Asian English Language Classrooms

Asian English Language
Classrooms
The teaching of English in the Asian context is always challenging and dynamic
because both teachers and learners have diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Equally important, where English is not widely used outside the classroom, Eng-
lish language classrooms are an authentic site of learner engagement. For these
reasons, for all those concerned with contemporary English language teaching
(ELT) in Asia, Asian English Language Classrooms: Where Theory and Practice
Meet, provides an account of theoretical orientations and practices in the teach-
ing of English to multilingual speakers whose primary language is not English.
While covering the fundamental ELT areas (e.g., the teaching of language skills,
educational literature, the use of technology in ELT, the role of pragmatics in
ELT, social psychology of the language classroom, and language classroom man-
agement) with which every language teacher and teacher trainer must be con-
cerned, this volume showcases how particular orientations shape ELT practices.
We believe that practicing English teachers must have a heightened awareness of
the theory behind their practice. At the same time, the theoretical stance must be
firmly anchored in actual classrooms. Containing newly commissioned chapters
written by well-regarded and emerging scholars, this book will appeal not only to
beginning teachers or teachers in training but also to established teachers around
Asia where English is used as a lingua franca. If you are a student teacher of English
or an English teacher who would like to see what other progressive teachers like
you are doing across Asia, this is the book you have been looking for.
Handoyo Puji Widodo, PhD is an Associate Professor at the English Language

Center, Shantou University. He has published internationally in refereed journals
and volumes.
Alistair Wood, PhD is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at

Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He has spent more than 20 years teaching English
for Specific Purposes (ESP) and applied linguistics in Asia, and published in such
journals as Applied Linguistics and English for Specific Purposes.
Deepti Gupta, PhD is a Professor at Panjab University, India. Her PhD was in
ELT. In addition to her 30-year teaching experience, Gupta has authored three
books and articles in numerous national and international journals (e.g., IATEFL
Issues, Asian EFL Journal, Profile, ICFAI, Diviner, and ELT Journal).
Routledge Research in Language Education
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
The Routledge Research in Language Education series provides a platform for

established and emerging scholars to present their latest research and discuss key
issues in language education. This series welcomes books on all areas of lan-
guage teaching and learning, including but not limited to language education
policy and politics, multilingualism, literacy, L1, L2 or foreign language acquisi-
tion, curriculum, classroom practice, pedagogy, teaching materials, and language
teacher education and development. Books in the series are not limited to the
discussion of the teaching and learning of English only.
Books in the series include:

Team Teaching and Team Learning in the Language Classroom
Collaboration for Innovation in ELT
Edited by Akira Tajino, Tim Stewart and David Dalsky
Teaching EFL Learners Shadowing for Listening

Developing Learners’ Bottom-Up Skills
Yo Hamada
Teacher Agency and Policy Response in English Language Teaching

Edited by Patrick C. L. Ng and Esther F. Boucher-Yip
The Space and Practice of Reading

A Case Study of Reading and Social Class in Singapore
Chin Ee Loh
Asian English Language Classrooms

Where Theory and Practice Meet
Edited by Handoyo Puji Widodo, Alistair Wood and Deepti Gupta
Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages

A History of Language Education, Assessment and Policy in Britain
Nicola McLelland
Asian English Language
Classrooms
Where Theory and Practice Meet
Edited by Handoyo Puji Widodo,

Alistair Wood and Deepti Gupta
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Handoyo Puji Widodo, Alistair
Wood and Deepti Gupta; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Handoyo Puji Widodo, Alistair Wood and Deepti Gupta
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-80086-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75524-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
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Contents
List of contributors vii

Acknowledgements xiii
Preface xiv
1 Introduction: re-contextualizing English language teaching

in Asia today 1
HANDOYO PUJI WIDODO, ALISTAIR WOOD, AND DEEPTI GUPTA
2 Teaching listening in pre-tertiary and tertiary English

education in Japan 14
TOMOKO KURITA
3 Developing speaking for intercultural communication:

textbooks with critical and creative approaches 30
LIXIAN JIN AND MARTIN CORTAZZI
4 Teaching reading through multimodal texts 49

EVELINE CHAN AND ZUOCHENG ZHANG
5 Supplementing extensive reading for Japanese EFL learners 71

MEREDITH STEPHENS
6 Teaching writing to multilingual learners using the genre-

based approach 83
JUSTINA ONG
7 Teaching communicative vocabulary 98

ANNA SIYANOVA-CHANTURIA AND PAUL NATION
8 What EFL teachers should know about online grammar tasks 113
REIMA AL-JARF
vi Contents
9 Teaching pronunciation to adult learners of English 131
KAREN STEFFEN CHUNG
10 Fluency in language classrooms: extensive listening

and reading 150
ALISTAIR WOOD
11 Literature in an age of distraction 164

ALAN MALEY
12 Expressing study abroad experiences in second language

haiku writing: theoretical and practical implications for
teaching haiku composition in Asian EFL classrooms 180
ATSUSHI IIDA
13 Exploring ICT tools in English language learning:

language, technology, and the globalized classroom 192
PAOLO NINO VALDEZ, NESLIE CAROL C. TAN,
AND LINDSEY NG-TAN
14 The use of photo story in the Indonesian English language

classroom: working with multimodal tasks 203
NUR ARIFAH DRAJATI, SRI REJEKI MURTININGSIH, WINDA
HAPSARI, AND HASTI RAHMANINGTYAS
15 Social psychology of the language classroom 216

HAMZEH MORADI AND DEEPTI GUPTA
16 The role of pragmatics in teaching English as an additional

language 233
ANDREW D. COHEN
17 Language classroom management 254

ZEKIYE MÜGE TAVIL AND ARIF SARIÇOBAN
Index 268
Contributors
Reima Al-Jarf taught ESL, ESP, and translation for 26 years. She has published over
220 books, ebooks, book chapters, encyclopedia, and journals articles in peer-
reviewed international and national journals and conference proceedings. She
has given 325 conference presentations and 50 workshops in 69 countries.
She is a member of 22 international and national professional organizations.
She reviews articles for numerous peer-reviewed international journals includ-
ing some ISI journals. She has won three Excellence in Teaching Awards and
the Best Faculty Website Award at King Saud University, College of Lan-
guages and Translation, Department and the two KSU women’s campuses.
Eveline Chan is a senior lecturer in English and literacies education, Univer-

sity of New England, Australia. Eveline has worked in language education for
over two decades, teaching English as an additional language (EAL) students
in school and tertiary contexts, and in mainstream and Teachers of English
to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher education programs. Her
research interests include language and literacy development (L1, L2/EAL),
literacy pedagogy and assessment, classroom discourse analysis, multimodal
representations of curriculum knowledge, image-language interaction in mul-
timodal texts, and reading in hypertext environments.
Karen Steffen Chung (史嘉琳Shı̌ Jiālín), originally from St. Paul, Minnesota,
USA, has taught English and linguistics in the Department of Foreign Lan-
guages and Literatures of National Taiwan University since 1990; her cur-
rent rank is associate professor. Her educational background includes a BA
in East Asian languages from the University of Minnesota, 1976; an MA in
East Asian studies from Princeton University, 1981; and a PhD in Linguis-
tics from Leiden University, 2004. The title of her dissertation is “Mandarin
Compound Verbs.”
Andrew D. Cohen is an emeritus professor of second language studies from

the University of Minnesota, living now in Oakland, CA. Cohen was a Peace
Corps volunteer in rural community development with the Aymara Indians in
Bolivia (1965–1968), taught four years at UCLA and 16 at Hebrew University
of Jerusalem before spending 22 years at the University of Minnesota. He is
viii Contributors
co-editor of Language Learning Strategies (OUP, 2007), author of Strategies
in Learning and Using a Second Language (Routledge, 2011), and co-author
of Teaching and Learning Pragmatics: Where Language and Culture Meet
(Routledge, 2014). His most recent book, Learning Pragmatics from Native
and Non-Native Language Teachers, is forthcoming from Multilingual Matters.
Aside from his books and his numerous chapters and articles on research meth-
ods, language assessment, bilingual education, language learner strategies, and
pragmatics, Cohen has studied 12 languages, with Mandarin being the latest.
Martin Cortazzi is a visiting professor at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo,

China. He has taught and trained teachers in Britain, China, Lebanon, Tur-
key, Iran, Malaysia, Norway, Cyprus, and elsewhere. He has published widely
on aspects of applied linguistics, education, narrative, and metaphor analysis.
For many years, Martin Cortazzi and Lixian Jin have been researching lin-
guistic, cultural, and educational issues related to Chinese learners and edited
Researching Chinese Learners, Skills, Perceptions and Intercultural Adaptations
(2011, Palgrave Macmillan).
Nur Arifah Drajati earned a BA in English education from Sebelas Maret Uni-
versity (UNS Surakarta) in 1999. She had taught English at SMA Labschool
Jakarta for 17 years. She currently teaches postgraduate students at UNS Sura-
karta. In 2008, she completed her MA at Jakarta State University, and in
2013, she completed her PhD in English education at the same university.
She is also a member of the TEFLIN Board (The Association of Teachers of
English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia, Teacher Development Division).
Her research interests lie in technology in language learning, action research,
and reading difficulty.
Deepti Gupta is a professor at Panjab University, India. Her PhD was in Eng-
lish language teaching (ELT). In addition to her 30-year teaching experience,
Gupta has authored three books and articles in numerous national and inter-
national journals (e.g., IATEFL Issues, Asian EFL Journal, Profile, ICFAI,
Diviner, and ELT Journal). She has conducted more than a hundred work-
shops and teacher training programs. She helps people become empowered
through cognitive training. As a teacher, Gupta believes that counseling peo-
ple towards a stronger life is part of her profile.
Winda Hapsari is an English teacher and teacher trainer at Lembaga Bahasa dan
Pendidikan Profesional LIA, a language course institute based in Indonesia.
She earned her master’s degree in educational psychology from Universitas
Indonesia. She has published her work in the area of ELT with TESOL Inc. and
TEFLIN Journal. Her research interests include educational psychology, Eng-
lish language pedagogies, teacher professional development, and motivation.
Atsushi Iida is an associate professor in the University Education Center at

Gunma University, Japan. He was awarded his PhD in English composition
Contributors ix
and TESOL at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania (PA),
USA. His research interests include second language writing, literature in
second language education, and writing for academic publication. He has
published his work in various journals including System, Scientific Study of Lit-
erature, English Teaching Forum, Asian EFL Journal, and Assessing Writing.
Lixian Jin is Chair Professor in Applied Linguistics and Head of School of Eng-
lish at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. She has taught English
and linguistics and led international research teams in Britain, Hong Kong,
Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, and China. Her publications and research inter-
ests are in these areas and bilingual clinical assessments, narrative, and meta-
phor analysis. She has also served as an editor or an executive editorial member
on a number of international journals. Lixian Jin and Martin Cortazzi edited
and contributed to Researching Cultures of Learning: International Perspec-
tives on Language Learning and Education (2013) and Researching Intercul-
tural Learning: Investigations in Language and Education (2013, Palgrave
Macmillan).
Tomoko Kurita teaches English at the Jikei University School of Medicine, Jis-
sen Women’s University Junior College, and Tokyo Kasei University, Japan.
She graduated from Teachers College Columbia University’s MA TESOL
program. She has taught English at elementary schools, junior and senior high
schools, and universities in Japan. Some of her research interests include lis-
tening, project-based learning, and learner autonomy.
Alan Maley has been involved with ELT for over 50 years. He worked with the Brit-
ish Council in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, China, and India (1962–1988)
before taking over as director-general of the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge
(1988–1993). He then worked in university posts in Singapore (1993–1998),
Thailand (1999–2004), Malaysia, and Vietnam (2004–2011). He is now a
freelance consultant and writer. He has published over 50 books and numerous
articles. He is a past president of IATEFL, and recipient of the ELTons Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2012. He is a co-founder of the C Group (http://thecre
ativitygroup.weebly.com/).
Hamzeh Moradi holds a Ph. D in Linguistics from Panjab University of India.

He works as a lecturer at the Department of English Language and Litera-
ture, at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran. He has several years of
experience in teaching linguistics and English as a foreign/second language at
various institutions. He has demonstrated commitment in research, mainly in
the areas of linguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, bilingualism, second
language acquisition, language and technology, and English language teaching.
He has published several manuscripts in international peer-reviewed journals.
Sri Rejeki Murtiningsih, called Jackie, received her BA in English educa-

tion from Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. She earned her master’s degree in
x Contributors
education from Flinders University of South Australia. After receiving her
PhD in education from the University of Oklahoma, Murtiningsih returned
to Indonesia and started teaching in the English Education Department at
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. Her research interests include teach-
ing ESL/English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading and writing, reflective
practice, service learning, and curriculum development.
Paul Nation is an emeritus professor of applied linguistics in the School of Lin-

guistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington,
New Zealand. His books on vocabulary include Teaching and Learning Vocab-
ulary (1990) and Researching and Analysing Vocabulary (2011) (with Stuart
Webb), both from Heinle Cengage Learning. His latest book on vocabulary
is Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (second edition 2013) pub-
lished by Cambridge University Press. Two books strongly directed towards
teachers appeared in 2013 from Compass Media in Seoul: What Should Every
ESL Teacher Know? (available free from www.compasspub.com/ESLTK) and
What Should Every EFL Teacher Know? He is also a co-author of Reading
for Speed and Fluency. Books 1–4 (With C. Malarcher, 2007; Seoul: Compass
Publishing).
Lindsey Ng-Tan is a lecturer in the Department of English and Applied Lin-

guistics at De La Salle University-Manila (DLSU) where she teaches Eng-
lish communication, speech communication, and English research courses.
She finished a masters in teaching English language (DLSU) and is currently
pursuing Japanese language study (Philippine Institute of Japanese Language
and Culture). She was also a speech consultant for four years in SpeechPower
where she taught Speech for Beginners, Speech and Elocution for High
School, English Conversation Fluency, Grammar, Pronunciation, and Reading
Comprehension. Her research interests include computer-assisted language
learning and second language acquisition.
Justina Ong is a lecturer at the Department of English Language and Litera-

ture, National University of Singapore. She was the runner-up of the 2011
Christopher Brumfit PhD thesis award. Her research interests include second
language writing, applied linguistics, and second language acquisition.
Hasti Rahmaningtyas earned her bachelor degree in English language teaching

from the State University of Malang. She obtained her MA in applied linguistics
from the University of Adelaide in 2013. Her research interests are narrative study
and technology in language learning. She is currently teaching at the English
Department of Universitas Negeri Malang.
Arif Sarıçoban has been working as an associate professor of ELT at Hacettepe

University for about 20 years. He is interested in ELT teacher education, test-
ing, materials development, ELT methodology, teaching language skills, and
Contributors xi
educational linguistics. He has authored many textbooks and course books
in ELT, and participated and presented many papers, both in national and
international conferences and symposiums. He is acting as the chief editor of
a prestigious online journal for language and linguistic studies, and also act-
ing as a member of editorial boards and as a reviewer for many national and
international journals.
Anna Siyanova-Chanturia is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics in the School

of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Welling-
ton, New Zealand. Anna works in the fields of second language acquisition,
corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistics. Anna’s primary research interests
include cognitive and psychological aspects of second language acquisition,
learner corpus research, bilingualism, usage-based theories, phraseology, and
vocabulary. In particular, Anna’s research investigates acquisition, processing,
and use of multi-word expressions (e.g., idioms, collocations, binomials, lexi-
cal bundles, multi-word verbs) in a first and second language.
Meredith Stephens is on the faculty in the Department of Comparative Cul-

tures at the Institute of Socio-Arts and Sciences at Tokushima University. She
first studied Linguistics and Japanese at the University of Adelaide and then
pursued a degree in applied linguistics at Macquarie University. Her current
research focuses on English language pedagogy in Japan and cross-cultural
experiences of English language speaking immigrants in Japan.
Neslie Carol C. Tan obtained her masters in English language education in De

La Salle University with a thesis on critical thinking and literacy and an MA
in cultural studies from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, University
of London. Her research interests also include educational technology focus-
ing on computer-assisted language learning, and she has previously presented
papers on this field in international conferences.
Zekiye Müge Tavil is a member of the teaching staff in the Department of English
Language teaching at Gazi University. She received her PhD from the same
university. She is particularly interested in teacher training and development
and teaching language skills. She has presented papers at several conferences
and has published in EFL journals.
Paolo Nino Valdez holds a PhD in linguistics from the Philippine Normal
University, and his dissertation, which delves on culture and code switch-
ing, was a finalist for the Christopher Brumfit Outstanding Dissertation
Award in 2008. He is currently associate professor and former graduate
program coordinator of the Department of English and Applied Linguis-
tics, and external affairs director of the College of Education, De La Salle
University, Manila. His publications have appeared in the Asia Pacific Edu-
cation Researcher, Reflections in English Language Teaching, and Philippine
xii Contributors
Journal of Linguistics, as well as Blackwell’s The Encyclopedia of Applied Lin-
guistics. His research interests are in the areas of bilingual education, critical
pedagogy, and contemporary sociolinguistics.
Handoyo Puji Widodo is an Associate Professor of English Language Center

at Shantou University. Widodo has published extensively in refereed journals
and edited volumes. He has been actively involved in a wide range of (teacher)
professional development activities (e.g., joint research projects & peer men-
toring programs) in Indonesia and overseas. His areas of specialization include
language teaching methodology, language curriculum and materials develop-
ment, systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in language education, and teacher
professional development. His work has been grounded in socio-semiotic,
socio-cognitive, sociocultural, and critical theories of language pedagogies.
Alistair Wood was until recently a senior lecturer in English language and linguis-
tics at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He spent more than 20 years teaching
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and applied linguistics in Asia. His main
research interests are in ESP, scientific English, and Bruneian English, with
publications in Applied Linguistics and English for Specific Purposes, among
other journals. In addition, he was a member of a team running a large multi-
year project by Brunei and the United States helping to upgrade the English
language and English teaching skills of Association of Southeast Asian Nations
English teachers and teacher trainers.
Zuocheng Zhang is a senior lecturer in TESOL Education at the University of

New England, Australia. He teaches TESOL methodology, English as a world
language, and teaching for cultural diversity. His research interests include
business English; TESOL education; multimodality, genre studies, and lan-
guage; and discourse and identity in professional contexts. He has published
extensively in these areas.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the contributors to this volume for their professional commit-
ment to this project, for sharing their creative thoughts with us, and for allowing
us to hear their scholarly voices presented in this work. Our special gratitude
also goes to Christina Low, editor of Routledge Education, Psychology and Lin-
guistics, for encouraging us to proceed with this project, along with a debt of
gratitude to Yuvaneswari Yogaraja and other editorial staff at Routledge who
assisted with the project. We would also like to say thank you to two anonymous
reviewers for their feedback on the initial proposal for the volume. We wish to
extend our sincerest thanks and appreciation to Winnie Cheng at the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University for her assistance at the volume proposal writing stage.
Preface
Despite an increasing number of Asian speakers of English, the English language

is still often seen as a school subject or as a foreign language. However, we feel
assured that Asia is a prospective market for English language teaching (ELT)
enterprises because more and more institutions are concerned about designing
and implementing ELT to help English learners become competent users of the
language and to prepare these learners for English-speaking communities of prac-
tice in Asia and beyond. In line with this, more and more qualified English lan-
guage teachers are needed to enhance the quality of ELT. Years of experience in
ELT have witnessed the fact that Asian English language classrooms are always
uniquely complex and diverse because each of the learning institutions has dif-
fering expectations and holds socio-cultural values that shape the teaching and
learning of English. With this in mind, there is a need to equip language teach-
ers with a solid understanding of principled ELT practices. These practices are
grounded in theoretical orientations (e.g., multimodality, creative writing) and
learners’ and institutional needs.
For these reasons, we initiated this project by inviting contributors who have
experience in ELT in Asia to make this volume possible. As teacher awareness
of experimenting with different approaches and methods in ELT grows in Asia,
where many language teachers are becoming unsatisfied with many current ways
to teach, the volume could provide a focus for conversation. To us, one of the
strengths of this volume is that it provides a wonderful opportunity for emerging
scholars’ voices to be heard. Another strength of the volume is that all the issues
raised in this collective work are about what most of the Asian ELT teachers are
concerned with in the area of ELT. Thus the tone of this volume reflects the
power of English in Asia and the power of Asia in the globalized world, because
in recent years, there have been an increasing number of Asian learners of English
who would like to become members of the global community.
The volume consists of the introduction chapter and a further 16 chapters.
In the introductory chapter, we contend that there is an urgent need for re-
contextualizing today’s ELT in Asia because of language classroom diversity and
complexity. We maintain that classroom diversity and complexity are historically,
socially, and psychologically situated. This re-contextualization aims to enhance
the quantity and quality of ELT and to explore different teaching practices that
Preface xv
make the teaching and learning of English meaningful and relevant to learners’
needs and other stakeholders’ expectations. Therefore, this book makes a sig-
nificant contribution to the field by providing locally grounded information and
ideas for designing and implementing ELT in Asian contexts.
The diversity and complexity of language classrooms challenge language teach-
ers to experiment with different ways to teach and engage learners in differing
texts and tasks. In the 16 chapters, each of the contributors voices a different
perspective on the teaching of language skills, educational literature, or creative
writing; the use of technology in ELT; the role of pragmatics in ELT; social
psychology of the language classroom; and language classroom management. We
hope that these voices can be an inspiration to Asian English language teachers
who are always enthusiastic about new ways to teach English. We also hope that
this volume will attract language teachers to continually make innovations in
language classrooms in order to encourage learners to devote their time, energy,
and effort to develop their English ability and finally participate in Asian and
globalized communities of practice.
1 Introduction
Re-contextualizing English
language teaching in Asia today
Handoyo Puji Widodo, Alistair Wood,
and Deepti Gupta
As echoed in the special issue of the Journal of Multilingual and Multilingual

Development, The Power of English and the Power of Asia: English as Lingua
Franca and in Bilingual and Multilingual Education, Asia is a potential market for
English language education inasmuch as English language teaching (ELT) indus-
tries have been burgeoning for a number of reasons. To begin with, “the number
of [non-native Asian speakers] has already surpassed that of native speakers, if we
count the number of people who use English as a second and foreign language”
(Cheng, 2012, p. 327). At this point, it seems fair to say that regardless of the
socio-political status of English, Asia has the largest number of English speakers
in the world. This can be a motivation for Asian learners of English to become
users of the language. Southeast Asian (e.g., Singapore) and East Asian countries
(e.g., China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan), the fastest growing regions, are key
players in Asia’s economic, cultural, and educational developments in today’s
world. In this respect, English plays various roles in Asia, such as an official or
semi-official language, a lingua franca, a medium of instruction, and a school
subject. For example, because each of the Asian nations uses different official
languages, English enjoys the status of being both a lingua franca (when com-
municating with Asian fellows across the region) and the sole official working lan-
guage used by organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN). This shows that English is increasingly becoming the language of Asia
that enables Asians to communicate with one another. From time to time, Asian
countries seek to make “determined and focused efforts to establish cadres of
competent users of English in education, commerce and culture” (Kirkpatrick &
Sussex, 2012, p. 3). This indicates that Asian countries would like their citizens
to be part of the global community of practice. In recent times, these countries
have been key players in language education because more and more Asians are
competent users of the language who can be role models for English language
learners (ELLs).
In many Asian contexts, socio-politically, English is still often seen as a ‘for-
eign’ language in formal school and university curricula. Because of the role
of English as a lingua franca in Asia, English should be viewed as an additional
language, or teachers should re-contextualize what the learning of English as a
2 Handoyo Puji Widodo et al.
foreign and second language means to ELLs, because the learning of English
is viewed as an instrumental vehicle or investment in building and maintain-
ing social relationships and transnational collaboration, bridging transnational
communication, mediating social and economic mobility, and facilitating inter-
national cultural and educational exchanges among others. What makes the
teaching and learning of English in Asia unique is that most of the ELT pro-
grams are situated in multilingual and multicultural settings, which make such
practices a site of struggle among ELLs. In this multilingual context, it is a
common phenomenon that code-mixing and code switching commonly take
place inside and outside the language classroom. These code-mixing and code-
switching practices serve as “a natural and creative strategy and identity marker
for multilingual users of English” (Kirkpatrick & Sussex, 2012, p. 2). Addition-
ally, years of our teaching in Asia have witnessed the fact that designing and
implementing ELT practices are always challenging, because many such prac-
tices are socially sited in geographic domains where English is not widely used
in daily social encounters. What seems to be interesting in this context is that
the teaching of English co-exists with that of other languages ranging from local
languages to national or official languages. ELT in this regard aims to bridge
a connection among Asian countries “[g]iven the diversity of official languages
and sociolinguistic profiles among [Asian countries]” (Kam, 2002, p. 2). Even
though each of the Asian countries “had its own special reasons for teaching
English in the early days, the language is now spreading in the region for largely
pragmatic reasons” (Kam, 2002, p. 2). The growing needs for teaching English
are driven by a widespread use of the language in academic (e.g., overseas stud-
ies, international academic exchange programs), professional (e.g., overseas job
placement), occupational (e.g., working as a nurse abroad), and survival (e.g.,
immigrant workers) settings.
In recent years, though, Western scholars have dominated much of the work
on methodology in ELT. More and more work on ELT practices in the Asia
region is beginning to be well represented or reported. There is a growing
realization throughout the continent that English is an Asian language, yet
pedagogical approaches and practice are still too often not rooted in the Asian
context. To fill this need, this volume, Asian English Language Classrooms:
Where Theory and Practice Meet, aims to explore different theoretical stances
and practices of ELT in the region and to bring about a synthesis of what
works best in contemporary English language pedagogy in Asia. By inviting
scholars in the area of ELT who have teaching experience and know current
ELT practices in the region, this book provides a fresh impetus for designing
and implementing ELT, which is socioculturally grounded in Asian traditions
where people hold different cultural values and social norms. Thus this volume
provides a platform for both well-regarded and emerging scholars who voice
their experience in ELT in Asian countries, such as Brunei Darussalam, China,
India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan, the Phili
ppines, and Turkey.
Introduction 3
A need for re-contextualizing ELT in Asia today

Traditionally, classrooms are a place where teaching and learning takes place.
They are also a site of engagement or social practice where “people, typically one
teacher and a number of learners, come together for a pedagogical purpose” (All-
wright, 1992, p. 267). Additionally, classrooms serve not only as a site of engage-
ment where a teacher and students interact with one another but also as social
events, which involve social roles (e.g., teachers as facilitators, students as teacher
co-collaborators), social relationships (e.g., a teacher and students, students and
their peers), and social interaction (e.g., a teacher and students, students and their
peers, students and instructional text). These social roles, social relationships, and
social interaction shape the diversity and complexity of classrooms. Thus
the classroom is a rich resource for learning about learners’ lived experi-
ences, including their identities [who they are; what they are doing]. A num-
ber of classroom activities can be used that combine language learning with
expanding [teacher] knowledge of the learners and their individual needs.
(Murray & Christison, 2011, p. 63)
For this volume, the scope of English language classrooms extends beyond
four-wall classrooms, but language classrooms are operationalized as a site of
engagement/social practice, which takes place either in face-to-face or virtual
environments. At present, language classrooms can occur in both face-to-face
and virtual settings, commonly known as blended classrooms in which both
teachers and students can interact with each other in face-to-face mode and virtu-
ally. This new paradigm changes the way both teachers and students see language
classrooms as dynamic and fluid sites of engagement, which allow for a myriad
of social practices promoting genuinely humanistic and process-oriented views of
teaching and learning in general and of ELT in particular.
Methodology in ELT has been a topic of extensive discussion and research in
recent years in the Asian region, as evidenced not only in the growing volume
of journal articles and books dedicated to the topic but also in the prominence
of the topic at international conferences, which are annually held, such as the
Asian EFL Conference, Asia TEFL Conference (annually held in different Asian
nations), CamTESOL Conference (Cambodia), JALT Conference (Japan),
MELTA Conference (Malaysia), RELC International Conference (Singapore),
TEFLIN Conference (Indonesia), TESOL Arabia Conference (United Arab
Emirates), and Thai TESOL Conference (Thailand). We have witnessed the
fact that the topic of methodology in ELT is always well-received. It is fair
enough to say that a vast majority of the research and discussions concern
methodology in ELT at all educational levels ranging from primary to higher
education and from government-owned educational sectors to privately man-
aged educational sectors as well as from formal education to informal educa-
tion. Methodology in ELT in Asian contexts remains in demand because more
and more language teachers and practitioners seek different ways to teach their
learners based on their sociocultural contexts and needs. It is noticeable that a
growing number of projects that touch on ELT practices are being conducted
in Asian contexts.
To respond to this need, this volume provides insight into re-contextualizing
today’s ELT in Asian contexts. The idea of re-contextualization of today’s ELT
attempts to raise teacher awareness of how contexts exert influence on a choice
of theoretical orientation and pedagogical practice (Widodo & Park, 2014). This
choice making relies upon such factors as teachers, students, materials, needs,
and institutionalized culture among others. The re-contextualization of ELT tries
to respond to the reality that each language classroom is contextually unique
because both a teacher and students engage in social practice informed by differ-
ent goals, pedagogical values, and expectations (Tudor, 1996). This is a challenge
for language teachers to play roles as agents of change. With this role in mind,
language teachers need to understand the characteristics of the context in which
they work. These characteristics can embrace the nature of learners, the features
of classroom materials as learning resources, the features of institutions, and the
broader world. Certainly, teachers need to know the nature of language and lan-
guage learning as philosophical foundations of ELT as a whole.
Aims of the book

This volume contains a collection of newly commissioned chapters tailored for
those who wish to explore different pedagogical principles and theoretical stances
in actual Asian English language classrooms. It provides an up-to-date account
of ELT praxis in Asia. It is designed particularly for students taking language
master’s level and teacher education courses. The practical focus on Asian lan-
guage classrooms makes the volume particularly useful and relevant to those who
engage in the profession of ELT in different Asian settings. For those with more
ELT experience, this volume can also provide a way of surveying and updating
the existing knowledge on ELT. Overall, the book aims to give a general intro-
duction to fundamental areas of ELT for the beginning or more experienced
teacher and thus covers those areas about which all English teachers need to
know. Additionally, the volume raises an awareness of how English teachers con-
textually frame their pedagogical practices to cater to their students’ local needs
situated in a specific socio-institutional context. Specifically, the volume aims to
1 explore and unpack what English language pedagogies mean to English

teachers and learners in the Asian context where English is mostly considered
a subject language or a foreign language;
2 showcase how theory informs practice and how practice refines theory
(Kumaravadivelu, 2006). In this regard, language teachers play the roles of
agents of change and explorers of different pedagogical practices enmeshed
in a particular theoretical stance in response to changing needs for meaning-
ful English language pedagogies;
Introduction 5
3 promote, among different stakeholders, discussion about, and exploration of
theoretically informed English language pedagogies, which are deeply rooted
in the notion that such a pedagogical enterprise is an art of exploration – that
is to say, there is no best way to teach the English language in all pedagogical
contexts because of diversity and complexity of language classrooms; and
4 produce exemplary and grounded work that promotes the idea that language
teachers should experiment with their practical theory.
These goals serve as the foundation of exploring what best works in Asian English
language classrooms.
Readership of the book

This volume can be a welcome addition to the previously published books on
methodology in ELT. As the title of this volume indicates, the readership of
the volume is varied. The book can be a core or required undergraduate text
for such courses as Language Teaching Methodology and Language Curriculum
and Materials Design and Development. We argue that the relationship between
language teaching methodology and language curriculum and materials develop-
ment is that both are informed by particular approaches (theories), methods,
and principles. Language curriculum and materials are curricular artifacts, which
shape language teaching methodology in action. Because this volume is a collec-
tion of papers written by Asian language scholars and scholars who have working
experience in Asia and have in-depth knowledge of the ELT contexts in Asia,
it can be selected as a required text for pre-service teachers in all ELT depart-
ments in Asia. The volume can also be a complementary resource book for such
courses as Teaching Practicum and Microteaching at language teacher college
and university levels. At the graduate level, it may also be a compulsory refer-
ence for second-year students and those who attend in-service courses, teacher
certification training, and other in-service workshops, as it is designed to provide
pre-service and in-service English teachers with a solid understanding of current
language pedagogies in Asia.
The present text is definitely an invaluable guide text for teacher educators who
would like to enrich their course syllabi and teaching contents, and provide stu-
dents with a better understanding of what ELT means personally, professionally,
and contextually. This means that teacher educators can help their student teachers
acquire knowledge and develop competence in making methodological choices
(e.g., approaches, methods, and designs) in teaching. For language researchers,
the volume can be a reference for researchers who wish to investigate different
macro- and micro-skill areas and features of ELT approaches, methods, and prac-
tices. They may test out or examine how they can modify or adapt the ELT prac-
tices discussed in the text to their own research context. Lastly, this edited work can
serve as a guide for English teachers and practitioners who would like to broaden
their horizons of current ELT practices and explore different approaches, meth-
ods, procedures, and techniques that may work for their own classrooms.
The foci of the volume

