiple and valid assessments of each student? This action research paper provides supporting evidence for the correlation between the use of technology and students' engagement. This was achieved by creating and implementing a course which aims at motivating, promoting and assessing oral communication skills. Students are required to use various channels, including video recordings to demonstrate their communication abilities. This framework enables students and instructors alike to overcome the challenges of large classes.
Portfolio assessment has been implemented in many core disciplines for quality assurance and cons... more Portfolio assessment has been implemented in many core disciplines for quality assurance and consistent assessment of learner outcomes. For English language learning, for which varying proficiency levels of learners exist, portfolios are suggested to assess individual learners' progress. The current study was carried out in an online English language course at a higher education institution in Turkey. After the portfolio implementation, the researcher collected learners' perceptions regarding it as an assessment tool through open ended questions. The findings indicated that learners had very positive feelings towards portfolio use in the course because it helped them to see how they were using the target language.
Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook (FB) are currently highly used by students because... more Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook (FB) are currently highly used by students because technology has the potential to become a valuable resource to support their educational communications and collaborations. This paper attempts to present a comprehensive picture of what has been investigated in terms of the use of Facebook as an online English language-learning environment and inquires whether this learning model can enhance students' learning of English. It also aims to explore the students' perceptions towards learning English in the Facebook context following four treatments, language improvement, confidence, motivation and attitude. The sample who participated in the study was N=65, in the department of English language and translation enrolled in a B.A program.
Due to EFL undergraduate students' ineffective learning strategies, which mirror lack of autonomy... more Due to EFL undergraduate students' ineffective learning strategies, which mirror lack of autonomy, this paper is a pilot study into how use of Cambridge Dictionaries Online can affect undergraduate students' autonomy or self-reliance in a Thai EFL context. The link was selectively integrated in a writing classroom as a tool to improve their English during writing assignments because it appears to be more comprehensive than others. Seventy three students participated in the study and completed a questionnaire based on arguments that new generations or young learners can relate themselves to the link viewed as learning technology and in turn possess positive attitude toward and motivation in learning English autonomously.
Each publication is reviewed by at least two external reviewers. Since the language of public... more Each publication is reviewed by at least two external reviewers. Since the language of publication is English, at least one reviewer is a native speaker of English. At least one reviewer has a different affiliation country than the author. The submissions are subject to the double blind review process. Every care is taken so that there is no conflict of interest between the authors and the reviewers. The review is made in a written form with a clear conclusion on acceptance or rejection of the submission. The reviewing procedure and the reviewer file are published on the Journal's website at http://www.tewtjournal.org/reviewingprocedure.html The names of reviewers for particular issues are not revealed, instead, once a year, the aggregate list of reviewers for the entire volume is published.
One way to provide high quality instruction for underserved English Language Learners around the ... more One way to provide high quality instruction for underserved English Language Learners around the world is to combine Task-Based English Language Learning with Computer-Assisted Instruction. As part of an ongoing project, "Bridges to Swaziland," these approaches have been implemented in a determined effort to improve the ESL program for Orphans and Vulnerable Children at a mission school in Swaziland, Southern Africa. In addition to providing staff development for Swazi teachers and staff, the project director and her students have worked directly with OVC and also created a number of digital tools, designed to encourage discussion, facilitate cooperative learning and inspire English Language use in a meaningful and culturally relevant context. Results, while limited, indicate that application of the two approaches, TBLL and CALL has increased the confidence of teachers and improved student motivation and achievement.
This paper reports on a one-year longitudinal study that adopted a blended teaching approach base... more This paper reports on a one-year longitudinal study that adopted a blended teaching approach based on designing and implementing an online EFL course to be used by Greek students aged 13-14 years old along their more traditional face-to-face lessons. The reason for creating a more dynamic learning environment aligned with the rest of the curriculum was to increase EFL learners' engagement and motivation through their exposure to authentic online material and participation in a variety of reading, writing, speaking and listening tasks. Data analysis of pre-and post-achievement tests on English language reading comprehension performance along with students' Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) attitude questionnaire showed that participants generally had a positive attitude toward CALL. At the same time, open online access technologies gave them the opportunity to further develop their EFL reading comprehension skills. The paper concludes by highlighting the fact that online class components were not designed to fit the online tools into a task-based EFL lesson, but rather served the learning objectives of the actual lesson based on a blended teaching approach.
