Journal of English Language and Linguistics

EFL Pre-service Teachers’ Perceptions about the Advantages and Disadvantages of Peer Team Teaching Experiences

Hassan Saeed Awadh Ba-Udhan — 2023-11-03

This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of EFL pre -service teachers (PTs) towards the advantages and disadvantages of their peer team teaching(PTT) experiences. The sample consisted of 52 participants, with equal numbers of males and females, from the English Language Department of the College of Education at Seiyun University. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were employed to gather the data, including reflective reports and a questionnaire.These findings prove that PTT has numerous benefits for PTs. The five most common advantages included increasing confidence, correcting the mistakes of one another, preparing a better lesson plan, exchanging experiences, skills, and knowledge, and overcoming challenging situations in teaching. On the other hand, some PTs held negative opinions towards PTT. The five most significant disadvantages included disagreement among team members, reliance of some members on other members to do the work on their behalf, not following the lesson plan, late completion of the work due to disagreement among the team members, and unequal division of work among the members. The findings revealed that PTs’ perceptions of PTT’s advantages and disadvantages did not differ significantly based on gender. The researcher recommends that EFL PTs implement PTT during their preparation stage, as it has many benefits for PTs’ professional development.

The Use of COCA to Promote Autonomous Learning among Thai EFL University Students in a Writing Course

Pipittaporn Inpanich — 2023-11-23

This study investigated whether the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) can promote Thai EFL public university students’ autonomous learning in a paragraph writing course. Thirty third-year students participated in this study, and they were from a public university in Bangkok, Thailand. They were asked to complete three writing assignments. Each assignment included the first draft and the final draft, and when they finished the first draft, they were required to use COCA to discover usage patterns and revise their work based on teacher feedback they received. The questionnaire was used to find out self-report data regarding the implementation of COCA on promoting students’ autonomous learning based on the process of autonomous learning by Knowles (1975). Additionally, the semi-structured interview was employed to investigate the students’ perceptions of COCA as a tool for promoting autonomous learning. The results from the questionnaire showed that COCA could be a material resource for learning writing. The semi-structured interview also revealed that the students’ perceptions of using COCA as a tool for promoting autonomous learning were positive because it can increase their confidence in their writing due to the use of authentic data. When they are confident of their writing skills, they are willing to continue practice writing through the use of COCA.

Rhetorical Moves and Metadiscourse in English Abstracts of Research Articles and Masters’ Theses

Wirada Amnuai — 2023-11-24

Rhetorical communication and metadiscoursal devices are important in understanding the rhetorical negotiations involved in academic texts. Research studies comparing these two phases of the analysis of English abstracts of research articles and Masters’ theses written by non-native English writers are limited. Three corpora of abstracts in the field of business were analyzed for their rhetorical moves by using Hyland’s (2000) model and metadiscourse markers in the moves by using Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse taxonomy. Some striking similarities and differences were found among the three sets of data. Purpose, Method, and Product moves were found with different degrees of occurrences, while the Introduction and Conclusion moves occurred infrequently. The employment of interactive devices outnumbered the interactional devices. Transitions and self-mention were the most frequent markers in the international corpus, while frame markers and attitude markers were found extensively in the two Thai-based corpora. The findings of the analysis of the two related genres shed light on the genre variations which were derived from genre-specific features. This can be ascribed to the dynamic nature of research articles as a professional genre and theses as an educational genre. Additionally, the study provides inexperienced non-native writers with a deeper understanding of the rhetorical structure and metadiscourse devices realized in research articles and theses.

Using Dilemma Scenarios in English Education to Enhance Undergraduate Students’ Speaking Skills and Perceptions

Nipawan Narueprempree — 2023-11-28

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of using dilemma scenarios in the
English education curriculum for improving undergraduate students' speaking abilities and
perceptions of English learning. 45 undergraduate students from a public university in northern
Thailand took "Listening and Speaking in Daily Life" in the first semester. A pretest-posttest
design was used in the study, which was supplemented by a twenty-item questionnaire. The
findings demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in speaking proficiency, as seen
by post-test scores that increased from an average of 17.80 to 23.07. The questionnaire reply
emphasized the pupils' strong impressions even further, with an average perception level of
4.23 on a five-point Likert scale. The capacity of the scenarios to effectively portray real-life
situations earned the most favourable evaluation, with an average score of 4.51. Furthermore,
students reported greater vocabulary learning, enhanced critical thinking abilities, and a
preference for the dilemma scenario methodology over traditional educational approaches. In
conclusion, this study indicates the educational importance of employing dilemma situations
in English instruction, emphasizing its ability to develop abilities and foster positive learning
perspectives among students. Dilemma scenarios are used in this study to provide students with
scenarios that call for serious thought and decision-making between possibilities. The purpose
of these scenarios is to imitate real-world circumstances where definitive answers are
frequently unavailable. This forces students to think more deeply and analytically while
expressing their reasoning in English. According to the study's findings, using dilemma
scenarios can help Thai undergraduate students improve their speaking abilities considerably
and give them a more engaging and hands-on English language education that is in line with
the needs of international communication.