This volume contains 17 chapters (including this introductory chapter), which
address different ELT issues. These issues embrace the teaching of language skills,
the educational literature (creative writing), the use of technology in ELT, the
role of pragmatics in ELT, the social psychology of the language classroom, and
the management of the language classroom. The volume presents three genres of
scholarly work: review, pedagogical, and original essays.
In Chapter 2, Tomoko Kurita provides an account of effective listening com-
prehension instruction in Japan’s pre-tertiary and tertiary English education.
This instruction is based on the two theoretical frameworks of listening compre-
hension: Anderson’s (1995, 2009) model and top-down and bottom-up pro-
cesses, highlighting the importance of teaching listening, focusing on the process.
Despite the importance of process-based listening instruction, Kurita observed
that listening is the last priority in classrooms in Japan (Blyth, 2010; Yanagawa,
2012), and the typical listening lesson seems ineffective, which is why Japanese
people tend to have serious difficulties understanding what they hear in English
even after learning English at school (Nihei, 2002). In addition, Japanese learn-
ers have often been exemplified as learners having difficulties in English listening,
especially in word recognition, because of their first language (L1) phonological
obstacles. The author suggests that listening pedagogy should focus on solving
the students’ problems in listening processes rather than correcting answers to
listening comprehension questions.
Lixian Jin and Martin Cortazzi in Chapter 3 discuss intercultural communica-
tion based on the argument that this is crucial in contemporary contexts in which
learners of English will need to interact with culturally diverse people both locally
and internationally. They outline some aims and themes for intercultural skills in
ELT linked with important aims of education: the need for learners to under-
stand and reflect on cultural contexts in their own and other communities, and
to develop critical and creative thinking. Jin and Cortazzi elaborate their practical
application of this threefold model through their contribution to the develop-
ment of textbooks in China. They contend that, as elsewhere in the Asian region,
English classes in China are often large and an emphasis on oral skills is quite
recent. There are constraints in teachers’ training in this area, and most learners
have little experience interacting with English speakers from outside China. The
contribution of this chapter focuses on examples from two series of textbooks,
which include specifically designed elements to develop intercultural understand-
ing with creative and critical oral communication, particularly through authors’
innovative ‘Participation Activities,’ which feature three stages of oral interaction
to analyze and solve problems in intercultural situations.
In response to a need for increasingly multimodal reading materials in both
print and digital formats, Chapter 4, written by Eveline Chan and Zuocheng
Zhang, provides an overview of research and theory concerning contemporary
multimodal texts and reading, explores some of the affordances of multimodal
texts for developing ELT students’ repertoires of reading, and outlines some of
Introduction 7
the challenges for innovating practice in Asian ELT contexts. Chan and Zhang
argue that the conceptions of reading need to be broadened beyond processing
meaning from the printed word to include meanings created in image, sound,
and space, which interface with the written-linguistic mode. Images combined
with words have the potential to convey powerful cultural messages, as exem-
plified in media texts and advertising campaigns. Digital texts combine sound
effects and music with animated images to engage readers, and interactive ele-
ments bring an element of joint construction to reading and text composition.
This historical shift in textual practices, coupled with the emergence of multiple
World Englishes, necessitates a critique of ELT practices, particularly in settings
where English is an additional language. It is no longer adequate to adopt the
practices of inner-circle, English-speaking countries without first considering the
local purposes for ELT and the global contexts for communication in English.
In Chapter 5, Meredith Stephens presents the incorporation of extensive lis-
tening and creative written responses into extensive reading in order to assist
students to reap the benefits of the massive exposure to second or additional
language, such as English, afforded by doing extensive reading and listening.
Stephens also adds that the inclusion of creative written responses in these tasks
is important in establishing a mental representation of spoken language in order
to learn to read (Walter, 2008). Extensive listening is viewed as a means of attain-
ing this skill. Furthermore, Wolf (2008) has explained the Vygotskian view that
writing helps learners to refine and expand their thinking. Composing creative
responses to the texts read in extensive reading is deemed a means of achieving
this end.
In the area of second or foreign language writing, Justina Ong argues that
learners face many challenges in writing. For example, at a text-based level, they
face problems in grammar and vocabulary, also known as lexico-grammar, and
in constructing syntactically appropriate sentences (Tang, 2012). Such problems
could stem from their lack of understanding of the functional use of language
and could be addressed through effective writing instruction. Driven by these
concerns, Ong, in Chapter 6, discusses a genre-based approach to the teaching
of writing to multilingual learners. Specifically, she focuses on one of the criti-
cal stages of Feez’s (1998) teaching-learning cycle, ‘modelling and deconstruc-
tion of text.’ She demonstrates how teachers could deconstruct two advertising
texts through highlighting the linguistic features (e.g., lexis, transitivity patterns,
mood, modality, and attitudinal lexis) the writers use to build up the ideational
and interpersonal meanings of the texts (see Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Hal-
liday, 1994; Schleppegrell, 2004) and how the writers use language to achieve the
social purpose of persuasion.
In Chapter 7, Anna Siyanova-Chanturia and Paul Nation focus on vocabulary
and multi-word expressions (MWEs) in the context of communicative language
teaching. Recent years have seen a growing interest in research looking at the
acquisition and use of MWEs in a second and foreign language classroom. MWEs
are phrases that exhibit a certain degree of fixedness and are recognized as being
conventional by a native speaker. They can be of many different kinds, such as
collocations (strong tea), multi-word verbs ( figure out), idioms (piece of cake),
and speech formulas (What’s up?). MWEs are important because they constitute
a large proportion of authentic spoken discourse and are considered an essential
component of mature linguistic performance. The abundance of MWEs in speech
puts them at the forefront of communicative vocabulary teaching and learning.
In addition, classroom research suggests that using MWEs can be a quick way of
developing fluency, particularly in the early stages of language learning. Thus this
chapter addresses a number of questions pertinent to the vocabulary and MWEs
needed for spoken use of the language. One of its goals is to show what kind of
activities language teachers can use in order to aid communicative vocabulary
learning in general and MWE acquisition in particular.
To cater to technologically oriented ELT in this digital age, Reima Al-Jarf, in
Chapter 8, discusses online grammar tasks based on a local need situated at King
Saud University (KSU), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Al-Jarf observed that this uni-
versity has a Blackboard account for each of the courses faculty members teach,
but very few faculty members are actually using Blackboard in teaching, including
those who teach English language courses at the university. The author noted that
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers at KSU find it difficult to select
and perform online grammar tasks that are appropriate, beneficial, and helpful for
EFL students. Therefore, this chapter addresses (1) the types of online tasks that
can be integrated into blended grammar instruction for EFL/ESL (English as a
Second Language) college students, (2) the performance of the online grammar
tasks based on online grammar websites, (3) criteria for selecting online gram-
mar tasks, (4) instructional stages with online tasks, and (5) how online grammar
tasks are performed. Illustrative examples of websites that can be used to perform
each type of task are also presented. The teacher’s roles in performing the pro-
posed tasks will be described as well. This chapter will be beneficial to EFL/ESL
instructors who use an online course, a blog, a discussion forum, a mobile app,
or any other form of technology as a supplement to in-class grammar instruction.
Karen Steffen Chung in Chapter 9 provides a practical account of how to teach
English pronunciation to adult learners. She begins by providing a rationale for
the teaching of pronunciation and suggestions about how to prepare teachers
mentally for the course. Since pronunciation training often receives a low priority
in ESL programs (Baker, 2013), teachers will need to have some convincing argu-
ments ready to explain its importance to program administrators and colleagues,
students, and even teachers themselves. Key aspects of brain function and general
principles of language learning are also discussed. Chung also presents a list of
practical hints for teachers and students, and a collection of highly effective strate-
gies and methods for pronunciation improvement and overall language learning.
A short list of resources and tools as well as a list of suggested pronunciation texts
are provided in the remaining section of the chapter.
In Chapter 10, Alistair Wood discusses the integration of extensive reading
and extensive listening. He argues that more recently, the concept of extensive
practice has also been seen to include listening as well as reading. However, the
idea of extensive listening has not been as widely accepted as extensive reading,
Introduction 9
and there is still debate as to the benefits of this approach. This chapter exam-
ines what both extensive reading and extensive listening bring to the language
class and how they can be integrated effectively into more traditional approaches
to these two skills. A comparison is made with the more traditional intensive
approaches, particularly with regard to listening, and justification given as to why
extensive listening should also have its place (Widodo & Rozak, 2016). It looks
at them both in relation to the overarching criterion of fluency as an aim in lan-
guage teaching and investigates how extensive reading and listening contribute
to fluency. Recently, both of these approaches have been combined in one activity
where students read and listen to texts simultaneously. Wood concludes by sug-
gesting how teachers can make use of extensive reading and listening not only
to motivate students but also to compliment the aims of intensive reading and
listening and improve overall performance in these areas.
Alan Maley in Chapter 11 discusses the nature of the near-total and constant
distraction in which we live, and other factors bearing on the way we use litera-
ture, including the rise of control culture, the role of English in the world, and
the need for social and emotional intelligence. Three approaches are discussed:
Literature as Study, as Resource, and as Appropriation, focusing on the last. Text
selection can have a powerful influence on the relevance of literature, so options
for enhancing the appeal of texts are presented. It then focuses on possible activi-
ties for implementing Literature as Appropriation. These include familiarization
activities, extensive reading, creative writing, and manipulating texts. The con-
clusion reviews the challenges literature faces: the culture of speed and info-glut,
the current utilitarian model of education, the need to validate local cultures
through English, and the gap between English in the classroom and the plurality
of Englishes outside it.
In Chapter 12, Atsushi Iida documented the way in which EFL students used
haiku – a three-line Japanese poem – in a second language (L2) to focus and
express their study abroad experiences. The qualitative analysis of poetry writing
in English showed that each haiku on the study abroad experience written by four
EFL students contained both the description of each event and the depiction of
the writers’ emotional states and that their voices were articulated as a result of
their reflective and linguistic negotiations of personal experiences. More broadly,
this study exemplifies the abilities of EFL students to express their personal expe-
riences through expressive writing and demonstrates how haiku writing as a form
of meaningful literacy practice can transform the L2 composition classroom.
Paolo Nino Valdez, Neslie Carol C. Tan, and Lindsey Ng-Tan in Chapter 13
flesh out the use of information communication technology (ICT). They point
out that the rapid development of ICT in the age of globalization has pushed for-
ward the boundaries of communication. Moreover, communication in globalized
settings involves highly mobile, hybrid, and technology-competent individuals.
In the educational context, therefore, teachers are faced with a new set of chal-
lenges as they come to the task of educating ‘digital natives’ possessing mul-
tiliteracies and shuttling between different linguistic, cultural, and multimodal
worlds. Divided into two sections, this chapter initially describes the current
thinking on ICT in the context of ELT and proceeds with the identification of
thematic strands that influence practice in the field. Moreover, using the commu-
nity of practice framework of Lave and Wenger (1991), the second section then
elucidates preliminary findings of an English language classroom use of social
networking in the development of media logs. As will be reported, students who
participated in the project not only drew on rich cultural and linguistic resources
in achieving their communicative purpose but also deployed their skills in the use
of technology and social media. These skills, therefore, actualize the notions of
mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire as they become part
of a community of practice in a global classroom.
In another area of technology in ELT, a plethora of research on the use of
multimedia such as Photo Story has been undertaken. However, little is known
about how it is used in secondary-school settings of English as an additional lan-
guage (EAL) classrooms, such as in Indonesia. With this in mind, in Chapter 14,
Nur Arifah Drajati, Sri Rejeki Murtiningsih, Winda Hapsari, and Hasti Rahman-
ingtyas report an empirical study that examined to which extent the deploy-
ment of Photo Story mediated multimodal learning tasks in the EAL classroom.
The study specifically looked at challenges and benefits of using Photo Story to
develop students’ writing and speaking competences. The study also investigated
the roles of teachers and students in the entire learning process. A total of 35
students in grade 12 volunteered to participate in this study. In groups of four,
they were assigned to perform a series of tasks. Drawing on students’ postings,
narratives, and interviews, this chapter reports on four major findings: (1) draft-
ing and negotiating strategies for the creation of multimodal narrative texts, (2)
framing the use of language in composing, (3) collaborating on text creation
and improvement, and (4) positioning roles of teacher and students in the entire
learning trajectory.
In Chapter 15, Hamzeh Moradi and Deepti Gupta address the social psychol-
ogy of the language classroom to help teachers and language educators obtain
a better understanding of socio-psychological forces related to language learn-
ing in the classroom, be cognizant of the implicit psychological features of the
interaction between teachers and learners, manage the classroom and learning
environment, and optimize classroom management. The authors maintain that
social and psychological factors of language learning have been the focus of a
significant amount of research during the past few decades. The importance of
social psychology facets in the language learning process is one of the most per-
vasive themes in recent research on L2 acquisition. In fact, L2 acquisition is not
only an innate aptitude and phenomenon but also a socio-psychological one.
Thus it is important to consider the social and psychological conditions in which
L2 learning occurs. This chapter reviews the most significant models related to
the socio-psychological facets of language learning and clearly describes some of
the indispensable concepts in the field such as self-efficacy, attitude, motivation,
effort, literacy learning strategies, and self-awareness.
Andrew D. Cohen, in Chapter 16, provides an overview of the role of prag-
matics in teaching English as an additional language by looking first at innovative
Introduction 11
approaches to research methods. Then the chapter looks at politeness and impo-
liteness, considering cross-cultural and ethnic differences, jocular insults, and
swearwords. Next, examples of recent speech act research – focusing on com-
plaints and requests – are considered. After that, Cohen looks at other areas
of pragmatics: conversational overlap, back channeling, phatic communication,
humor, sarcasm, and pragmatic function of discourse markers. The last portion
of the chapter focuses on pedagogy. A number of issues relating to the teaching
of L2 pragmatics are considered: teaching L2 learners a less-commonly taught
speech act (criticism), teaching third language (L3; EFL) learners a commonly
taught speech act (refusals), teaching pragmatics to learners for whom English is
a lingua franca, materials development for L2 pragmatics, construction of prag-
matics websites, and assessment of pragmatics. The chapter ends with a focus on
the learner and on strategies for the learning and performing of pragmatics.
Fundamental to ELT is classroom management that supports a well-organized
picture of learning. Classroom management enforces both learning in class and
communication between teachers and learners. Effective classroom management
has a noticeable impact on the language learners. The purpose of classroom man-
agement is to provide a constructive environment for both students and teach-
ers; this is not possible with nonmotivated learners, so the teachers should be
the managers in the classroom by involving all the students in the teaching and
learning process. Effective classroom management helps learners not only spend
more time on learning but also less time on destructive behaviors by appealing to
the learners’ interest. Apart from that, there are several strategies for scaffolding
students to achieve fruitful outcomes, but the most crucial issue is to enhance
teacher awareness of classroom management. Therefore, in the last chapter,
Chapter 17, Zekiye Müge Tavil and Arif Sarıçoban discuss various strategies in
relation to classroom management by underlining different solutions in accord-
ance with recent approaches to classroom management.
Future directions: teacher innovation and creativity

Much work has discussed and documented different theoretical and conceptual
orientations and methods in ELT in different geographic and institutional set-
tings as well as different communities of practice. What is urgently needed in
current ELT practice is teacher innovation and creativity. Innovation and crea-
tivity deal not only with translating theory into practice based on a particular
context but also with experimenting with different theories in order to examine
what works and what does not work in a particular ELT context. Grounded in
the notion of innovation and creativity, language teachers are able to critically
see the relevance and practicality of the adopted conceptual/theoretical stance.
Innovation and creativity, of course, mean different things to every language
teacher and arise from different perspectives. Because language classrooms are
diverse in terms of pedagogical practices, there is a call for more exploration in
teacher creativity and innovation in the adoption of theory-informed methodol-
ogy, educational literature, the use of technology, and classroom management in
ELT across Asia, for example. As Muller, Herder, Adamson, and Brown point
out, “Asia as a region is rich in ideas and theories based on local contexts, and
these locally derived theories and solutions may prove more relevant to the Asian
context than imported ideas” (2012, p. xii). With this in mind, it is high time for
language teachers to explore their own practical theories in their own language
classrooms.
In this introduction, we have outlined the rationale, aim, readership, and foci
of the book, and the need for re-contextualizing today’s ELT in Asia. We hope
that this volume will motivate others to continue work on methodology in ELT
in which the ideas of teacher innovation and creativity are addressed. We do
expect that such work will generate proposals for other directions for the field
of ELT and for the enhancement of our understandings of different perspec-
tives on methodology in ELT. These efforts will need to be documented in dif-
ferent Asian ELT contexts. It is important to note that this volume does not
impose dogmatic methodology on practicing teachers, but it gives fresh impetus
for designing and implementing ELT practices, which are theory informed and
contextually relevant to learners’ and other stakeholders’ needs.
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2 Teaching listening in
pre-tertiary and tertiary
English education in Japan
Tomoko Kurita
Listening is an important skill for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL)

as a means of comprehension and an input skill for acquisition (Rost, 2001a). It
can be said that all language learners should be taught how to listen so that they
can become independent learners because, as Rost (2001a) mentions, “a key dif-
ference between more successful and less successful acquirers relates in large part
to their ability to use listening as a means of acquisition” (p. 94). Therefore, how
to teach listening is a significant issue in any language-teaching context.
In Japan, teaching listening has recently been given more attention than in the
past because listening has been increasingly incorporated into university entrance
exams and international English exams such as the Test of English for Inter-
national Communication (TOEIC) and Test of English as a Foreign Language
(TOEFL) since it is recognized as a core skill of English proficiency. Under glo-
balization, people in Japan, especially in the business community, have realized
the importance of the communicative purpose of learning EFL. The Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has placed greater
emphasis on the teaching of all the four skills as practical communication skills at
school English education in Japan (MEXT, 2003, 2009).
However, Yoshida (2003) points out that there is a “serious discrepancy
between the ideal language education policy objectives and the reality of English
teaching” (p. 291). There is a gap between the need to teach listening in English
education and the actual classroom practice in Japan. In spite of the importance,
several studies (Blyth, 2010; Nihei, 2002; Yanagawa, 2012) reveal that teach-
ers have hardly implemented listening pedagogy in Japanese school education.
A lack of adequate listening instruction causes Japanese learners who were taught
English for 6 or 10 years at schools have serious difficulties in listening compre-
hension (Nihei, 2002).
Students in Japan view listening skills as difficult because of issues such as
speech rate, unknown vocabulary, and pronunciation (Noro, 2006). Further-
more, they recognize that those difficulties become causes of anxiety to them
(Noro, 2006). It is not only because students in Japan are not taught how to
learn listening effectively but also because English listening is challenging for the
students whose first language (L1) is Japanese. In research on listening, Japa-
nese learners of English have often been exemplified (Eastman, 1993; Erickson,
Teaching listening 15
Akahane-Yamada, Tajima, & Matsumoto, 1999; Otake, Hatano, & Yoneyama,
1996; Rost, 2001b) as learners having difficulties in English listening, especially
in word recognition because of their L1 phonological obstacles in the literature.
It is because the Japanese sound system including the phonology system, phono-
tactic rules, and use of tone and use of stress are different from that of English.
In teaching listening to Japanese learners, the L1 influences need to be taken into
account. Thus an effective listening methodology for them is called for in pre-
tertiary and tertiary education.
In this chapter, my goal is to explore effective approaches to listening com-
prehension for students in Japan as an EFL context. First, I discuss the current
situation of English listening pedagogy in Japan. Second, I introduce two theo-
retical frameworks on the listening comprehension process: Anderson’s (1995,
2009) model and the top-down and the bottom-up processes. Third, I high-
light the importance of teaching listening, focusing on the process rather than
the product. Fourth, I analyze the common difficulties that students in Japan
often encounter in listening comprehension and discuss useful interventions in
the classrooms. Fourth, I propose approaches for developing students’ listening
comprehension skills.
The current situation of English

listening pedagogy in Japan
In Japan, teaching English listening has been paid more attention because MEXT
and the business community have started to value the importance of communica-
tion on the international stage as related to globalization and developing com-
munication abilities of Japanese people (MEXT, 2003, 2009). The most recent
Course of Study places an emphasis on the need to develop students’ practical
English communication abilities such as accurately understanding and appropri-
ately conveying information and ideas (MEXT, 2009). The language policy in
Japan is based on the strong requests of the business community, which requires
English as the international language of commerce (Yoshida, 2003, p. 291).
Listening skills have been increasingly included in university entrance exams
and other English tests because of greater emphasis placed on the teaching of
the four skills as practical communication skills (MEXT, 2003, 2009). In 2006, a
listening component was introduced into the National Center Test for University
Admission (Center Test) as one of the subpolicies of MEXT (Tahira, 2012). Fur-
thermore, the number of TOEIC test takers has been rapidly increasing in Japan.
The Institute for International Business Communication (2014) announced that
about 2.4 million people in Japan took TOEIC compared to about 1.7 million
people in 2009.
However, several researchers (Blyth, 2010; Nihei, 2002; Yanagawa, 2012)
claim that teachers have hardly implemented listening pedagogy in Japanese
education, even though the importance of teaching listening has increased since
listening is recognized as an essential part of communication ability. Yanagawa’s
(2012) research, which explores the washback effects of the introduction of
16 Tomoko Kurita
the listening test from Center Test, reveals that teachers do not put emphasis
on teaching listening in their classrooms of third-year students in high schools.
Although 98% of the teachers were interested in the listening component of the
Center Test, 24% of the teachers answered that they spent more than 20% of the
lesson time on listening instruction. Two percent of them spent none of their les-
son time on listening. Additionally, the study found that students also spent little
or no time in listening practice outside of school and that the students do not
know how to acquire listening skills (Yanagawa, 2012).
Nihei (2002) also states that it is likely to be the biggest problem that although
the importance of listening skills is widely acknowledged in Japan, the adequate
instruction and materials to develop them have not been provided. He also points
out the time limitation of listening as one of the reasons, and he estimates that
the average time devoted to listening activities in every class is five minutes per
day. In the interviews on how teachers taught listening in Japan, Blyth (2010)
found that “most teachers said that listening often was last on the list of priorities,
yet they claimed it to be higher on their own personal priority list” (p. 76). Some
interviewees mentioned that there were some constraints in teaching listening:
limited time, textbooks that did not include listening materials, and no permis-
sion to choose how to teach listening freely.
In pre-tertiary education, reading and writing have been emphasized since
the 1960s when it was placing emphasis on grammar rules and language struc-
tures (Tahira, 2012). This traditional methodology seems to remain and to have
become hidden constraints to teachers. In 2013, another test system called TEAP
(Test of English for Academic Purposes) was introduced to assess high school
students’ English four-skills proficiency for academic purposes for university
admission, expecting a long-term positive washback onto pre-tertiary English
education (Taylor, 2014). The introduction aims to change the dominance of
grammar-focused university entrance exams, which influence the EFL pedagogy
in schools emphasizing a grammar-translation method.
Thus, regardless of the importance of teaching listening, listening is last on the
list of priorities in classrooms with some constraints such as limited time and text-
books that did not cover listening materials, or a question-answer methodology.
It is important to explore the methods of teaching listening comprehension that
teachers are able to implement in the actual classrooms so that the students can
learn how to learn listening and enhance their listening comprehension ability in
pre-tertiary and tertiary education contexts.
Insight of listening process for comprehension

For improving listening skills as part of English communication ability, it is
important for teachers and students to gain insight into the process of listening
comprehension and to monitor how the students arrive at the right answer for
the comprehension questions, or alternatively why comprehension breakdown
happens.
It is critical to know these two theoretical frameworks of the listening compre-
hension process in order to implement a process approach to teaching listening.
These frameworks assist teachers in analyzing students’ breakdown in listening
comprehension and identifying the problems that they need to address.
Anderson’s model of language comprehension

Anderson (1995, 2009) breaks down the language comprehension process into
three stages: perception, parsing, and utilization. In the first stage of percep-
tion, the listener is involved in the perceptual process that encodes the spoken
message. Words are segmented from the speech stream and recognized by the
listener. The second stage is the parsing stage, in which the words in the message
are transformed into a mental representation of the combined meaning of the
words. In this stage, the listener is involved in the identification of constituent
structure or a basic phrase or unit in a sentence’s surface structure. The third
stage is the utilization stage, in which the listener uses the mental representation
of the sentence’s meaning. For instance, if the sentence is a question, the listener
may answer; if it is an instruction, he or she may obey. The three stages are by
necessity partly ordered in time; however, they also partly overlap. Listeners can
make inferences from the first part of a sentence while they perceive a later part. It
seems that it is the key to successful listening comprehension that the listener suc-
ceeds in processing information in each stage. For example, a process approach
based on this model can be implemented to enhance a word recognition skill at
the perception stage, to increase a mental representation skill at the parsing stage,
and to gain better understanding of speakers’ intention at the utilization stage.
Top-down and bottom-up processing framework

The second framework is the top-down and the bottom-up processing frame-
work. It is generally agreed that top-down and bottom-up processes continuously
interact to make sense of spoken input (Vandergrift, 2007). Top-down process-
ing refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a
message. Bottom-up processing, on the other hand, refers to using the incoming
input as the basis for understanding the message. In listening comprehension, the
combinations of top-down processing with bottom-up processing of information
from the stimulus itself are used.
In other words, linguistic knowledge and world knowledge interact in paral-
lel fashion as listeners create a mental representation of what they have heard
(Hulstijin, 2003). For instance, it is possible to understand the meaning of a
word before decoding its sound because we have many different types of knowl-
edge, including knowledge of the world around us. We know what normally
happens, and so we have expectations about what we will hear. Buck (2001)
mentions, “While we are listening, we almost always have some hypothesis about
what is likely to come next” (p. 3). Significantly, second language (L2) or EFL
18 Tomoko Kurita
learners, who have limited processing ability with less linguistic knowledge, will
depend on their ability to make use of all the available resources to interpret what
they hear by top-down processes. The learners make use of context and other
compensatory strategies to make sense of the aural form of a word (Vanderg-
rift, 2006). Therefore, it is generally agreed that strategies to use compensatory
mechanisms – contextual, visual, or paralinguistic information; world knowledge;
cultural information; and common sense while listening – will determine the
degree of listening success (Vandergrift, 2007). It seems that the key to success-
ful listening is also that the learners can control both processes well to create a
mental representation from what they have heard.
The findings in research on top-down and bottom-up processes have provided
two approaches to listening instruction: an approach to raise metacognitive aware-
ness about listening (favoring top-down processes) and an approach to develop
lexical segmentation and word recognition skills (favoring bottom-up processes).
According to Richards (2008), the top-down process approach includes exer-
cises that develop the learners’ ability to use key words to construct the schema
of a discourse, infer the setting for a text, and infer the role of the participants
and their goals. The bottom-up process approach includes exercises that develop
bottom-up processing, which helps learners to recognize word and clause divi-
sions, recognize key words, and recognize key transitions in a discourse.
The importance of focusing on the process

Because listening comprehension takes place within the mind of the listener,
teachers tend to know how much students understand. Therefore, teachers give
listening comprehension questions to students and focus on how many right
answers they get – namely, product of listening. Field (1998), however, high-
lights the importance of teaching listening, focusing on process rather than prod-
uct. Although the scores tell us something about how much the student can
listen as a listening product, they tell us nothing about why they cannot listen
as process. According to Field (1998), teachers focusing on the product judge
the students’ comprehension by the number of correct responses to questions or
tasks. On the other hand, teachers focusing on the process follow up on incorrect
responses in order to determine where understanding broke down and to resolve
the problems.
Typical listening teaching methodology in Japan focuses on product, not pro-
cess. According to Nihei (2002), in a typical listening lesson in Japanese school
education, students either listen to the CD of a reading textbook or after listening
to some materials answer some comprehension questions. In interview research
on how to teach listening in Japan, Blyth (2010) found that five teachers out of
seven claimed that the ultimate goal of listening in the classroom was to answer
comprehension questions. Focusing on the product is just testing for the stu-
dents, not teaching. The students in Japan do not practice listening skills and
listening strategies for better comprehension (Nihei, 2002). If the students are
just tested without learning how to improve listening skills, and correct answers
are focused on too much, it is natural for the students to view listening as stress-
ful. Jones (2008) points out that for many students in Japan, listening is often
stressful and even potentially demotivating.
Noro (2006) reveals that Japanese college students have listening difficulties
such as speech rate, unknown vocabulary, and pronunciation, and that those dif-
ficulties become a kind of stressor to them. Listening tasks without consideration
for the students’ difficulties in the listening comprehension process can discour-
age students from listening. Jones (2008) proposes that teachers should take into
account why students may find the listening task difficult in teaching listening in
order to help students increase their ability. It seems that the instruction focus-
ing on the product has ignored addressing students’ listening problems through
examining the process and reduces their self-confidence because they will not
have improved as listeners.
Moreover, teachers paying attention to the listening process can avoid con-
fusion of approaches. Richards (2005) points out that it seems that current
listening instruction in general seems to be mixed with both learning to listen
and listening to learn. The same confusion could be found in Japanese class-
rooms. The confusion could happen if teachers do not know the difference
between listening processes as comprehension and as acquisition. It is necessary
for teachers to differentiate teaching listening comprehension from listening
for acquisition because the two views of listening lead to different directions for
classroom pedagogy (Richards, 2005). Teachers need to realize that instruction
for learning to listen (that is, learning to understand spoken message) involves
enhancing comprehension abilities in the language comprehension process.
The learners use what they already know in order to comprehend. On the other
hand, instruction for listening to learn (that is, learning the syntax and lexis
of the language through listening) involves creating new meaning and form
linking, and then repeating the meaning and form linking, which helps the
learners to be ready for paying more attention to the syntax and lexis of the
language through listening. The learners need to notice what they do not know
ÿÿr acquisition.
The confusion of the approaches could cause teachers to use inappropriate
materials or activities and lead learners to listening difficulty and anxiety, which
negatively affects listening performance. For example, if a teacher uses a spoken
text for acquisition, including many unknown lexical items to learners as a text
for comprehension task, the learners cannot achieve the listening comprehension
task since there is a large impact of vocabulary knowledge on comprehension,
and they will only feel that listening is too difficult. In general, unknown vocabu-
lary is one of the sources of listening difficulties (Bloomfield et al., 2010; Buck,
2001; Noro, 2006). Using spoken text with low vocabulary coverage in teach-
ing listening comprehension might discourage learners from listening, unless the
purpose of listening is just inference. Thus the instruction focusing on the listen-
ing process enables teachers to choose appropriate approaches and activities.
Seeking insight into the difficulties students often encounter in listening com-
prehension may provide us with more effective listening instruction that focuses
20 Tomoko Kurita
on the process so that students can also monitor their listening processes on
their own.
Difficulties that students in Japan encounter

It is useful for teachers to analyze common difficulties that students encounter
from a process-based perspective. In general, compared to reading, listening can
prove to be more difficult for EFL and L2 learners (Jones, 2008). First, readers
usually have the opportunity to refer back to a written text to clarify understand-
ing, but listeners do not have the chance to refer back to a spoken text in most
listening contexts (Jones, 2008). Second, while readers recognize spaces between
words, listeners have to segment words (Osada, 2004). Stahr (2009) asserts,
Spoken language is characterized by assimilation as well as unclear articu-

lation, and lexical units are not necessarily as clearly marked as in written
text; this lack of clarity of spoken language makes word segmentation an
extremely difficult task for L2 listeners (p. 582).
Research on Japanese college students by Noro (2006) reveals that main

sources of difficulties in listening comprehension are rate of speech, vocabulary,
and pronunciation. Under real-time processing, they attribute their compre-
hension breakdown to the three sources of difficulties: speech rate, unknown
vocabulary, and pronunciation. All the sources of difficulties make the bottom-
up processing difficult. Next, I would like to discuss the three main sources of
difficulties and suggest effective interventions by which teachers can facilitate
students’ listening comprehension.
Speech rate
The speech rate problem is mainly caused by a lack of automaticity. In order to
understand speakers at normal speed, the listening process must be almost auto-
matic. The average speech rate of a lecturer to non-native speakers is 140 words
per minute, while that of conversations is 210 words per minute (Tauroza & Alli-
son, 1990). It is true that the faster the speech is, the more difficult it is to under-
stand, but slower speech rates do not necessarily help (Bloomfield et al., 2010).
In general, listening to a foreign language is, even at higher levels of proficiency,
a cognitively demanding activity because the capacity of working memory could
affect the amount of information a learner can process.
In the case of students in Japan, however, just because speech appears fast,
it might not mean that it is. Buck (2001) mentions L2 listeners often perceive
that speech is too fast, but it is often due to a lack of automaticity, and if they
learn to process the language automatically, speech seems to become slower.
Students in Japan, who have had little listening experience, are likely to face a
lack of automaticity. In successful listening, there is little time to think about
meaning. The students need to develop the ability to process the language
automatically.
The teacher should use effective intervention in the classroom by giving listen-
ers additional processing time as a silent pause between constituent boundaries.
Osada (2004) demonstrates, in a study on Japanese college students, evidence
that less proficient listeners receive the auditory impression that listening pas-
sages with longer silent pauses are more comprehensible than those with no
adjustment.
Unknown vocabulary
Unknown vocabulary also causes students’ comprehension breakdown. This
problem is the result of the overlap between the students’ vocabulary knowledge
and the vocabulary of the spoken text. If teachers choose an appropriate spoken
text with adequate lexical coverage for the students, the students will have little
difficulty.
The size of vocabulary knowledge that is needed for satisfactory comprehen-
sion of a spoken text is 98% (Nation, 2006; Stahr, 2009). Nation (2006) asserts,
if we take 98% as the ideal coverage, a 6,000–7,000 word family vocabulary is
needed for dealing with spoken text, while the first 1,000 plus proper nouns
cover around 85% of spoken text. Spoken language makes slightly greater use of
high-frequency words of the language than written language does. Infrequent
vocabulary has a negative impact on listening comprehension (Bloomfield et al.,
2010).
Authentic material may include much vocabulary unknown to students. It
is, however, important for students to be exposed to authentic spoken English
because “authentic language and real-world tasks enable students to see the rel-
evance of classroom activity to their long term communicative goals” (Brown,
2001, p. 258). Therefore, if authentic material is used, the task should be an easy
and achievable one such as “listening for gist,” which refers to top-down listen-
ing where the learner tries to understand what is happening, even if the student
cannot understand every phrase or sentence, or listening for main ideas. The
effective intervention for students is to choose an easier spoken text ideally with
98% lexical coverage for the listening comprehension tasks or to provide pictorial
support.
On the other hand, the students could perceive a familiar word as an unknown
word if students remember the word with the wrong pronunciation or a different
stress position. It is impossible to link the sound heard with the meaning of the
word in their long-term memory. In such a case, they could perceive the word as
an unknown word. Therefore, it is important to learn vocabulary with a proper
sound image with correct phonemes and stress position.
Pronunciation
Pronunciation, which is viewed as a source of difficulty, is likely to cause problems
with word segmentation or word recognition. For example, “soup or salad” can
be misheard as “super salad.” Students in Japan are not accustomed to the fea-
tures of spoken English, which causes difficulties (Nihei, 2002). It is essential for
22 Tomoko Kurita
them to know that spoken English is different from written English. In connected
speech, phonological modification such as assimilation, elision, and intrusion,
take place. In general, the lack of linguistic information in the bottom-up process
may be made up by using non-linguistic information such as the listener’s world
knowledge in the top-down process. Therefore, if the listener had the contextual
knowledge of the situation in the top-down process, s/he could hear “soup or
salad.” The effective intervention may be to provide topical knowledge or con-
textual information before listening, since they are used in the top-down process.
In general, Japanese listeners have a serious challenge in word recognition in
spoken English. Rost (2001b) mentions that Japanese learners often have diffi-
culty identifying key words in spoken English, which has a different stress system,
while Danish learners of English have less difficulty because there are similarities
of stress, tone, phonology, and phonotactic rules between English and Danish.
The segmentation of continuous speech into words is an important part of listen-
ing ability and a prerequisite for word recognition. The Japanese language has
a mora-based rhythm, which influences Japanese learners’ segmentation proce-
dure, even when they listen to English.
A psycholinguistic study (Murty, Otake, & Cutler, 2007) has revealed that “lis-
teners rely on L1 language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different language,
stress-, syllable-, or mora-based rhythm is exploited” (p, 77). Evidence shows
that non-native listeners did not necessarily segment speech in the same way as
native listeners (Murty et al., 2007). For example, Japanese learners of English
tend to listen to English using their L1 mora-based rhythm (Otake et al., 1996).
They often mishear because they try to represent a set consonant (C) and vowel
(V) – namely, CV structure – as a mora, which is different from the CVC struc-
ture in English; for example, Japanese native listeners tend to hear the phrase
“not at all” as “no ta tall.”
Paying more attention to stress and rhythm seems to help Japanese students
to segment words better. Native English listeners treat the stressed syllable as the
beginning of a word by the Metrical Segmentation Strategy for English (Cut-
ler & Norris, 1988). The linked and assimilated consonants and reduced vowels
are produced by English stress timing. An effective method of intervention is
repeated listening to the oral text and providing English subtitles or transcription.
The difficulties and the affective reaction

