Teaching speaking is an area of language education which is frequently neglected in English classes in Turkey. This dissertation reports on an action research study designed to address this problem. The study involved data collection through interviews, questionnaires, and observations, as a way of eliciting students’ views as a means to improve speaking classes and to outline the impact of student negotiation on students’ classroom participation and performance. The research, conducted in the ELT Department at a university in Turkey, comprised three different stages. In the first reconnaissance phase, initial data were collected to understand the classroom context. This informed the second stage, comprising eight weekly-based interventions that involved planning, action, observation and reflection, in which students were given a voice and classroom activities were designed accordingly. In the third stage, the final data were collected to understand the effectiveness of student negotiation. According to the findings, students wanted more opportunities to practise spoken language in class. Student negotiation allowed for the design of classes according to students’ needs and wants, with students becoming more motivated to engage in classroom activities. This led to the development of more positive attitudes towards speaking classes, and more positive perceptions of their speaking ability were reported at the end of the term, together with increased classroom participation, greater willingness to communicate, higher self-esteem, and lower levels of anxiety. The findings also suggested that student negotiation is likely to impact on students’ and teachers’ professional development. The study has a number of implications for both the teaching of speaking and for research: it demonstrates the significance of student engagement in classroom activities, made possible through designing activities which take into account students’ views and perceptions. Student negotiation and attention to students’ needs and wants would appear to promote a high level of student participation, increased motivation and more positive attitudes towards speaking classes. Further research studies, and specifically, more action research, should be conducted in Turkey to generate practical implications to improve classroom practice.

Acredita-se que a apropriação de uma língua estrangeira pelo sujeito através do ensino pode ser medida pela a aquisição de determinado grau de proficiência na língua-alvo, por meio de materiais e abordagens que possibilitem um ensino/aprendizagem bem-sucedido. Entendemos por bem-sucedido aquele procedimento que coloca o aprendiz em posição de intérprete historicizado (ASSOLINI, 2013, 2010), ou seja, aquele sujeito que ultrapassa a suposta literalidade dos sentidos, desprendendo-se da relação termo a termo. Isto posto, este trabalho objetiva: 1) analisar a forma como os recursos disponíveis no material didático oferecido pela Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo, por meio do programa São Paulo Faz Escola são discursivizados pelo sujeito-professor de inglês em escolas públicas do Estado de São Paulo; 2) descrever e analisar recortes desse material didático relacionando-os à fala dos sujeitos-professores. O corpus desta análise foi constituído por entrevistas semiestruturadas, realizadas com quatro professores da rede pública do estado paulista, assim como por recortes do material didático referido, buscando estabelecer relações entre o discurso dos sujeitosprofessores e esse material. A Análise de Discurso de matriz francesa (pêcheuxtiana) e as ciências da educação formam nosso arcabouço teórico-metodológico, por possibilitarem relações críticas com a linguagem de maneira ampla, e com o ensino de língua inglesa e o material didático, de forma particular. Os resultados das análises discursivas indicam que: 1) alguns sujeitos (se) silenciam ao falarem sobre o material didático; acreditam que (se) silenciando, esquivando-se, deixariam de significar tal material; 2) alguns sujeitos questionam o material didático, mas, apesar de tal inquietação, ocupam a posição de sujeitos enunciadores de dizeres e práticas preestabelecidas que não lhes fazem sentido; 3) a experiência dos sujeitos-professores, na sala de aula, não corresponde as suas formações imaginárias a respeito do aluno, da escola, nem do material didático; 4) assujeitados ideologicamente, não (se) percebem como profissionais capazes de ocupar a posição de intérpretes-historicizados, condição basilar para que tenham voz e se constituam como autores de seu próprio dizer. Palavras-chave: Material didático. Ensino de língua inglesa. Análise de discurso. / It is believed that foreign language acquisition can be assessed by the acquisition of a certain level of proficiency in the target language by means of usage of any material and approaches, allowing successful teaching/learning process. By well-succeeded, we understand the procedure in which the learner puts him/herself in a position of interpreter-historicized, defined by Assolini (2013, 2010) as the subject who goes beyond literality, free from term-to-term, or word-to-meaning relationships. This work aims at: 1) analyzing the ways through which the subject-teacher of English as a foreign language in public schools in the State of São Paulo puts the teaching material into discourse; 2) describing and analyzing sections of that material, offered by State Government, referred to in the interviews with subject-teachers. This study is based on the perspective of French Discourse Analysis, adopting the views of the philosopher Michel Pêcheux and the Social-Historical Theory of Literacy Acquisition. We understand that those theories allow critical relationships with language in a broad way, and more specifically, with English Language Teaching and its materials. The corpus of this analysis consists of selected excerpts from semistructured interviews with four state public school teachers, as well as sections of material offered by the State government, seeking correlations between the subject-teachers discourse and the teaching material. Our results lead to some observations: 1) some subjects resort to silence, attempting to avoid comments about the teaching material; 2) others, although incredulous about the offered material, assume the position of broadcasters of meaningless practices from that material; 3) teachers experience in the classroom do not correspond to their representation of the subject-learner, school or teaching material; 4) ideologically subjected, teachers do not see themselves as professionals capable of assuming position of interpreter-historicized, a basic condition to be aware of their own voice, authorship and subjectivity.