Exploring the Virtual Linguistic Landscape of Chinese University Websites: A Focus on Internationalization and Multilingualism

LI JINZHEN — 2023-11-29

This study explores the Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) in Chinese higher education, emphasizing the strong government focus on internationalization. It investigates the language choices of the top 100 Chinese university websites and their information functions. Findings reveal that the majority (87%) of these websites are bilingual, using simplified/traditional Chinese and English. Additionally, 7% take a multilingual approach, employing simplified Chinese, English, and other foreign languages. A minority (6%) sticks to monolingualism. These websites disseminate various information categories, including general university details, admissions, academic units, research, campus life, international collaborations, academics, training, and talent recruitment. Notably, some websites feature information specific to the Chinese Communist Party and cultural aspects. The prevalence of English content demonstrates top Chinese universities’ efforts to engage with the global community and enhance their international reputation. These findings add more understanding of multilingualism and the roles of English in cyberspace such as websites.

Production of Politeness by Myanmar (Burmese) Native Speakers in Requests

Wai Yan Min Oo — 2023-12-06

This research aims to examine the production of politeness in Myanmar (Burmese) native speakers via the request speech act. The politeness theory of Brown and Levison (1987) was deployed to investigate the responses elicited from the informants. The data consists of quantitative approach (Discourse completion test). Forty-nine male and female Myanmar (Burmese) native speakers with different ages and educational backgrounds responded to the questionnaire. The findings of this research argued for the adequacy of the theories of Brown and Levison (1987) for the Myanmar (Burmese) context. In addition, a new politeness strategy, "using politeness markers," was suggested. Employments of politeness strategies in making the requests varied depending on the different social variables. Three characteristics of using politeness strategies by Myanmar (Burmese) native speakers are also laid out. The framework of politeness production in the request by Myanmar (Burmese) native speakers was proposed to fulfill the goal of third-wave politeness research.

Judgements of EFL Students on English Stress Placement

Samrurng Tuengkun — 2023-12-21

The purposes of the study were to investigate the knowledge related to the stress in English at the word level and the sentence level gained by 2^nd – 4^th year Thai students majoring in English and to compare the scores of the knowledge test obtained by the students with different years of their study and different faculties of their affiliations. The randomly selected sample consisted of 190 participants out of 321 volunteers, the 2^nd - 4^th year English majors. The research instrument was a Test to Measure the Knowledge of English Stress (TMKES) at the word and sentence levels used to collect the data, and the statistics that were utilized to analyze the data included frequency, mean, standard deviations, and One-Way ANOVA. The findings of the study showed that students who took the test were able to score over half of the total on average. The students’ competence in English stress was not significantly different due to their different years of study. However, the students who were affiliated with different faculties had the significantly different competence in English word stress excluding English sentence stress. Additionally, when the scores of both the word stress and the sentence stress were combined, there was a statistically significant difference owing to the distinguishable affiliations.

Effective English Speaking and Writing Strategies of Chinese Working Staff

ShaSha Zhang — 2023-12-21

The purposes of this study were to 1) investigate the effective English speaking and writing strategies of Chinese working staff, and 2) compare the effective strategies of participants with different genders, and ages. The participants were 92 working staff at Dongming Administrative Service Management Center, Dongming county, Shandong province, China. Other 4 persons, 2 males and 2 females, were interviewees. The researcher employed questionnaires and a semi-structure interview to collect the data from those officers. The findings revealed that the 15 speaking strategies and 15 writing strategies were their moderate effective strategies. Their top 3 speaking strategies were 1) telling the interlocutor to speak slowly, 2) practicing questioning and answering, and 3) expressing not understanding; while their top 3 writing strategies were 1) learning writing with correct grammar from teachers, 2) writing after models, and 3) memorizing sentence structures. When comparing those strategies by sex and age, the researcher found that the participants with different genders and ages rated those strategies moderate effective. However, their top three speaking and writing strategies were different.