Facing the difficulties may cause the students’ negative affective reaction. Noro
(2006) clarifies the nature of listening anxiety by the qualitative analysis of the
data obtained by both questionnaire and oral interviews with Japanese college
students. Affective reactions in the face of the listening difficulties are irritation,
lack of concentration, aversion, sense of resignation, and loss of self-confidence.
He concludes, “The difficulties were some sort of ‘stressor’ to them” (Noro,
2006, p. 64).
Anxiety has a negative impact on listening comprehension, but it also could be
a factor that allows listening to be stressful and potentially demotivating for many
students (Jones, 2008). If students continue to experience unachievable listen-
ing tasks, this might be demotivating for the students. Chang (2008) found that
listening supports such as repeated input reduced learners’ anxiety on listening
tests, and Chang and Read (2008) mention that the metacognitive approach is
likely to be effective in reducing listening anxiety.
Thus, from the analysis of difficulties that students in Japan encounter, these
feelings are caused by the lack of automaticity; insufficient vocabulary; which
includes the problem of having wrong sound images; and the L1 phonological
obstacles, which make speech perception such as word segmentation and word
recognition difficult. Furthermore, those difficulties become some kind of stress-
ors to listening anxiety, which cause lack of concentration, demotivation, and loss
of self-confidence. The teacher should use the effective intervention methods to
reduce their difficulties in listening activities as well as address their problems: for
example, using spoken text with a silent pause between constituent boundaries,
providing enough time to process the listeners without automaticity, or offering a
choice of an easier spoken text with 98% lexical coverage for the listening activity.
Proposed approach as a solution

Based on comprehension process and common difficulties students in Japan
encounter, how can we help the students improve their listening comprehension
ability? The purpose of this section is to discuss a solution that can be imple-
mented in pre-tertiary and tertiary English education in Japan.
Teaching listening strategies for developing the top-down process

I have clarified that the main three difficulties that students in Japan often
encounter are perception problems in the bottom-up process. The normal pro-
cess of listening comprehension uses not only the acoustic input in the bottom-
up process but also the listener’s knowledge, past experience, feelings, intentions,
and intelligence to create the interpretation of the text in the top-down process
(Buck, 2001). Therefore, students should be taught how to use the top-down
process as well as avoid focusing on the bottom-up process too much. First, as
a pre-listening activity, teachers should provide the students with background
information to enhance the use of the top-down process. Second, teachers should
provide students with listening activities focusing on a certain listening strategy –
for example, listening for gist, listening for purpose, listening for main ideas, and
listening for specific information.
Teaching metacognitive strategies for better managing the

listening process
Recent research has revealed the importance of metacognitive strategies for L2 lis-
tening success. (Goh, 2008; Goh & Taib, 2006; Vandergrift, 2003, 2007). Rich-
ards (2008) defines metacognitive strategies as “conscious or unconscious mental
24 Tomoko Kurita
activities that perform an executive function in the management of cognitive
strategies” (p. 11) including assessing the situation, monitoring, self-evaluating,
and self-testing. Teachers should encourage learners to use metacognitive strate-
gies. If teachers have the students monitor what their own listening problems
are and evaluate their listening performance even for a short time, the students
learn how to use metacognitive strategies for listening. Anderson’s (1995, 2009)
model is useful for monitoring listening precisely. For example, Goh (2000)
investigated listening difficulties in light of Anderson’s model (1995). Dur-
ing perceptual processing, listeners reported the difficulties of not recognizing
words, neglecting what follows, and not chunking the stream of speech. Dur-
ing the parsing phase, they reported the difficulties of quickly forgetting what
is heard, an inability to form a mental presentation from words heard, and not
understanding subsequent parts because of what was missed earlier. During the
utilization phase, they reported understanding the words but not the message
(Goh, 2000).
This provides teachers with the methodological implication that they can have
the students do self-monitoring with a monitor sheet to see the process on the
perception stage, the parsing stage, and the utilization stage (see Table 2.1).
Teachers who can take more time to implement listening activities should fol-
low the sequence with “steps in guided metacognitive sequence in a listening
lesson” (Goh & Taib, 2006). It consists of five steps (see Table 2.2): first, in pre-
listening activity, in pairs, students predict the possible words and phrases that
they might hear and write down the prediction in English or Japanese; second,
in the first listen, as they are listening to the text, students circle those words or
phrases they have predicted correctly, and they also write down new informa-
tion they hear; third, in pair process-based discussion, students, in pairs, compare
what they have understood so far and explain how they arrived at the understand-
ing, and they identify the parts that caused confusion and disagreement and make
a note of the parts of the text that will require special attention in the second
listen; forth, in the second listen, students listen to the parts that have caused
confusion or disagreement and write down new information they hear; fifth, in
a whole-class, process-based discussion, the teacher leads a discussion to confirm
comprehension before discussing with students the strategies that they used. It
is a constructive approach that allows Japanese students to realize the efficacy of
using metacognitive strategies.
Table 2.1 Monitor sheet
Perception stage Parsing stage Utilization stage Notes

Can you Can you Can you understand Do you notice
recognize words? visualize it when the speaker’s any other
it’s heard? intention? problems?
Text 1
Text 2
Table 2.2 Steps in guided metacognitive sequence for students in Japan
1 Pre-listening In pairs, students predict the possible

words and phrases that they might hear
and write down the prediction in English
or Japanese.
2 First listening As they are listening to the text, students
circle those words or phrases they have
predicted correctly, and they also write
down new information they hear.
3 Pair process-based Students, in pairs, compare what they have
discussion understood so far and explain how they
arrived at the understanding, and they
identify the parts that caused confusion
and disagreement and make a note of the
parts of the text that will require special
attention in the second listen.
4 Second listening Students listen to the parts that have
caused confusion or disagreement and
write down new information they hear.
5 Whole-class, process-based The teacher leads a discussion to confirm
discussion comprehension before discussing with
students the strategies that they used.
Teaching suprasegmental features for better word recognition

In the case of Japanese learners, the main problem of their listening difficulty
seems to be word recognition, which seems to be caused by the failure of segmen-
tation of English speech owing to the use of their L1 segmentation procedure.
Several researchers (Erickson et al., 1999; Hisaoka, 2004; Torikai et al., 2003)
support teaching suprasegmental features such as rhythm, stress, and intonation
as important linguistic cues to all Japanese learners. Torikai et al. (2003) argue
that a great number of Japanese people, in spite of having a good knowledge
of English vocabulary, fail to understand what native speakers say even at rela-
tively slow speed. They recommend shadowing to learn the knowledge of the
suprasegmental features (word stress, rhythm, and intonation) of spoken English.
In a study by Yanagihara (1995), the results reveal that the shadowing method
is more effective than the dictation method and that the use of the shadowing
method or the dictation method is more effective than simply listening alone.
Hisaoka (2004) also claims that the use of shadowing improves Japanese stu-
dents’ listening abilities, allowing them to articulate the suprasegmental features
in connected speech such as rhythm, intonation, assimilation, elision, and link-
ing. He explains that shadowing improves processing of fast speech because it
enhances the phonological loop.
Besides shadowing, Cauldwell (2002) recommends observing and imitating
the suprasegmental features of connected speech. Using a rubber band to focus
on strong-weak, stress-timed rhythm in English is also helpful to students in
26 Tomoko Kurita
understanding English stress. Thus teaching suprasegmental features should be
integrated with speaking skills.
The three-part sequence of listening instruction

and micro-exercises
Field (1998) proposed a three-part sequence consisting of pre-listening, while-
listening, and post-listening and contains activities that link bottom-up and top-
down listening. In EFL classrooms in Japan, the sequence is useful with some
modifications to activities. First, in the pre-listening phase, providing topical
knowledge is more helpful for the use of metacognitive strategies for students
than the vocabulary review. Reviewing of key vocabulary forces students to focus
on the bottom-up process too much, as a study by Chang (2008) revealed. Pre-
listening should focus on the top-down process. The teachers can provide back-
ground information or stimulate their experience related to the topic integrated
with speaking, reading, and writing activities.
In the while-listening phase, not only can comprehension exercises for the
top-down process but also dictation or partially transcribing for the bottom-up
process can be practiced. It depends on what the students need to monitor and
improve. For example, transcription and dictation can tell more about the condi-
tion of learners’ word recognition than their answers to comprehension ques-
tions. Listens should be repeated more than once so that the learner can identify
the parts that caused confusion and breakdown, and the learner can pay special
attention to those parts in the second listen. That may encourage learners to use
metacognitive strategies. For low-level learners, the teacher should use spoken
text with a lengthened pause between constituent boundaries for less demanding
listening practice.
Finally, the post-listening phase should include more activities to diagnose lis-
tening problems. Teachers and learners can focus on sections that the learner
could not follow or not understand. This may involve analysis of part of the text
to enable students to recognize such features as linking, assimilation, and other
features of spoken discourse that they were unable to process. For example, by
reading the transcription of the spoken text, students will notice the gap between
what they heard and the actual words used. The monitor sheet (Table 2.1) is also
useful here.
Micro-exercises that focus on required skills in each stage in the Anderson
(2009) model are effective; they are exercises aiming to enhance word recogni-
tion skills on the perception stage, creating metal representation skills on the pars-
ing stage, and skills to understand the speaker’s intention in the utilization phase.
For example, one micro-exercise for the perception stage is a dictation exercise
focusing on phonological modification. One parsing stage exercise is an exercise
that involves the listener drawing what s/he heard, which includes a certain form
of syntax. One utilization stage exercise is a turn-taking exercise, which makes the
students think of the speaker’s intention and reply. These micro-exercises can be
integrated with speaking, reading, and writing. More importantly, the exercises
need neither an extended amount of time nor any extra materials, so teachers can
implement them easily in pre-tertiary and tertiary education contexts in Japan.
Conclusion
In pre-tertiary and tertiary education in Japan, listening instruction should be
emphasized as well as teaching the other three skills. Teachers should pay more
attention to process rather than product in listening pedagogy because the pro-
cess approach can follow up on students’ problems and help teachers to choose
appropriate listening activities. In this chapter, effective listening comprehension
instruction focusing on process has been explored, based on the two theoretical
frameworks of listening comprehension – the Anderson (1995, 2009) model and
the top-down and the bottom-up processes – and taking into account common
difficulties students often encounter: first, teaching listening strategies to enhance
the top-down process; second, teaching metacognitive strategies to cope with the
difficulties; and third, teaching suprasegmental linguistic features such as stress,
rhythm, and intonation, which are useful linguistic cues for better bottom-up
processing. The lesson sequences including the top-down process approach and
the bottom-up process approach, as well as the micro-exercises for improving the
subskills for the perception, parsing, and utilization phase, are useful, and they can
be integrated with speaking, reading, and writing. In spite of some constraints,
teachers need to implement listening pedagogy focusing on process in Japan.
In order to develop better listening pedagogy, further research for listening
pedagogy in Japan will be needed in the future. It will need to include empirical
studies that prove the efficacy of process approaches through teacher percep-
tion, material development, learner motivation, teacher language awareness, cur-
riculum pressure, and so on. Moreover, it seems that learning the stress-timed
rhythm of English is necessary for students in Japan. Teaching suprasegmental
features and linguistic phenomenon of connected speech is important to the stu-
dents for developing the bottom-up process. Further research on the efficacy
of explicit instruction of suprasegmental features and linguistic phenomenon in
spoken language will be expected.
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3 Developing speaking for
intercultural communication
Textbooks with critical and
creative approaches
Lixian Jin and Martin Cortazzi
In this chapter, we present a brief rationale for developing intercultural com-

munication as an aspect of enhancing learners’ oral skills in English Language
Teaching (ELT), and we outline some relevant aims and features of this topic.
The key questions here are:
1 How can we develop textbooks for oral intercultural communication skills?

2 How can we integrate intercultural communication skills with approaches to
develop students’ thinking skills and their creative thinking?
We highlight our contribution to materials development: an approach that we

have developed over a number of years, which links intercultural communication
skills with the development of students’ ability to analyse and reflect on con-
texts and situations of interaction, and to develop their own critical thinking and
creativity. Together with developing students’ professional skills for their future
workplace communication, these can be seen as inter-related aspects of develop-
ing oral skills in English (see Figure 3.1).
As a specific application, we focus on the context of teaching oral skills in
China. This is a significant case: China has many millions of learners of English.
While Chinese ELT has developed enormously in recent years at all levels of edu-
cation, the teaching of oral skills remains problematic in many places. Although
many teachers and students are aware of the need to develop intercultural com-
munication skills, there is little training for teachers and there are relatively few
resources for this. Although increasing numbers of Chinese students and teachers
travel internationally, this remains a very small proportion of the total numbers of
learners and teachers: this is therefore an under-developed area of Chinese ELT.
We show the application of the suggested approach through the use of published
textbook materials and classroom activities for teaching English in universities in
China, in particular through the use of ‘Participation Activities’.
Contemporary communication, cultures, and ELT

Contemporary communication is specially characterized by the multiplicity
of media, with the speed, complexity, and diversity of communication locally,
Developing speaking 31
Figure 3.1 Three inter-related aspects of oral skills in English developed in this chapter.
nationally, and across national borders. Frequently, this means speakers of different
languages and cultural backgrounds interact with each other in an increasing range
of contexts: either face-to-face or less directly through electronic media. Thus,
for more and more people, communicating in a second language with culturally
diverse others is becoming a normal situation. It is quite likely to be a routine future
situation for learners currently studying languages. Language education, therefore,
needs to prepare students for these features of contemporary communication.
For the development of language learners’ speaking skills, this is a crucial
point. First, because it means that any individual or organization may sooner or
later find a need to interact rapidly or at short notice with an unexpected range of
culturally diverse participants. People with whom students may need to interact
may include visitors or tourists, international students and teachers, or, for adult
learners, clients, customers, and business and professional partners from around
the world. Equally, as language users, students may travel or study abroad or
interact directly, electronically, or vicariously through social and mass media with
a widening range of other speakers. Second, language learners can be seen as cur-
rent or future professionals and workers, citizens of societies whose cultural diver-
sity in many places is multiplied through migration and population movements.
An increasing number of places can be characterized by ‘superdiversity.’ This
term underlines the complexity of urban populations in cities such as London,
New York, or Melbourne where two to three hundred or more languages can be
found, reflecting the enormous variety of cultures and ethnic groups among resi-
dents (Vertovec, 2007). Therefore, these intercultural communication contexts
are not only international but also local: students need to learn to communi-
cate with those from other cultural communities within their own locality. These
32 Lixian Jin and Martin Cortazzi
points mean that intercultural communication skills have become a key part of
the citizenship and professionalism, which is ultimately the context for which
many learners develop competent speaking skills, not only in a first but also in a
second or foreign language (Byram, 2008; Clyne, 1994; Guilherme, 2002; Scol-
lon, Scollon, & Jones, 2012; Varner & Beamer, 2011) (see Figure 3.1).
The internationalization of ELT is a crucial part of this expansion of commu-
nication since in many education systems and business and professional organiza-
tions all around the globe English is the language of choice for communicating
whenever a second language is required, so English needs to be taught and
learned with intercultural contexts in mind. This development greatly extends
any discussion about the role of culture in ELT: traditional concepts of a ‘tar-
get culture’ must now be pluralized to extend to a far greater range of ‘target
cultures’ or ‘source cultures’ (those of the learners) for international students
(Cortazzi & Jin, 1999). ‘English’ also needs to be pluralized to ‘Englishes.’
This problematizes ideas of ‘native-speaker cultures’ of English as the sole or
main target since potentially any or every culture in the world is the cultural
context of contemporary communication: interactants with whom students as
future professionals may want to speak can represent this extraordinary diversity
of backgrounds and contexts; many will be using English as a second or foreign
language, quite possibly in expert but different ways, which reflect local or inter-
national Englishes (Kirkpatrick, 2007). Naturally, this range of contexts includes
those where people use English as a first language, but they are by no means
confined to first-language users who, globally, are vastly outnumbered by users
of English as a second or other language. Since a pedagogic focus on one or two
target cultures and contexts is plainly insufficient in this contemporary communi-
cation context, it is appropriate to develop intercultural skills in relation to a wide
range of speakers from a wide range of cultural contexts.
Intercultural communication skills

The target for developing speaking skills must therefore include a dimension of
developing intercultural communication skills. This will involve developing stu-
dents’ cultural awareness, knowledge, and understanding of diverse intercultural
situations; development of positive attitudes; and engagement with and empathy
for people from other cultures – some of these people will inevitably be unlike the
learners themselves. Developing these skills will include developing students’ abil-
ity to analyse and interpret unfamiliar situations in which intercultural commu-
nication is a key element. Cultural aspects of language learning should therefore
include intercultural situations selected not only from different regions around
the world but also locally so that in the ELT classroom, students can encounter
diversity within their own country or context of learning.
Figure 3.2 shows some aims for developing intercultural communication skills
in ELT (e.g., see Aldred, Byram, & Fleming 2003; Byram, 2008; Corbett, 2003,
2010; Jackson, 2014; Zhu, 2014). Several broad points should be salient: these
skills are worth developing from an educational viewpoint as part of human
Intercultural communication aims for learners in ELT

classes
Learners need to develop
• interest and open-mindedness about cultures and communication

• curiosity and confidence to explore intercultural situations and experiences
• understanding of and empathy for other cultural communities
• visions of themselves as ‘intercultural’
• recognition of different dimensions of cultural beliefs and practices
• awareness communication styles, cultural ways of politeness and
interaction
• explicit awareness of communication practices within their own cultural
context
• ability to analyse situations and think critically about issues and problems
• mindful thinking and communication, sensitivity to stereotypes
• creativity in considering viewpoints and others’ stances and experiences
• sensible risk taking in communication and action
• ability to accommodate to different audiences and different situations
• ability to negotiate language misunderstandings
• skills to manage intercultural conflict situations
• skills to make explicit and explain elements of different cultural practices
• ability to mediate and help others in situations of communication
difficulties
• socio-cultural engagement, responsibility, and intercultural citizenship
Figure 3.2 Some aims for learners to develop intercultural communication skills.
development in a holistic approach to language education; the skills are worth

developing in any language (a first, second, other or foreign language), and such
aims can apply to all language skills, but the focus here is on developing oral skills.
These aims naturally take considerable time to realize in practice fully. Appro-
priate resources will be needed. Materials should include multimedia textbooks,
which include video and audio recordings of speakers from different cultures,
and literature in English from around the world to engage learners’ imaginations.
In practice, all materials need to be tailored to different levels and contexts for
language learners. Students will need models of analysing intercultural situations
and of talking about intercultural thinking and feeling. These models may be
embodied in published materials or enacted by teachers.
Analysis, reflection, and themes

Teaching speaking for intercultural communication has a future orientation for
students, to engage with contemporary communication situations and their
concomitant complexity and diversity. However, developing these intercultural
skills has an immediate present value for students too. It is important to help
learners see this current relevance during teaching-learning processes. This is
partly to help sustain student motivation and partly so that teachers give learners
feedback on intercultural issues while they are learning intercultural skills. One
rationale for including cultural issues in ELT is not only that students should
understand target cultures but also to enable learners to analyse, understand,
and reflect upon their own culture and identity. Similarly, teaching speaking for
intercultural communication includes, by design, an element in which students
analyse, understand, and reflect upon their own personal communication and
upon ways in which people within their own cultural community express them-
selves (see Figure 3.2). This reflective element includes developing students’ abil-
ity to be explicit and think critically about their own communication situations,
including some in which they are personally involved and which include (inter)
cultural elements.
To develop students’ ability to analyse intercultural situations becomes crucial
when the question of topics and situations is considered. These could produc-
tively involve one target context or target community. However, this misses the
complexity and diversity of much contemporary communication. This means a
global variety of topics and situations need to be included. Since not every cul-
ture or intercultural context can be represented within a syllabus or teaching
scheme, representative sample situations are involved so that students develop
sound knowledge of what aspects of contexts typically vary in intercultural com-
munication and enhance their ability to analyse problematic situations.
The topics through which speaking skills are extended traditionally revolve
around communicating about the family, food, travel, shopping, work and leisure
interests, health and education, and daily life in one’s own or a target country. At
more advanced levels, topics often concern current problems and issues in society
or cultural, geographical, and historical features of one or more target coun-
tries. Engagement in such topics can, of course, include intercultural dimensions.
However, in our view, the list needs to be extended for a more sustained devel-
opment of intercultural speaking skills, and over a long term, it should include
the inter-related topics mentioned in Figure 3.3. One rationale for this is the
complexity of contemporary communication patterns and the role of intercul-
tural education for speaking skills related to future professional and workplace
communication.
A slightly different rationale for topics in Figure 3.3 and the aims in Figure 3.2
is that the sustained teaching of oral intercultural communication skills really
requires some specific training and teacher development. A problem here is that
for many teachers, and even teacher trainers, intercultural communication has not
yet been part of their training or professional development. One way to under-
stand what might be involved in such professional development is to look at cur-
rent textbooks about intercultural communication, which would be likely used in
training programmes. There are now many introductions to this field (Chen &
Starosta, 2007; Hurn & Tomalin, 2013; Jackson, 2014; Martin & Nakayama,
Aspects of intercultural communication for selective

development of ELT topics
Develop students’ awareness and increasing understanding of
• key features of contexts and how contextual variables affect communication

• World Englishes and international uses of English
• cultural ways of speaking, rhetorical and discourse practices in interaction
• non-verbal communication
• the pragmatics and interpretations of intercultural communication
• participants’ diverse identities and how they relate to communication
• professional communication in intercultural situations, workplaces, and
organizations
• issues in cultures of learning, international education, and study abroad
• tourism, travel, and hospitality
• well-being and health care
• personal relationships across cultures: friendships, love, marriage, and
family life
• world views, religions, philosophies of living, and value systems
Figure 3.3 Some aspects and inter-related topics for developing intercultural com-
munication in ELT.
2009; Piller, 2011; Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009; Zhu, 2014) and collec-
tions of basic readings or papers (Christopher, 2012; Gudykunst, 2003; Holliday,
Hyde, & Kullamn, 2010; Samovar et al., 2014) and handbooks (Jackson, 2012;
Kotthoff & Spencer-Oatey, 2007; Zhu, 2011) and direct considerations for ELT
(Corbett, 2003, 2010; Fennes & Hapgood, 1997; Fitzgerald, 2003; Hall, 2002).
These publications commonly feature the aims and topics we have outlined
(Figures 3.2 and 3.3). Our approach, however, emphasizes the inclusion of criti-
cal and creative thinking, which we consider to be inextricably related strands of
developing intercultural communication skills (see Figure 3.1) and which are less
frequently considered in this literature.
Critical and creative thinking

In this approach, developing intercultural communication skills is intimately
linked with critical and creative thinking. In many educational contexts, these
skills are frequently discussed in their own right as central to the normal and
effective development of human abilities (e.g., Boden, 1994; Gardner, 1993;
Sternberg, 1988, 1999). They are widely recognized in study programmes and
for English for Academic Purposes (Brink-Budgeon, 2010; Butterworth &
Thwaite, 2013; Moon, 2008), but they are also considered in everyday English
uses (Carter, 2004; Pope, 2005) and can be applied in many areas of learning
(Cummins, 2012; DfEE, 1999; Tan, 2007). Critical thinking can relate to the
analysis of intercultural contexts and communication situations, reflection on
cultural themes in communication, and consideration of communication issues
and problems for critical cultural awareness (Guilherme, 2002; Holliday, 2011;
Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009). Creative thinking can relate to recognizing
others’ cultural viewpoints, stances, and experiences, and to developing empathy
for different perspectives while recognizing alternative explanations for misun-
derstandings and conflicting positions in communication. Critical and creative
perspectives complement each other.
Developing oral skills in ELT in China

Teaching Chinese learners in China is a significant case for developing intercul-
tural communication skills. They represent by far the largest national group of
learners of English in the world. Because of China’s role internationally, there are
clear economic, social, and personal needs for Chinese professionals, tourists, and
travellers to communicate with people from different cultures around the globe
and, equally, for those outsiders visiting or working in China to communicate
effectively with Chinese people, whether in English, Chinese, or another lan-
guage. The concept of developing intercultural communication skills in relation
to local cultural diversity and minority languages in China is now on the agenda
of bilingual education but has so far not impinged greatly on ELT in China in
terms of practical applications (Feng, 2007, 2011; Lo Bianco, Orton, & Gao,
2009).
However, as with many students in the Asian region, most Chinese learners
are in a difficult position for learning intercultural skills. Opportunities to inter-
act with those from outside China are limited. There are limited chances for
most Chinese to interact with teachers or students from outside China. They may
develop some intercultural skills through travel and study abroad. However, for
those lucky enough to travel abroad, this is usually for short visits in which they
may speak a lot of Chinese and little English. Thus visiting other cultural contexts
and living abroad does not in itself guarantee the development of either oral skills
or intercultural competence unless visits are arranged systematically with these
aims in mind – even then students can over-estimate their own resulting intercul-
tural development (Jackson, 2010; Dai & Chen, 2014). Research indicates that
even though Chinese learners have a good background in learning English and
attain acceptable scores on international tests, such as the International English
Testing System and Test of English as a Foreign Language, as international stu-
dents, many experience difficulties in communicating and learning in English,
with associated intercultural problems of learning (Cortazzi & Jin, 2013a; Jin &
Cortazzi, 2011, 2013).
Many Chinese universities, some schools, and private language institutes have
a tradition of informal solutions to developing oral skills. This ‘learning English
with Chinese characteristics’ includes the holding of English-speaking events for
students through film and drama societies, book clubs with discussion circles,
or English-speaking competitions (performances are sometimes shown on TV);
the weekly informal gathering of students in an ‘English Corner’ of a park or
square on campus for casual conversation; and in some places, Chinese versions of
immersion English programmes to facilitate rapid language acquisition through
massive exposure (Jin & Cortazzi, 2004).
In terms of ELT methodology, formal language teaching in China has
moved beyond grammar-translation approaches to more active learner-centred
approaches in which applications of knowledge of English to real-world contexts
are emphasized. This includes learning to discuss and solve problems and develop
collaborative skills in groups. Within this context, oral skills are considered far
more important than was previously the case, and intercultural skills are more
valued.
A major issue for many Chinese students abroad is that they have a limited
willingness to speak in English. Many students are afraid to make mistakes and
reluctant to take risks. Some who study abroad interact socially largely or exclu-
sively with other Chinese students in Chinese and find it difficult to make friends
with local people. This may partly be a result of a legacy of Chinese cultures of
learning in which, in large classes, students are not encouraged to speak out, ask
questions, raise issues in discussion, or proffer alternative viewpoints. Many Chi-
nese students are seen by international teachers as ‘passive’ in class discussions:
this is wrong labelling and perhaps a stereotype, since students in China listen
mindfully and may be learning in different ways for cultural and social reasons in
a different educational tradition (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996; Jin & Cortazzi, 1998).
Most Chinese teachers of English manage the classroom interaction in their large
classes rather effectively to promote learning in more formal ways (Cortazzi &
Jin, 2001), but it has taken some years for English teachers to begin to feel com-
fortable with the classroom organization of pair and group work, which is typical
of oral interactive approaches.
Further difficulties for developing students’ oral skills relate to their teach-
ers’ professional skills. Most English teachers in China are Chinese: they have
largely learned English in China, and few have had opportunities for an extended
stay abroad. Very few Chinese teachers of English have had training in teaching
intercultural communication skills. Most teachers in China teach large classes
(primary and middle schools frequently have classes of over 40; university classes
may have 60 or more students; even in oral language classes, numbers of well
over 30 are commonplace). Teachers are aware of the importance of teaching
oral skills, but only recently have listening and, to a lesser extent, speaking been
included in tests at national levels in China. Traditional constraints in classroom
practices include an emphasis on grammar and vocabulary taught in a teacher- or
textbook-centred approach. This is changing with more teacher development in
teaching oral skills and cultural aspects of ELT. A Chinese professional practice is
that teachers learn skills and pedagogic techniques from observing each other in
demonstration lessons, which may be video recorded. The recent generation of
ELT textbook materials published in China has accompanying audio and video
recordings, including recordings of situations with intercultural interactions, with
tape scripts, and with intercultural notes provided.
Applications of this intercultural framework

