This book examines the pronunciation goals of teachers, course leaders, and learners on a ten-week UK pre-sessional access course, particularly with regard to suprasegmental instruction and target of instruction on how these goals are reflected in pronunciation assessment, and how teacher goals are informed by their attitudes and beliefs. A mixed methods approach, including direct observation and semi-structured interviews, is employed to address the area of enquiry. Results show a lack of clarity of course goals. Although there is a firm emphasis on suprasegmental instruction, in semi-structured interviews, teachers report a lack of clear course goals and guidance.
This book introduces the reader to the ongoing research on teaching English as a foreign language and highlights recent trends in theories of acquisition, teaching and development of communication and intercultural skills. As English as a third language is increasingly recognised as a common world reality, research around this particular subject certainly provides useful answers to questions regarding the most desirable pedagogical method when teaching it at school, the strategies that students use when learning foreign languages
This book constitutes another step of the linguistic community in translating cognitive linguistics research into a set of guidelines applicable in the foreign language classroom. The authors, language scholars, and experienced practitioners discuss a collection of both more theoretical and practical issues from the area of second and foreign language pedagogy. These are matters that not only enhance our comprehension of particular grammatical and lexical problems, but also lead to the improvement of the efficiency of teaching a foreign language.
This book examines a ubiquitous, yet under-researched, area of language education, i.e., language teachers' use of curriculum materials. It particularly focuses on EFL teachers' use of prescribed curriculum materials in higher education in Mainland China and presents a qualitative, multi-case study involving four Chinese EFL teachers and eight students (two students from each teacher’s class) at one university in Mainland China. Drawing on data from pre-lesson and post-lesson interviews with the teachers, lesson observations, and documents in three consecutive semesters at the target university, the book delineates the processes of materials use in classroom settings.
This book introduces the concept of the ‘native speaker’ frame: a perceptual filter within English Language Teaching (ELT) which views the linguistic and cultural norms and the educational technology of the anglophone West as being normative, while the norms and practices of non-Western countries are viewed as deficient. Based on a rich source of ethnographic data, and employing a frame analysis approach, it investigates the ways in which this ‘native-speaker’ framing influenced the construction and operation of a Japanese university EFL program.