This study was an examination of peer review use in English composition courses at a Japanese university. Approximately 100 students in four writing classes engaged in four modes of peer review modes: face-to-face, handwritten (both on-draft and using an evaluation sheet), and computer-assisted. The learners in the study represented a range of proficiencies, from lower-intermediate to advanced, so the assigned writing passages were limited to single paragraphs rather than full-length essays, which has typically been the case in prior research in this area. Each peer review session was preceded by training in peer review, including modeling and whole-class editing, as well as suggestions for each particular mode the learners participated in. After each session, students completed questionnaires in order to assess their evaluations of the activities, both as reviewers and comment receivers. The questionnaire data were then analyzed using a variety of statistical methods--including Rasch analysis descriptive statistics, and parametric and non-parametric measures--first to validate the questionnaire instrument, and second to ascertain the degree to which each peer review modes was viewed favorably or unfavorably received by the participants. Additionally, the participants' written drafts and peer comments were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed in order to answer several research questions that focused on: the number and type of peer suggestions the learners made in each mode, the number and type of suggestions that were incorporated into later drafts by the authors, the degree to which suggestions and revisions were affected by learner proficiency, and the accuracy of the peer suggestions. For the research questions concerned with learner evaluations of the peer review modes, findings were mixed. The participants responded favorably to reading others' drafts and receiving comments, but they were less comfortable reviewing and making suggestions for their peers. Computer-assisted peer review was the most positively received overall, particularly from those in the High Proficiency Group. Person measures for Low Proficiency learners, on the other hand, were generally higher for on-draft peer review, while those for Intermediate Proficiency participants tended not to indicate strong endorsement for any particular mode. In order to answer the next set of research questions, the participants' drafts and peer suggestions were analyzed. Most of the learners' suggestions, particularly for those in the Low Proficiency Group, tended to be local in nature, concerning such areas as word choice, grammar, and mechanics; fewer suggestions were made at the sentence- or whole-text-level. In terms of incorporation of suggestion by authors into later drafts, oral peer review led to the highest rate of suggested revisions while review using an evaluation sheet of guided questions resulted in the lowest rate. Learner proficiency did not have a significant bearing on suggestions or revisions, except in the case of the High Proficiency Group, whose members made significantly more suggestions during computer-assisted peer review than during the other modes. Finally, over 73% of peer suggestions were determined to be accurate across all four modes. These findings indicate that peer review can work on even the most limited of scales with learners of even modest language proficiency. No single mode of peer review succeeded in all areas, and instructors are encouraged to blend different modes if possible. However, if a single mode is preferred or required, computer-assisted review is strong choice. / CITE/Language Arts

This study is a qualitative inquiry of eight mid-career second language (L2) teachers’ identity evolution. These teachers have or had full-time or tenured teaching experience in secondary schools in Japan. Since they were mid- and later career teachers, they have explored their development, what they are now, and why they keep growing. They have all made meaningful voluntary changes in their professional lives. To make meaningful voluntary changes at moments of transitions, the teachers have made choices and negotiated, or juggled, their identities. They are successful teachers who have tenaciously pursued what matters to themselves professionally throughout their lives. One unfilled niche in the L2 teacher development and education is research on redefining L2 teachers who began their careers in secondary education in Japan, make meaningful voluntary changes in mid-career, and make apparently difficult work situations negotiable. The three purposes of this study are to (a) explore why and how L2 teachers’ identity evolution and their professional growth at mid-career happen; (b) learn more about the complexity of teacher change mechanisms at mid-career, and; (c) highlight ways that teachers whose professional development has stalled can grow out of their stagnation by examining the lives of successful mid-career and later career teachers. Eight L2 teachers participated in this study, recruited between 2005 and 2010. Interviews are the main source of data collection. I triangulated the data with email exchanges, class visits, and public documents such as Curriculum Vitae, syllabi, and curriculum descriptions given to students in a current or former class, handouts used in class, and published research articles. The data analysis was grounded in Riessman’s (2008) thematic and structural narrative analysis for identity evolution. Using these frameworks, I analyzed the data by(a) looking for stories and events in the telling as well as searching for identity negotiation and evolution with the participants with thematic analysis, which applied to all the participants, and (b) seeking contextual, discursive, and interpersonal cohesion and meanings with structural narrative analysis, which was applied to one participant. What each participant deemed important determined what kind of L2 teacher they wanted to become. With their efforts to keep evolving as L2 teachers through reflection, action, and negotiation they became consciously aware of what mattered to them. Their conscious awareness prompted them to exercise agency to plan meaningful changes. / Teaching & Learning

The writing of this thesis was guided·by the question "how does one teach English as a second language through theater?" This thesis.contains the pedagogical research basis for teaching English as second language, a script with supporting materials for teaching English as a second language, and a playwright's.journal detailing the writing process for the dramatic work. Within the pedagogical research, there is a comparison between the different founding fathers of modem TESL methodologies, a comparison between the different methodologies, and a practical exploration of teaching English as a second language through Task Based Instruction. The script itself is the lyrical book for a ten day, episodic musical for Spanish speaking 3rd and 4th graders. The dramatic work was written to be performed in a voluntary extracurricular context, such as an ESL summer camp.