to ELT in China
Some applications to develop oral intercultural communication skills in second
language situations in Western countries have been developed in Hong Kong
universities and schools. These include prolonged student sojourns and academic
exchanges with English-speaking institutions, short visits abroad, and ELT pro-
jects which develop direct oral interaction with local visitors and residents who
speak English or with students abroad using the Internet. Some of these activities
are within specific intercultural communication teaching modules. These are suc-
cessful when supported by reflection and analysis through classroom discussion
and journal activities supported by informed teachers (Jackson, 2010). Students
can be prepared through ethnographic training to make the most of opportuni-
ties to understand the insider perspectives of others (Corbett, 2003; Roberts,
Byram, Barro, Jordan, & Street, 2001). However, in most mainland Chinese
ELT contexts, such possibilities are limited or impossible and therefore less direct
oral experiences need to be provided through the use of multimedia resources
and textbook materials, which include audio and video recordings of intercultural
dialogues (scripted or authentic) and descriptions and narratives of intercultural
interactions. These will form the basis of classroom interactions, perhaps sup-
ported by online resources.
In the following considerations and textbook examples, we refer to several
series of materials for College English courses published in China jointly by Mac-
millan with Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (SFLEP) (Smallwood,
Li, Martin, & Green, 2002–5, 2004–5) and with the Foreign Language Teaching
and Research Press (FLTRP) in Beijing (Greenall, Tomalin, & Friedland, 2008–
9, 2009). These materials arguably lead developments in intercultural commu-
nication within ELT in China, and they have been linked with practical teacher
development programmes over some years. We have been closely involved with
these as series editor and cultural editor, materials writers, or authors of accompa-
nying teacher’s books, also as teacher trainers conducting related courses in key
cities in China.
In this approach, it is not enough for learners to simply encounter a representa-
tive range of cultures through texts in order to raise their awareness and knowl-
edge of other cultural communities. Rather, learners need to explore, investigate,
and interpret intercultural interactions; identify the stances and interpretations
taken by interlocutors and the values they draw on; and identify sources of mis-
understandings and intercultural conflict. For this, learners need to be encour-
aged and guided to develop flexibility, mindfulness, and cultural adaptability, and
eventually be prepared to mediate in situations of intercultural difficulty, misun-
derstanding, or conflict.
The FLTRP materials (Greenall et al., 2008–9, 2009) include audio and video
recordings, both scripted and authentic, which with printed texts and dialogues
give students access to a wide variety of cultural situations. Many of these scripts
are models for Chinese and British participants are in interaction. Activities
include many oral tasks for pair and group discussions and class presentations,
often on cultural aspects of themes presented in the main texts, supported with
‘Culture Notes.’ These are further supported with focused activities related to a
specific ‘Reading across Culture’ section on the theme of each unit, with discus-
sion activities, which encourage students to express their own ideas and view-
points on aspects of cultural life in different contexts. Some activities ask students
to reflect on Chinese cultures and local situations. For example, on the theme
of tourism, students are given the task to prepare in English their own recom-
mendations of local places for international visitors and to describe significant
sites taking into account the cultures of such visitors. Classroom presentations
are made by groups and in the Teacher’s Books, teachers are given communica-
tion criteria to evaluate these and give explicit feedback to learners. Later, after
students have had the opportunity to internalize this process, teachers hand over
this evaluation process to learners. Students draw up and apply their own criteria,
including criteria of intercultural communication (e.g., that this should be appro-
priate, efficient, effective, and satisfying; Ting-Toomey, 1999; see Figure 3.6).
Oral expression is further developed through ‘Developing Critical Thinking’ –
a section in each unit that encourages independent thinking about ideas pre-
sented in the main text or dialogues. The Teacher’s Books give explicit guidance
on different ways to manage the classroom organization of these activities. Many
Chinese students are not accustomed to a lot of self-expression in English; some
will feel a lack of confidence and the potential embarrassment of speaking out
in class, and some will hesitate to verbalize their own ideas, so the Teacher’s
Books give full examples of answers and possible discussion points so that stu-
dents can be supported. Some teachers use the Internet to make these available
to their classes. These materials thus contain a lot of information and activities to
raise awareness of cultural issues and to apply some intercultural communication
skills – all the activities are, after all, conducted in English.
The SFLEP materials (Smallwood et al., 2002–5, 2004–5) also have this
emphasis on oral interaction on cultural themes through active engagement in
role plays, discussions, problem-solving, and interpreting ideas. The materials
contain three kinds of additional innovations. One section has ‘Intercultural
Notes,’ which specifically give intercultural information and guidance related to
a unit theme. Examples of topics for these notes are gift giving in different cul-
tures; perceived space between people, power, and language; World Englishes;
intercultural marriages; languages and communication in Australia; exams across
cultures; and questioning and learning in classrooms across cultures.
Another innovation is a section in each unit on ‘Expanding Your Creativity.’
This encourages oral expression in unexpected ways, which are quite different
from both traditional and recent activities in Chinese ELT. This is a significant
skill development in China (Cortazzi & Jin, 2013b). Each activity is by defini-
tion different from all others in the same textbook, but each asks students in
pairs or groups to use English actively in new contexts in ways that go beyond
accuracy and fluency. They emphasize interest, imagination, visualizing alterna-
tives, engaging in problem solving, using judgement, or applying personal and
social values (see examples in Figure 3.4). These creative activities lead to stu-
dents’ oral presentations in class, and students must give reasons or a rationale
for their achievements here. These presentations can be evaluated by the teacher
using criteria suggested in the Teacher’s Book but are later evaluated by students
themselves. The Teacher’s Books have examples of guidance for students and of
completed activities, but there is necessarily a creative range of outcomes for such
activities.
Expanding creativity: activities for creative oral

presentations of ideas
• put qualities for a successful personal relationship in rank order, from a

given list (e.g., romance, honour, trust, family background, wealth, loy-
alty, accommodation)
• design a T-shirt with a message to express your thinking about a local
environmental issue)
• decide what money means to people in your group (e.g., security,
power, happiness, comfort, health and well-being, family status, property
ownership)
• design a poster to advertise and recommend a newly issued book, song,
or film
• interpret some intercultural data about good students and comment on
its significance and interest for your group
• design an event for the Verbal Olympics: all events must emphasize peo-
ple’s verbal abilities (e.g., telling jokes or stories, presenting introduc-
tions, arguments and speeches . . . the longest/shortest/most moving/
most entertaining/ most expressive/ most informative. . .)
• make ‘guidelines for the guides’ – i.e., do’s and don’ts for Chinese guides
to interact with international visitors and tourists (e.g., explaining, sus-
taining interest, entertaining, organizing a group, timekeeping, visitors’
cultural values)
• prioritize facilities for town planning in your locality (e.g., shopping, busi-
nesses, sports and leisure, entertainments, scenic landscaping, transport,
tourist and visitor facilities, environmental aspects)
• write and perform a dialogue between a young person in love and their
parents (who think their son/daughter is being unwise)
Figure 3.4 Examples of activities to develop creativity in oral skills in pairs

and groups (based on Smallwood et al., 2002–5).
A third innovation is a ‘Culture Corner’ in each unit (authored by Jin).
This section systematically raises issues in intercultural communication which
have been specifically observed to be problematic for Chinese learners of English
in intercultural face-to-face interactions in China and internationally. These
observations have been confirmed with key informants. The section shows how
particular verbal events can be interpreted or misinterpreted by participants from
different cultural communities – often this leads to wrong impressions, misun-
derstandings, or wrong evaluations of people, which can reinforce stereotypes
(examples of topics are given in Figure 3.5). The section gives examples and
information from different cultural viewpoints illustrated with cartoons and
encourages students to observe and analyse interactions themselves by showing
what features of context, cultural frameworks, interaction, and language to look
out for.
‘Culture Corners’ are each followed by a ‘Participation Activity.’ This is an
observed intercultural communication situation or critical incident, which has
different cultural interpretations, which can lead to misperceptions, misunder-
standings, misinterpretations, or conflict. Learners are presented with different
choices for action or interpretation; they discuss and choose one which they feel
is most appropriate, with reasons, and consider the consequences of other choices
and who might make these other choices (see Cushner & Brislin, 1996). We call
this a ‘Participation Activity’ to emphasize that students need to talk about and
often re-enact or role-play such situations. There are no right or wrong answers,
but through the Teacher’s Book students are given further notes on the Culture
Corner, key questions to help them consider the Participation Activity situations
in more depth, and feedback comments for each choice. Thus, the main point of
the activity is to consider and verbalize interactional choices, imagine, and discuss
alternative cultural consequences and cross-cultural explanations of politeness,
and to role-play similar scenarios – all in English.
Figure 3.6 shows three stages of Participation Activities. These can be related
to the extracts from an example of ‘Ask if you are not sure’ (Smallwood et al.,
2004, 2005, 2006, Book 2: 49–50; Teacher’s Book 2: 54–55). The Culture
Corner elaborates with a cartoon illustration how second language users often
Culture Corner topics: raising awareness of politeness practices across cultures

• ways of listening • asking when you are not sure
• expressing disagreement • using intonation to express meaning
• accepting invitations • expressing feelings and emotions
• indicating preferences • cultural views of classroom events
• persuading others • culture shock and changes
• praising yourself • linguistic aspects of competitiveness
• ways of presenting arguments • topics for social chatting
• presenting balanced arguments • expressing humour
• asking questions in formal contexts • politeness with emails
Figure 3.5 Developing intercultural communication with oral skills (based on Small-

wood et al., 2004–5).
Figure 3.6 Three stages of participation activities to develop intercultural communi-

cation skills (based on Smallwood et al., 2002–5, 2004–2005).
do not understand what they are hearing: in some cultures, it is the listener’s
responsibility to understand, whereas in others, the onus is on the speaker to be
clear; some people are embarrassed to ask or unsure how to ask for clarification;
hesitating or waiting to ask may be interpreted as shyness or showing a lack of
interest. Yet not asking may have serious consequences for misunderstanding (a
humorous example of this is given):
Participation activity
You are attending a lively discussion about philosophy. Your Canadian pro-
fessor is explaining the views of a contemporary British philosopher. The
professor uses the word Weltanschauung during the discussion, and you
don’t know what it means. You try to work out the meaning from the con-
text: ‘Her Weltanschauung is interesting because it. . .’ says the professor.
‘This Weltanschauung is common among a group of people who. . .’
You think the word may have something to do with a newspaper; you
know that Die Welt is the name of a German newspaper. It may be important
for you to know this word; the professor has already used it twice. You would
really like to know what Weltanschauung means.
With a partner, discuss the following courses of action open to you. Give
reasons for your choice. You could
a) interrupt immediately, but politely, and ask for an explanation of Wel-

tanschauung. Maybe everyone else wants to know, too;
b) wait until after the discussion has finished and look up the word by
yourself; you don’t want to look silly in front of the professor and the
other students;
c) quietly ask your neighbour if he or she knows the meaning of the
word; if your neighbour knows, you will obtain the answer without
interrupting the class;
d) ask the professor for an explanation after the class has finished. This
will avoid wasting class time if not everyone needs to know.
(Weltanschauung means ‘world view’ – a German expression often used by

English speakers in discussions about philosophy, politics, and related areas.)
Notes in the Teacher’s Book to help with stage 1 or later (Figure 3.6):
Students should consider

• how important it is to know such a term and whether this importance
would only be known when you ask the teacher
• whether to interrupt the teacher and how to do this appropriately and
politely
• whether talking to a neighbour will be considered an interruption to
that student or to others nearby – and to the teacher
• whether asking the teacher might help the class
• whether asking the teacher after the class would interrupt the teacher
then or delay the teacher in doing something else
• whether asking the teacher after the class is a good idea: it may help
you but would it help other students?
Observation and research (Jin & Cortazzi, 1998, 2011) indicates that this situ-
ation does represent a real problem in intercultural communication for many
Chinese people, and many Chinese students prefer choice (b) or (d), whereas
Western European and North American students are far more likely to choose
(a). In stage 1 (Figure 3.6), students are encouraged to envisage different cultural
viewpoints and participants’ feelings, while questioning their own assumptions.
The Teacher’s Book gives further considerations for each choice and its conse-
quences, allowing the teacher to give guidance, comments, and elaborations on
students’ discussions and their reports (stages 2 and 3). Comments for choice (a)
are especially helpful for Chinese learners:
If you do this, you should get an explanation immediately. However, you would
need to think whether it is OK to interrupt the teacher in this way; in fact,
most Canadian professors will not mind; they will probably see your question
as a useful part of the class. You could use what you think you know as part
of your question: ‘I know that Die Welt is the name of a German newspaper
but I am not sure what’ ‘Weltanschauung’ means – is the term related to the
newspaper?’(The answer is ‘yes’, indirectly, because ‘Die Welt’ means ‘the world’
and ‘Anschauung’ means ‘view’.) Of course, although he teacher may welcome
your question, it is possible that other students may not like your interruption,
especially if your question is about something that they know and may think is
basic knowledge. If it turns out that other students also wanted to ask, you will
have helped them. You may also help the teacher because your question will help
him or her to establish common ground which will be important for the rest of the
explanation – perhaps the teacher presumed that some ground, such as this term,
was common when in fact it is not. As the discussion is lively, your question is a
way for you to join in . . .
Together, the three stages (Figure 3.6) give students considerable practice
for their oral skills, developing intercultural awareness with a critical-creative
approach, which considers different views, experiences, and feelings.
Conclusions
In China, learners face considerable difficulties in their development of oral skills
for intercultural communication. These are associated with the limited opportu-
nities in their educational context, cultural traditions, and aspects of confidence
and willingness to speak. Speaking skills are always developed in relation to par-
ticular topics: for intercultural communication, we have illustrated a range of
these at different levels (Figures 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5) and through features in text-
book materials.
Intercultural communication skills cannot be developed simply through lan-
guage skills nor through knowledge of relevant cultures, nor by just knowing
a few rules, politeness formulae, or examples of do’s and don’ts. The materials
we describe seek to develop overall awareness of likely differences, variables, and
common ways of speaking in cultural styles of communicating within a frame-
work of active student participation. The approach illustrated in Figures 3.1 and
3.2 highlights the fundamentals: the development of learners’ ability to observe,
analyse, and think flexibly. These underlying creative and critical strands of the
cognitive and emotional engagement of this approach help to maintain student
interest. They offset the inevitable fundamental difficulty of developing oral
skills – their transience in real uses. Even with efforts to hold this transience,
through uses of audio and video recordings, tape scripts, cultural notes, and
intercultural guidance related to realistic scenarios, this difficulty remains for
speaking skills.
Teacher comments on the materials we discuss, given in training sessions, indi-
cate how they find this approach positive; they comment that it opens cultural
and pedagogic horizons, not only for developing oral skills but also for a more
holistic approach, which emphasizes pedagogic variety and creativity. This helps
them to feel enabled to develop their own practices with their own ideas for
local adaptations. While this approach and the examples are designed for ELT in
China, we hope they provide principles, insights, and ideas for adaptation else-
where. Within the current trends of communication and intercultural relations
worldwide, this topic warrants all the effort and creativity we can put into its
further development.
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4 Teaching reading through
multimodal texts
Eveline Chan and Zuocheng Zhang
The teaching of reading in English language learning settings, and in the context
of education more generally, is influenced by the purposes for reading and by the
changing nature of texts brought about by the impact of digital technologies on
reading practices. Digital technologies have transformed the way in which texts
are produced, distributed, and consumed (Kress, 2005, 2010). Contemporary
reading materials in both print and digital formats include a complex interplay
of written text, images, and design elements. Such texts can be described as mul-
timodal: they combine different sets of semiotic resources for making meaning,
such as language, image, and spatial patterns, and communicate these meanings
through multiple sensory modes and media (Jewitt, 2005, 2008; Kress, 2003;
Lemke, 2006). For example, online news websites often include written articles
accompanied by images, video, infographics, and interactive elements to engage
and communicate information to readers; business reports may use graphics
to summarise complex data or to highlight significant findings; and language
learning materials frequently include images and audio to support the compre-
hension of written text to make meaning more accessible to learners. Images
have the potential to convey powerful cultural messages, as they do in media
texts and advertising campaigns. Digital texts readily combine sound effects and
music with animated images to engage readers and often include interactive ele-
ments as well, bringing an element of joint construction to reading and viewing
activities.
These changes in the nature of texts have substantial implications for teaching
reading using authentic, contemporary texts in English language teaching (ELT).
Proponents of multiliteracies pedagogy (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; New Lon-
don Group, 1996; Unsworth, 2001) have long held that (1) conceptions of read-
ing need to be broadened beyond processing meaning from the printed word
alone to include the integration of meaning across multiple semiotic modes, and
(2) the teaching of reading needs to recognise the culturally and linguistically
diverse contexts for communication in our increasingly globalised societies (New
London Group, 2000, p. 9). There has also been a growing recognition of this
shift in the ELT literature (e.g., Ajayi, 2012; Archer, 2000; Farías, Obilinovic, &
Orrego, 2007; Lotherington & Jenson, 2011; Royce, 2007; Yi, 2014), with an
emphasis on the need for teachers to be innovative in their teaching of English
50 Eveline Chan and Zuocheng Zhang
(Baker, 2012; Tomlinson, 2005). Furthermore, practitioners are urged to recog-
nise that it is no longer adequate to simply adopt the ELT materials and practices
of inner-circle, English-speaking countries without considering both the local
contexts and purposes for ELT and the global contexts for communication in
English (Graddol, 2006; Kirkpatrick & Sussex, 2012; Muller, Herder, Adam-
son, & Brown, 2012).
Against this background, this chapter aims to (1) provide an overview of
research and theory around contemporary multimodal texts and reading, (2)
explore some affordances of multimodal texts for developing English language
learners’ repertoires of reading, and (3) outline some of the challenges for inno-
vating practice in Asian ELT contexts.
Contemporary multimodal texts and reading
Changing nature of text

The dissemination of textual artifacts in the public domain is no longer con-
strained by the capacity of publishing houses and the printing press. Tools for
digital text production make it easier to combine the semiotic resources of visual
texts (static and dynamic images), audio texts (music, narration, sound effects),
and kinaesthetic performance (drama, dance, other artistic performance) with
those of spoken and written language. As a consequence, the consumption and
production of multimodal texts has increased to a point where the printed word
is no longer the primary mode for representing knowledge and communicating
information (Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Jewitt, 2008).
This shift in textual practices can be seen in the design of resources for learn-
ing, and in particular, how knowledge is represented for pedagogical purposes.
In a study of learning resources for secondary-school science, mathematics, and
English from the 1930s, 1980s, and 2000–2005, Bezemer and Kress (2010)
reported that images are increasingly displacing writing as the dominant mode of
representation in textbooks, web-based resources, and teacher-produced materi-
als. While many print-based ELT materials have typically incorporated images
to support students’ language learning, the influence of digital media on texts,
images, and layout also can be seen in textbooks published over time (Ajayi,
2012). For example, in a study of 17 English as a Foreign Language textbooks
for primary and secondary students in China published by People’s Education
Press between 2002 and 2006, Chen (2010a) reports the pervasive use of multi-
modal resources to engage readers dialogically. The study revealed how resources
such as dialogue balloons, illustrations, labels accompanying images, and incom-
plete verbal texts mediate the “voices” of the editor, illustrated characters, and
the reader by creating spaces for joint construction of meaning across visual and
verbal modes.
The interaction of meanings across different semiotic resources in a multi-
modal text can be complex and multi-layered. Images, for instance, fulfill a range
Teaching reading 51
of different functions in textbooks and various learning materials. For example,
an image may provide visual balance and cohesion in the design and layout of
a page – it may be purely decorative or contribute predominantly to the com-
positional function of a text. Alternatively, multimodal resources may function
primarily to complement verbal text in negotiating interpersonal meanings to
engage readers, as in Chen’s (2010a) study mentioned earlier. Furthermore,
images may also play a significant role in representing ideational meanings in
a text: a photograph can depict a setting relevant to target language use; pic-
tures of various kinds are commonly used to support vocabulary development
by providing redundancy in meaning; graphs and diagrams often present com-
plex information in a more visually accessible format than written text; sym-
bols in images can communicate powerful social and cultural messages (e.g.,
Zhang & Freebody, 2010). In other words, the semiotic work performed in
contemporary texts in all three functional components – the representational
(ideational), interactive (interpersonal), and compositional (textual) (Halliday,
2009, p. 314; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) – is distributed across a range of
multimodal meaning-making resources. Thus meanings in a text are not con-
fined to the words alone.
Changing concepts of reading

This changing nature of text has substantial implications for reading and the
teaching of reading in ELT contexts. Reading extends beyond the processing of
meaning from the printed word. Students are increasingly engaging with multi-
modal texts in print and on screen, through websites, social media, video games,
advertisements, graphic novels, and textbooks. In order to make sense of such
multimodal texts, students need some understanding of how language and other
modes interact to make meaning. Kress (2000, p. 337) contended that it would
be impossible to make sense of such texts, “even of their linguistic parts alone”,
without understanding how features such as images, words, colours, and sound
contribute to the meaning of a text.
In the ELT research literature, there has been an increasing recognition that
reading for authentic purposes requires more than an ability to decode linguis-
tic meanings. For instance, Archer (2000), Lotherington and Jenson (2011),
and Royce (2007) maintain that communicative competence in a target language
must extend beyond a focus on linguistic meaning to recognise images as con-
structions of social and cultural meanings. English language students need skills
to interpret images in order to understand how social, political, and ideological
messages are constructed in text (Ajayi, 2012, p. 17), particularly with the expan-
sion of online ELT resources and opportunities for direct intercultural communi-
cation via the Internet (Baker, 2012, p. 32).
To accommodate these broader purposes for reading, models of reading in
ELT, and of literacy more broadly, have shifted over time from cognitive and
behavioural approaches focused on skills and strategies (e.g., Goodman, 1988),
to conceptualising reading as a sociocultural and situated process, and as a social
practice, which varies across cultures, contexts, and social groups (Gee, 2008).
An adequate model of reading then, needs to incorporate a broad repertoire of
practices, which can account for the complex processes required to successfully
make use of the meanings in print and multimodal texts in different institutional
and social settings while being flexible enough to facilitate culturally relevant
approaches to ELT.
As “a systematic way for interrogating . . . (reading as a sociocultural, situ-
ated) . . . practice”, Freebody and Luke (2003, p. 57) identified four areas of
reading competence: coding competence, semantic competence, pragmatic com-
petence, and critical competence. These areas of competence, they argued, are a
necessary repertoire of reading practices, or resources, associated with effectively
engaging with print and visual texts (Freebody, 2007, p. 34; Freebody & Luke,
2003, p. 57; Luke & Freebody, 1990). Building on this “four resources” model
(Freebody, 2007), multimodal communicative competence requires a reader to
understand how grammatical, graphological, and phonological sound and visual
conventions or patterns contribute to the meanings of a text (coding compe-
tence); to interpret its meanings (semantic competence); to know how to act on
the different cultural and social functions that various texts perform (pragmatic
competence); and to recognise the ideological messages in texts (critical com-
petence). As shown in Figure 4.1, the four resources model can be effectively
adapted to map multimodal reading practices (e.g., Bull & Anstey, 2010; Serafini,
2012; Tan & Guo, 2009).
Figure 4.1 Multimodal reading competences derived from the “four roles model” of
reading (Freebody, 2007, p. 34).
Teaching reading 53
The four roles or areas of competence shown in Figure 4.1 are described in
more detail in the following sections.
Code breaking (coding competence)

Reading multimodal texts involves not only decoding linguistic elements of writ-
ten language or the printed word but also actively interacting with text to retrieve
information from all modes of communication available during the meaning-
making process.
In the decoding role, readers bring their knowledge about language to learn
new vocabulary. They use their understandings about the relationships among
sounds, letters, symbols, and word structures to identify unknown words.
Grapho-phonic and lexico-grammatical cues are used to make sense of written
text. Similarly, when visual material is included in the text, readers bring their
knowledge of visual conventions and symbols to the decoding task.
Meaning-making (semantic competence)

Proficient readers are active readers who have clear goals in mind for reading and
use reading strategies in their attempt to achieve comprehension. They participate
in the construction of meaning from a text – they relate meanings in the text to
their knowledge of the subject matter and experiences with other texts. They use
their knowledge of vocabulary to construct meaning from the text and engage with
both the literal and inferential meanings presented or implied in the text. When
reading multimodal texts, they effectively integrate the complementary meanings
represented in image, language, and other modes (Chan & Unsworth, 2011).
Text-user practices (pragmatic competence)

Competent readers not only read for meaning but also use their understanding to
achieve various goals for communication. In this role, readers use a wide range of
texts for authentic purposes – for example, in everyday activities, academic study, or
work-related tasks. They understand the different social and cultural functions that
texts perform in society and how they are structured differently to achieve their pur-
poses (genre). They can be described as “writerly readers” (Cheng, 2008, p. 67; Hir-
vela, 2004) who have a working knowledge of the distinctive features of the text – for
example, its tone, the degree of formality, and the sequence of components – and
they can relate such features to the context based on their genre knowledge.
Text-analyst practices (critical competence)

Competent readers go beyond the text to analyse the underlying assumptions.
The text analyst engages critical reading skills and uses knowledge of language
and semiotic practices to identify how people, events, and ideas are portrayed
in a text. They analyse the point of view of the author/composer and how the
structure and features of a text, such as the choice of words or the juxtaposition
of images, are used to achieve various purposes. In reading literary texts, the text-
analyst role enables readers to exercise their “critical competence” in identifying
how different characters, actions, events, and groups are represented. In factual
texts, they can identify what facts are presented and omitted, and in what form
“facts” are represented (e.g., statistically, graphically, in tables), and whose point
of view is projected through these representations. In advertising and media
texts, they recognise how print, sound, and image work together to construct an
ideal product, a news story that sells, and the textual devices used to position and
persuade the target audience.
Exploiting multimodal aspects of texts for developing

repertoires of reading
Despite the diverse goals and settings for reading English in Asian classrooms,
contemporary texts place new demands on English language teachers to shift
their practices from skills-based to approaches that develop students’ repertoires
of practices for reading multimodal texts. Language, image, and other typograph-
ical features complement each other in communicating messages to the reader/
viewer. The interaction of meaning-making resources in a multimodal text pro-
vides multiple cues for the reader/viewer to engage with text meaning. Salient
features in images may indicate contrast, disproportion, or other key information
in the text, or emotion as suggested by colour and framing. Explicit teaching
about the features of language, image, design, and layout may be exploited to
engage and enhance students’ reading strategies.
The following sections provide some criteria for selecting texts, suggestions for
addressing the four practices when teaching reading with multimodal texts, and
assessment in multimodal reading.
Text selection
In many Asian ELT classrooms, textbooks are the predominant resource for
teaching EL students. Therefore, teachers need to recognise the multimodal
resources that are central to EL textbook design and students’ learning. The fol-
lowing questions may be helpful in guiding teachers’ selection and use of texts:
• What (cultural) representations are made in this text?

• Are they representative of students’ diverse cultural experiences?
• Are they accurately portrayed?
• What biases are expressed?
• Are they relevant to students’ interests, learning, and/or content
requirements?
• Do they meet the requirements of state-mandated standards?
• What multimodal resources are available for meaning?
Teaching reading 55
Code breaking – what does the text say?
When decoding the elements and structural composition of language and texts
with pictures, graphic displays, and navigational devices such as on web pages, the
following prompts may be useful:
• What type of text is this?

• What patterns and conventions can be seen in this text?
• What symbols or visual conventions appear in this text? (e.g., keys, legends,
scales, units shown on axes of a graph, logos, icons)
• What does the student already know? (e.g., letters, words, punctuation, sym-
bols, layout)
• What features of the text does the teacher need to teach explicitly?
An example of a code-breaking activity: reading texts with maps

Explicit teaching around identifying and decoding symbols, icons, visual conven-
tions, and word labels on maps, such as Figure 4.2, can provide opportunities for
building vocabulary and expanding students’ visual literacy, depending on the
level of the students and the lesson goals. The teacher can draw attention to the
legend and the use of colour, guide students to identify icons and symbols, and
Figure 4.2 Tourist map of Shanghai.1

(Source: China Tour Advisors, Shanghai Maps)
Table 4.1 Example of code-breaking activity
talk about what they represent. Students can then apply their decoding skills to
task-based activities (Table 4.1).
Similar code-breaking activities can also be applied to texts with graphs, dia-
grams, and other kinds of images with labels.
Meaning-making – what does the text mean?

The ways in which images and other modes of meaning are interwoven to con-
struct the content of a text need to be made explicit to English language learners.
Questions to guide meaning-making activities include the following:
• What do the students already know about this topic?

• What are the possible meanings of this text?
• What facts or information can be found in this text?
• How are people, objects, events, and places represented?
• How do different modes in this text work together to create meaning?
° What meanings are coded visually?

° What meanings are coded verbally?
° Are there meanings that are similar across modes?
° Are there meanings in one mode that are additional or complementary
to the meanings in the other mode?
° Are there meanings that are alternately represented in one mode then
the other (i.e., distributed across the modes)?
° Are there meanings that are divergent in image and language (e.g., do
they contradict each other?)?
Teaching reading 57
Example of a meaning-making activity: reading explanatory
texts with diagrams
Reading activities for meaning-making focus on gaining literal information from
the text, making inferences or predictions, or summarising information, depend-
ing on the lesson goals and the level of the students.
Scientific explanations are commonly accompanied by diagrams, such as in
Figure 4.3.
The soil food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their
lives in the soil. It describes a complex living system in the soil and how it
interacts with the environment, plants, and animals.
Food webs describe the transfer of energy between species in an ecosys-
tem. While a food chain examines one, linear, energy pathway through an
ecosystem, a food web is more complex and illustrates all of the potential
pathways. Much of this transferred energy comes from the sun. Plants use
the sun’s energy to convert inorganic compounds into energy-rich, organic
compounds, turning carbon dioxide and minerals into plant material by pho-
tosynthesis. Plants are called autotrophs because they make their own energy;
they are also called producers because they produce energy available for
other organisms to eat. Heterotrophs are consumers that cannot make their
own food. In order to obtain energy they eat plants or other heterotrophs.
Figure 4.3 An example of a topological food web.2

(Source: “Soil food web”, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wikimedia Commons)
The diagram shows the relationships among types of organisms in the soil,
organic matter, plants, birds, and mammals. The words provide the techni-
cal vocabulary to classify the organisms into taxonomic groups. Along the
bottom of the diagram, technical terms are also used to categorise different
types of feeders according to their place in the food web. However, neither
the words in the diagram nor those in the accompanying Wikipedia entry
fully explain the relationships between the organisms represented in the dia-
gram by arrows. In other words, meanings implicit in the diagram need to
be inferred. Similarly, the intermodal relationships between visual and ver-
bal meanings need to be recognised in order to understand the complex
concepts, which are jointly constructed and distributed across modes in the
multimodal text.
With such texts, successful meaning-making depends on understanding how
the visual and written modes in the text work together to create meaning. Stu-
dents’ attention can be drawn to the affordances of each mode in representing
different scientific concepts. When probing what meanings are made visually,
students can be asked questions such as the following:
• Does the image symbolise, classify, or analyse?

• How are participants in the food web represented?
° What images or symbols are used?

• What processes and relationships are depicted in the diagram?
° What do the arrows mean?

° What do the boxes along the bottom of the image mean?
• Are there meanings in language that are additional (or complementary) to
those in the diagram?
° What nouns and adjectives describe the organisms and concepts in the
web?
° What verbs and verb types are used?
° What adverbs and phrases provide the circumstances of the processes or
ideas?
• Why are some meanings made in different modes? How does this help your
understanding of the text?
Text user – how do I use this text?

To develop pragmatic “text-user” competence, connections between texts and
learners’ cultural practices need to be made in ways that are significant for their
learning. Some questions to draw attention to these connections are as follows:
• What is the purpose of this text?

• How is the text structured to achieve its purpose?
Teaching reading 59
• What features make this text effective in achieving its purpose?
• How would this text be used in the community?
• What opportunities are there for students to use this text?
Example of text-using activity: reading research articles

When reading research articles, students may be guided by a range of questions
to heighten their awareness of the genre:
• What kind of a research article is this? (e.g., is it a primary research article or

a review of research?)
• What is the purpose of this kind of article?
• What sections do you expect to find in a research article? (e.g., abstract,
introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion)
• What are the typical features of each section?
The results section of a research article presenting quantitative data may be

exploited to this end. A visual display of results in tables or graphs is usually
accompanied by a written commentary, which refers to the information in the
table or graph. To begin the data commentary, the link between the visual and
the verbal is usually signposted by expressions such as “as shown in the table/
graph,” which directs the reader to process the visual information in specific
ways. It is usually the salient results such as trends, patterns, or features that are
highlighted in the commentary for the reader. In some research reports, the com-
mentary may go on to discuss these salient features to provide an interpretation
or explanation of the findings.
Support materials such as a checklist of features may be provided to scaffold
students’ engagement with an exemplar text. Questions that focus attention on
text features may be included as part of the scaffold:
• What lexical, syntactic, and organisational features have you noticed in the
results section?
• How do these features make this section distinct from other parts of the
research article?
• Why do you think the author chooses to organise the results in this way (e.g.,
the order of ascending or descending importance of information, the visual
before the verbal, or vice versa)?
• What is the impact of this organisation on the reader?
• What devices are used to link the table/graph with the commentary?
• From your experience, which of these features are shared by other texts you
have read in your discipline area?
Multimodal texts achieve their social purposes by exploiting the affordances of

different modes of meaning valued by the discourse communities in which mem-
bers recognise these genres as legitimate forms of social action. Teaching students
explicit knowledge about genre and text equips them with the pragmatic compe-
tence to engage with text for effective communication.
Text analyst – what are the hidden meanings?

By probing how texts position readers differentially, various linguistic and visual
devices deployed to influence interpretation and the reader may be identified as
follows:
• Whose interests are served by this text?

• Whose voices or opinions are missing from this text?
• Does this text present a balanced point of view?
• What devices are used to influence the readers’ thoughts or feelings?
Online media texts provide ready sources for text-analysing activities. Internet
news websites can be used to compare different representations of news events.
Multimodal advertisements can be used to identify the devices that are used to
persuade consumers.
Example of text-analysing activity: identifying bias in multimodal

news reports
The Asia News Network news story by Tan Hui Yee (2015, March 4), “Haze
Rises to Unhealthy Levels in Chiang Mai”, is accompanied by a photo (Fig-
ure 4.4), taken from a high angle, showing a city shrouded in smog (The Straits
Times Asia report, Asia News Network www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/haze-
rises-to-unhealthy-levels-in-chiang-mai, March 4, 2015).
Both the language and the image convey the gravity of pollution in the city.
The headline and lead, “Pollution Readings Far Exceed WHO Guidelines; Sit-
uation Could Worsen”, make explicit that haze has reached a level that is det-
rimental to health. A comprehension question can be asked of students: What
do the text and image say about the haze in Chiang Mai? Other more implicit
meanings are distributed between the text and the image. Neither the text nor
the image so far has touched upon the source of the pollution until one goes
on to read the caption for the image.
The caption directly below the photo states:
Haze is an annual problem in northern Thailand, as farmers practise open

burning. During this period, many residents suffer breathing ailments and
the Doi Suthep Mountain disappears from view.
(The Straits Times,
March 04, 2015)
Teaching reading 61
Figure 4.4 Haze is an annual problem in Northern Thailand3.

(Source: Photo © The Nation/Asia News Network)
Farmers are singled out as the culprits in the dependent clause “as farmers prac-
tise open burning.” The position of the clause in the first complex sentence
gives it end weight and foregrounds the problem – haze and pollution. The next
sentence highlights the effects of this problem – that is, “many residents suffer
breathing ailments” and the mountain view is lost to the residents. Questions
such as the following can be asked:
• What are the causes and effects of the pollution?