In a society increasingly mediated by technology, the medium has created unparalleled opportuniti... more In a society increasingly mediated by technology, the medium has created unparalleled opportunities. As a result, it has refocused educators' attention on how technological literacy is both an essential learning outcome in all higher education programs, and the intermediary, the means to achieve the digital competences expected from employees. In the field of English for Specific Purposes, and at a time when technology is perceived to enable quick and effective access to a vast number of sources of information and knowledge, teaching a language confronts teachers and students with divergent views that converge into what we perceive to be interconnected paths. We critically reflect upon these interconnected paths in order to obtain further insights on how technology, namely Machine Translation and Computer-Aided Translation, is perceived by business communicators who are learning English in an ESP environment. Within the premises that translation is an act of intercultural communication, our case study addresses mirrored perceptions of the English language, the act of translation, and the use of technological tools. Our study draws on both perspectives and discusses how mirrored images of students and teachers converge through project-based approaches, rooted in practical, short visual tasks with a clear and immediately visible purpose.
In Higher Education, feedback is still largely implemented as an external teacher-centred practic... more In Higher Education, feedback is still largely implemented as an external teacher-centred practice, which has been found to be irrelevant in improving students' language learning. This paper advocates that internal, or self-generated feedback, has a potential role to play in learners' formative processes under the condition that it is implemented as a task-based activity enhanced by suitable technological tools. In an experimental study, learners were engaged in the task of creating screencasts, or digital audio-visual recordings, of oral medical reports for authentic professional purposes. The study surveyed the kind of knowledge restructuring processes learners activated as a result of self-generated feedback enhanced by screencast technology. It also sought to understand learners' perceptions of the experience.
Societal changes have, throughout history, pushed the long-established boundaries of education ac... more Societal changes have, throughout history, pushed the long-established boundaries of education across all grade levels. Technology and media merge with education in a continuous complex social process with human consequences and effects. We, teachers, can aspire to understand and interpret this volatile context that is being redesigned at the same time society itself is being reshaped as a result of the technological evolution. The languagelearning classroom is not impenetrable to these transformations. Rather, it can perhaps be seen as a playground where teachers and students gather to combine the past and the present in an integrated approach. We draw on the results from a previous study and argue that Digital Storytelling as a Process is capable of aggregating and fostering positive student development in general, as well as enhancing interpersonal relationships and self-knowledge while improving digital literacy. Additionally, we establish a link between the four basic language-learning skills and the Digital Storytelling process and demonstrate how these converge into what can be labeled as an integrated language learning approach.
This paper reports on the first stage of an Italian national project, Access Thorough Text (ACT h... more This paper reports on the first stage of an Italian national project, Access Thorough Text (ACT henceforth), designed to respond to issues related to reading strategies, textual barriers and online access to web texts in English in educational environments, with specific reference to English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The first stage of the work has been focused on the theoretical foundation on which the project is based, in particular giving suggestions about how digital literacy for learners aged 6-18 can be encouraged and facilitated in web-based multimodal platforms (Jones, Hafner 2012). An inventory of integrative systems has been created to account for a range of devices that help break down barriers in texts (Baldry, Gaggia, Porta, 2011; Gaggia 2012; Porta 2012). The second section of this paper presents the design and administration of a needs analysis for the identification of specific needs for the three targeted age groups of EFL learners (group 1: 6-10, group 2: 11-14; group 3: 15-18). The survey also investigates which best practices can be adopted with regard to a) ease of access; b) awareness of sociocultural and genre-related textual barriers, and c) language problems for EFL learners. This paper will focus on Group 3, i.e. learners aged 15-18, and on how New Travel websites (NTWs) can be used in educational environments through task-based activities.
