Mainstream teachers who obtained their English as a second language (ESL) certification by exam only are faced with increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in their classrooms. Decreasing standards for teacher ESL certification and increasing accountability for ELLs has made teachers' role in effectively increasing the language and academic skills of ELLs an area of major concern. This study used a survey and focus group interviews to obtain information regarding ESL-certified fourth- and fifth-grade teachers' perceived preparedness, practices and resources needs related to meeting the academic and language needs of ELLs in general education classrooms. The results indicated that teachers reported differences in their perceived preparedness based on years teaching experience, years of ESL certification, professional development hours, and university ESL courses, but not on certification route. The results also showed that teachers reported differences in their sheltered instruction practices based on the percentage of ELLs, but not on grade, instructional design, or preparedness. The correlation analysis revealed there is a positive correlation between preparedness and sheltered practices. The study revealed that while teachers are using strategies that make content lessons accessible and comprehensible to ELLs, they are often not specifically addressing the academic language development of their students. It is recommended that districts provide teachers with professional development opportunities that specifically address second language acquisition and practical ways to develop academic language across the content areas.

This study provides quantitative and qualitative data about the effects of using children's literature with adolescents in a language classroom and the role of children's literature in students' second/foreign language development, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. The study presents qualitative data about the role of children's literature in developing more positive attitudes toward reading in the second/foreign language and toward reading in general. With literature being a model of a culture, presenting linguistic benefits for language learners, teaching communication, and being a motivator in language learning, this study presents empirical data that show that inclusion of children's literature in adolescents' second/foreign language classroom promotes appreciation and enjoyment of literature, enhances the development of language skills, stimulates more advanced learning, and promotes students' personal growth.

Native speakers often ignore the limitless potential of language and stick to institutionalized formulaic sequences. These sequences are stored and processed as wholes, rather than as the individual words and grammatical rules which make them up. Due to research on formulaic sequence in spoken language, English as a Second Language / Foreign Language pedagogy has begun to follow suit. There has been a call for a shift from the traditional focus on isolated grammar and vocabulary to formulaic sequences and context. I tested this hypothesis with 19 L2 English learners who received 5 weeks of task-based instruction and found substantial progress in oral fluency only for the experimental group. Differences between pretest and posttest oral fluency were examined by looking at the learners' speech rate and their mean length of run. Subjective evaluation of fluency by 16 native English judges confirmed the calculated measures.

This study identified the types of sexist language that appear in ESL textbooks by Thai authors. The study analyzed the ESL textbooks by Thai authors sold at the Chulalongkorn University bookstore during spring 2007. It was a qualitative case analysis of fifteen ESL textbooks covering the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels of ESL instruction. The study used feminist criticism to discover what gender roles are sanctioned as appropriate in ESL textbooks by Thai authors and if the language used supports or challenges patriarchy. The results of this study show that sexist language is present in the textbooks and that the textbooks contain content that promotes sexist assumptions concerning gender roles. As a whole, the language and examples used in ESL textbooks by Thai authors support patriarchy.

The importance of explicit grammar instruction has been debated during decades within the second language acquisition discourse community. Researchers’ views on the topic are controversial, and there is still no clear answer to be found. In terms of English teacher attitudes, previous research shows no indication of a gradually decreasing interest in explicit grammar instruction in L2 or FL classrooms. Despite this, the Swedish National Agency of Education does not mention explicit grammar instruction in their official documents regarding the subject of English. Hence, this paper aims to examine if the Swedish context has an impact on in-service English teachers’ attitudes towards explicit grammar instruction. To investigate their attitudes, along with their preferred approaches to explicit grammar instruction, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five English teachers at upper secondary school. The interviews were recorded, carefully analysed and partly transcribed. The results show that all of the interviewed English teachers were positive towards explicit grammar instruction and use it in their teaching. In terms of approaches to explicit grammar instruction, all of the five teachers explained that they highlight a certain grammatical rule when they notice that many of their students have a hard time with it. It is often after a writing assignment that the grammatical difficulties are revealed and will be brought up in class. The teachers tend to explain the rule by using the whiteboard, a relevant YouTube clip or a PowerPoint. An interesting finding was that all of the teachers referred to their own experience when explaining why they use a specific approach to explicit grammar instruction, whereas none of the teachers referred to research within the field. In addition, all of the interviewed teachers expressed that the official steering documents by the Swedish National Agency of Education should mention grammar instruction more explicitly. However, they were still positive towards the official documents, because of the fact that these focus on communication. The current paper provides an indication of how English teachers in Sweden prefer to work with explicit grammar instruction, along with suggestions for further research on the topic.