• Which residents suffer from it?
• Whose view is obscured by the haze?
This news report reflects the concerns of the city dwellers and presumably
represents their interests. While it refers to the farmers’ open burning as
the source of the problem, the story does not explicitly state what they are
burning and why. The “what” is answered in the second paragraph of the
full news report: “It is an annual scourge in northern areas of the country
from January to April as Thai farmers, as well as those in Laos, Myanmar
and Cambodia, torch the land to clear scrub or agricultural waste.” How-
ever, it does not explain why farmers burn their agricultural waste and what
the government has done to intervene. Government action is mentioned
in a much later paragraph of the news story: “The Thai government has
had little success with its attempts to control open burning and encourage
agricultural waste to be ploughed into the soil instead of being burnt”. This
information in itself does not explain the lack of success of the government
intervention. There are no quotes from farmers to give them a voice in the
issue, and other references to fires in the region are not linked explicitly to
causal agents. The following questions to identify hidden meanings in the
text can be asked:
• Whose interests are served by the news report?

• What evidence is there for this interpretation? In the image? In the language?
• How do text and image work together to construct this point of view?
• Whose view is not represented in this news report?
From the interplay of meanings in language and image, it can be argued that the
news report, particularly the point of view represented in the image and its cap-
tion, is biased towards the urban community and the government, and thus sets
up an opposition with the farming community.
Assessing reading of multimodal texts

Assessment practices in educational contexts dominated by formal, external
examinations generally do not prioritise the multimodal aspects of reading in
their test designs (Unsworth, 2014). Formal assessment lags classroom practice,
where classroom teachers often take up the responsibility for formative assess-
ment and assessment for learning.
Some considerations for assessing multimodal reading include the following:
• Do test stimulus materials represent an authentic range of the materials that

students need to read and view in the English language curriculum?
• Are some of the test items multimodal?
• Do some test materials include features of online texts?
• Do test items represent a range of the types of reading tasks that students
encounter in multimodal texts?
• What alternative forms of testing are best suited for assessing multimodal
reading?
The suggestions in the aforementioned sections, while not exhaustive, point to some
of the affordances of multimodal texts as rich resources for moving student readers
from decoding text to engaging critically with meaning. Strategies such as inferring
meaning from texts and integrating meanings across multiple sources of informa-
tion are essential for effective reading of written, visual, and multimodal text types
Teaching reading 63
(Chan & Unsworth, 2011). Some further benefits for teaching reading are
afforded by teaching reading through multimodal texts:
1 Multimodal texts offer learners multiple points of entry into reading, allow-
ing them alternative reading paths for interpreting texts from captions,
images, colours, layouts, or words. Furthermore, differentiated reading
paths are established along the lines of student backgrounds, interests, and
needs (Ajayi, 2010).
2 Learners can access a wider range of semiotic possibilities for meaning-making
by drawing on different modes. This can lead to increased student participa-
tion, collaboration, and negotiation of meanings (Ajayi, 2012).
3 A shift in the relations between textbook producers, teachers, and students
enables more open, participatory relations in knowledge production (Beze-
mer & Kress, 2010).
Challenges for innovating practice in Asian English

language classrooms
Transforming practice in settings where large classes, centrally controlled cur-
ricula, high-stakes assessment, and traditional methods of education are highly
valued often presents a challenge for innovating pedagogy. For pedagogical
innovation in ELT to be implemented in a sustainable way, specific local con-
texts for teaching and learning need to be taken into account. For instance,
Littlewood (2007) mentions some constraints on the implementation of task-
based language teaching in East Asia – namely, classroom management, avoid-
ance of English, minimal demands on language competence, incompatibility
with public assessment demands, and conflict with educational values and tradi-
tions. A similar concern with local and situational factors is echoed in Fang’s
(2012) discussion of the constraints of the new English curriculum mandated
by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Fang (2012) identifies teachers’ lack of
knowledge about the curriculum and ELT approaches, form-oriented examina-
tions as perceived by students and teachers, and student and teacher’s faith in
the effectiveness of communicative language teaching activities as barriers to
innovation. The same mood is captured in Hu’s (2005, p. 654) “ecological per-
spective on ELT,” which calls for recognition of the complicated link between
language instruction and the economic and sociocultural contexts specific to
where learning and teaching take place. A closer examination of challenges to
innovative practice in Asian ELT contexts, therefore, is warranted, and practi-
cal ways of overcoming them are necessary for effective English teaching in the
classroom. Four dimensions of context, which contribute to these challenges
are elaborated and discussed in the following sections: the ecology of English
in Asian contexts, culture of learning in Asia, social and economic constraints,
and ideology of text.
Ecology of English in Asia
English enjoys differential statuses in various Asian contexts. In India, for exam-
ple, it has the status of an indigenized language, or New English, to contrib-
ute to the “triglossic” situation where varieties of English are used in different
domains of Indian life (Gargesh, 2009, p. 92). In other contexts, such as China,
Japan, and Thailand, for example, it is a foreign language and studied as a
school subject. The ecological relationship (Haugen, 2006) between English
and other languages, in particular the national languages, is important to con-
sider for the teaching and learning of English. Social and individual attitudes
towards English, material resources input by the government and society, and
educational and employment opportunities mediated by English proficiency are
all relevant.
Based on his survey of English teaching in 15 countries and territories (East
Asia and Southeast Asia), Ho (2002) identifies several key features. There is
much diversity of English teaching in the region. While English learning is
made compulsory as an educational policy, it is not implemented effectively
because of “under-funding, over-crowding of classrooms, shortage or even lack
of textbooks, and ill-equipped teaching areas” (p. 14). The divide between the
traditional rural areas and the urban areas results in different levels of student
motivation for language learning and their achievements of proficiency. Lan-
guage learning has a pragmatic goal – that is, to share the advantage of access-
ing communication, science, technology, and education opportunities through
English. The tension between traditional forces and the drive for change in
language pedagogy, in the form of the dilemma of continuity and change,
is ever present, but particularly when introducing new methods for language
teaching. Adapting the teaching of English to meet local needs and practices
has been advocated by Kachru (2009) and supported by studies of English
in contexts such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (Mahboob, 2009; Mahboob &
Elyas, 2014).
Culture of learning
Culture of learning as a concept captures a number of factors relevant to English
language learning and teaching. Cortazzi and Jin (1996, p. 74) developed it
to account for Chinese students’ experience of learning in Western/British aca-
demic settings:
Different cultures of learning exist in Western and Chinese educational con-

texts which teachers need to be fully aware of and take into consideration
while teaching English in China. These cultures of learning include academic
and professional expectations, perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and values about
what good learning is, what constitutes a good teacher and a good student;
learning and teaching styles, approaches and methods; classroom organiza-
tion, management, activities and behavior.
Teaching reading 65
These factors play a significant role in language learning as they invalidate the
“autonomous” assumptions and call for the “ideological” ones in language
teaching (Coleman, 1996, p. 1). Language learners bring with them a baggage
of learning experiences, what they want to become through learning a language,
and what they ought to be (Dörnyei, 2009). At the level of culture of learning,
Chinese students, for example, tend to believe that knowledge is from teachers
and textbooks, education is accumulative, and teachers direct learning while stu-
dents follow and work hard (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996; Hu, 2002).
Social and economic constraints

Asia is as huge as it is heterogeneous in several important ways. Geographically,
it spans East Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle Asia, and West Asia. Culturally, the
Confucian influence in East and Southeast Asia, Islamic influence in West and
Middle Asia, and Buddhist influence in India and many other parts of Asia, com-
plicated by political systems of socialism and capitalism, make the region cultur-
ally diverse. The stages of economic development are also different, with some
nations being advanced and many others at varying stages of industrialisation.
Within each country, in particular, developing countries, internal disparity such
as between rural and urban locations, the economically powerful coastal regions,
and the less developed inland areas, are recognised as factors relevant to educa-
tion, in particular language pedagogy (Fang, 2012; Ho, 2002).
Taking China as an example, Hu (2005) identifies the influence on pedagogic
practices of resource factors such as appropriate curricula, school facilities, and
availability of properly trained teachers because of the imbalance of economic
power in the affluent coastal areas and the poor inland provinces. This dispar-
ity entails a close examination of the match between proposed methodological
affordances and constraints, and local social, cultural, and economic conditions.
The motivation for learning English, however, is high in China, for students
at least. This is, in part, driven by the high-stakes examinations for admissions to
middle school and university. For example, reading typically takes up 30% of the
total score for an English test in the university entrance examination, excluding
the need to read instructions for listening and writing tasks. However, the Eng-
lish examination is focused on verbal language, with visuals typically included as
prompts for writing or glossing unfamiliar vocabulary. The national examination
values print text rather than multimodal text, which is not untypical of central-
ised assessment regimes internationally and in Asia, for instance, Singapore (Tan,
Bopry, & Guo, 2010).
Nevertheless, the curriculum environment is conducive to teaching multimodal
reading in China’s classrooms. The New English Curriculum and its framework
calls for an all-round ability to use English and the task-based approach to lan-
guage teaching. Multimodal reading draws on more explicit strategies for teach-
ing: to relate sources of information and to evaluate messages central to the text.
The explicit teaching of multimodal text features can be embedded within a task-
based approach.
Ideology of text
Texts, no matter how they are defined, are the substance for reading. They are
not neutral entities but permeated by ideology in the sense that text production,
consumption, and transmission are part of sociocultural practices and ideologically
driven (Fairclough, 1989). For example, English texts in Chinese school textbooks
are constructed to embody mainstream Chinese socialist values such as priority of
social harmony and communal well-being (Chen, 2010b). In other words, stu-
dents are reading to learn to become communal members rather than individuals.
When students have been socialised to read such texts, they may experience certain
cultural dissonance when they are exposed to texts that promote individualistic
values. This is subtle but important to reading, both for understanding the mes-
sages and practising skills for critical reading. As Kachru (2009, p. 455) points out,
the messages in (varieties of English) should be “learned, acquired, absorbed, and
appreciated within the cultural contexts” where they are produced. In the more
participatory environment of the Internet, such texts, predominantly multimodal,
provide opportunities for developing students’ critical reading skills.
There is a tension between the text for teaching or promoting patriotism and
the international outlook espoused by the New English Curriculum. In the for-
mer, the pursuit of the common good is embedded – the whole nation – while
the latter is oriented to individual endeavor. This tension poses a challenge but
can be a resource for critical reading. This may start from the viewing of images
in the textbooks by deconstructing the interpersonal meaning around attitudes
(Chen, 2010b).
Concluding remarks
The four levels of context discussed in the previous section represent challenges
for teaching English in Asian contexts – the-one-size-fits-all mindset is unlikely to
be effective or efficient in Asian English classrooms. When an approach is advo-
cated or considered for adaptation, the local context, from the national culture of
learning to the classroom situation, needs to be carefully addressed.
The potential for teaching reading in the online environment as a commu-
nity activity in constructing and interpreting meanings in text (Tierney, 2013) is
becoming a reality. As access to the Internet breaks down vertical hierarchies of
power in cultures of learning, alternative spaces to crowded classrooms are being
created for increased participation in collaborative knowledge production. The
teacher is no longer the sole source of information and knowledge, since:
cultural artifacts such as externally produced language textbooks and other

teaching materials, English language media (including the internet) and the
arts, all of which can be used to examine different images and perspectives of
other cultures at both local and global levels.
(Baker, 2012, p. 32)
Teaching reading 67
With the proliferation of multimodal texts online, multiple entry points to
complementary ways of meaning give students greater power to access meaning
and engage with text. In this environment, as Gee and Hayes (2011, p. 120)
argue, “we all need more experiences that allow us to be critical . . . asking whose
interests are served and whose are not, and what the agendas were of the produc-
ers of those words, images, and texts”. Teaching reading through multimodal
texts opens up the space for an expanded repertoire of textual practices leading
to critical competence.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the use of the following material in this
publication:
1 Figure 4.2: Tourist map of Shanghai. Source: Shanghai Maps Free Down-
load www.chinatouradvisors.com/travelguide/Shanghai/. Reproduced with
permission from China Tour Advisors.
2 Figure 4.3: An example of a topological food web. Source: “Soil Food Web”
by USDA – http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/soil_food_
web.html via Wikimedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_
food_web. Licensed under Public Domain.
3 Figure 4.4: Haze is an annual problem in Northern Thailand. Source: www.
straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/haze-rises-to-unhealthy-levels-in-chiang-mai
on the Asia News Network www.asianewsnet.net/. Reproduced with per-
mission from The Nation Multimedia Group.
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5 Supplementing extensive
reading for Japanese EFL
learners
Meredith Stephens
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogy in Japan continues to be char-

acterized by the transmission style of education, in which the teacher transfers
knowledge to the students, and the grammar-translation method (Nagatomo,
2012). Nevertheless, alternative or even complementary methodologies such as
extensive reading are growing in importance. This is because educators recog-
nize the many clear benefits Day and Bamford (1998) outlined, and they imple-
ment them in the hope that this will improve the English proficiency of Japanese
students. The definition of extensive reading is taken from Day and Bamford’s
(1998, pp. 7–8) seminal work and is characterized as follows:
1 Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely out of the classroom.
2 Materials on a wide range of topics are available so as to encourage reading
for different reasons and in different ways.
3 Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading
material that fails to interest them.
4 Reading is usually related to pleasure, information, and general understand-
ing. These purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the
interests of the student.
5 Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises after
reading.
6 Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in
terms of vocabulary and grammar. Dictionaries are rarely used while read-
ing because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading
difficult.
7 Reading is individual and silent, at the student’s own pace, and, outside
class, done when and where the student chooses.
8 Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower, as students read books and
other material they find easily understandable.
9 Teachers orient students to the goals of the program, explain the methodology,
keep track of what each student reads, and guide students in getting the most
out of the program.
10 Teachers are role models for students – active members of the classroom read-
ing community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the rewards
of being a reader.
72 Meredith Stephens
Day and Bamford do not recommend follow-up activities such as comprehension
questions that require students to retrieve irrelevant details (p. 141), but they do
present numerous ways in which an extensive reading program can be effectively
supplemented in the reading community: the current study is a further exploration
of this issue. In particular, it will address how extensive reading can be supplemented
with extensive listening and having students provide creative written responses.
Transferring reading skills to listening comprehension

Before the age of electronic communications in Japan, reading comprehension
of second language (L2) English was a skill to be mastered in order to compre-
hend documents. Currently, this skill remains important, but because of modern
technology, travel and migration, listening and speaking skills are also considered
important. One of the assumptions educators may bring to extensive reading
programs is that students will transfer the skills from reading to oral commu-
nication. However, students whose first contact with English has been in writ-
ten form may have trouble transferring this skill to listening. Written words in
English are separated by spaces, but the stream of spoken English is continuous.
Crystal (2005) identifies an important feature of normal spoken language:
Normal speech proves to be so rapidly and informally articulated that in fact

over half the words cannot be recognized in isolation – and yet we have little
trouble following it, and can repeat whole sentences accurately.
(p. 48)
Unlike speech, written words can be recognized in isolation and are therefore
more accessible for the L2 learner. Accordingly, skill in reading will not automati-
cally equip the L2 learner to comprehend normal speech. This strengthens the
case for practising simultaneous reading and listening.
Supplementing extensive reading with extensive listening

Traditionally, linguists have asserted the primacy of speech over writing because
writing is a representation of speech and because children learn speech before
writing (Allen, 1975). Furthermore, only 40% of human languages are repre-
sented in written form, and for speakers of these languages, language means
speech (Crystal, 2005). However, in the case of L2 learners, Allen (1975)
observes no advantage in preserving the order of first language (L1) acquisi-
tion. In contrast, he argues that adult learners may prefer to have oral language
supported with written text and that this presents no barrier to them attaining
oral fluency. If this view were applied to the practice of extensive reading and
listening, students would not be disadvantaged from conducting these activities
simultaneously.
Chang (2011) carried out a study of the effectiveness of the practice of simul-
taneous reading and listening; one group consisted of a ‘reading-while-listening’
Supplementing extensive reading 73
group and the other a control group. The reading-while-listening group outper-
formed the control group in terms of both listening fluency and vocabulary gain.
Chang and Millet (2014) conducted a further experiment on the development of
listening fluency comparing three groups: reading only, reading-while-listening,
and listening only. The reading-while-listening group achieved superior results
to the reading only and listening only groups. Accordingly, Chang and Millet
conclude that the most effective strategy is to have students first read and listen
simultaneously and then listen only, and that this listening skill can continue to
be activated for unfamiliar passages.
According to Masuhara (2007), L2 Japanese EFL learners lack the neural
networks for an adequate aural/oral vocabulary, segmental and supresegmental
proficiency, and automatic understanding of English syntax (p. 24). Masuhara
recommends that these L2 readers be taught to connect spoken language with its
meaning. They need to become familiar with how prosodic features create mean-
ing as a basis for learning to read (p. 29). According to this reasoning, it would
appear advantageous for Japanese learners of English to engage in simultaneous
reading and listening.
Walter (2008) presents a compelling case for L2 learners forming a mental
representation of spoken language. She explains the role of the phonological
loop, in which the last two seconds of what has been read or heard is stored
in the working memory in order to better comprehend larger stretches of text.
These insights from Walter strengthen the case for extensive reading to be sup-
plemented with extensive listening.
However, some may question the need to perceive a phonological representa-
tion of the text while reading. Crystal (2005) explains competing points of view
regarding this question of “reading by ear or by eye” (p. 123). The former asserts
that a phonological bridge is necessary and the latter that “a non-phonological
route from print to meaning must exist” (p. 125). Crystal concludes that both
strategies are employed according to the stage of learning or reading material. If
the latter approach is the one that applies in the Japanese context, it is possible
that some students may make the grapheme to semantic connection without the
phonological bridge, and in this case, extensive listening may be redundant for
those who are simply aiming for reading comprehension.
Language as participation
Studies of first-language acquisition highlight the importance of feedback from
the interlocutor. Wells (1981) explains how children confirm the effect of their
utterances from the responses of their interlocutors: “Both listening and speak-
ing, however, require that the child should have a conversational partner who is
oriented to his needs as a language learner” (p. 109).
The importance of the interlocutor goes beyond the purely linguistic. Kather-
ine’s (1991) discussion of the role of the interlocutor in the development of an
awareness of feelings: “We need a reaction, feedback, when we’re feeling some-
thing. When the feedback is accurate, our feeling unfolds and becomes clearer. . .
An echo bounces your words back to you” (p. 19). Citing the work of Rogoff
(1990, 1995), Sfard (1998). Donato (2000) and Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000),
Block suggests that the acquisition metaphor of learning needs to be supple-
mented with a participation metaphor.
The discussion of the role of the interlocutor raises the broader concern of
the participation of the learner not only with a single interlocutor but also with a
range of interlocutors in the community. Mickan (2013) reminds us “we live in
relationships and learn through relationships” (p. 32), describing the essential role
of socialization in the learning of languages. Block (2003) highlights the inter-
actional and interpersonal dimensions of Second Language Acquisition (SLA),
reminding us that it is more than information exchange (p. 64): “Transactionally-
oriented aspects of talk will be embedded in and intertwined with relational/
interpersonal aspects” (p. 73). This suggests that learners in an extensive read-
ing and listening program may benefit from opportunities for discussion and to
provide written responses to the text.
Should extensive reading be supplemented with

comprehension questions?
Comprehension questions sometimes feature in graded readers, but do not
reflect the ideals of modern pedagogy. Bloom (Davidson & Decker, 2006) dis-
criminated between lower and higher order thinking skills, with the lower ones
consisting of knowledge, comprehension, and application, and the higher ones
of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Comprehension questions belong to the
category of lower order thinking skills. Nagatomo (2012, p. 163) observes a
lesson in a university English class, which features comprehension questions, and
makes the criticisms that it neither helps the student engage with the text nor
make progress in English.
The case for supplementing extensive reading with

creative written responses
Extensive reading and listening are intrinsically worthwhile activities, but provid-
ing a creative written response can harness this input to promote higher order
thinking skills. Reading and listening are sources of unilateral input. Tokuhama-
Espinosa (2008) describes sources for language learning such as television and
computers as “passive tools” (p. 176). In contrast, “true learning comes with
use, and use related to language implies practice with others” (ibid). Accordingly,
learners in an extensive reading and listening program would benefit from the
opportunity to reflect on what they have read or listened to. Tokuhama-Espinosa
(2011) highlights the nature of learning in a social context. She describes this
learning process as 1 + 1 = 3, meaning “each person has his or her own ideas, but
once shared, what is produced by the combined effort is greater than the sum
of its parts” (p. 215). She urges teachers to provide opportunities for collabora-
tive learning. Ideally, an extensive reading and listening program would need to
provide such opportunities. Furthermore, Tokuhama-Espinosa advises teachers
to provide instruction in different channels such as “discussion, readings, vid-
eos, debates, projects” (p. 164) in order for students to retain the information
because it has been processed through different, albeit overlapping, neural path-
ways. Similarly, Puchta (2013, pp. 49–50) urges,
Thinking actively – when we do things such as writing down our thoughts

about something, talking aloud to ourselves, engaging in a discussion with
someone, taking our time to silently reflect on something that engages us,
or playing around in our mind with knowledge we have just acquired – can
help us integrate recently acquired knowledge with prior knowledge, dis-
cover new aspects about something we already know, or develop a deeper
understanding of a concept.
The act of writing helps clarify the student’s response to a text. As Crystal
argues, “Full meaning does not always exist prior to writing; often the process
operates in reverse. A typical comment is Edward Albee’s: ‘I write to find out
what I’m thinking about.’ ” (2005, p. 128).
Vygotsky (1962, cited in Wolf, 2008, p. 73) describes how the process of writ-
ing helps individuals refine and expand their thoughts. Writing fosters an inner
dialogue within individuals as they hone their expressive skills by the sheer effort
of finding the most fitting language. Accordingly, there are two kinds of dialogue
that are characteristic of learning: the dialogue of collaboration, and inner dia-
logue that occurs when writing. Also citing Vygotsky (1981), Arnold and Mur-
phey (2013) highlight “the importance of the other in learning is essential” (p. 7).
They similarly explain Vygotsky’s insight that learning is first intermental – that is,
between individuals – and second intramental – that is, internal.
Teaching practices for L1 English-speaking middle school children affirm the
importance of the inner voice when reading:
Reading comprehension is an ongoing process of evolving thinking. When

readers read and construct meaning, they carry on an inner conversation
with the text. They hear a voice in their head speaking to them as they read
a voice that questions, connects, laughs, cries. This inner conversation helps
learners monitor their comprehension and keeps them engaged in the story,
concept, information and ideas, allowing them to build their understanding
as they go.
(Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 78)
Harvey and Goudvis continue to explain that “reading is a social act” (p. 82)
because of the common practice of sharing what has been read from either a
novel or the newspaper with others. They exploit this in the L1 classroom with
an activity called “Read, write and talk.” They urge children to jot down notes as
thoughts occur to them as they read and respond to it with an activity called STR:
stopping, thinking, and reacting. They insist that engagement and interaction
with the story is necessary for constructing meaning and therefore comprehen-
sion: “Active reading is a dynamic process that puts the reader at the helm” (p. 84).
Neurologist and teacher Judy Willis advises that memory and retention can be
enhanced with strategies such as “individualized opportunities to verbalize, write
or create something using a new language arts skill or new information students
read in hopes of building more connecting dendrites” (2008, p. 36).
These studies and practices may offer insights into L2 pedagogy. Students
should be encouraged to write about what they have read and listened to in order
to develop their inner dialogue in the L2. Indeed, de Guerrero (1994) provides
evidence that many adult learners do in fact experience inner speech in their L2,
so this phenomenon is not confined to L1 learners. Hence the process of reading
in the L2 should provide learners with the opportunity to practise inner speech in
their L2 during the act of writing.
The interlocutor may require someone to reflect their ideas in order to help
them define their English language selves. This is in fact evidenced in a study of
Japanese high school learners of English. Watanabe (2013) describes the justifica-
tion of one of the students in his study for not being willing to communicate in
English: “Even if students are motivated to acquire practical English, they cannot
build confidence in using English or be willing to communicate in the language
without many chances to use it (p. 161).” Thus willingness to communicate
seems to require the presence of an interlocutor who is a speaker of the L2. This
raises the question of whether the task of responding to extensive reading and
listening and the ensuing dialogue with the teacher who reads their response
could fulfill that need.
The current study

Two classes of second-year university students in classes of Communicative English
were assigned homework consisting of extensive reading of and listening to books
of their choice for 14 weeks over a semester. This was a compulsory class for non-
English majors. One class consisted of 22 students from the Regional Studies
Department, and the other consisted of 20 students, mainly from the Civil Engi-
neering Department. Permission was obtained from 13 members of the Regional
Studies class and 13 members of the Civil Engineering class for their work to be
cited for educational research.
The students were asked to read and listen to the story twice, and listen only
one additional time. They were instructed to choose a book from the collection
of graded readers in the library at whatever level they desired. Weekly homework
consisted of a single-page essay about the graded reader, and the students were
given a different essay question every week. The final homework was to write
a reflection of how and why the listening and the reading had improved their
English over the semester. The second question concerned gains in confidence
in vocabulary, grammar, cultural knowledge, and listening. Responses have been
selected from these essays, which relate to the questions of improvements in lis-
tening and providing creative written responses to the texts.
Student responses
Benefits of supplementing extensive reading with listening

Many students indicated the benefits of supplementing extensive reading with lis-
tening. However, a common theme was the difficulty of listening comprehension.
This may be due to the small phonemic scale of Japanese. Tokuhama-Espinosa
(2008, p. 40) posits that this small phonemic scale increases the likelihood of a
Japanese speaker having an accent in a language with a larger phonemic scale. She
attributes accents to difficulties in aural perception of the L2. This may account
for the listening difficulties expressed by the students. Furthermore, as Crystal
(2005) has explained, the individual words in normal speech are not comprehen-
sible in isolation and yet become comprehensible in the stream of speech. This
poses an additional problem for the L2 learners who have based their learning
on the printed word. However, many students explained that repeated listen-
ing practice helped them improve their listening comprehension. It was possible
for many of these students, already in their second year of university, to work at
decoding the meaning of connected speech:
“Listening is difficult. At first, I couldn’t keep up with the CD. But I listen
several times I could understand little by little. Beginning by getting used
to English is important.”
“Listening and reading this semester improved my English.”
“I enjoy listening.”
“My English ability was improved in this class, especially listening. We listen to
a CD every week so I think it approved the ability.”
“I think we are able to learn with our ears by doing homework while listening
to the CD.”
“I feel more confident in listening a little, because I feel like it has become
easy for me to understand spoken English. I think that the reason is that
I listened to the CD repeatedly and got used to listening to English.”
“Three times listening was great training for me.”
“My listening skill improved greatly.”
A major barrier to successful reading and listening comprehension is arguably

a limited vocabulary. The Japanese language does contain many loanwords from
English, which may be a source of positive transfer. However, the possibility of
positive transfer of vocabulary is not on the same scale as that for learners from
language backgrounds of similar typologies to English, such as French and Ger-
man. Vocabulary acquisition is onerous for speakers of non-cognate languages.
The following comment expresses the frustration experience by an inadequate
vocabulary: “I don’t feel confident in vocabulary so much. I think my vocabu-
lary increased but they are not enough because I frequently couldn’t understand
words in the class and I couldn’t compose English sentences without using a
dictionary.”
Traditionally, students have memorized vocabulary through looking at lists
of vocabulary and their translations in special vocabulary books, with a special
red transparent cover provided to hide the translations temporarily in order to
aid memorization. Comments from students suggest that the alternative method
used in the current study, reading and listening to new vocabulary in context, can
also be effective:
“I gained ‘listening’ and ‘vocabulary’ through this class.”

“Previously I learned English word for word in the English word book. Now
through this class I have learnt that it is easy to remember to learn English
words in a phrase.”
One student was able to transfer skills gained from listening to the CDs to com-
prehending the teacher’s English. As Crystal (2005) has explained, a majority
of words in the stream of speech would become impossible to comprehend if
uttered in the same way in isolation. However, the following student’s comment
suggests that the barrier of understanding the stream of speech has started to
erode. Comprehension of the stream of speech rather than of single words may
have been enhanced by this practice: “After listening to the CDs my ears became
better and better. I recognized it when I could hear your fast English.”
However, one respondent experienced a barrier to listening comprehension
after a certain threshold: “It was difficult to understand the CDs above Level
Three.” Reading and listening were conducted simultaneously and therefore the
visual support provided by print was present. A possible explanation for the earlier
comment is that the contrasting word orders of English and Japanese render rapid
processing of the languages to be challenging for L2 learners of the respective
languages. The traditional approach for comprehending advanced texts has been
yakudoku (Takeda, 2002), or ‘translation reading’. The purpose of this method-
ology is to render difficult English texts into well-formed Japanese, rather than
simply comprehending English in its own terms. Because of the contrasting word
orders of the languages, the most efficient way to parse the sentences is considered
to be from right to left. Nevertheless, the act of listening to English necessitates
that it be processed in its natural order. Accordingly, Japanese students may have
had limited practice of parsing English in its natural order. This may render simul-
taneous reading and listening to be a novel and challenging experience. This study
was confined to simple texts, and therefore simultaneous reading and listening of
advanced texts is also a topic that merits further exploration.
Benefits of supplementing extensive reading

with creative written responses
Student responses confirm the value of providing a written response to the text:
“However I have felt that I can write about my feeling by reading books in
English. It was surprising for me because I didn’t like English. Someday,
I got used to write English, and like reading English books. These books
I chose were easy, so I, who did not like English, can read them easily.”
This student derives an unexpected pleasure from reading because he is able to

choose easy books and expresses satisfaction about being able to understand
them and write how he feels about them. This confirms Day and Bamford’s
(1998) recommendation that students benefit from choice of book and level
(p. 8). Furthermore, it confirms the value of being able to provide a personal
response (arguably in contrast to responding to comprehension questions), as
Puchta (2013) and Harvey and Goudvis (2007) argue concerning the enriching
nature of reflection and expression.
The student’s comment that he had not liked English is commonly heard.
There is even a word in Japanese to express dislike of English: eigogirai. The rea-
son for the dislike of English is arguably its role as a gatekeeper to higher levels of
education. For students, English is inextricably associated with the arduous pro-
cess of cramming for important exams and the concomitant threat of being unable
to realize their ambitions. Many students would have had no experience of using
English for communicative purposes. Hence the social purposes for language
acquisition outlined by Block (2004) and Mickan (2013) earlier are arguably
unfamiliar to these students. In providing a creative written response to the litera-
ture, the student has indicated that he was able to write about his feelings. This
indicates that he has been able to create an interpersonal dimension to the study
of English, which was likely to have been hitherto absent. This is the beginning
of learning English, which conforms to Block’s (2003) participation metaphor.
Another student indicated the value of dialogue with the teacher in terms of
the written feedback received from the teacher. Again, this indicates that the role
of English is one of participation: “I feel more confident in grammar because the
English sentences I composed really weren’t wrong. So I was looking forward to
having my submitted homework returned every week.”
Despite the challenge of writing a response in English, these students indicated
that the effort was worthwhile. The following comments indicate enjoyment of
reading and responding to texts. Responses concerning the enjoyment of reading
were unsolicited and therefore can be considered to be particularly important.
“It was hard for me to do homework every week, but I enjoyed reading
books and writing my idea on paper.”
“It was very hard for me to write the essays every week, but I could
understand the importance of reading English books. I am very glad to have
improved my English skills. I want to improve them more and more.”
“When this class started I had a hard time finishing reading a book, but
I was getting used to reading a book by reading different books every week.
At the very least, reading an English book and writing my opinion were get-
ting easy. Also, I came to like and enjoy English.”
“I’ve improved writing and vocabulary skills, because I can write long
English sentences and I can enjoy to write English.”
“At the very least, reading an English book and writing my opinion were
getting easy.”
These comments highlight the pleasure some students derived from extensive
reading and listening. Students’ personal responses ranged from faint praise:
“I came not to dislike English,” to effusive: “I fell in love with English here for
the first time.”
Recently, the importance of positive emotion for learning (Willis, 2008) and
for successful language acquisition (see Schumann, 1997; Tokuhama-Espinosa,
2008) has been explored. Accordingly, further research could identify whether
the long-term practices of extensive reading, listening, and responding continued
to provide students with the enjoyment of learning a language and the concomi-
tant improved proficiency. Nevertheless, there was some negative feedback about
providing written feedback to the story:
“The homework was very hard [. . .] because I must read a difficult book.”
“Sometimes I read a strange story and it was difficult to write a remark.”
This may be due to cultural barriers in the genres of English language fiction.
However, this comment is not in itself a reason to abandon stories, which are
unfamiliar in the learners’ milieu. This comment reflects the effort identified by
Crystal (2005) that writing imposes in order to clarify thought. It is precisely this
kind of effort that teachers hope will assist students to refine their thinking skills.
It is unlike the kind of effort previously expended by Japanese students neces-
sitated by English examinations, which test reading comprehension. This kind of
struggle implies development of higher order thinking skills employed in reflect-
ing on rather than simply comprehending the text.
Unexpected findings
An unexpected finding of this study, because it was unsolicited, was that some
students indicated that they had not read a book in English before. In fairness,
this must also be true of many native English-speaking learners’ experience of
reading books in Japanese.
“Before I attend this class, I read English book hardly anything at all.”
“It was the first experience to finish reading one book written in English.”
The novelty of extensive reading and listening suggested by comments such as