This multiple case study was designed to explore the adjustment and cultural learning of sojourning English language teachers (ELTs) in Japan and South Korea. Qualitative research methods were used to design the study and to collect the data. Using Holliday's Host Culture Complex model (1994) as a theoretical framework, shared patterns in the adjustment process emerged from the participants' blogs and interviews. The patterns provide evidence supporting cultural learning through relationships with various people in different parts of the host culture complex. The strongest pattern revealed that the relationship between sojourning ELTs and their co-teachers was one of the more beneficial relationships for the sojourners' cultural learning. However, these relationships were only found in government-sponsored English language programs, such as the JET Program in Japan and EPIK in South Korea. Another strong pattern revealed that the participants' relationships with their significant others marked a shift in their adjustment patterns in one or more parts of the host culture complex. This study prompted the creation of a new revised host culture complex, which includes foreigners within the target culture. These foreigners, some who are also sojourning ELTs, have shown to influence the adjustment process of the participants. Additionally, this study demonstrates the use of social media for research and professional development in English language education.

In 2003 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) unveiled their new junior high school (JHS) English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy, which focused strongly on oral communication. Although there is evidence of policy noncompliance in schools until now there has been no English language research on the attitudes or practices of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), or the views of the students, and their parents in regards to teaching/learning English speaking skills. The research, based on JHSs in a mid-sized Japanese city (pop. 475,000 approx.), focused predominantly on JTEs, but also included students, and their parents. Focus group sessions, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews were used to collect data. The study reveals that learning English speaking skills is considered important, but passing the senior high school (SHS) entrance examination is the main concern and so, test impact from the SHS entrance examination exerts the greatest pressure on JHS JTEs. The JTEs also perceive themselves as facing other issues such as student motivation, JTE speaking proficiency, and large class sizes. Another finding is that JTEs appear to receive inadequate training– pre- and inservice– resulting in issues, such as a reliance on traditional methods (yakudoku), which are not in accordance with MEXT’s intentions, and JTE proficiency test achievement levels lower than those desired by MEXT. As a result of these issues gaps exist between MEXT JHS EFL policies and actual teaching practices, and have unfortunately led to a situation where JTEs believe that MEXT does not care about or understand the teaching environment. The study concludes that implementation of MEXT’s policy require a better match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy, a decrease in class sizes, and JTEs receiving more adequate training. A more positive relationship between MEXT and JTEs would result from these two groups working collaboratively when designing JHS EFL policies and could better achieve a match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy.