<p dir="ltr">The purpose of this three-paper dissertation is to examine the effect of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework-informed use of social media on language learning through a meta-analysis and two mixed-method studies. The first paper is a meta-analysis that examines the overall effect of social media use on language learning and the factors that moderate the effect. The second paper is a mixed-method study to investigate the effect of the Community of Inquiry-informed use of Facebook discussion activities on English speaking. The third paper is a mixed-method study to examine the effect of the Community of Inquiry-informed use of Facebook discussion activities on English writing. The combined results expanded our understanding of the overall effect of the use of social media on language learning and the applicability of the CoI framework in social media platforms. Finally, the last chapter synthesized the findings across three papers and presented implications for research and practice. </p><p><br></p>

With the dominance of the Web in education and English language learning, new literacies have emerged. This thesis is motivated by the assumption that these literacies need to be integrated into the Egyptian pre-service EFL teacher education programmes so that EFL student teachers can cope with the new reality of language teaching/learning. Therefore, the main objective of the present study is to develop a theoretical understanding of the relationship between Web-based new literacies and the teaching of TESOL in a way that supports the possibility of expanding Egyptian pre-service EFL student teachers’ language-related literacy practices by integrating some Web-based new literacies into their education programme, with specific reference to the context of Assiut University College of Education (AUCOE). This requires accomplishing minor objectives represented in: (1) identifying the range of those Web-based new literacies that Egyptian EFL student teachers need in this ICT-dominated age; (2) identifying those Web-based facilities beneficial to them, and why and how they can be beneficial; and (3) generating framework for EFL curriculum design based on both literature and empirical data. To accomplish this, a design-based research (DBR) methodology drawing on a pragmatic epistemology is developed and employed as the main research paradigm informing this design study. Thus, the research design involves a flexible three-stage research framework: (1) the preliminary phase, which acts as a theoretical and empirical foundation for the whole study, and informs a preliminary design framework; it involves reviewing relevant literature and obtaining empirical data through documentary analysis (100 documents), online questionnaire (n=50), and semi-structured interviews (n=19); (2) the prototyping phase that involves two iterations (36 participants in the first iteration, and 30 in the second) conducted in the Egyptian context to test the proposed design framework. Each iteration acts as a micro-cycle of the whole design study, and thus involves its own objectives, learning design, research methodology and procedures (in line with the main DBR methodology), and results; (3) the assessment/reflective phase which, based on the prototyping phase results, presents a final design framework for expanding EFL student teachers’ language-related literacy practices. This has implications for the EFL curriculum design process within the Egyptian context in general, and AUCOE in particular. Results indicate that throughout the two iterations, it has become evident that the process of expanding EFL student teachers’ language-related literacy practices by integrating some Web-based new literacies into the AUCOE pre-service programme is quite feasible once some design principles are considered. Some significant conclusions and educational implications are provided, along with some main contributions to knowledge in TESOL/TEFL, language-learning theory, research methodology, and educational practice as far as the Egyptian context of pre-service EFL teacher education is concerned.

This study has been undertaken using an interpretive methodology in order to examine the socially constructed views of Saudi EFL teachers and their decision-making with regards to the appropriate cultural models for EFL textbooks in Saudi public schools. The study also examines the factors affecting the teachers’ views and how they apply their beliefs in their classrooms. In addition, the study will also examine if the Saudi EFL teachers have any concerns about what they have been through and examined and accordingly investigates how they address their pedagogical decision-making in the classroom. Moreover, this study is interested in looking at EFL teachers as local teachers teaching a global language. In view of the exploratory nature of this study and its context-specificity, the naturalistic orientation of interpretive and social constructivism as an epistemological stance were selected. The research design employed a concurrent mixed methods design using an adapted version of Cresswell (1996). In this study, the participants were Saudi Arabian EFL teachers from one city in Saudi Arabia teaching in all of the three public education levels (primary, intermediate and secondary). The data collected were both qualitative (interviews and open-ended questionnaires) and quantitative (close-ended questionnaires). For the interviews, 14 male and female teachers equally interviewed, whereas for the questionnaires 280 male and female participated. The data collection of both data qualitative and quantitative occurred at the same time during my field journey in 2009 in Saudi Arabia. I used the SPSS descriptive statistics for the analysing the quantitative data and used exploratory content analysis for the qualitative data. The study findings revealed that the Saudi EFL teachers were not satisfied with the cultural content currently promoted in the Textbooks as they inappropriately contradict the local cultural values. Thus, they believe that for a better cultural content, the textbooks should therefore include a mixture of different cultures that do not mismatch with the local. And as they are controlled by some educational and social factors, they are limited to practice what they think is appropriate to apply in the classroom, therefore, their decision-making in this regards to some extent are to be controlled. In addition, the findings of the current study revealed that the Saudi EFL teachers show their openness to other cultures based on their glocal position as local Saudis teaching a global language. The conclusion of the study has some suggestion and implications to improve the cultural content of the EFL textbooks as well as implications for the EFL teachers in general and their practices and decision-making with regards to the textbook. Furthermore, the study proposed a model for the appropriate EFL textbooks for each educational level and can be applied locally in the Saudi context and globally for other similar context around the world.