this suggest that this methodology is a departure from those that students had
previously experienced. This conforms to the findings of Nagatomo’s (2012)
recent study. Many educators lament the progress of English language learn-
ers in Japan (see Nagatomo, 2012, p. 15; Seargeant, 2009, p. 47). One reason
may be that extensive reading is not as widely practised as traditional pedagogies
of grammar, translation, and comprehension questions. Further research could
investigate whether extensive reading and listening could serve to bridge this gap.
Conclusions
The major gain from this project were the feelings of success that the students
expressed at sensing that they had improved their listening skills. It suggests that
these students had begun to experience the skill highlighted by Masuhara (2007) and
Walter (2008) of connecting spoken English with its meaning and, importantly, that
many of them were able to gain a sense of pleasure from their reading. With practice,
it is anticipated that students can extend the skill of listening comprehension to texts
of increasing complexity. One student indicated a barrier to listening comprehension
to texts above Level Three of the graded reader series. This highlights the need to
facilitate listening comprehension of texts of greater lexico-grammatical complexity.
As for the value that they ascribed to providing a written response, some stu-
dents perceived this positively, whereas a few students considered it to be a bur-
den. Those who perceived this positively derived the benefits identified by Puchta
(2013) of self-expression, and gains in confidence. Generally, this study supports
the notion that students perceive benefits from an integrated approach to exten-
sive reading. Certainly, the reading is the core of the approach, but providing
students with opportunities to reflect on their reading, respond to it, and receive
feedback can only consolidate and extend their gains. It demonstrates a move
from the passive goal of the comprehension of English, to the use of English as a
form of participation, as outlined by Block (2003).
Teachers are obliged to assess, and those with large classes of 40, 50, or even
more students may have no option but to assess extensive reading and listening
with comprehension questions, which can be administered online. However, for
those with the luxury of smaller classes, extensive reading and listening can be
usefully supplemented with activities designed to elicit personal responses to the
literature.
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6 Teaching writing to
multilingual learners using
the genre-based approach
Justina Ong
The current writing pedagogies include the process-based, genre-based, content-

based (including theme-based), task-based, problem-based, and project-based
approaches (Hinkel, 2006). The process- and genre-based approaches have
become the most influential writing instruction for learners. These approaches
have been used to teach first language (L1), second language (L1), and multilin-
gual learners (Gentil, 2011; Leki, 2011). The process approach emphasizes the
cognitive processes (e.g., planning, transcribing, and revising) (Flower & Hayes,
1981; Scardamalia & Berieter, 1987) and the effective management of these
processes in a writing task (Manchon, Roca de Larios, & Murphy, 2009; Ong,
2014). Previously, the genre-based approach was regarded as a product-based
approach because of its emphasis on linguistic features of texts. Consequently,
there is a perception that the genre-based pedagogy and process-based peda-
gogy are competing against each other (Racelis & Matsuda, 2013). However, the
genre-based approach to the teaching of writing entails both product and process
approaches, which Tardy (2009) highlighted in her four dimensions of genre
knowledge: formal, process, rhetorical, and subject-matter knowledge. Accord-
ing to her, formal knowledge includes the lexico-grammatical conventions of the
genre, the structural moves that are common to the genre, and the modes and
media through which the genre may be communicated. Process knowledge refers
to the procedural practices through which a genre is carried out; this includes the
composing processes for the written genres. Rhetorical knowledge refers to the
genre’s purposes and learners’ awareness of the dynamics of persuasion within a
socio-rhetorical context. Finally, the subject-matter knowledge is the specialized
content knowledge required in a writing task.
The underlying assumption of the genre-based theory is that writing is both a
solitary and a social activity. Writing is a solitary activity because writing involves
planning, transcribing, and revising, and the effective management of these pro-
cesses (Ong, 2014). This is typically shown when learners independently con-
struct texts at the later stages of the genre-based pedagogy. Writing is a social
activity because the final piece of writing is often the result of social and cultural
constructs (Prior, 2006). This is shown by the role played by the teacher, particu-
larly during the earlier stages of the genre-based instruction when they model and
deconstruct a text. The socio-cultural elements (e.g., scaffolding, guided practice,
84 Justina Ong
and co-participation) appear in their instructional discourse. Teachers rely on
their instructional discourse (e.g., modelling, prompting, instructing, explain-
ing, thinking-aloud, and scaffolding) and use instructional tools (e.g., graphic
organizers, text structures, mnemonics, spellchecks) to teach writing skills. Social
practices and cultural conventions are made accessible to learners through their
instructional discourse (Englert, Mariage, & Dunsmore, 2006). In this sense, the
writing activity is not only a solitary one.
Drawing upon Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this
chapter offers a genre-based approach to analyzing two advertising texts and
focuses on the deconstruction of the texts using Feez’s (1998) teaching-learning
cycle. Classroom teachers could apply such an approach to a variety of selected
texts for different age groups and proficiency levels of students (see Widodo,
2006). The main aims of this chapter are to raise second or foreign language
learners’ awareness of the functional use of language in achieving a social and
communicative purpose of persuasion for authentic advertising texts and to offer
language teachers a few practical suggestions for modelling and deconstruction
of comparable texts through thinking-aloud.
Since 1981, genre has become an important concept in second-language writ-
ing studies (Tardy, 2011). Genres are ways in which people achieve their objec-
tives through their use of language in particular contexts (Paltridge et al., 2006).
Genre in SFL emphasizes “a purposeful and sequential character of different gen-
res and the systematic links between language and context” (Martin, 1992, as
cited by Hyland, 2007, p. 153). The use of language is, nevertheless, conformed
to some socially recognized ways of using it. These socially recognized ways of
using language permit a variety of texts to be roughly organized under a par-
ticular genre category – for example, informational genre, descriptive genre, and
persuasive genre – although in real-life contexts, a more hybrid type of genre
typically exists – for example, advertising brochures, notification letters, news
reports, emails, blogs, and chat rooms. Schools have been strongly encouraged
to use authentic texts to teach students writing skills because such texts are what
learners are truly exposed to in their everyday lives. Examples of authentic texts
are the two advertising brochures in which I have selected for demonstrating the
genre-based approach to teaching writing.
Genre is typically defined as ‘staged’ and ‘goal oriented social processes’
(Christie, 1998; Derewianka, 1996; Martin, 1989; Painter, 2001). According
to several SFL genre analysts, language has three meta-functions: the ideational,
textual, and interpersonal functions (Christie, 1998; Derewianka, 1996; Hal-
liday, 1994; Hyland, 2003, 2007; Martin, 1989; Painter, 2001; Schleppegrell,
2004). These meta-functions are used to achieve a particular social goal. The
ideational function has to do with content or field representation. It centrally
addresses what a text is about. The interpersonal function focuses on the rela-
tionship of the participants involved in using the language. The textual function
deals with how language features ‘hang together’ in a cohesive manner. The
genre-based approach to teaching of writing highlights the meta-functions of
sample texts to learners.
Teaching writing to multilingual learners 85
Hyland (2007) identified the main elements in genre-based pedagogy and
illustrated how this pedagogy plans learning, sequences learning, supports learn-
ing, and assesses learning of writing. Drawing upon Feez’s (1998) prominent
teaching-learning cycle, he showed how this pedagogy could be used to sup-
port learners’ learning of writing. The teaching-learning cycle involves five major
stages: (1) building the context: teachers teach the purposes of the genre and the
contexts in which the genre is commonly used; (2) modelling and deconstructing
the text: teachers, through their instructional discourse, analyze the key linguistic
features and stages of representative samples of the genre; (3) joint construction
of the text: teachers guide learners to compose in the genre; (4) independent
construction of the text: teachers allow learners to independently construct the
text; and (5) linking related texts: teachers relate to other genres and contexts.
Accordingly, such a cycle is intended to be used flexibly. Based on learners’ exist-
ing genre knowledge, learners can enter any one stage, teachers can return to an
earlier stage of the cycle, and the stages can be repeated (Hyland, 2007).
Christie and Martin (1997) advocated that genre pedagogy pulls language, con-
tent, and contexts together and offers language teachers a systematic and explicit
manner of teaching writing. They addressed how writing works to communicate
its underlying goals. Expanding on the advantages of genre pedagogy, Hyland
(2004) suggested that this approach to teaching of writing is “explicit, systematic,
based on students’ needs, supportive, empowering, critical, and consciousness-
raising” (Hyland, 2004, pp. 10–16).
More recently, researchers attempted to apply genre-based analysis to learners’
writing so as to track their language development (see Christie, 2012a, 2012b,
2012c; Christie & Derewianka, 2008). For instance, Christie (2012a, 2012b,
2012c) used genre-based analysis to track the writing development of L1 learn-
ers. In her study, she has extracted authentic texts from school textbooks and
obtained learners’ writing for analysis. She found that early childhood learners,
who are in the age ranges of five to eight years old, learn to translate speech
to writing, use simple words, construct simple sentences, expand their writing
through relating to place and time of events, use frequently used conjunctions
to connect sentences, and foreground the self using personal pronouns. Late
childhood learners, who are in the age range of 9 to 12 years old, learn to deal
with un-commonsense knowledge, learn to progress from speech-like writing
to writing mode, learn to use lexically denser words, expand noun groups, use
a larger prepositional phrase, display their emotions and attitudes through writ-
ing, and use a greater variety of conjunctions and thematic structures. Christie
(2012c) further observed that, as learners reach adolescence, they learn to mas-
ter abstraction in English, history, and science subject domains. In the case of
English language, learners learn to evaluate the texts that they read. They learn
how complex themes and rhemes are built up; how nominalizations and abstrac-
tions are used; how values, attitudes, and emotions of the writers are embedded
through the use of language in a text; how distance is created with less reliance
on personal pronouns; and how to manage clause complexity. Tracking learners’
language development using genre-based analysis has proven useful in informing
86 Justina Ong
educators about learners’ language needs. Additionally, the benefits of genre-
based approach to teaching and learning writing can be reaped on a prior condi-
tion that language teachers could effectively ‘talk about texts’ in the classroom.
Deconstruction of texts serves to heighten learners’ awareness of how language
can be used to achieve its purpose, and it is an important stage of the genre-based
pedagogy.
Analysis: text deconstruction

In this analysis, I focus on the deconstruction of two short advertising brochures,
which typically occur at stage two of genre-based pedagogy. In doing so, I adopt
a think-aloud approach. The selection of two advertising texts allows me to dem-
onstrate the functional use of language in both texts. Text 1 is labeled Kaikoura
(Figure 6.1). Text 2 is labeled Blue Mountain (Figure 6.2).
Ideational meaning: lexis

How is the field of both texts constructed? I consider the choice of lexical
phrases, the process, circumstances, and the participation types of the texts.
Painter (2001) proposed that the lexical choices and the process, circumstance,
and participation types construct the ideational function of a text. In a similar
Text 1: Kaikoura
(C1) Today, you will have the morning free (C2) to explore the sights and
sounds of Kaikoura. (C3) If you are a nature lover, (C4) why not sign up
for an optional dolphin excursion, (C5) where you may have the opportu-
nity (C6) to swim with friendly and intelligent creatures? (C7) If you prefer
(C8) to stay dry (C9) and yet have a close encounter with the ocean wildlife,
(C10) you can go whale watching. (C11) Take a cruise out to the waters in
the open sea, (C12) where you may be lucky enough (C13) to catch a sight
of migrating whales breaking the surface. (C14) For a unique way to view the
whales close up (C15) without disturbing them, (C16) you may take a flight
to whale watch instead.
(C17) In the afternoon, we depart for Ashburton. (C18) Experience the
hospitality of the locals with a STAY WITH A NEW ZEALAND FAMILY.
(C19) The group will be split into smaller numbers (C20) to enjoy a maxi-
mum comfort. (C21) Receive a warm welcome from your new found friends
(C22) as you get a glimpse of their laid back lifestyle (C23) and hear them
share snippets of information about life in their country. (C24) They will be
interested (C25) to hear about your country too, (C26) so why not bring a
gift from home (C27) to introduce them to your homeland?
Figure 6.1 A brochure from the Chan Brothers Tour

Text 2: Blue mountain
(C1) The blue mountains are set within the wild wilderness of a national park.
(C2) It’s an area full of spectacular scenery from towering escarpments to hid-
den rainforests. (C3) Because of its ruggedness, (C4) many areas of the blue
mountains are inaccessible to the majority of visitors.
(C5) This wilderness experience traveling by four wheel drive will help you
(C6) enjoy a sense of excitement and adventure in the great outdoors. (C7) Your
guide will not only show you some breathtaking sights over one of the moun-
tains most rugged valley systems (C8) but also explain the incredible diversity of
flora and fauna (C9) as you enjoy a guided walk to the edge of the escarpment.
(C10) To top it off, (C11) you will enjoy a cup of traditional Aussie Bush Tea.
Figure 6.2 A brochure from the Aussie Tour
vein, both Halliday (1994) and Christie and Derewianka (2008) pointed out
that the nouns, verbs, prepositional phrases, adverbial adjuncts, and other
resources for time, place, and manner reveal the ideational function of a text.
Christie and Derewianka (2008) further distinguish the lexico-grammatical fea-
tures at the clause level and the lexico-grammatical features beyond the clause
level. At the clause level, Christie and Derewianka discussed the participants
involved in the types of processes and circumstances. Beyond the clause level,
they discussed the logical relationships between the events. In my analysis of
the ideational function of the two advertising texts, I look at the choice of
lexical phrases used by the writers, followed by the process, circumstances, and
participation types.
First, what lexical phrases are used and why are they used? The writer of Text 1,
Kaikoura, used ordinary phrases such as the sights and sounds (C2), a close encoun-
ter with (C9), to catch a sight of and migrating whales breaking the surface (C13),
to view the whales (C14), receive a warm welcome (C21) and get a glimpse (C22).
These phrases were used to arouse the senses of the audience or readers. Many
activities such as dolphin excursion (C4), take a cruise (C11), to catch a sight of
(C13), and take a flight to whale watch (C16) were foregrounded to promote
the activities offered in Kaikoura. With lexes such as nature lover (C3), swim
with creatures (C6), encounter with ocean wildlife (C9), and laid back lifestyle
(22), the image of Kaikoura is portrayed as a carefree and relaxed place; one that
could bring tourists close to nature. Contrary to Text 1, the writer of the Blue
Mountain text used predominantly adjectives to describe the place. For examples,
wild wilderness (C1), spectacular scenery, towering escarpments, and hidden rain-
forest (C2), wilderness experience (C5), great outdoors (C6), breathtaking sights
(C7), rugged valley systems (C7), incredible diversity (C8), guided walk (C9), and
traditional Aussie Bush Tea (C11). The lexes such as escarpment, rainforest, and
valley systems entail technicality; hence, they created a more specialized effect.
88 Justina Ong
The image of Blue Mountain is projected to be wild, mysterious, magnificent,
and adventurous.
Despite a similarity in the persuasive purpose of both texts, there is a disparity
in the choice of lexis used. Evidently, the ideational function of Text 1 focused
on the activities one could do at different times of the day, whereas the ideational
function of Text 2 focused on the distinctive features of the place. Comparatively,
the field of Text 1 is less technical and more commonsensical than Text 2.
Ideational meaning: processes

What processes, circumstances, and participation types are used and why? Apart
from the lexical items, the ideational function of texts is realized through the
transitivity patterns known as the process types (Halliday, 1994; Painter, 2001).
The process types specify the actions, events, or relationships between the impli-
cated participants. The processes are typically situated circumstantially, for time,
place, or cause (Halliday, 1994; Painter, 2001). By examining the transitivity pat-
terns, which involves the identification of the process, participants, and circum-
stances in a clause, one can explain how the field of the texts is constructed – e.g.,
we can describe what is being talked about (Eggins, 1994). There are six main
types of processes: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential
(Halliday, 1994). A comparative analysis of the types of processes reveals that
Text 1, Kaikoura, has predominant use of material and mental processes, but
Text 2, Blue Mountain, has predominant use of relational and mental ones. Text
1 used material processes of ‘doing’ to construct actions through presenting the
activities one can do there. Text 2 used relational processes to relate or connect
participants to each other without any actions (see Figure 6.3).
Even though both texts used mental processes, a closer investigation of the
subcategories of the mental processes further reveals that Text 1 has a mixture of
perception, affection, and cognition, but Text 2 has predominant use of affection
processes. For example, in Text 1, the perception processes are to catch a sight of
(C13) and experience (C18); the affection processes are enjoy (C20) and receive a
Text 1: Material process
In C1–C2, “Today, you will have the morning free to explore the sights and
sounds of Kaikoura”.
Text 2: Relational process
In C1, “The blue mountains are set within the wild wilderness of a national
park”.
Figure 6.3 An example of material process in Text 1 and relational process in Text 2.
warm welcome (C21), and, finally, the cognitive process is prefer (C7). In Text 2,
the affection process is enjoy (C6, C9, and C11). Thus Text 1 is richer ideationally
compared to Text 2, as it appeals to the senses, affect, and cognition of readers,
whilst Text 2 appeals to readers’ affect only.
Ideational meaning: participants

The participants referred to in Text 1 are you (C1, C3, C5, C7, etc.), we (C17),
the group (C19), and they (C24). As Text 1 is centrally concerned with actions,
there is a foregrounding of human participants ‘doing’ the actions. Whether it
is the actor in the material processes or the sensor in the mental processes, the
writer predominantly used ‘you’. Contrary to Text 1, Text 2 has mostly nouns
as carriers in the relational processes – e.g., The Blue Mountain (C1), It (C2),
Many areas (C4), and This experience (C5). These nouns carry attributes. From
C7 in Text 2 onwards, there is a shift of participants from nouns to personal pro-
nouns. This is likely because of a shift in the field; the text producer moved from
a description of the place to what the tourist would be expected to experience. In
brief, the prevalent use of personal pronouns as participants, rather than the use
of nouns in Text 1, makes the field of the text more commonsensical and of the
‘everyday’ domain.
Ideational meaning: circumstances

Another key difference in the ideational function of Text 1 and 2 lies in the
selection of the type of circumstances (Figure 6.4). The most significant dis-
tinction is in the time and place circumstances, not in manner, extent, role, nor
cause circumstances. Text 1 used time circumstantially – e.g., today and morning
(C1), and afternoon (C17) – to sequence activities one could do in chronologi-
cal order and also place circumstantial – e.g., open sea (C11), Ash burton (C17),
country (C23), home’ 26), and homeland (C27). However, Text 2 used only
Text 1: Time and place circumstances
In C17, “In the afternoon, we depart for Ashburton”.
Text 2: Place circumstance
In C1, “The blue mountains are set within the wild wilderness of a national
park”.
Figure 6.4 An example of time and place circumstances in Text 1 and place
circumstance in Text 2
90 Justina Ong
place circumstantially – e.g., national park (C1), rainforest (C2), and many areas
(C4) – to describe the place.
Interpersonal meaning: speech function

How is the tenor of both texts constructed? To discuss how interpersonal mean-
ings of Text 1 and 2 are constructed, I look at the writers’ choice of mood, modal-
ity, and attitudinal adjuncts. The interpersonal function of a text is constructed
by the use of mood (i.e., statements, questions, and commands), modality (i.e.,
modal verbs and adverbs), and other linguistic resources, which show evaluative
and attitudinal meanings (Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Halliday, 1994; Painter,
2001). Martin and White (2005) have proposed an appraisal framework that
focuses on the evaluative and attitudinal meanings of the texts. The framework
emphasizes the linguistic resources that reveal writers’ attitudes, graduation, and
engagement. Writers’ attitudes can be expressed using emotional reaction (i.e.,
affect), evaluation of the worth or quality of things or processes (i.e., apprecia-
tion), and judgment of behavior of others (i.e., judgment). Graduation denotes
the strength of emotions, viewpoints, and judgments that are displayed by writ-
ers. Engagement reflects writers’ involvement in the issue or topic of discus-
sion. The choice of mood in Text 1, Kaikoura, is more varied than Text 2, Blue
Mountain. Text 1 consisted of statements, commands, and offers; however, Text
2 consisted of only statements.
First, Text 1 used commands in the form of imperatives – e.g., Take a cruise
(C11), Experience the hospitality, (C18) and Receive a warm welcome (C21).
When these imperatives are used, they typically signal an unequal relationship
between the writers and readers, with the writers having greater power and pos-
sessing greater expertise compared to the readers (Halliday, 1994). However,
contrary to the typical function of imperatives, these imperatives were used to
capture the readers’ attention and not to command or instruct them. Second,
Text 1 used modulated interrogatives (Eggins, 1994), which employ the speech
function of an offer (Figure 6.5).
Modulation is a way for ‘speakers’ to express their judgments or attitudes
about actions and events (Eggins, 1994). The writer of Text 1 employed modu-
lated interrogatives in the form of suggestions. The choice of commodity is a type
of service – e.g., dolphin excursion (C4) – and a product – e.g., a gift (C26). The
Text 1: Modulated interrogatives
In C3–C4, “If you are a nature lover, why not sign up for an optional dolphin
excursion. . . ”
In C23–25, “They will be interested to hear about your country too, so why not
bring a gift from home,. . .”
Figure 6.5 Examples of modulated interrogatives

use of why not as a proposition, in negative polarity, was not to make it manda-
tory for tourists to sign up for a dolphin excursion or to bring a gift, but rather
to suggest that they might do so if they prefer to. The reason the writer of Text
1 used modulated interrogatives is because all the activities in Kaikoura would
cost the tourists money; therefore, the writer had to make the activities optional
or suggestive.
Interpersonal meaning: modality

The difference between Text 1 and Text 2 lies in the intensity of modality used,
not in terms of the frequency of use. The intensity of modality in Text 1 is low
and medium, but the intensity of modality in Text 2 is medium. Text 1 used
low intensity of modality – e.g., ‘may’ (C5, C12, and C16) and ‘can’ (C10) – in
order to be less assertive and less authoritative when persuading readers to join
the activities. For example, ‘may’ indicates an option. The medium intensity of
modality in Text 2 – e.g. ‘will’ (C5, C7, and C11) – makes it more certain. The
writer of Text 1 sold the activities; the tourists would have to pay for them,
thus, the choice of intensity of modality was low. However, the writer of Text 2
advertised the place as a whole tour package, thus, his choice of medium intensity
modality is appropriate. In addition, the writer of Text 2 used intensifying adverbs
to quantify the extent of the beauty of the place. High intensifying adverbs such
as ‘full of’ (C2), ‘many’ (C4), and ‘majority’ and ‘most’ (C4) were used to express
the writer’s affect towards the place; this was completely absent in Text 1. In this
sense, the interpersonal meaning in both texts is constructed differently.
Another significant aspect of interpersonal meaning is the attitudinal affect
encoded in the texts. More attitudinal affect appears in Text 1 than Text 2. The
writer of Text 1 used attitudinal affect to create an intimate relationship with
the readers. He described the dolphins as having human characteristics such as
‘friendly and intelligent’ (C6). He used ‘a close encounter with the ocean wildlife’
(C9) to create an impression that the tourist ‘is meeting with’ the whales, but
it is simply about watching the whales. In addition, the adjective ‘migrating’
(C13) is commonly used to describe movement of people, but it is used in this
text to illustrate movement of whales. The dolphins and whales are personified
as humans to appeal to the potential tourists. The writer also suggested to read-
ers that they could ‘view the whales close up without disturbing them’ (C14–C15).
A less positively attitudinal laden word ‘disturbing’ was used to appeal to the
new-age travelers who would probably not like to be disturbed and also the ani-
mal lovers who respected and cared for the freedom of animals. The noun ‘the
opportunity’ (C5) reflects the writer’s attitudinal affect towards the activity of
swimming with dolphins – i.e., it is a rare chance. He also used ‘lucky enough’
(C12) to express his affect towards catching the sight of ‘migrating whales break-
ing the surface’ (C13) to imply that tourists who see whales are indeed fortunate.
In Text 2, the writer used many positive adjectives such as ‘spectacular’ (C2),
‘breathtaking’ (C6) and ‘great’ (C7), etc. to show his positive affect towards the
place and ‘incredible’ (C8), ‘guided’ (C9), and ‘traditional’ (C11), etc., to show
92 Justina Ong
his positive affect towards what would be offered at Blue Mountain. The scenery
was described as ‘spectacular‘ (C2) and the sights over one of the mountains were
described as ‘breathtaking’ (C6).
In summary, the writer of Text 1 sequenced a list of activities tourists can do in
the morning and afternoon. However, the writer of Text 2 described Blue Moun-
tain and the tour experience. The macro-structure of advertising texts appears
to be less structured because they are hybrid genres. Although the purpose of
both texts was that of persuasion, the ideational and interpersonal meanings were
constructed differently. In terms of ideational function, Text 1 (Kaikoura) had
generalized lexes that are of everyday domain, unlike Text 2 (Blue Mountain)
which had more semi-technical lexes. As Text 1 foregrounded the activities one
could do there, the processes were mainly material and mental ones. However,
Text 2 foregrounded the features of the place; as such, the processes were pre-
dominantly relational ones. Text 1 had a more varied use of mental processes than
Text 2 (e.g., Text 1 used perception, affection, and cognitive processes, but Text
2 used affection processes only). Whereas Text 1 used predominantly personal
pronouns as participants, Text 2 used both nouns and pronouns. Whereas Text
1 situated the time and place circumstances, Text 2 had only the place circum-
stances. In terms of interpersonal function, the writer of Text 1, through the
choice of language use, attempted to build a more intimate relationship with
the readers compared to the writer of Text 2. Text 1 had a greater diversity of
mood choice – e.g., modulated interrogatives and imperatives. Furthermore, the
intensity of modality used in Text 1 was of low and medium ranges, whereas the
intensity of modality used in Text 2 was of medium range. The ranges invited a
more imaginary dialogic interaction between the writer of Text 1 and its readers.
Finally, Text 1 was written not only for those who enjoyed guided and planned
tour but also for those who regarded themselves as new-age travelers, nature lov-
ers, and animal protectors. The tour agency sells not only the image of place but
also the image of the consumer – that is, anyone who travels with Chan Brother is
a modern traveler. Aussie Tours in Australia wrote Text 2 mainly for adventurous
backpackers. The writer of Text 2 might have believed that the scenery of Blue
Mountain would naturally attract anyone who would like to visit the place; thus,
the writer focused on the attractiveness of the place.
Research studies in the genre-based approach

in Asian contexts
In this section, I review a few recent research studies that looked into the genre-
based approach to teaching Asian learners of English. Myskow and Gordon
(2010) and Firkins, Forey, and Sengupta (2007) described the genre-based
approach to teaching writing to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learn-
ers. The instruction focused on the modelling and deconstruction of genres,
which is similar to the focus of this chapter. Myskow and Gordon (2010), for
example, described the genre-based approach to teaching university application
letters to six Japanese EFL high school learners. Their instruction looked into
the rhetorical patterns and language used in university application letters. In the
contextual analysis stage, the social context of letter writing such as understand-
ing the values and beliefs of readers of their application letters was emphasized.
This aspect emphasized the importance of considering the perspectives of read-
ers. In the textual analysis stage, learners analyzed the rhetorical and linguistic
features and the organization structure of sample application letters. In another
study, Firkins, Forey, and Sengupta (2007) incorporated an activity into the
genre-based approach to teaching procedural and information report writing to
32 low-proficiency EFL Hong Kong secondary-school students. The instruction
on modelling and deconstruction of stages again focused on the structure and
lexico-grammatical features of texts. The researchers concluded that the genre-
based approach benefits EFL learners in their organization of writing.
There are a few recent studies that examined the effects of the genre-based
teaching approach on EFL learners’ writing. Chen and Su (2012), for exam-
ple, investigated the effects of genre-based writing instruction on 41 Taiwanese
University EFL students’ summary writing using a test and retest design over
a period of seven weeks. The learners were explicitly taught the structure of a
prototypical narrative genre and linguistics features for writing narratives based
on the teaching-learning cycle of the genre-based approach. Chen and Su (2012)
found that the learners improved in content and rhetorical organization rather
than linguistics accuracy and lexical density of their writing after the intervention.
Another study is that of Yasuda (2011) who examined how 70 college-level Japa-
nese EFL learners had developed their genre awareness, linguistic knowledge,
and writing competence for email-writing tasks in a writing course. In imple-
menting the genre-based approach, Yasuda included the idea of phases of tasks
from task-based language teaching and learning. Yasuda (2011) found that learn-
ers’ genre awareness was heightened and that learners’ emails improved in task
fulfilment and appropriacy, cohesion and organization, grammar, writing fluency,
and language sophistication, but not lexical diversity after the intervention.
Implications of the genre-based pedagogy

for Asian learners
There is a large number of Asian learners of English. The number of learners of
English from China alone approximates to 390 million (Wei & Su, 2012). Given
this large number of Asian EFL learners, it seems clear that more research in L2
learning and teaching of writing on this population and others is needed. The
explicit focus on textual and linguistic features and the systematic instructional
stages of the genre-based pedagogy make this writing approach a useful one for
L1 or EFL learners. However, a one-size-fits-all writing approach will not work
well for Asian learners who are different from L1 learners. First, unlike L1 learn-
ers, L2 learners have their L1 genre knowledge to draw from when writing in
L2 (Gentil, 2011). Some writers rely on L1 genre knowledge to compose in L2,
particularly if they have low L2 proficiency. The use of L1 vocabulary as substitu-
tion of L2 vocabulary is most prevalent when learners learn to write in L2. Gentil
94 Justina Ong
(2011) suggested that language teachers can identify prior knowledge that learn-
ers bring to a writing task so as to help them draw upon it as they develop the
knowledge required for writing in L2. It appears intuitive to hypothesize that, if
learners’ L1 genre knowledge resembles L2, then transfer of this knowledge is
likely to ease the process of writing and produce positive outcomes. However, if
learners’ L1 genre knowledge does not resemble L2, then learners have to relearn
the appropriate L2 genre conventions.
Second, the cultural background of L1 or L2 learners differs markedly. There
are differences in how L1 or L2 learners organize the structure of their texts,
use vocabulary, perceive their audience, define the purpose of writing, etc. Leki,
Cumming, and Silva (2008) attributed some of these differences to the cultural
background of learners, lack of proper writing instruction, and lack of writing
experience. Gentil (2011) hypothesized that if sociocultural expectations in real-
izing the L2 genre differ from the L1 genre, knowledge of the L1 genre is of lim-
ited use for learners writing in L2, even if learners have sufficient L2 proficiency
and adequate L1 genre knowledge.
Third, there are clearly individual differences between L1 and L2 learners and also
among L2 learners. Individual differences such as motivation, attitudes to learning
an L2, learning strategies and styles, etc., play an important role in learners’ acquisi-
tion of writing in an L2. Ong (2015), for example, found that China EFL learners’
interest level in writing an essay, familiarity with and self-efficacy in writing various
genres, and gender explained 25% of the learners’ writing ability variance and that
gender was highly significant, and interest level in writing an essay was marginally
significant, but familiarity with and self-efficacy in writing various genres were not
significant.
Fourth, and finally, in the design and implementation of the genre-based writ-
ing approach, teachers should consider learners’ age, L2 proficiency, L2 writ-
ing ability, language needs, task variables, and motivation, and how the variables
affect processes of writing and text quality. Here are some suggestions:
• More scaffolding and guided practice activities in building the context of

texts and in modelling and deconstructing of texts can be provided for
elementary or low L2 proficiency or low L2 writing ability learners. Teach-
ers can reduce the amount of scaffolding and guided practice as learners
develop their genre knowledge and writing skills. The ultimate goal is for
learners to develop a sense of personal control over their learning-to-write
processes.
• Based on learners’ language needs, teachers can emphasize targeted lexico-
grammatical features when they model and deconstruct texts.
• Teachers can select a wide range of in-class reading topics to meet the diverse
interests of learners. Teachers can include authentic texts (e.g., advertising
texts, newspaper, magazines, emails, blogs, and business reports) that learn-
ers read in their daily lives. These increase the value of writing.
• As task demand of writing different genres varies, teachers can teach learn-
ers easier genres such as recount, narrative, and procedural text before
proceeding to more difficult ones such as argumentative text, information
report, and academic text. Recount and narrative texts coincide with the
knowledge-telling writing strategy that automatically creates coherence in
writing, but argumentative text requires learners to transform genre and
topic knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987).
• In implementing writing tasks, teachers can consider how task variables influ-
ence processes of writing (Ong, 2014) and text quality (Ong & Zhang, 2010,
2013; 2013; Ong, 2013). When EFL learners were given ideas for writing an
argumentative essay and a sample macro-structure of the essay, the frequency
of metacognitive processes reported were lower in both the planning and
writing stages compared to when they were not given any assistance. Specifi-
cally, the frequency of generation and organization of new ideas during the
planning stage and the frequency of elaboration and organization of new
ideas during the writing stage were lower (Ong, 2014). When EFL learners
were given ideas for writing an argumentative essay and a sample macro-
structure of the essay, they also produced overall better quality texts (Ong &
Zhang, 2013), better quality of ideas (Ong, 2013), and higher lexical com-
plexity but not fluency (Ong & Zhang, 2010). The implication drawn is that
emphasizing the organizational structure of genres in the genre-based peda-
gogy benefits the processes and products of EFL writing (see also Chen &
Su, 2012; Firkins, Forey, & Sengupta, 2007).
• Learners who prefer collaborative group work can be given more opportuni-
ties to jointly construct texts with their teachers and peers. Learners who pre-
fer to write independently can be given more opportunities to independently
construct texts. Over time, teachers can encourage learners who prefer to
write independently to do more collaborative writing tasks and vice versa.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I adopted a think-aloud approach which mimics instructional
discourse on modelling and deconstruction of texts. I highlighted the differences
in the use of lexico-grammatical features of two sample advertising texts that
learners can model and teachers can use in their practice. The demonstration of
think-aloud offers learners and teachers an opportunity to view this important
stage of the genre-based pedagogy (Firkins, Forey, & Sengupta, 2007; Hyland,
2007; Myskow & Gordon, 2010). I also reviewed recent research studies that
looked into the genre-based approach to teaching EFL learners and offered some
implications of the approach for Asian learners.
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7 Teaching communicative
vocabulary
Anna Siyanova-Chanturia and Paul Nation
Second language (L2) researchers, practitioners, and educators agree that mas-
tering vocabulary is of great importance in becoming a mature language user.
It is also one of the greatest challenges for a L2 learner. As Swan and Walter
(1984, p. vii) put it, “Vocabulary acquisition is the largest and most important
task facing the language learner.” There is simply too much to learn in a limited
period of time, with the opportunities to actually use the language, especially in
communicative situations, being scarce. This chapter looks at the vocabulary and
multi-word expressions (MWEs) needed to use the language communicatively
and addresses a number of questions: How much vocabulary is needed for spo-
ken language comprehension? What are MWEs and why are they important in
communicative vocabulary teaching and learning? What is involved in teaching
communicative vocabulary? What kind of communicative vocabulary activities
can be used in and outside the classroom?
How much vocabulary is needed for spoken language