The purpose of this research is to investigate whether the implementation of Cooperative Learning (CL) activities, incorporating the insights given by Howard Gardner’ (1993) theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) and the notion of Whole Language Approach (WLA) in college EFL classrooms will have a positive effect on students’ language proficiency and attitude. A quasi-experimental study was developed. The site of this study was in an EFL classroom in a Taiwanese College. The subjects were from the researcher’s three English classes at Chung Hwa Institute of Medical Technology during one semester. Many learning activities based on Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences were used while a Cooperative Learning approach was practiced. The data for this study was collected from three sources. One was from the subjects’ questionnaires on attitudes and on motivation, regarding Cooperative Learning and Multiple Intelligences. Another was from student interviews. The third was from the students’ test scores on their language proficiency tests. The results of the study showed that the experimental group that was taught using the ideas based on CL and MI outperformed the group based on CL, and the control group, on the Simulate English General Proficiency tests for the four language skills. Though there were no significant differences among them within this short-time study, the motivation in learning English was enhanced a great deal for the experimental group that was taught using the CL and MI ideas. Based upon the insight gained from this study, CL, MI, WLA and Language Learning Center were thus recommended to be integrated into the Junior College English curriculum. Pedagogical implications for the application of CL and MI in an EFL classroom were developed. Above all, suggestions for teacher development in CL and MI were proposed. Finally, suggestions for future research have been recommended.

In recent years, English has become a compulsory subject in schools and many tertiary institutions of Vietnam. The need to train teachers of English is greater than ever before. However, in the Hanoi Foreign Languages Teachers Training College (HFLTTC), English language teaching in general and the teaching of oral skills in particular leave much room for improvement. The students' oral proficiency is far from satisfactory. This problem has inspired the writing of this study report as an attempt to search for an appropriate method to improve the students' communicative competence. The study consists of four chapters. Chapter one will overview some English Language Teaching (ELT) methods in relation to teaching spoken English and their application in Vietnam. Chapter two will consider the context of the HFLTTC where teaching and learning are carried out with a view to identifying an appropriate approach to the problem. Chapter three will outline communicative competence as an objective of the ELT and discuss principles of the communicative approach to attain the objective, and suggest teaching material through which the principles can be applied. Chapter four will recommend the classroom techniques which may improve the students' oral proficiency. This study report should be regarded as an attempt to apply the communicative approach to teaching oral skills to students in the context of Vietnam.

The present study is one of the first attempts undertaken to study English and Vietnamese news discourse on a contrastive basis. More specifically, it investigates the structure, the lexical and syntactic features of English and Vietnamese political news discourse. It is hoped that the results of the study may help the Vietnamese teacher and student to make better use of newspapers in the process of English language teaching and learning. In addition, it is hoped that the study may benefit the journalist, to some extent, because it is generally assumed that if the knowledge of news discourse structure, the linguistic features and the factors involved are professionally known and shared, this will facilitate news discourse production and comprehension. The study reveals two different strategies used by English and Vietnamese political news writers. English news writers predominantly employ the IP structure pattern whereas Vietnamese news writers employ BTN (Background-to-News). Lexically, English newspapers use more lively, vigorous language, metaphors, puns and hyperbole. In contrast, the occurrence of serious, formal language is a very pronounced feature of Vietnamese newspapers. This is the area where Vietnamese students of English often have difficulty, as is indicated by the survey. The greatest syntactic difference is sentence order, namely, English news stories often use S + V + (O) + (A) while their Vietnamese counterparts use A + S + V + (O) +. The other difference is that English news paragraphs are mostly single sentence paragraphs as disctinct from their multi-sentence Vietnamese ones. Chapter One is an introduction explaining the rationale, the methods, and the data for analysis, of the present study. Chapter Two is concerned with the theoretical background to the study. It deals with such concepts as cohesion, coherence, structure, relevance, text and discourse. Chapter Three provides a contrastive overview of English and Vietnamese newspapers, essentially in terms of ownership and the approach to news. Chapter Four examines the different structure patterns used by English and Vietnamese reporters and journalists. Chapter Five and Six study the different lexical and syntactic features of English and Vietnamese political news discourse, respectively. In chapter Seven, a comparison of English and Vietnamese political news discourse is given, which is based on the analyses presented in chapters Four, Five and Six. In addition, it presents the results of a survey of comprehension difficulty encountered by Vietnamese students studying English now at the University of Canberra, and looks at some discourse strategies involved in news discourse production and comprehension. The last chapter offers some implications for TEFL in Vietnam, which are based on the author's own experience and results of a survey. The author hopes that these implications may be of some help to the practising teacher as well as the student.