This study sets out to investigate whether and to what extent activities involving Extramural English (EE) have an impact on how students in the sixth and ninth year of the Swedish school-system perform on the national tests of listening and reading comprehension issued by the National Agency for Education. In order to test this, the students participating were asked to fill out a questionnaire asking about their contacts with English outside of the classroom environment and were then administered old national tests of reading and listening comprehension as part of their regular classroom instruction. The data collected was analysed in SPSS in the form of correlation analysis and ANOVA. It was found that EE-activities may indeed impact how well the students perform in tests assessing receptive skills and that certain activities (such as reading, gaming, engaging in oral communication) yielded greater gains than others (such as watching movies and TV-series). In addition to this, the study indicates a difference between how profound of an impact EE-activities have depending on the age of the students, with the older students benefiting more from EE than the younger.

The thesis aims to present the use of postcolonial literature in pursuance of developing critical literacy in English lessons of upper secondary schools, together with increasing the awareness of the postcolonial world, South Africa specifically. The theoretical part of the thesis concentrates on contemporary knowledge in the field of methodology of teaching literature, reading strategies, and critical literacy, including its development and assessment. Furthermore, the theoretical section establishes the environment for the practical part, which consists of qualitative research in a Czech upper secondary school and employs pretesting, intrinsic research, teacher's and students' assessment, and final achievement test. The research implies that critical literacy is viewed differently with respect to different experts and various fields. Furthermore, the research indicates that the assessment of critical literacy is built mainly on assumptions of the specialists interested in this field and no standardised or unified tests are available. Lastly, the research shows that postcolonial literature seems to be an optimal source for enhancing students' critical literacy since it incorporates similar themes as critical literacy. The thesis has explained that the use of postcolonial literature and relevant...

This dissertation is three interlinked studies that pilot new methods for combining corpus linguistics and semantic network analysis (SNA) to understand and teach academic language. Findings indicate that this approach leads to a deeper understanding of technical writing and offers an exciting new avenue for writing curriculum.<br><br>The first phase is a corpus study of fixed and variable formulaic language (n-grams and p-frames) in academic engineering writing. The results were analyzed functionally, semantically and rhetorically. In contrast to previous n-gram analyses, the p-frame analysis found that variable phrases are often participant-oriented and communicate author stance. <br><br>The second phase combined corpus and network analysis tools to create educational materials. Several elements of successful design were highlighted. The final phase tested the materials in two classes with fifteen graduate students, finding evidence for the value of this novel approach.<br>

The main purpose of this study was to investigate English second language(ESL) teachers' perceptions about learner self-assessment in the secondary school. The study also examined the factors that might influence the perceptions that teachers hold about self-assessment. The participants of this study were 163 ESL teachers who are teaching at secondary schools in Gauteng Province; they were from 94 randomly selected schools. The data was collected through questionnaires and the response rate was approximately 53%. The literature review was utilized to identify the main perceptions. The studies led to a 57-item teachers' perceptions of learner self-assessment questionnaire based on the following main perceptions: the value of self-assessment in the teaching and learning processes, the use of self-assessment as an alternative assessment technique in English second language learning, the accuracy and reliability of self-assessment and the role of teachers in the effective implementation of self-assessment in their classrooms. The data for the study were analysed using quantitative techniques. the findings for the study showed that teachers have a strong feeling about the value of learner self-assessment; they showed that it helps in the improvement of teaching and learning. The results also indicated that teachers agree that self-assessment should be used in English second language teaching as an alternative form of assessment as it enhances learners' linguistic skills. Teachers perceive that they have an important role to play in ensuring that the implementation of self-assessment becomes successful in their classrooms. However, some have indicated that learners are not objective enough when assessing themselves and therefore the results derived from self-assessment cannot be reliable and accurate. Teachers' perceptions correspond with their classroom self-assessment practice because most of them also indicated that they employ self-assessment to enhance learners' performance. Majority of teachers also indicated that factors such as class size, availability of materials, teacher professional training and development, formal teacher training, years of experience, classroom experience with self-assessment, and time available for self-assessment played a significat role in influencing their perceptions. The conclusions were drawn from the results and the recommendations were made for further research. The limitations of the study were also discussed. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

This study's purpose is to investigate formative assessment/feedback in elementary school. According to the Curriculum (2018), it is essential to use formative feedback in the classroom because it helps students progress in their learning. The aim is to see how formative assessment is conducted in English as a second language/English as a foreign language classroom. The research questions that we used were to what extent is formative feedback used in the elementary classroom? Furthermore, are there different ways of giving formative assessment in an English classroom? The primary method used has been electronic searches in two databases, such as Education research complete and ERIC. The study results will show that the teachers know that formative assessment is beneficial for the students' learning process. However, they do not use it due to the lack of experience, time and knowledge. We investigated the teachers' role in formative assessment and discussed how essential time and prioritizing are.