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore the literacy practices of marginalized adolescent youth in India and the relationship of these practices to imagination and identity construction. More than just tools for communication, language and literacy practices allow individuals to express their selves and identities as they voice their thoughts, negotiate meaning (Dyson & Genishi, 2005; Gee, 2003), and enact themselves within society (Janks, 2010; New London Group, 1996). This qualitative case study took place in Lucknow, India; the subjects were a group of adolescent girls at a nonprofit all-girls school in a seventh-grade classroom. Using discourse analysis, the data revealed the ways in which the girls used literacy to agentively position themselves as actual selves in their societies, as imagined social selves and others, in relationship to social others, and in imagined events.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the phonetic production of fricatives across differing word positions and task types. Further knowledge about the fricative production of second language learners of English would potentially improve the ability to teach correct pronunciation and improve the productivity of second language programs. All participants in this study were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese with English as their second language. A total of 12 subjects participated, all of whom had English proficiency ratings ranging from novice to advanced. The speakers were between 21-51 years of age, with each speaker having between 2 to 6 years of experience learning English in their country of origin. Using acoustic and spectral moment analyses, the acoustic nature of four types of fricative productions (/f/, /θ/, /s/, and /ʃ/) were analyzed as a function of linguistic task type and word position. Although a number of measures were found to differ significantly as a function of word position and task type, the majority of statistical analyses were not found to be significant. This lack of significance may be due to the specific methodology used, the speakers’ atypical voicing patterns, and/or decreased length of sound productions. Findings of this study may indicate that second language learners’ production of fricatives vary minimally across differing word positions and task types.

This thesis documents my exploration of professional development of four experienced English language teachers of diverse background taking the MA TESOL programme at the University of Manchester. Having considered professional development to be about change construed broadly to professional identity and teacher beliefs, I explored it through a series of individual in-depth interviews held throughout the programme. The majority of the interviews focused on the teachers' ongoing life and development and allowed the teachers space to make meaning of what they were going through and how they were developing as they engaged in the programme. On the basis of the interviews, stories about the teachers and their year were constructed. Within the stories, I synthesized what I had learned about the teachers' experience and highlighted the changes that I could see had happened to their professional identity and teacher beliefs. The stories provide a vivid example of professional development of experienced English language teachers through a master's degree. They also bring to the fore the significance of future-directed thoughts for how teachers develop professionally, which is rarely acknowledged in the existing literature. I further use the stories as a ground to conceptualize professional development of the four teachers to account for the important role their thoughts about the future played in it. Using the concepts of imagined identity and antenarrative, which I borrow from the literature, I describe it as an iterative pursuit of an ever-evolving imagined identity, or identities, and antenarrative, or antenarratives. Finally, I examine the cases using the conceptualization as a lens and offer some further insights about professional development in TESOL.

Informed by, and seeking to contribute to, discussions about appropriate methodology (e.g. Holliday, 1994), my study as reported in this thesis was concerned with appropriacy of paradigms in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). It explored practitioner perspectives in Thai higher education (HE) in this era when English has become 'the' main international language for intercultural communication (IC). This linkage between English as an international language (EIL) and IC is evident in the strategy of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) - of which Thailand was a founding member in 1967 - for greater economic, cultural and socio-political integration among its members. For practitioners like me, this regional strategic move in conjunction with Thai policies and curricular documentation raises questions about the appropriacy of the established practices of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Thailand. My multi-method qualitative case study addressed such questions by exploring the perspectives of three Thai-national teachers of English working in a Thai public university regarding the purposes of, and assumptions underpinning, their teaching of English. As informed by an understanding of their perspectives, I then considered the possible influences which might have shaped these perspectives. The study identified the teachers' main purposes to be short-term, instrumental ones - i.e. for academic study and examination preparation purposes. As such, they tended not to attach much value to the teaching of the cultural dimension (i.e. the target culture of native English speakers [NESs], the students' home cultures and other cultures) or intercultural dimension (i.e. knowledge, skills and mindset needed for engaging people from differing cultural backgrounds). These purposes were underpinned by assumptions they held about the NES linguistic norms as testable norms in TEFL and Teaching English for Academic Purposes (TEAP). The teachers seemed unfamiliar with alternative paradigms - such as Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL) - that might align top-level policy statements and actual classroom practices. This unfamiliarity suggests the inadequacy of the teachers' educational and professional development experiences. The influences from their institution such as exams-oriented and English-medium academic agendas also had repercussions for the teachers' perspectives. Stepping back from the teachers' perspectives, my study suggested discourse inconsistencies across Thai HE regarding paradigms and purposes of TESOL. This situation is unhelpful vis-à-vis the ASEAN foregrounding of EIL for IC, and the consequent need, through TESOL, to prepare Thai students to engage in IC with people within and beyond ASEAN. My study has implications for a direction of change for TESOL in the Thai HE and possibly for similar contexts elsewhere. It offers some suggestions about teacher education that can be supportive of reorienting TESOL towards appropriate and purposeful paradigms.