This study aimed to explore how a rural elementary school and community situated English language education in Central Turkey, and how the rural context shaped a beginning English language teacher&rsquo / s professional identity and teaching practices. In order to achieve this goal, a qualitative case study was conducted. The required data were obtained through three major methods / semi-structured interviews, a time and motion study, and an open-ended questionnaire. The interviews were all audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The time and motion study involved the recording of the English language teacher&rsquo / s actions at the school. In this regard, the teacher was observed both in and out of the class during a two-month period and his actions were noted down at 60-second intervals. In addition, an open-ended questionnaire was delivered to the students taking English as a compulsory subject in their curriculum. The data were organized in separate files regularly, and analyzed by coding, and interpreting the emerging themes. The results revealed four keys to being a successful teacher in the rural setting. These included appreciation of rural life, passion for rural teaching, aspiration for teaching profession, and being well-prepared for teaching. It was also concluded that the rural elementary school and its community had general appreciation for quality English language education / however, they did not find teaching practices sufficient for effective language learning. Thus, English was not on the top of their list. Lastly, the results also shed light on the rural challenges that a beginning teacher might face.

Each year a group of university students from English speaking countries go to Chile and work as volunteers under the National Volunteer Centre Program. The purpose of this case study is to examine how a group of novice volunteer teachers describe their experiences in a foreign country and how these experiences shape their understanding of teaching. Participants went through the process of open-ended questionnaires and one-on-one interviews of their experience. This study was sustained in the literature by the domains of volunteerism, English Language Teaching, and volunteerism and ELT, and a socio constructivist and experiential lens was adopted. Even though volunteer teaching abroad is an increasing worldwide trend, there are few studies that combine these areas, showing that the existing blend of volunteerism and English language teaching needs to be further examined. The analysis of the data showed that novice volunteer teachers experience five types of experiences when teaching English: language teaching experiences, language learning experiences, challenges, general experiences, and volunteering experiences. Novice teachers recalled their expectations before teaching and those were maintained, modified, or unfulfilled. Volunteers stated what teaching means to them after working in public schools, they were able to describe diverse language teaching experiences, and make recommendations to future volunteers.

This study evaluates the English language courses for 9, 10, 11, and 12th grades in Anatolian high schools in Sivas. The participants of the study were 200 students who were enrolled in the courses and 20 teachers who taught them. The quantitative data were obtained through different course evaluation questionnaires for students and teachers. The eclectic evaluation model employed in this study was structured by adapting the evaluation models suggested by Bellon and Handler (1982) and Brown (1989). The results of the study show that the courses were not much effective in reaching the goals and objectives of the program, the course content and materials were uninteresting for the students and materials were inadequate in providing opportunities for communicative and student-centered activities, the teaching and learning processes lacked variety, and the assessment procedures were not parallel with the objectives of the courses and approaches of the curriculum. Some of the important recommendations of the study were that teachers need to be informed about the curriculum (i.e. goals and objectives, approaches), course content and materials need to be revised and supplementary materials for teaching of all language areas (four skills, grammar, and vocabulary) should be provided, variety needs to be added to the teaching activities, and the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) need to be assessed properly.