In recent years, phonics instruction in early literacy education has gained in popularity due to its critical role in facilitating phonological awareness and processing skills, said to enable the self-teaching mechanism inherent in an alphabetic language. These claims are based on research on L1 learners of English, however: little has been reported on the utility of phonics instruction for foreign language learners. This study therefore investigated young Taiwanese learners of English who had undergone phonics instruction as part of their EFL programme of study. Textbook analysis, teacher interviews, a student questionnaire, and a battery of diagnostic tests and tasks were used to uncover the role and efficacy of phonics in Taiwanese EFL learners’ literacy development as well as the underlying factors that contribute to shape its role and affect its efficacy. The data was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively and findings related to the presentation and practice of phonics teaching in class, teachers’ and learners’ perceptions and beliefs related to phonics and English literacy, and learners’ strategy use in oral reading, spelling and word learning were analyzed and discussed. The results revealed that due to the influences of socio-contextual constraints, learners’ insufficient phonological skills, the absence of a well-developed spoken system in the learners, and a distinctive L1 writing system, phonics plays a distinctively different role for young Taiwanese learners of English from the one it plays for English L1 learners.

Over the last two decades, many ELT professionals and researchers have called for contextually appropriate forms of ELT pedagogy to be developed, arguing that the dominant discourse on ELT methodology, as promoted by local Ministry of Education (MoE) policy makers around the world, has been largely generated in ideal (North) contexts and so does not reflect the challenging realities of the majority of language teaching and learning contexts in which they are being imposed. Despite these calls, there has been very little research that shows how contextually appropriate ELT pedagogies can be developed. To fill this gap, there is a need for research that develops from the bottom-up by relying on input from teachers and learners who constitute the major stakeholders in the teaching and learning process. This study, therefore, set out to investigate students' and teachers' perspectives regarding what counted as good and appropriate English language teaching in two English medium primary school contexts in Cameroon. To achieve this, data was collected through classroom observation, friendship group interviews with children and stimulated recall with teachers from six English medium primary schools from Yaounde and Buea. A further two-day workshop group discussion based on videoed lessons from the six classrooms was organised with 30 teachers in both research sites. The findings of this study revealed that teachers and students possess shared, but also - in some respects - divergent notions of good/appropriate ELT pedagogy which are largely different from MoE enforced methodological procedure, and it is these notions - rather than what the Ministry says - that have the biggest impact on their experiences and practices. The study also revealed that, in exploring insights into their, as well as students’ perspectives on good teaching, teachers in the workshops were able to develop new ideas about appropriate teaching which took on board ideas from children’s perspectives as well as successful practices from the videoed lessons of their colleagues. These findings highlight the potential contribution of a bottom-up research approach to teacher development which takes account of context in the process of generating and disseminating good practice.

The purpose of this study was to explore why and how stories and drama can encourage children’s participation in class and also affect their learning of English as a foreign language in Taiwanese primary schools. The author takes a strong interest in both fields, English for Young Learners (EYL) and educational drama, and attempts to propose a solution, story-based drama, to two of the more common problems faced by teachers at primary level—mixed ability classes and limited teaching hours. The key methodological approach was action research in a case study format, using mixed methods and gathering quantitative as well as qualitative data in order to evaluate the impact of the author’s teaching on the children’s English learning. The quantitative research data was gathered with the aid of questionnaires responded to by one hundred and nine teachers and thirty-two fifth graders, while the qualitative data was collected from interviews, participant observation, fieldnotes, journals, artefacts, and video and audio recordings. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that the incorporation of stories and drama into the existing school curriculum was workable, and the story-based drama assisted the pupils to have greater participation in class and a higher degree of improvements than before in terms of their four language and non-verbal communication skills. This was corroborated by questionnaire results, interviewees’ responses, the co-teacher’s observations, and the pupils’ written work. The author recommends that a collaborative approach to curriculum design and research methodology could be adopted by teachers themselves or between teachers and researchers in order to stimulate more research on the use of story-based drama in similar contexts, while deepening our understanding of this resourceful teaching approach.