The CEFR encourages teachers to resort to task-based activities in the language classroom. Howeve... more The CEFR encourages teachers to resort to task-based activities in the language classroom. However, some resistance has been offered to this approach, due to lack of appropriate training and difficulty in meeting some basic practical conditions, as well as in finding
The potential synergy between task-based language learning (TBLL) and the use of technology prese... more The potential synergy between task-based language learning (TBLL) and the use of technology presents a number of challenges for current English teachers. Many of these are due to classroom constraints and/or to an unawareness of the value and utility that technology may have in language learning. As Chapelle (2001: 2) pointed out more than a decade ago,
Students often struggle throughout the reading process and are not aware of how they are reading.... more Students often struggle throughout the reading process and are not aware of how they are reading. While reading instruction dialogue has been around for many years, it has mostly focused on traditional face-to-face methods of modeling and feedback. Technology can play a role in reading instruction by offering teachers and students the option of using video to help motivate students to read, to showcase student readings, as well as to show students what they are doing as they read. This study will present and review strategies using readingcasts, dramatic read-alongs, digital booktalks, recorded video of students reading for feedback, and video feedforwarding.
This study focused on identifying EFL teachers' perceptions on the use of ICT in their teaching. ... more This study focused on identifying EFL teachers' perceptions on the use of ICT in their teaching. A number of 42 EFL teachers from two state universities in Indonesia were involved. A closed-ended questionnaire based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) ) was distributed and interviews were conducted. The findings revealed that 31 teacher users were found to have high motivation to use ICT because they believe that it is important in ELT as it makes learning enjoyable, interesting, and effective, among other constructive outcomes. Meanwhile, even though the other 11 teacher non-users were aware that the use of ICT is becoming more essential nowadays, their motivation remains low. Their barriers were rooted from the lack of training and support, either financial or non-financial, from their work environment. Therefore, these barriers should become a priority for institutions to overcome, considering that ICT provides unlimited sources of information in ELT and teachers must be prepared to face new challenges in education and technology that are present today.
This paper aims at accentuating and exploring the effect of using electronic portfolio (EP) platf... more This paper aims at accentuating and exploring the effect of using electronic portfolio (EP) platform in providing corrective feedback (CF) on EFL students' overall and microcomponential writing performance. Moreover, by conducting a semi-structured interview, the study seeks to obtain students' attitudes towards the use of EP in three aspects, namely awareness, work/activity, and pros and cons. A total of 34 intermediate EFL students ranging from 20-25 years of age participated in this study. While students in the experimental group (N=17) received their corrective feedback via EP, the control group's (N=17) writing assignments were corrected using traditional paper-and-pen portfolio. An EP platform was designed using DOKEOS environment during eight instructional sessions.
Assessing oral skills in relatively large Business English classes seems a most formidable task f... more Assessing oral skills in relatively large Business English classes seems a most formidable task for any teacher. How does one make sure to get multiple and valid assessments of each student? This action research paper provides supporting evidence for the correlation between the use of technology and students' engagement. This was achieved by creating and implementing a course which aims at motivating, promoting and assessing oral communication skills. Students are required to use various channels, including video recordings to demonstrate their communication abilities. This framework enables students and instructors alike to overcome the challenges of large classes.
Portfolio assessment has been implemented in many core disciplines for quality assurance and cons... more Portfolio assessment has been implemented in many core disciplines for quality assurance and consistent assessment of learner outcomes. For English language learning, for which varying proficiency levels of learners exist, portfolios are suggested to assess individual learners' progress. The current study was carried out in an online English language course at a higher education institution in Turkey. After the portfolio implementation, the researcher collected learners' perceptions regarding it as an assessment tool through open ended questions. The findings indicated that learners had very positive feelings towards portfolio use in the course because it helped them to see how they were using the target language.
Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook (FB) are currently highly used by students because... more Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook (FB) are currently highly used by students because technology has the potential to become a valuable resource to support their educational communications and collaborations. This paper attempts to present a comprehensive picture of what has been investigated in terms of the use of Facebook as an online English language-learning environment and inquires whether this learning model can enhance students' learning of English. It also aims to explore the students' perceptions towards learning English in the Facebook context following four treatments, language improvement, confidence, motivation and attitude. The sample who participated in the study was N=65, in the department of English language and translation enrolled in a B.A program.
Due to EFL undergraduate students' ineffective learning strategies, which mirror lack of autonomy... more Due to EFL undergraduate students' ineffective learning strategies, which mirror lack of autonomy, this paper is a pilot study into how use of Cambridge Dictionaries Online can affect undergraduate students' autonomy or self-reliance in a Thai EFL context. The link was selectively integrated in a writing classroom as a tool to improve their English during writing assignments because it appears to be more comprehensive than others. Seventy three students participated in the study and completed a questionnaire based on arguments that new generations or young learners can relate themselves to the link viewed as learning technology and in turn possess positive attitude toward and motivation in learning English autonomously.
Each publication is reviewed by at least two external reviewers. Since the language of public... more Each publication is reviewed by at least two external reviewers. Since the language of publication is English, at least one reviewer is a native speaker of English. At least one reviewer has a different affiliation country than the author. The submissions are subject to the double blind review process. Every care is taken so that there is no conflict of interest between the authors and the reviewers. The review is made in a written form with a clear conclusion on acceptance or rejection of the submission. The reviewing procedure and the reviewer file are published on the Journal's website at http://www.tewtjournal.org/reviewingprocedure.html The names of reviewers for particular issues are not revealed, instead, once a year, the aggregate list of reviewers for the entire volume is published.
One way to provide high quality instruction for underserved English Language Learners around the ... more One way to provide high quality instruction for underserved English Language Learners around the world is to combine Task-Based English Language Learning with Computer-Assisted Instruction. As part of an ongoing project, "Bridges to Swaziland," these approaches have been implemented in a determined effort to improve the ESL program for Orphans and Vulnerable Children at a mission school in Swaziland, Southern Africa. In addition to providing staff development for Swazi teachers and staff, the project director and her students have worked directly with OVC and also created a number of digital tools, designed to encourage discussion, facilitate cooperative learning and inspire English Language use in a meaningful and culturally relevant context. Results, while limited, indicate that application of the two approaches, TBLL and CALL has increased the confidence of teachers and improved student motivation and achievement.
This paper reports on a one-year longitudinal study that adopted a blended teaching approach base... more This paper reports on a one-year longitudinal study that adopted a blended teaching approach based on designing and implementing an online EFL course to be used by Greek students aged 13-14 years old along their more traditional face-to-face lessons. The reason for creating a more dynamic learning environment aligned with the rest of the curriculum was to increase EFL learners' engagement and motivation through their exposure to authentic online material and participation in a variety of reading, writing, speaking and listening tasks. Data analysis of pre-and post-achievement tests on English language reading comprehension performance along with students' Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) attitude questionnaire showed that participants generally had a positive attitude toward CALL. At the same time, open online access technologies gave them the opportunity to further develop their EFL reading comprehension skills. The paper concludes by highlighting the fact that online class components were not designed to fit the online tools into a task-based EFL lesson, but rather served the learning objectives of the actual lesson based on a blended teaching approach.