comprehension?
It has been proposed that an educated native speaker of English has a vocabu-
lary of around 20,000 word families, or 32,000 vocabulary items (Goulden,
Nation, & Read, 1990; Nation, 1990). However, these are relatively con-
servative estimates. According to some less modest ones, this number is
around 50,000 vocabulary items.
(Laufer, 2003)
A more important, and pedagogically interesting, question is not how much

a native speaker, or a proficient non-native speaker may know – these are likely
to be unrealistic goals for most L2 learners, especially in the English as a for-
eign language context (EFL) – but how much vocabulary is needed to engage
in everyday activities in the target language, such as, for example, watching a
movie or participating in a conversation. Nation (2006) found that, on aver-
age, 6,000–7,000 word families were needed to successfully deal with unscripted
spoken language (which means gaining a coverage of 98%). Importantly, Nation
(2006) also established that the greatest variation in vocabulary coverage occurs
Teaching communicative vocabulary 99
in the first 1,000-word families, which cover around 83% of spoken texts. The
second 1,000-word families were found to account for 6% of spoken coverage,
while the fourth and the fifth 1,000-word families were found to provide a mere
2% of spoken coverage.
The aforementioned figures highlight the value of high-frequency words in
vocabulary learning. Evidently, the first 1,000-word families should be of pri-
mary focus in an English language-learning programme. Nation (2011) further
points out that a considerable amount of spoken communication is possible even
if a L2 learner knows far fewer than 6,000–7,000 English words. According to
West (1960), the minimum vocabulary needed to converse over a range of topics
in English is around 1,200 words (this figure, however, should be viewed as an
initial goal).
Multi-word expressions: what are they and

why are they important?
Thus far, we have talked about vocabulary in terms of words. However, our lexi-
con is not made up solely of single words (Siyanova, 2010; Siyanova-Chanturia,
2013; Siyanova-Chanturia & Martinez, 2014). MWEs, such as, collocations
(strong tea, do a favour, chicken wings), multi-word verbs ( figure out, rely on, put
up with), idioms (piece of cake, tie the knot, cost an arm and a leg), binomials ( fish
and chips, nice and easy, time and money), speech formulas (How’s it going? What’s
up? No worries), grammatical constructions (the -er, the – er, this is X, these are Ys),
expletives (Oh no! Damn it! What the hell!?), and other multi-word items have
been found to constitute around 28% of the spoken discourse analysed (Biber,
Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999). On average, four such units are
produced by a native speaker in every minute of spoken discourse (Pollio, Barlow,
Fine, & Pollio, 1977). These figures suggest that MWEs (also known as formu-
laic sequences, prefabricated language, chunks, formulas, frequent phrases) are an
important component of mature linguistic performance. Clearly, then, the focus
in L2 communicative vocabulary teaching and learning should be not only on
(single) words but also on a wide range of phrasal elements.
In addition to MWEs being an integral part of the mental lexicon, it is widely
acknowledged that mastery of a word encompasses more than just knowing a
word’s form, meaning, and pronunciation (Nation, 1990; Richards, 1976). An
important aspect of Richards’s (1976) framework of word knowledge is that
knowing a word also involves knowing the words that go with it – that is, its col-
locates. Richards (1976, p. 79) argues, “For many words we also ‘know’ the sorts
of words most likely to be found associated with the word” – that is, knowledge
of collocation assumes that on encountering the word fruit we can expect the
words ripe, green, sweet, bitter, and for the word meat we might expect tender,
tough (Richards, 1976).
Knowing which words collocate, or go together, with other words is important
in order to sound idiomatic, or native-like (i.e., to achieve “nativelike selection”
in the words of Pawley & Syder, 1983, p. 191). The appropriate use of a wide
100 Anna Siyanova-Chanturia and Paul Nation
range of MWEs is considered to be a prerequisite for proficient language use
(e.g., Wray, 2002). However, research has also shown that L2 learners often have
problems with MWEs in their language (Nesselhauf, 2005; Siyanova & Schmitt,
2007, 2008). Researchers have suggested that L2 learners rely on creativity and
make “overliberal assumptions about the collocational equivalence of semanti-
cally similar items” (Wray, 2002, pp. 201–202). That is, where words have a simi-
lar meaning, such as heavy and strong, learners are likely to assume their equally
appropriate status, or mutual interchangeability, in collocations like strong wind
and heavy rain. Although saying heavy wind or strong rain – rather than the
more conventional strong wind and heavy rain – will not impede general com-
prehension and will not lead to a breakdown in conversation, these ‘unidiomatic’
instances will inevitably signal the nonnative-likeness of the speaker’s vocabulary
repertoire. Other instances of MWE misuse or avoidance may, indeed, lead to a
breakdown in conversation (e.g., not knowing the conventional ways to greet or
farewell, express feelings and emotions, show solidarity and sympathy, and other
pragmatic aspects of MWE use; see the following text). Foster (2001) proposed
that L2 learners, unlike native speakers, construct a large proportion of their lan-
guage from rules rather than lexicalised or prefabricated routines, such as MWEs.
That is, they learn words individually, out of context, without paying attention to
their immediate environment, and, when trying to produce an MWE, such as a
collocation, learners may combine words that do not normally go together (e.g.,
heavy + wind and strong + rain). These unexpected or infrequent word combina-
tions can be perceived as atypical, making the learners less effective communica-
tors and hindering their acceptance into the speech community.
We have so far argued that MWEs are important because (1) they constitute
a large proportion of native-speaker discourse; (2) they are a necessary compo-
nent of Richards’s (1976) and Nation’s (1990) frameworks of word knowledge;
(3) their appropriate idiomatic use is a prerequisite for native-like performance.
There are, however, other reasons why MWEs are an important aspect of com-
municative vocabulary knowledge and why such phrasal units should be taught.
Research suggests that using MWEs may be a quick way of developing fluency,
particularly in the early stages of language learning (Wood, 2002). Wood (2002)
argues that speech fluency lies in the control of a large number of MWEs and that
many familiar concepts and speech acts can (and should) be expressed formulai-
cally. That is, if a speaker can pull MWEs readily from memory as chunks, fluency
can be enhanced. This process of ‘chunking’ is believed to reduce the amount
of planning, processing, and encoding required, and “gives the speaker time to
pay attention to the multitude of other tasks necessary while speaking, such as
generating specific lexical items, planning the next unit of discourse, syntactic
processing of novel pieces, and so on” (Wood, 2002, p. 7). Thus the key to
speech fluency in a L2 may partially lie in the amassing and regular use of a rich
repertoire of MWEs.
Finally, researchers have pointed out an important link between MWEs and
pragmatic linguistic competence (and, correspondingly, performance). Accord-
ing to Coulmas (1979), MWEs provide the verbal means for a wide range of
conventional actions. As Wood (2002) further notes, specific situations provide
specific contexts for the use of formulas, and only “an understanding of the rel-
evant dimensions of certain social situations and their relative value guarantees
understanding of the meanings of the formulas that are highly likely to occur in
them” (p. 8). Wood’s observations are based on the studies that looked at the
functions of the various types of MWEs in communication such as that of Bygate
(1988) who researched formulaic use in adult learner interactions. Bygate (1988)
reports on a wide range of L2 formulas used in a variety of conversational con-
texts and for an array of pragmatic purposes. It is believed that the use of MWEs
can help the learner (1) cope with the complexity of numerous social situations,
(2) structure their discourse in an orderly and unambiguous way, and (3) attain a
sense of group identity (Wood, 2002). The latter is particularly important in the
English as a Second Language (ESL) context.
In sum, based on the evidence discussed thus far, a strong case can be made for
the inclusion of MWEs in communicative language pedagogies and practices, and
making them a core component of a vocabulary-learning programme.
Multi-word expressions, frequency,

and vocabulary learning
It has long been acknowledged that one of the ways of quickly becoming flu-
ent in the language (or at least some aspects of it) is to memorise a range of
useful MWEs (Nation, 2011; Palmer, 1925). The type and number of MWEs
will depend on the learner’s immediate needs (Nation, 2011). For example,
for learners who want to learn some basic vocabulary in order to stay in an
English-speaking country for a short period of time, Nation and Crabbe (1991)
devised a 120-item list of words and phrases (which includes phrases such as
excuse me, how much does that cost? where is the toilet? thank you, and so on).
This survival vocabulary has been translated into several languages, available
from Paul Nation’s website (www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.
aspx). This basic vocabulary can be learnt in a few hours over several days, and
for a small investment of learning effort, it can give L2 learners a large return
in communicative use (Nation, 2011). Whether or not L2 learners intend to
spend a period of time in an L2 country, one of the ways in which teachers can
help learners gain fluency in the early stages of L2 development is to encourage
them to memorise commonly used MWEs, such as those in Nation and Crabbe
(1991), as well as other frequent phrases. For example, Shin and Nation (2008)
identified the most frequent MWEs in spoken English using the spoken section
of the British National Corpus. Table 7.1 contains the 30 most frequent items
from this study.
As can be seen from Table 7.1, the most frequent MWEs in spoken English
comprise a variety of phrases: speech routines, discourse markers, verbs, colloca-
tions, lexical bundles, and so on. In addition, their length and (semi-)fixedness
vary from two words (e.g., thank you) to longer constructions with slots to be
filled (e.g., (about) (No.) percent (of sth)). What unites them is that they are very
Table 7.1 The most frequent MWEs in spoken English (Adapted from Shin & Nation,
2008)
1 you know 16 at the moment

2 I think (that) 17 a little bit
3 a bit 18 looking at (sth)
4 (always, never) used to {INF} 19 this morning
5 as well 20 (not) any more
6 a lot of {N} 21 come on
7 (No.) pounds 22 number {No.}
8 thank you 23 come in (swe, sth)
9 (No.) years 24 come back
10 in fact 25 have a look
11 very much 26 in terms of {sth}
12 (No.) pound 27 last year
13 talking about (sth) 28 so much
14 (about) (No.) percent (of sth), in 29 {No.} years ago
sth, on (sth), for (sth) 30 {Det-the, this, a}
15 I suppose (that) county council
frequent in spoken English (e.g., the most frequent MWE you know was found
to occur a staggering 27,348 times in 10 million running words). It is these and
other frequent MWEs that teachers should focus on and should encourage their
learners to learn and use.
It is noteworthy, however, that care should be taken when choosing items
from the list (Shin & Nation, 2008). Specifically, teachers should bear in mind
that the reference corpus used in the study represents both colloquial and for-
mal British English produced by adult speakers. On the one hand, items such
as {No.} pounds, {No.} pound and {Det-the, this, a} county council suggest the
strongly British (and somewhat formal) nature of the corpus, or, at least, parts of
it. The authors argue that such items can be ignored, where, for example, English
is taught outside the United Kingdom. On the other hand, items such as you
know, a bit, and come on (as well as many others that appear further down the list:
mind you, I bet, hang on) are very colloquial and may, thus, be best approached
through learners identifying and learning them in longer stretches of naturalis-
tic speech (and in the context of a range of communicative tasks, such as dia-
logues, pair and group work), rather than teaching them explicitly (e.g., through
memorisation). Interestingly, greetings such as Good morning, Good afternoon,
Good evening, and How are you? were not found in the top-100 phrases. This
suggests that while frequency is a very important (perhaps, a major) factor to
consider when choosing vocabulary to focus on in or outside the classroom,
it is certainly not the only factor. Clearly, teachers should also use their intui-
tion and judgment when selecting the target items (see Siyanova-Chanturia &
Spina, 2015, for an overview of the research into the accuracy of native and
non-native-speaker intuition in the context of MWEs). As Shin and Nation
(2008) conclude, although frequency in the language is an important criterion
for selecting vocabulary items, it is only one of several criteria along with others
such as learner needs, difficulty, teachability, suitability for the age, proficiency
level, and background of the learners in question. Nevertheless, having a list of
the most frequent MWEs in spoken English is a useful reference point for course
designers, teachers, and learners alike, in particular, in the context of communi-
cative vocabulary teaching and learning.
Teaching communicative vocabulary: the four strands

While the nature of MWEs, their importance in L2 learning, and the fact that
L2 learners often have problems with MWEs are well documented, there is lit-
tle research on what can be done to help learners achieve greater “nativelike
selection” (Pawley & Syder, 1983, p. 191) and improve their fluency and com-
municative competence. In the remainder of the chapter, we focus on a range of
approaches, activities, and principles aimed at increasing L2 learners’ awareness
of and exposure to communicative vocabulary, including both single words and
MWEs.
According to Nation (2007), the activities in a language course can be clas-
sified into four distinct strands: meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output,
language-focused learning, and fluency development. The rationale behind the use
of the four strands is the assumption that for learning to occur, it is useful to
adopt a holistic view of the opportunities for learning in any language-teaching
situation. In a well-designed course, it is argued, there should be an even balance
of the four strands with similar amounts of time dedicated to each strand (Nation,
2007). Next we discuss each of the strands, focusing on a range of activities that
can be used in the context of communicative vocabulary teaching and learning.
Meaning-focused input
The strand of meaning-focused input assumes the learning of a L2 primarily
through two activities: listening and reading. As Nation (2007, 2011) argues,
these activities provide learners with the opportunity to learn vocabulary items
incidentally, gradually increasing the breadth and depth of knowledge of single
words and MWEs. Because listening comprehension is a key part in any spoken
communicative activity, the meaning-focused input strand is especially important
when preparing learners for spoken interaction. Classroom activities that can be
used in the context of the meaning-focused input strand are listening to stories
that are read aloud by the teacher or other L2 learners, participating in communi-
cative activities (role plays, dialogues, presentations) as well as reading. However,
there is a limit to how much time can be dedicated to vocabulary learning in the
classroom. It may, therefore, be of considerable value to encourage L2 learners to
engage in extracurricular out-of-classroom activities that promote the acquisition
of new vocabulary. As Nation (2001) notes, opportunities for indirect vocabulary
learning should occupy much more time in a language course than direct vocabu-
lary learning activities. Such activities may, for example, include extensive reading
and extensive listening.
Extensive reading can be used as a useful activity outside the classroom, both
in the EFL and ESL contexts. Researchers have long acknowledged an important
role of reading in vocabulary learning owing to repeated encounters with the
same word over the course of reading (Day & Bamford, 2002; Pigada & Schmitt,
2006). Indeed, according to Nation’s (2001) principles of vocabulary teaching,
spaced repeated exposures are a necessary prerequisite for vocabulary learning.
In addition, it also provides the learners with the opportunity to meet words in
their contexts of use.
Researchers have proposed that for extensive reading to be effective, a num-
ber of conditions need to be met. For example, Day and Bamford (2002) put
forward ten principles for an extensive reading approach: the reading material is
easy; a variety of reading material on a wide range of topics must be available;
learners choose what they want to read; learners read as much as possible; the
purpose of reading is usually related to pleasure, information, and general under-
standing; reading is its own reward; reading speed is usually faster rather than
slower; reading is individual and silent; teachers orient and guide students; and
the teacher is a role model of a reader.
It, thus, appears that the key to extensive reading success is that the material
contains mostly high-frequency familiar words, with only a very small propor-
tion of new words or MWEs. In addition, learners should read for pleasure,
and they should do so on a regular basis. Nation and Wang (1999) suggest
that learners need to read one book per week in order to meet repetitions of a
new word or MWE soon enough to reinforce the previous meeting. One of the
most useful jobs that a teacher can do is to encourage the learners to engage in
extensive reading. After all, as Nation (2001) points out, reading may be one of
the few options for out-of-class vocabulary development for some learners (e.g.,
EFL learners).
Extensive listening, such as, watching television, is another extracurricular out-
of-class activity that has been shown to lead to vocabulary learning (Koolstra &
Beentjes, 1999; Lin, 2014; Meinhof, 1998). Nurweni and Read (1999) recom-
mend promoting watching English-language television programmes outside the
classroom. However, as Lin and Siyanova-Chanturia (2014) argue, access to
North American, British, Australian, or New Zealand television programmes is
not always easy. Satellite television can be expensive for an ordinary household,
which means that the only practical way of accessing it may be the school library
or self-access, language-learning centre. Evidently, this implies certain limita-
tions in terms of where and when, as well as a limited choice of programmes.
These authors point out, however, that Internet television can overcome most of
these problems. They argue that EFL learners can take Internet television with
them and watch it wherever they wish (while commuting, at home, at univer-
sity). Internet television is accessible with a few clicks on an Internet-enabled
smartphone (or another mobile devise), which means that learners can receive
authentic input even if they only have a few minutes on a train (Lin & Siyanova-
Chanturia, 2014).
According to Lin and Siyanova-Chanturia (2014), the following principles
demonstrate the potential of Internet television, especially, in the context of com-
municative vocabulary learning: learners receive extensive exposure to English;
learners have the opportunity to observe everyday English; watching television
facilitates contextual vocabulary acquisition. Thus extensive listening via watch-
ing television is not unlike extensive reading. However, there are some differ-
ences that teachers should be aware of when encouraging their learners to engage
in one or the other activity. One of the principles of extensive reading is that it
should be easy (Day & Bamford, 2002). Because watching (traditional or Inter-
net) television puts emphasis on authentic (unmodified) input, this principle is
unlikely to apply to extensive listening. Thus while extensive reading is suitable
for any level (graded readers should be chosen according to the learners’ pro-
ficiency level: beginner, intermediate, advanced), television programmes may
only be suitable for more advanced learners. Even then, however, learners may
need help and advice on how to make watching television a valuable learning
experience. The following strategies, adapted from Lin and Siyanova-Chanturia
(2014), may help guide EFL learners:
1 Repeated viewing: Repeated viewing leads to repeated encounters with a

vocabulary item.
2 Training on contextual vocabulary learning skills: This will help learners
acquire skills implicitly from watching television.
3 Programme selection: Lin (2014) found that television programmes in the
factual, drama, and comedy categories were more representative of everyday
English than programmes in the music, learning, and religion categories.
The programmes should, thus, be chosen accordingly.
4 Narrow viewing: Viewing programmes on the same or similar theme is likely
to provide multiple repetitions of vocabulary items and help learners accu-
mulate vocabulary on a particular topic.
5 Subtitles: Subtitles can be used in the same language as the programme
(intralingual subtitles), or in another language, such as learners’ first lan-
guage (L1; interlingual subtitles).
Overall, researchers agree that extensive reading and extensive listening can be
useful activities, promoting learner autonomy and enhancing indirect vocabulary
learning.
The key principles of the meaning-focused input strand are as follows:
• vocabulary learning happens through reading and listening

• material is mostly familiar to the learners
• learners engage in reading and watching/listening for pleasure
• learning is aided by the use of context and cumulative background knowledge
• opportunities for large amounts of input (hence extensive reading and exten-
sive listening) are available
Meaning-focused output
While the strand of meaning-focused input centres on the receptive skills of a
learner – that is, language comprehension – the strand of meaning-focused out-
put focuses on language production. It has been proposed that L2 learners may
be unwilling to use vocabulary items they are unsure about, or those they may be
able to comprehend but not necessarily produce correctly (this particularly applies
to certain MWEs, such as phrasal verbs, collocations, and idioms that are more
likely to be known receptively than productively). Therefore, meaning-focused
output activities should build on meaning-focused input and previous deliber-
ate learning (Nation, 2011). Meaning-focused output activities include speaking
activities that draw on written input. For example, retelling activities, ranking
activities, role-play activities, problem-solving activities, and activities that involve
negotiation for meaning in pairs or small groups (Joe, Nation, & Newton, 1996).
As Nation (2011) argues, if the task sheet contains some words and MWEs that
are new to the learners but essential for the activity, a speaking activity can pro-
vide excellent opportunities for vocabulary learning. However, the new words
and MWEs should be few, and the focus should be on high-frequency items (e.g.,
words from the first two 1,000-word families, see Nation, 2006 as well as MWEs
from Shin & Nation, 2008 and other MWE frequency lists).
Nation (2011) recommends following the following guidelines when design-
ing communicative activities within the strand of meaning-focused output:
1 Amount of written input: Learners should be provided with plenty of mate-

rial on the handout or task sheet. It is recommended to include some new
material (words or MWEs), although these should be few.
2 Procedures: It is important to include an element of repetition in the task.
The target material should be repeated a number of times during the task.
3 Creative use: Learners should be encouraged to use the material in new con-
texts (i.e., they should not repeat the original contexts as they appeared on
the handout/task sheet verbatim).
4 Deliberate attention: Learners’ attention should be drawn to the new vocab-
ulary items.
These guidelines can be applied to a range of communicative tasks, such as, rank-
ing, problem solving, retelling, role-playing, and so on. For example, by follow-
ing these guidelines, the commonly used task of retelling can be carried out as
follows:
1 Amount of written input: The material can be newspaper and magazine arti-
cles and reports. There should be at least one article or report per learner.
Ideally, the learners should be able to choose the text they want to retell (but
different learners should choose different texts).
2 Procedures: The point is to retell the piece to a number of people. This will
ensure repetition of the target material.
3 Creative use: The point now is to retell the same story from a different per-
spective, slightly modifying events, characters, and places (i.e., retelling the
story not from the perceptive of the author of the text but, for example, from
the perspective of one of the characters, witnesses).
4 Deliberate attention: A task can be added to make sure the listeners are not
passive listeners but active participants in the task (e.g., they can ask ques-
tions, ask the speaker to repeat something, express their attitudes towards
the story).
The key principles of the meaning-focused output strand are as follows:
• new vocabulary items are learned through speaking

• material is mostly familiar to the learners
• learners draw on a range of communicative strategies such as dictionary use
or use of contextual cues
• opportunities for speaking are plentiful
• learners work in pairs or small groups
Language-focused learning
The strand of language-focused learning is meant to engage the students in the
deliberate study of language features, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, gram-
mar, and discourse. Some of the techniques for vocabulary learning are word
cards, flashcard software, and vocabulary notebooks (Nation, 2001, 2008, 2013).
Word cards, which are cards with a L2 word on one side and the L1 equivalent
on the other, have been shown to be particularly useful in deliberate vocabulary
learning. Nation (2001) defines ‘learning from word cards’ as the formation of
associations between a foreign word form and its meaning (which could be a L1
translation, L2 definition, or picture). There is a long history of research on the
use of word cards in vocabulary teaching and learning (Mondria & Mondria-de
Vries, 1994; Nation, 1982, 2001, 2013). Research suggests that this technique
(1) is efficient in terms of return for time and effort, (2) allows learners to focus
on an aspect of word knowledge that is not easily gained from the use of contex-
tual cues or dictionary use, and (3) allows L2 learners to control the amount of
repetition (Nation, 2001). In addition, the knowledge gained through the use
of word cards has been argued to be the kind of knowledge necessary for typical
language use (Elgort, 2007).
Word cards have traditionally been used with words as the target vocabulary.
However, they can also be useful in the learning of MWEs. Recent years have
seen attempts to incorporate the use of word cards in classroom learning of
chunks and phrases (e.g., Noonan, 2010). In addition, laboratory-based research
has shown that some kinds of MWEs, such as idioms, can be successfully learnt
using a paired-associate paradigm (e.g., Steinel, Hulstijn, & Steinel, 2007). The
principle behind this paradigm is not unlike the principle behind the use of word
cards – that is, the formation of association(s) between the form and meaning.
Another useful technique is recording new words and MWEs. Teachers may
encourage their students to record new vocabulary items in a number of different
ways – in boxes, word maps, and so on. It is particularly a good idea to keep a
word or MWE notebook and add new items as the learners come across them in
texts, during lessons, or when doing homework. Learners may find it helpful to
categorise new items. For example, they can do so according to the type (e.g.,
part of speech), or based on the topic (hobbies, food and drink, school, home
and family, sport, weather, and so on). It is important for the learners to revise
and revisit the words and phrases in their notebooks on a regular basis as well as
add new items as they encounter them in their input.
The key principles of the language-focused learning strand are as follows:
• focus is on deliberate learning of language features

• vocabulary learning is aided by the use of word cards, reading, writing, and
translation
• focus is on form
Fluency development
The fourth and final strand is that of fluency development, which is particularly
important in the context of communicative language learning. This strand does
not involve the learning of new language features or vocabulary items. Instead, it
focuses on becoming fluent in using what the learner already knows. For exam-
ple, it is important to be able to process certain kinds of information fluently such
as numbers (e.g., time, price), days of the week, months, other ‘time’ words,
greetings and farewells, and so on. This fluency practice is best done in pairs or
small groups with one learner leading the activity, although it can also be done in
larger groups as a teacher-led activity (Nation, 2011).
One of the most effective activities for spoken L2 fluency development is the
4/3/2 technique that involves repetitive reception and production of the same
material (Nation, 2007, 2011). In the 4/3/2 technique, the learners work in
pairs or triads with one learner speaking on a familiar topic for four minutes and
the other learner(s) listening to the speaker. The pairs or triads change partners
such that each speaker has a new partner(s) to whom they now deliver the same
talk – this time, in three minutes. The pairs or triads change the partners again,
and the same speaker now delivers the same talk in two minutes. The logic behind
this activity is that the less time the speaker has to give a talk, the faster (more
fluent) their speech will be. In other words, the talk delivered in two minutes
should be more fluent and should contain fewer and shorter pauses than the
same talk delivered in three or four minutes. The speakers within pairs or triads
rotate until all the learners have delivered their talks three times: in four, three,
and two minutes.
Research into the effectiveness of the 4/3/2 technique has showed a significant
increase in speakers’ rates as measured by words per minute as well as significant
improvements in the quality of the speech such as fewer and shorter hesitations
and pauses, and increases in grammatical accuracy and grammatical complexity
(Arevart & Nation, 1991; Nation, 1989). The fact that both quantitative and
qualitative improvements have been observed supports the use of the 4/3/2
technique in ESL and EFL classrooms as a useful activity for the development of
L2 fluency (and, possibly, accuracy, as reported in Nation, 1989).
Particularly important, in the context of fluency development, are MWEs,
which have been linked to a quick way of developing fluency (Wood, 2002).
This is because operating with larger units (as opposed to single words) that are
retrieved readily from memory as chunks may enhance the speaker’s perceived
fluency. The process of ‘chunking’ is believed to reduce the amount of planning,
processing, and encoding needed for language comprehension and production
(Wood, 2002). Thus one of the important features of fluent speech in an L2 (just
as it is in a L1) is believed to be the knowledge and use of a variety of MWEs.
A useful task that can help raise awareness of MWEs in speech is shadowing.
As Wood (2002) argues, shadowing is most valuable for dealing with spoken
discourse. In this communicative task, L2 learners are encouraged to imitate the
performance (fluency and intonation) of a native or highly proficient speaker.
Students read aloud a piece of text with the help of a transcript provided by the
teacher, while listening to a recording of the same excerpt. The excerpt normally
contains a variety of MWEs. Given the abundance of MWEs in everyday lan-
guage, it should not be difficult to find a suitable authentic text with instances of
various MWEs. Students are encouraged to repeat the task until they are certain
they have mastered the target phrases. Special attention is paid to the pronun-
ciation and fluency of the MWEs, as well as the suprasegmental aspects, such as
intonation contours and variations in speed. The students then perform their
own reading aloud. Shadowing tasks, rich in high frequency and, hence, useful
for communicative purposes MWEs, can help raise learners’ awareness of the
presence of larger chunks in language and improve their production in real-time
speech (Wood, 2002).
The key principles of the fluency-development strand are thus:
• learners work with high-frequency, familiar material

• focus is on fluency (i.e., speed) rather than accuracy
• learner output is fast paced, free of hesitations and pauses
• focus is on listening and speaking
• opportunities for large amounts of input and output are available
Conclusion
This chapter has raised a number of issues with respect to vocabulary teaching
and learning. Specifically, we have looked at the vocabulary needed to use the
language communicatively. We have also introduced MWEs and presented the
case for their key role in the development of fluency, pragmatic knowledge, and
native-like selection. Critically, this chapter has argued that a language course
should seek to employ and integrate the four strands of meaning-focused input,
meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development.
The four strands are important in their distinct contributions to speaking and
vocabulary development. One of the aims of the chapter was to show how teach-
ers can design and use activities to aid vocabulary learning. The chapter has cov-
ered a range of activities that can be used as part of a four-strand approach to
communicative vocabulary teaching and learning, both in and outside the class-
room. We have maintained that vocabulary needs to be integrated into a variety
of language use activities that draw on all four strands. All in all, the present chap-
ter has provided a strong case for the inclusion of the communicative vocabulary
component into institutional vocabulary-learning programmes.
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8 What EFL teachers should
know about online grammar
tasks
Reima Al-Jarf
English as a foreign or second language (EFL or ESL) teachers generally believe

that the formal study of grammar is essential to the eventual mastery of a foreign
or second language (L2) when language learning is limited to the classroom
(Thu, 2009). However, teachers and students around the world feel that gram-
mar constitutes a major difficulty in teaching and learning of a second/foreign
language. For example in Oman, Al-Mekhlafi and Nagaratnam (2011) reported
that teachers, as well as students, face difficulties regarding grammar instruction
in EFL. In Greece, results of a needs analysis by Xenodohidis (2002) revealed
that most of the students majoring in computer science mainly needed grammar,
syntax, and speaking, as well as computing vocabulary, to be able to comprehend
specific computing texts and to be better qualified for their careers. Half of the
students rated grammar as a problem. In Iran, EFL college students have many
grammatical problems when writing in English, the most prominent of which
are the use of prepositions, concord, articles, distribution of verb groups, and
tenses. To a lesser degree, they have problems in using relative clauses and plu-
ral morphemes (Golshan & Karbalaei, 2009). Other studies have shown specific
problems that students have in learning L2 grammar such as the improper use of
prepositions by EFL Jordanian Arab learners, even at advanced stages of learning
(Tahaineh, 2010).
Difficulties in L2 grammar, as Xenodohidis (2002) found, may be attributed to
the rare use of language in everyday life and at work, and to the lack of exposure
to EFL, especially for older students. To overcome difficulties in learning L2
grammar, both teachers and students indicated that practice is of crucial impor-
tance to grammar learning (Thu, 2009). ESL learners also need explicit help to
improve the grammatical accuracy of their writing (Hegelheimer, 2006).
With the latest developments in information and communication technol-
ogy, more and more instructors around the world are seeking to enhance their
language instruction through activities and experiences made available through
technology. Many have integrated a variety of technologies in the teaching of
grammar in foreign and L2 learning environments such as websites and CD-
ROM virtual environments (Bowen, 1999); Cyber Tutor, which allows students
to annotate sentences and provides them with instant feedback and help facili-
ties (McEnery & Others, 1995); and Learning English Electronically computer
114 Reima Al-Jarf
software, which consisted of 43 lessons emphasizing grammar concepts and accu-
rate sentence structure, and covering topics such as employment, food, health,
school, and transportation (Schnackenberg, 1997).
In addition, explicit, implicit, and exploratory grammar teaching approaches
that use word processing packages, electronic dictionaries and grammars, the
World Wide Web, concordances, electronic mail, computer games/simulations,
and authoring aids were combined to overcome the ‘grammar deficit’ seen in
many British undergraduate students learning German (Hall, 1998). In addi-
tion, an interactive messaging system set up on the Internet enabled teachers
of English in Hong Kong to discuss language-related issues as part of the Tel-
eNex teacher-support network. Grammatical explanations based on the analysis
of corpus data were routinely used to answer teachers’ queries (Tyrwhitt-Drake,
1999). In another study, Hegelheimer (2006) used the iWRITE program, a pro-
totype of a corpus-based, database-driven online grammar/writing resource for
intermediate learners of English. This online resource was intended to improve
advanced-level ESL learners’ writing by increasing their grammatical awareness
and their ability to correct grammatical errors in their own writing.
Moreover, several other prior studies have shown that the integration of tech-
nology proved to be effective in the teaching and learning of L2 grammar. For
example, computer-assisted and web-based grammar teaching helped instructors
devote class time to teaching communication skills and individualizing course
work (Beaudoin, 2004). Journalism teachers and students found the web-based
Targeted Approach to Grammar System, a kind of grammar checker, useful for
teaching and learning basic grammar (Henderson, 2002). Language learners in
an intensive English program benefited from web-based materials in learning ESL
grammar (Quesada, 2000). My Sentence Builder, a computer-assisted treatment
program for the remediation of expressive-grammar deficits in children with spe-
cific language impairment, was found to be effective in addressing expressive-
grammar difficulties in children (Washington, Warr-Leeper, & Thomas-Stonell,
2011).
Furthermore, in Saudi Arabia, an online course was used in the teaching of
English grammar to EFL freshman students from home. Pretest mean scores
showed significant differences between the experimental and control groups in
their grammatical knowledge. Following online instruction with Nicenet (an
Online Course Management System), comparisons of the posttest mean scores
showed significant differences in students’ achievement as a result of using the
online course in teaching and learning grammar. The online course helped moti-
vate the students and enhance their learning and mastery of English grammar
(Al-Jarf, 2005).
At Brigham Young University’s English Language Center, a web-based oral
grammar assessment tool that enabled teachers to assess students’ mastery of
the grammatical structures covered in grammar classes was created. The project
consisted of an online database of speaking tasks designed to target specific gram-
matical structures. Students and teachers reported that the project was beneficial
Online grammar tasks 115
in providing practice and self-assessment opportunities. Most students like using
the program and considered it helpful (Torrie, 2007).
Similarly, a multimedia instructional grammar program was used by Adult ESL
learners at a Midwest community college to facilitate the transition of declara-
tive knowledge of the English passive voice to procedural knowledge. Grammar
instruction was introduced in the context of American history and geography.
Students with low prior knowledge of passive voice grammar concepts, interme-
diate level of general vocabulary, and adequate basic knowledge of content (basic
geography and history) benefited most from the program (Koehler, Thomp-
son, & Phye, 2011).
Finally, students learning Japanese at a US university produced a Japanese gram-
mar quiz on the World Wide Web in which they employed a Common Gateway
Interface (CGI) script to produce a simple, well-designed website consisting of
multiple-choice questions and CGI-generated answers with concise explanations.
The process of web-page production was highly motivating for the students and
served as an effective review of L2 grammar rules in a constructive mode. With
appropriate content adjustment, the same process can be easily replicated in L2
courses for learners of all proficiency levels (Fukushima, 2006).
Need for the study