This research focuses on the reflection practices of 45 young learners of English in Brunei Darussalam. The purpose of the research was to ascertain the feasibility of employing a reflection exercise, as a core component of a writing portfolio assessment procedure, in the context of Brunei Darussalam. The research adopted a case study approach which was specifically aimed at: a) examining the reflection criteria used by pupils; b) identifying any developmental pattern of reflection in the use of these criteria: and c) determining the correlation between writing performance and the pattern of progression in reflection. The findings of the study suggest that the pupils made use of a number of criteria which can be grouped into three categories according to the extent of their approximation to the concept of reflection and their focus on the writing pieces being reflected on. In terms of progression, it was found that a large number of pupils were considered mixed in their reflection, a third showed positive progression, while a small number failed to progress. The correlation between the pupils' writing performance and their progression in reflection was found to be significant, especially among female pupils. The implications of the findings, among others, are that: a) the concept of reflection within portfolio assessment is generally practicable among the young learners in the context of Brunei Darussalam; b) some evidence for positive progression in the use of the selection criteria categories essentially illustrates the pupils' ability to shift the focus of their reflection; c) the evidence to suggest the link between performance in writing and progression in reflection calls for more investigation possibly with the involvement of a larger population sampling. These implications are significant not only for the research community, where there is a clear lack of research of this kind with young learners or learners of English as a foreign language; but also for the Brunei Darussalam context where portfolio assessment is one new approach to assessment being recommended to schools.

The central focus of this study is to explore how learner-centredness is perceived and practised by Chinese primary EFL teachers in the recent national curriculum reform in China, which promotes learner-centred ideology in all school subjects beginning from 2001. Following an introduction to the research context, the study begins with a comprehensive literature review for the purpose of finding out where and how notions of learner-centredness originated and developed in the West from the past to the present, from general education to the field of English language teaching, along with doubts, criticisms, and confusions gathered around the ideology. This is followed by a review of studies on learner-centred educational reforms in developing countries. Chinese philosophical thoughts, traditional educational practices, and recent research efforts into learner-centred teaching are also reviewed to highlight the influence of specific cultural contexts for implementing such an ideology. To investigate the Chinese primary EFL teachers' views on and practices in learner-centredness, this study adopted a mixed mode of research methods using both quantitative and qualitative techniques to collect data in order not only to reveal the scale of impact of the curriculum reform on teachers' views and practices but also to provide an in-depth understanding of teachers' classroom behaviours with regard to learner-centredness. The study involved a large scale questionnaire survey of 1000 primary EFL teachers and 18 classroom observations of teachers acknowledged as being good teachers along with various forms of teacher interviews by which teachers' beliefs and behaviours regarding learner-centredness were studied. The main findings from the study are as follows: (1) Chinese primary EFL teachers overwhelmingly welcomed the new ideology for curriculum change while pedagogically they preferred a middle path - the teacher-directed learner-centred approach (TDLC). (2) Both their beliefs and reported practices reflected a mixture of learner-centred and teacher-centred teaching. (3) Classroom practices of 18 teachers representing good practices at the time of the study showed clear Chinese characteristics of teacher-directed learning centred teaching. Based on the data collected from different sources, the cultural appropriateness of learner-centred teaching in the Chinese context is discussed. A reconceptualisation of the concept for the Chinese primary EFL context is drawn from teachers' views, which contributes to a better understanding of Chinese primary EFL teachers' perceptions and practices of learner-centredness in China. The research has important implications for teacher educators in understanding and supporting teachers for curriculum change and for research into learner-centred education in different contexts as well as for research into primary EFL in other developing countries.

This thesis is an exploratory study that examines the potentiality of teaching phonological awareness, which is a precursor to early reading development in English, in conjunction with letter and simple word reading instruction in Japanese elementary school English education. It is an attempt to answer a question of how letters could be introduced into it without placing too much burden on children. Comprehensive literature review argues that learning to read English requires multiple levels of phonological awareness which Japanese children seem unlikely to develop fully in their L1 acquisition, and that a more enhanced outcome of instruction would be achieved if phonological awareness is taught together with letters and applied for early reading. Two main tools are adopted in this study. The questionnaire survey for 398 elementary school teachers elucidates not only the current elementary school practices but also their beliefs and principles in terms of letter and early reading instruction, both of which are essential for understanding the field but very few studies have investigated: Many teachers present children with letters in English classes but the focused instruction of letters or early reading tends to be avoided considering possible demand for children or due to the teachers’ lack of knowledge and skills for teaching them. Furthermore, from the discussion of the both qualitative observation and qualitative assessment data obtained through the intervention in a Japanese elementary school, the following is revealed: (1) The children show L1-specific characteristics in phonological processing of English such as adding a vowel after a consonant or segmenting after a consonant-vowel combination. (2) The difficulty of phonological awareness tasks for them was slightly different from that for English-speaking counterparts. (3) The children could develop the higher-level phonological awareness skills such as phoneme deletion and substitution through the instruction and have favourable attitude toward it. Thus, this study demonstrated the teachability of phonological awareness and its learnability for Japanese children as well as its importance in English reading acquisition. Finally, some implications not only for classroom practices but also for teacher training are drawn suggesting the necessity of future introduction of it with letters and early reading into Japanese elementary school English classrooms.