In a society increasingly mediated by technology, the medium has created unparalleled opportuniti... more In a society increasingly mediated by technology, the medium has created unparalleled opportunities. As a result, it has refocused educators' attention on how technological literacy is both an essential learning outcome in all higher education programs, and the intermediary, the means to achieve the digital competences expected from employees. In the field of English for Specific Purposes, and at a time when technology is perceived to enable quick and effective access to a vast number of sources of information and knowledge, teaching a language confronts teachers and students with divergent views that converge into what we perceive to be interconnected paths. We critically reflect upon these interconnected paths in order to obtain further insights on how technology, namely Machine Translation and Computer-Aided Translation, is perceived by business communicators who are learning English in an ESP environment. Within the premises that translation is an act of intercultural communication, our case study addresses mirrored perceptions of the English language, the act of translation, and the use of technological tools. Our study draws on both perspectives and discusses how mirrored images of students and teachers converge through project-based approaches, rooted in practical, short visual tasks with a clear and immediately visible purpose.
In Higher Education, feedback is still largely implemented as an external teacher-centred practic... more In Higher Education, feedback is still largely implemented as an external teacher-centred practice, which has been found to be irrelevant in improving students' language learning. This paper advocates that internal, or self-generated feedback, has a potential role to play in learners' formative processes under the condition that it is implemented as a task-based activity enhanced by suitable technological tools. In an experimental study, learners were engaged in the task of creating screencasts, or digital audio-visual recordings, of oral medical reports for authentic professional purposes. The study surveyed the kind of knowledge restructuring processes learners activated as a result of self-generated feedback enhanced by screencast technology. It also sought to understand learners' perceptions of the experience.
Societal changes have, throughout history, pushed the long-established boundaries of education ac... more Societal changes have, throughout history, pushed the long-established boundaries of education across all grade levels. Technology and media merge with education in a continuous complex social process with human consequences and effects. We, teachers, can aspire to understand and interpret this volatile context that is being redesigned at the same time society itself is being reshaped as a result of the technological evolution. The languagelearning classroom is not impenetrable to these transformations. Rather, it can perhaps be seen as a playground where teachers and students gather to combine the past and the present in an integrated approach. We draw on the results from a previous study and argue that Digital Storytelling as a Process is capable of aggregating and fostering positive student development in general, as well as enhancing interpersonal relationships and self-knowledge while improving digital literacy. Additionally, we establish a link between the four basic language-learning skills and the Digital Storytelling process and demonstrate how these converge into what can be labeled as an integrated language learning approach.
This paper reports on the first stage of an Italian national project, Access Thorough Text (ACT h... more This paper reports on the first stage of an Italian national project, Access Thorough Text (ACT henceforth), designed to respond to issues related to reading strategies, textual barriers and online access to web texts in English in educational environments, with specific reference to English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The first stage of the work has been focused on the theoretical foundation on which the project is based, in particular giving suggestions about how digital literacy for learners aged 6-18 can be encouraged and facilitated in web-based multimodal platforms (Jones, Hafner 2012). An inventory of integrative systems has been created to account for a range of devices that help break down barriers in texts (Baldry, Gaggia, Porta, 2011; Gaggia 2012; Porta 2012). The second section of this paper presents the design and administration of a needs analysis for the identification of specific needs for the three targeted age groups of EFL learners (group 1: 6-10, group 2: 11-14; group 3: 15-18). The survey also investigates which best practices can be adopted with regard to a) ease of access; b) awareness of sociocultural and genre-related textual barriers, and c) language problems for EFL learners. This paper will focus on Group 3, i.e. learners aged 15-18, and on how New Travel websites (NTWs) can be used in educational environments through task-based activities.
The CEFR encourages teachers to resort to task-based activities in the language classroom. Howeve... more The CEFR encourages teachers to resort to task-based activities in the language classroom. However, some resistance has been offered to this approach, due to lack of appropriate training and difficulty in meeting some basic practical conditions, as well as in finding
The potential synergy between task-based language learning (TBLL) and the use of technology prese... more The potential synergy between task-based language learning (TBLL) and the use of technology presents a number of challenges for current English teachers. Many of these are due to classroom constraints and/or to an unawareness of the value and utility that technology may have in language learning. As Chapelle (2001: 2) pointed out more than a decade ago,
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