At the College of Languages and Translation (COLT), King Saudi University
(KSU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the author conducted an exploratory study in
which a needs assessment questionnaire-survey, with open-ended questions, was
administered to a sample of EFL students in the first four levels of the English-
Arabic translation program, and another questionnaire-survey was administered
to a sample of EFL instructors at COLT who have taught grammar and writing
to students in the first four levels. Results of the needs assessment question-
naires showed that Saudi EFL students had several difficulties in learning and
applying English grammar rules. Students had many weaknesses in using verb
tenses, articles, prepositions, complex sentences, word order, singular and plural
noun forms, subject-verb agreement, indirect speech, question formation. They
could not produce grammatically correct sentences in free writing. The students
had negative attitudes towards learning English grammar and felt that English
grammar was difficult to master, and it was difficult to remember so many rules
and specific details. They indicated that they did not know how to study English
grammar. When they did an exercise, they did not know whether their answers
were correct or incorrect. When they wrote a paragraph or essay, they did not
know whether their sentences were grammatically correct or not.
In addition, both students and instructors indicated that time allocated to the
teaching of grammar was insufficient for covering all of the grammatical struc-
tures that the students needed for translation. Instructors were unable to cover
all of the grammatical structures. Allocated time was insufficient for practice in
class and for following up with the students in and out of class, and checking
116 Reima Al-Jarf
their homework. The Interactions and Mosaic grammar textbooks assigned by
the department did not have sufficient exercises for practice. The students needed
extra practice, help, guidance, and individualized feedback.
Aims of the chapter

Based on the findings of prior studies reported earlier and results of the stu-
dent and teacher questionnaire-surveys, this chapter proposes the integration of
Internet grammar websites with different types of online tasks in EFL grammar
instruction as a supplement to in-class grammar instruction. Specifically, the study
gives examples of grammar websites that target specific grammatical structures
and show the types of online grammar tasks that students can perform on their
own out of class and the instructional stages that can be followed. It also gives
guidelines for selecting online grammar websites and performing online tasks.
Use of supplementary online grammar tasks provides additional opportunities
for practicing and mastering English grammar by translation students at COLT.
Helping students at COLT master English grammar is important for their suc-
cess in the English language courses (listening, speaking, reading, and writing)
that they take in the first four semesters of the translation program and in the
subsequent specialized content courses (semantics, stylistics, text linguistics, and
linguistics) that they take in semesters 5–10 of the program. It is also important
for comprehending oral and written discourse in the translation and interpreting
courses, the translation project, and the production of target texts.
Context
The translation program at COLT, KSU, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is 10 semesters
or 5 years long. In the first four semesters, the students take English language
courses: four listening, four speaking, four reading, four writing, two vocabulary
building, and three grammar courses. Only two hours per week are allocated to
each grammar course. Students in levels I, II, and III study the following text-
books that are assigned by the department:
• Grammar I textbook: Kirn, E., & Jack, D. (2007). Interactions I: Gram-

mar. Silver Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
• Grammar II textbook: Werner, P. K., Nelson, J. P., Hyzer, K., & Church,
M. M. (2008). Interactions II: Grammar. Silver Ed. New York: McGraw-
Hill Higher Education.
• Grammar III textbook: Werner, P. K., & Nelson, J. P. (2007). Mosaic 2:
Grammar, Silver Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
In semester I (Grammar I), the students cover the following grammatical struc-
tures: parts of speech, prepositions, prepositional phrases, transitive and intransitive
verbs, linking verbs, regular and irregular verbs, adverb placement, information, tag,
negative and yes-no questions, negatives, regular and irregular plurals, use of definite
and indefinite articles, pronouns, subject-verb agreement, nine tenses, modals, pronun-
ciation of -ed, -s, and -es at the end of verbs and nouns, spelling of -ing, -ed, -es.
In semester II (Grammar II), the students cover the following grammatical
structures: the past perfect, types of verbs (transitive, intransitive, linking), the pas-
sive voice (with simple present, modal auxiliaries), the direct and reported speech,
non-finite verbs, gerunds and infinitives, types of phrases, dangling and misplaced
modifiers, and first and second conditionals.
In semester III (Grammar III), the students cover the following structures:
clause with that: reported speech; clauses with embedded questions; statements and
requests of urgency; clauses as subjects of sentences; reduction of noun clauses to
infinitive phrases; adjective clauses: restrictive versus nonrestrictive clauses; adjec-
tive clauses: replacement of subjects and objects; other adjective clause construc-
tions; reduction of adjective clauses to phrases; clauses and related structures of
time: future, present, past, and unspecified time; and clauses and related structures
of result.
Materials and tasks
Selecting online grammar websites and tasks

The course instructor can search for and make a list of useful English gram-
mar websites related to the grammatical structures to be covered in the course.
He/she may assign weekly grammar websites to be checked by the students.
Grammar websites selected should focus on a single grammatical structure such
as information questions, tag questions, negative questions, a single verb tense, a
modal, complex sentences (noun, adjective, or adverb clauses), imperatives, exclama-
tory sentences, correlative conjunctions, phrasal verbs, prefixes and suffixes or singu-
lar and plural forms, and so on. Websites selected should provide definitions,
explanations, examples, and supplementary exercises for extra practice and pro-
vide students with instant feedback. When posting a website, a brief descrip-
tion of the website should be given, and the website should be checked to see
if it is appropriate for the grammatical structure under study, if it matches the
proficiency level of the students, and if it contains enough material and items.
Several websites that target a particular grammatical structure should be posted
to accommodate different proficiency levels, different learning styles, and several
tasks (definition and explanation, practice, assessment, and remediation). Clear,
specific, and detailed instructions on how a particular task should be performed
should be given.
The students may search for grammar websites on their own by enclosing the
topic of interest such as “English tag questions”, “English complex sentences”, or
“English phrasal verbs” in quotation marks in the Google search box and by con-
necting search terms with Boolean operators such as: “and, or, not”.
The instructor can use an online course, an online discussion forum, a blog,
or a wiki to post the grammar websites, post the tasks, provide practice, hold the
discussion, and provide interaction and feedback.
118 Reima Al-Jarf
Based on a review of the literature on the effective practices in L2 grammar
teaching and learning, the following guidelines for selecting and using online
grammar websites and tasks can be followed:
Teach grammar explicitly: Thu (2009) reported that ESL teachers at an

English language school in San Diego, California, generally believe that
EFL grammar is best taught explicitly, not implicitly. Explicit grammar
instruction leads to gains in grammatical knowledge and writing profi-
ciency in first-year students of French at a UK university. It was also found
to be a powerful approach in bringing about improvement in the stu-
dents’ grammatical knowledge and production tasks (Macaro & Master-
man, 2006).
To teach grammar explicitly, Paesani (2005) suggested using literary texts
as comprehensible, meaning-bearing input. Literary texts serve as a basis of
the inductive presentation of new grammatical forms and as a springboard
for communicative practice of these forms after explicit instruction. They
provide learners with meaning-bearing input to assist their acquisition of
grammatical forms, to raise their consciousness about the target language,
to encourage meaningful communication among learners, and to develop
skills and strategies in the reading of literary texts.
Teach grammar inductively or deductively: Results of studies by Haight,
Herron, and Cole (2007) and Vogel, Herron, Cole, and York (2011)
supported using a guided inductive instructional approach to teaching
grammar in the beginning-level foreign language classroom. Results also
indicated that students who preferred explanations of the rules performed
better with a guided inductive approach. However, use of the deductive or
inductive approach depends on the level of language structure complexity.
AbuSeileek (2009) found that more complicated grammatical structures,
such as complex and compound complex sentences, need to be taught
deductively and that computer-based learning was functional for more
complex and elaborate structures.
Contextualize grammar instruction: Meyer, Youga, and Flint-Ferguson (1990)
argued that grammar instruction can be more effective if put in a realistic
context. Patterson and Pipkin (2001) recommended the listing of traditional
grammar websites, including online handbooks and style guides, but warned
that the isolated teaching of grammar has little impact on student writing.
They recommended that websites show teachers how to contextualize gram-
mar instruction. In another study by Baturay, Daloglu, and Yildirim (2010),
elementary-level English language learners enjoyed using WEBGRAM, a sys-
tem designed to provide supplementary web-based grammar revision mate-
rial and audiovisual aids to enrich the contextual presentation of grammar
and allow them to revise target grammatical structures using interactive exer-
cises such as gap-filling, combo-box, and drag-and-drop exercises.
Teach grammar communicatively: Benander and Roach (1995) indicated
that grammar must be taught as a way to convey meaning, not as an isolated
skill. Teaching grammar communicatively helped students show improve-
ment in production and recognition skills. Students should be provided
with opportunities to actively use their grammar skills in listening, speak-
ing, reading, and writing activities rather than passively responding to an
unfamiliar text or isolated sentences.
Integrate grammar instruction with reading and writing activities: Had-
dox (1998) and Weaver (1996) recommended the integration of grammar
and writing with all levels and found that the teaching of grammar in the
context of writing to be an effective and successful strategy.
Hegelheimer, Volker, and Fisher (2006) addressed the need for explicit gram-
mar instruction as part of preparing students to write by using a collection
of learner texts and transforming that collection into an online grammar
resource for intermediate non-native speakers of English. The use of learner
texts, online interactivity, and advanced technology (e.g., XML) facilitated the
implementation of iWRITE, an approach to embodying aspects of L2 acqui-
sition theory while taking advantage of the web’s potential for interactivity.
Freshman students at a Midwestern university participated in a study that
investigated the impact of an Internet-based program, designed to improve
basic writing skills, on grammar and punctuation scores on an English
Competency Test. Results indicated that the group that used the program
in conjunction with correcting rough drafts of assigned papers had higher
scores than the groups that did not use the program or used the program
on its own. The students reported that the program had improved their
skills (Mills, 2010).
Smoot (2001) taught “little grammar” – i.e., sentence structure, parts of
speech, and usage – and “big grammar”, such as essay structure, points of
an argument, and rhetorical devices, to his seventh grade students through
reading meaningful texts drawn from their history class.
Increase students’ grammatical awareness and promote noticing: Hegel-
heimer (2006) found that ESL learners need explicit help to improve
the grammatical accuracy of their writing by increasing their grammatical
awareness and ability to correct grammatical errors in their own writing.
Similarly, Fotos (1993) found task performance, specifically teacher-fronted
grammar lessons and interactive grammar problem-solving tasks, to be
effective as formal instruction in promoting grammar consciousness raising.
Focus on metalanguage: Thu (2009) reported that ESL teachers at an English
language school in San Diego recommended that metalanguage be used
with learners of all proficiency levels. Similarly, Fortune (2005) found that
advanced learners use metalanguage much more often than their interme-
diate counterparts, and he concluded that metalanguage can play a facilita-
tive role in focusing attention and deciding which form to use. Likewise, a
positive relationship was also found between metalinguistic knowledge and
facility with metalanguage as a result of rule verbalizations by EFL young
adult Chinese learners exposed to large doses of explicit grammar instruc-
tion (Hu, 2011).
120 Reima Al-Jarf
Use a task-based learning framework: Huang (2010) recommended the use
of Willis’ task-based learning framework in grammar instruction for adults.
Accommodate different learning styles: Beaudoin (2004) stressed the need
for structure and adaptability to different learning styles (such as visual,
auditory, and kinesthetic) in L2 grammar instruction.
Integrate exchanges between learners: Beaudoin (1998) gave some factors
that should be taken into consideration in creating a website for teaching
French grammar at the University of Alberta, Canada. Those included the
integration of exchanges between learners and exchanges between learners
and the virtual Francophone community and English-speaking community
in the case of English.
Provide guidance: Toth (2008) compared results for task-based L2 Span-
ish grammar instruction conducted as whole-class, teacher-led versus small
group, learner led. Results on grammaticality judgments and guided pro-
duction tasks indicated a stronger performance for the teacher-led group
on both tasks. To facilitate L2 learning, teachers should direct students’
attention to target structures and provide procedural assistance for process-
ing output.
Provide answers with concise explanations: Fukushima (2006) conducted an
experiment in which students learning Japanese at a US university pro-
duced a Japanese grammar quiz on the World Wide Web. The subjects
employed a CGI script to produce a simple, well-designed website consist-
ing of multiple-choice questions and CGI-generated answers with concise
explanations. The process of web-page production was highly motivating
for the students and served as an effective review of L2 grammar rules in a
constructive mode.
Provide ongoing training and technical support: Quesada (2000) asserted
that students need ongoing training and technical support in using web-
based materials.
Types of online grammar tasks

The grammar websites to be selected and used as a basis for performing online
tasks should include the following:
Online self-assessment: Websites should provide pre- and post-instruction

self-assessment, include self-grading and interactive grammar quizzes,
accommodate the different proficiency levels, and help the students diag-
nose their weaknesses, as well as enable them to assess their mastery of a
specific structure. The following are examples:
• Test Your English Level: www.world-english.org/test.htm
• Interactive Grammar Quizzes by level: http://englishmedialab.com/
beginnerquizzes.html
• Grammar Quizzes by level: http://a4esl.org/
• English Assessment Test: http://englishenglish.com/englishtest.htm
• More Assessment Tests: www.world-english.org/english_assessment_
tests.htm
• Self-grading grammar quizzes (Interactive Grammar Quizzes):
www.esltower.com/grammarquizzes.html
http://englishmedialab.com/beginnervideos.html
• Mixed Grammar Gap-Fill Quiz: www.world-english.org/archery.htm
• Passive Test: www.world-english.org/passive.htm
• Parts of Speech: www.eslus.com/LESSONS/GRAMMAR/POS/pos.htm
• Prepositions quiz: http://a4esl.org/q/j/ck/mc-prepositions.html
• Definite & Indefinite Articles (Quiz): www.learn4good.com/languages/
evrd_grammar/article_ex.htm
Websites that explain grammar rules or provide definitions
• www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/partsp.html
Single-structure grammar exercises and practice
• English Articles (A, An, The): www.world-english.org/articles.htm
• Articles: www.usingenglish.com/glossary/definite-article.html
• Articles (explanation & exercise): www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar_
list/artikel.htm
• Prepositions and Articles: www.world-english.org/degrees_online.htm
• Prepositions (On, It, By, etc.): www.world-english.org/prepositions.
htm
• Prepositional Phrases: www.world-english.org/prepositionalphrases.htm
• Preposition + Noun: www.world-english.org/prepositions3.htm
• Preposition + Adjective: www.world-english.org/adjective-preposition.
htm
• Preposition + Gerund: www.world-english.org/gerundprep.htm
• Comparatives/Superlatives: www.world-english.org/comparatives.htm
• Conditionals: www.world-english.org/conditionals.htm
• Quantifiers: www.world-english.org/quantifiers.htm
• Adjective Placement: www.world-english.org/adjectiveplacement.htm
• Modal Verbs: www.world-english.org/modals.htm
• Conjunctions: www.world-english.org/conjunctions.htm
• Question Tags: www.world-english.org/questiontags.htm
• Questions (comprehensive): http://english-zone.com/index.php?ID=1
• Questions English zone/Grammar: http://english-zone.com/index.
php?ID=30
• Gerund Or Infinitive: www.world-english.org/gerunds.htm
• Reported Speech: www.world-english.org/reportedspeech.htm
• Pronouns: www.world-english.org/pronouns.htm
• Nouns From Verbs: www.world-english.org/nounsfromverbs.htm
122 Reima Al-Jarf
• For Or Since: www.world-english.org/fororsince.htm
• The Passive Voice: www.ef.com/english-resources/english-grammar/
punctuation/
• Future Forms In English: www.world-english.org/future_english.htm
• Simple Present Or Present Continuous: www.world-english.org/sim
plepresentpresentcontinuous.htm
• English Verb Tense Tutorial: www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbten
seintro.html
www.dailygrammar.com/mobile/archive.html
• Rewriting Sentences: www.world-english.org/sentencerewriting.htm
A daily grammar lesson
• www.englishforeveryone.org/Topics/Sentence-Correction.htm
• www.worldenglishclub.com/grammar/daily-grammar-lessons/
pronouns-5
Error correction tasks
• Correcting Sentences: www.world-english.org/correctingsentences.
htm
• Correct The Mistake: www.world-english.org/correct_mistakes.htm
• Correct Word Order: www.world-english.org/correct_word_order.htm
• englishmedialab.com/grammar.html
• www.grammarly.com/newhp/index-check- landing.php?q=grammar&
gclid=CP3rv56ltqsCFagntAod-mlbcQ
Production tasks: The students can perform teacher-generated tasks such as
the following:
• Read the following story and then write 10 negative questions.
• Read the following paragraph and then write information questions begin-
ning with ‘when, what, where, who, whom, why, how, how far, how much,
how old’ and so on.
• Write a few sentences about what you have accomplished so far since the
beginning of the semester. Use the present perfect tense as much as possible.
• What are you going to do during Hajj break? Use the future tense as much
as possible.
• What are you going to do during your next summer holiday? Use the future
tense as much as possible.
• What are you currently doing during your Ramadan break? List some
activities that you are currently doing over the break. Use the present pro-
gressive as much as possible.
• Write a story or summarize a movie using the historical present.
The tasks can also be based on Internet websites as in
• www.training2you.com/information/443.php
Remedial tasks
• Diagnostic Grammar Test: www.world-english.org/diagnostic_gram
mar.htm
• Grammar Basics: www.englishchick.com/grammar/
• Common Grammar and Usage Mistakes: www.englishchick.com/
grammar/
Awareness-raising tasks: The students double-check their own essays and
paragraphs or those written by their classmates by reviewing grammatical
structures they have studied one by one. For example, they go through
their own essay, underline verbs and then make sure each verb agrees with
its subject. Then they go through all of the verbs, checking the tense and
making sure each is conjugated correctly. They underline all of the nouns
and double-check the plural forms and so on.
Metalinguistic awareness tasks: Students are provided with two or three para-
graphs (long stretch of discourse rather than single sentences), each using
a particular verb tense. The students underline the tense markers in each or
highlight the subject in each. They examine the context in which each tense
is used and the tense markers associated with each. They note subject-verb
agreement and give explanations of when each tense is used – i.e., they ver-
balize the rule and context in which each tense is used. They can be asked
to underline noun, adjective, and/or adverbial clauses, reduced clauses,
defining and/or non-defining clauses, or passive structures in a text and
give explanations and verbalize rules.
They can also be given a paragraph (a long stretch of discourse rather than
single sentences) with blanks and asked to fill the gaps with articles and
prepositions, correct the verb tense, and so on. They can be asked to verify
and justify when they have to use the definite article and cases in which they
do not, why a particular tense is used in a particular case and another one is
used in another, or for using certain punctuation marks and so on.
Leveling-up tasks: “Leveling-up” refers to practicing English grammatical
structures in an online language learning community. This can be done on
websites such as SharedTalk.com, which is a community of people from
all over the world dedicated to language exchange and language learning.
Students may practice a grammatical structure orally through voice chat
and may practice it in writing through text chat. According to SharedTalk.
com, groups of two or more people exchange their knowledge of particu-
lar grammatical structure and help each other to practice it. The students
practice with a native speaker, learn slang and informal expressions, ask
their partners for explanations about a grammatical structure, and receive
encouragement and support. Other websites for language exchange are
Paltalk, Polyglot club.com, Skype, and Facebook.
Differentiation tasks: According to Tomlinson (2001), “differentiation”
refers to providing students with different opportunities for acquiring
124 Reima Al-Jarf
content, processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas. It also involves
developing teaching materials and assessment procedures to help all stu-
dents learn effectively, regardless of differences in proficiency level. The
teacher creates an environment that is structured, positive, and supportive
for each student. For example, to practice using the ‘future or past tense’,
each student can write a paragraph about his/her future aspirations or a
past event of interest to him/her and with which he/she is familiar. When
grading the students’ paragraphs, the instructor can focus on strong points,
such as correct verb forms, and areas of improvement in each student and
commend those. Then the instructor can point out one or two weaknesses,
such as faulty irregular verb conjugations or faulty verb forms following
will, for each student to work on. The instructor starts with the simplest
to the more complex ones, depending on the student’s competency level.
General grammar reference websites

• Irregular verbs: www.englishpage.com/irregularverbs/irregularverbs.
html
• Regular verbs: www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/regular-verbs-list.htm
• Irregular noun list: english-zone.com/spelling/plurals.html
• Prefixes and suffixes: www.advanced-english-grammar.com/prefixes-
suffixes.html
• Idioms: www.goenglish.com/Idioms.asp www.learn-english-today.com/
idioms/idiom-categories/alpha-list_A.html
• Phrasal verbs: www.learn-english-today.com/phrasal-verbs/phrasal-
verb-list.htm
• Acronyms and abbreviations: www.acronymfinder.com/
• Collective noun list: www.ojohaven.com/collectives/
Self-improvement
• www.positivearticles.com/Category/Self-Help/54
• www.selfgrowth.com/successskills_articles.html
Overcoming test anxiety
• www.studygs.net/tstprp8.htm
• kidshealth.org/teen/school_jobs/school/test_anxiety.html
Examples of self-improvement and motivational topics written and posted by the
students are “The Positive Side of Life”, “14 Ways to Be Happy”, “Alphabet of
Happiness”, “Forgive and Forget”, “How I Studies Grade 12”, “How to Study”,
“Inspirations”, “Success”, “The Don’t Sweat Affirmations”, “The Life of Helen
Keller”, “The Old Man and His Son”, “These Things Are Great Things to Be
Learned”, “Lessons of Life”, “Life”, “Personal Skills”.
Study skills
• www.studygs.net/
Instructional stages
Orientation
Instruction with online tasks can proceed in the following steps:
• Introduce the students to the online course, blog, or online discus-

sion forum to be used for posting grammar websites and online gram-
mar tasks.
• Give the students the URL and ask them to register and enroll themselves.
• Post a sample website or task and show the students what they are
supposed to do and how and where to respond.
• Tell the students what is expected of them.
• Show the students how they can search Google for grammar websites
targeting specific structures by selecting specific search terms, enclos-
ing search terms in quotation marks, and using Boolean operators.
Pre-task phase
The teacher checks the websites, exercises, and quizzes to make sure that
they match the grammatical structure under study, students’ proficiency lev-
els, different learning styles, and aim for which the students are using them –
i.e., assessment, diagnosis, remediation, or practice. In the pre-task phase,
the instructor sets goals for a particular task and introduces the website and
the grammatical structure it targets, posts written instructions on how to
perform the task, and tells the students what they need to do and focus on.
The teacher presents what is expected of the students in the task phase. She
can give pre-questions.
Task phase
The students perform the tasks on their own at home either before or after
taking a class lecture. Online grammar tasks can be performed individually
(each student answers on his/her own), in pairs (two students work on a
task together), or in small groups (three or more students work on a single
task together and produce one answer). They can be performed interac-
tively (students react, respond, or comment on other students’ answers) or
collaboratively (each student performs part of the task or project and then
parts are put together to make the whole project). They can be performed
synchronously (all the students go online at the same time and work on the
tasks at the same time), asynchronously (the students go online at different
times – i.e. the students check the websites and perform the tasks, any time,
at their own convenience). To help the students make the most of online
tasks, they should do interactive exercises in which they take an active role.
While doing the task, the students should be required to engage in, respond
to, and actively participate in the task.
126 Reima Al-Jarf
Post-task phase
The students can discuss answers to questions. The teacher can clarify or
help with the problematic structures and items. The students may keep a log
of the tasks and structures they have finished. They can also perform post-
instruction assessment tasks and those who need extra help can do remedial
tasks.
Role of the instructor

The instructor serves as a facilitator, observer, and counselor. The instructor’s
guidance is crucial in facilitating the use of online tasks to improve students’
grammar knowledge. The instructor creates a positive and supportive online
learning environment that is secure for making mistakes. She praises good per-
formance and encourages the inadequate one. She encourages the students to
respond to and comment on each other’s performance. She encourages peer cor-
rection of errors. She responds to students’ needs, answers queries, and provides
technical support. To motivate students to do the online tasks, the instructor can
give credit or include online website content on tests.
Reflections
The online grammar tasks described in the present chapter were used repeatedly
with six groups of EFL freshman students at COLT over six semesters. Compari-
sons of the pre- and posttest scores for each group showed significant differences
in student mastery of English grammar between students who received in-class
instruction that depended on the textbook only (control group) and those who
received a combination of in-class instruction and a variety of online grammar
tasks (experimental group) in favor of the experimental group. This means that
students who performed additional online grammar tasks such as self-assessment
of their mastery of grammar, using websites that provide definitions and explain
grammar rules, checking general grammar reference websites, practicing single-
structure grammar exercises, taking the daily grammar lesson, and performing
error correction, production of certain grammatical structure, awareness raising,
metalinguistic skill acquisition, leveling-up, differentiation, self-improvement,
and study skills tasks as a supplement to in-class grammar instruction made higher
gains than students who were exposed to in-class instruction that depended on
the grammar textbook only.
A qualitative analysis of the students’ responses to the grammar posttest showed
the following: fewer errors in using and producing grammatical structures with
which they had difficulty before performing the online tasks such as tenses and
verb conjugation; singular and plural forms; use of prepositions; complex sen-
tences; question formation; use of the definite article; adding different suffixes
to form nouns, adjectives, and verbs; and others. They could also construct sen-
tences containing those structures correctly.
Effectiveness of the online grammar tasks with the experimental group is sup-
ported by the results of studies that used other types of technologies used by
the researchers cited earlier. As in the Al-Jarf (2005), Fukushima (2006), Hall
(1998), Hegelheimer (2006), Henderson (2002), Koehler, Thompson, and
Phye’s (2011), Quesada (2000), Tyrwhitt-Drake (1999), and Washington et al.
(2011) studies, the online grammar tasks proposed herein helped students in the
experimental group overcome grammar deficits by teaching and learning basic
grammar. They addressed expressive-grammar difficulties and enhanced the stu-
dents’ learning and mastery of English grammar. The students benefited from
the web-based materials, which served as an effective review of English gram-
mar rules with appropriate content adjustment to the different proficiency levels.
They also facilitated the transition of declarative to procedural knowledge of the
English grammatical structures, increased their grammatical awareness and pro-
vided self-assessment opportunities, and developed their ability to correct their
own errors.
Furthermore, analysis of students’ responses to a questionnaire-survey revealed
positive attitudes towards the online grammar tasks described earlier. Use of sup-
plementary online grammar tasks was reported to have several advantages: the
students could access the online grammar websites any time and perform the
online grammar tasks at their own convenience. They could learn independently
and at their own pace. They were in charge of their own learning. The mate-
rial posted served as a reference. They could refer to it as many times as they
wished and whenever they needed to. It could be re-used even after the end
of the course. They could follow up on their own progress by using the online
self-assessment tests as formative assessment tools and by keeping a log of their
own progress. They acquired study and self-improvement skills that helped them
overcome other grammar learning issues such as test anxiety.
The students added that the online grammar tasks met their needs by provid-
ing a variety of tasks and exercises that catered to the differences in ability and
knowledge among the students by targeting their weaknesses in English gram-
matical structures, such as tenses and complex sentences; by filling up the gaps
in their knowledge of prior grammatical structures that they studied in earlier
stages; and by clarifying the structures that they have not mastered, or which
they find confusing, such as English tenses, irregular singular and plural forms,
complex sentences, negative structures, question formation, reported speech,
and others.
Students who struggle with English grammar indicated that the online gram-
mar tasks provided them with extra opportunities for practice with tasks and
exercises they could manage. The online grammar tasks, they reported, helped
them acquire cognitive and metacognitive skills and support skills.
Some of the responses that the students gave to the questionnaire are as follows:
Hanoof reported, “It is a new way of learning which I find interesting and
motivating, unlike the textbook and classroom. I could do far more exercises
online than in the textbook without feeling that it is a chore”.
128 Reima Al-Jarf
Maha commented, “The exercises in the book were not enough for me. So the
online grammar tasks provided me with extra practice”.
Sara said, “I did extra exercises that helped me overcome my weaknesses in distin-
guishing between present perfect and present progressive and present perfect
progressive”.
Alia wrote, “I could take the online grammar tests every two weeks to find out how
much I have improved”.
Fatama indicated, “The self-study guides helped me learn how to study, review,
remember and apply English grammar rules, difficult and singular and plu-
ral forms and irregular verb conjugations which were confusing to me before”.
Samia added, “I found exercises that match my level and explanations that
I could understand, unlike the textbook that all students had to use whether
they understand it or not”.
Conclusion
Use of technology in grammar instruction is becoming more and more popular.
To help EFL college students master English grammatical structures, the author
recommends use of online grammar tasks that the students can perform on their
own out of class as a supplement to in-class grammar instruction, based on gram-
mar websites that focus on single and specific grammatical structures under study
in class. The students can check those websites and perform relevant tasks before
or after the class lecture.
The author also recommends that a grammar website repository (eLibrary) be
created by EFL/ESL grammar instructors and students in which grammar web-
sites are classified and stored according to the specific grammatical structures they
target. The grammar repository should have a comprehensive alphabetical index
that facilitates the searching process and allows grammar instructors and stu-
dents’ quick and easy access to the grammar repository via the Internet. Students
and instructors should be able to store, search, and retrieve grammar websites
to be used as supplementary material. The online grammar repository should be
interactive. Students should be able to post questions and receive answers and
feedback to their queries. Grammar websites used should be constantly updated
and reviewed, with new websites added and malfunctioning websites or those
with broken links removed. These resources are believed to enhance teaching and
learning of EFL grammar in language and translation schools.
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9 Teaching pronunciation to
adult learners of English
Karen Steffen Chung
This chapter is to a great extent based on the author’s decades of experience

teaching at the university level in Taiwan; however, most suggestions have wide
application and can be easily tailored to individual situations and needs elsewhere.
For example, first language (L1) influenced substitutions for certain vowels and
consonants of English will differ according to the home country or region, but
the principle of phoneme substitution remains the same. Teachers may find that
this chapter challenges some of their personal notions about the role of pronun-
ciation in language learning, or that it goes against the current of some recent
schools of thought in pronunciation teaching. We can only respond that it is per-
haps time to let some new voices be heard and to focus more on the exigencies
of survival and success in a competitive world outside of sheltered and idealistic
academia.
Teaching adult learners

Unlike children, adult students will in almost all cases have received previous
instruction in English. This training will not only have helped shape the current
state of their English but also will often determine how they go about learning a
language. Rather than just ‘teaching pronunciation,’ you will benefit your stu-
dents most by showing them a new way to learn English. This will be the hardest
part of what you do, especially since it involves identifying and offering replace-
ments for deeply ingrained habits, but it also has the potential for turning your
students’ English learning entirely around.
Children have certain advantages in learning their L1 – for example, virtually
unlimited exposure to the target language as spoken (in most cases) by compe-
tent native speakers. They have the chance and are motivated to use what they
learn immediately and usually get instant feedback. They benefit from lower
expectations and a much higher tolerance for their errors on the part of their
listeners. They have boundless curiosity and energy. Since the filters of a child’s
brain are at this point not yet fully formed, they will let just about anything in.
Adults, on the other hand, often have many preconceived notions about how
language should work and how it sounds; less exposure to the speech of native
132 Karen Steffen Chung
speakers; a tendency to experience fear; embarrassment, or even shame over mak-
ing mistakes; and often a belief that they are just ‘not good’ at learning languages.
The ideal would be for the adult student to be exposed to as much native-
like spoken input as possible, with persistent repetitions, ample opportunity for
speaking practice, and patience on the part of their listeners. This is often not
what happens, due to many factors. However, in a healthy human, the brain
maintains its plasticity one’s entire life (Doidge, 2007). In addition, adults bring
many strengths to the table such as sharper analytical skills, greater knowledge
and experience of the world, and high proficiency in at least one language already.
The question becomes not whether adults can learn languages well, but how to
harness the brain’s robust plasticity, together with its other more developed skills,
for the most efficient and effective results.
Thinking, fast and slow

The following is by far the most important point as regards our understanding of
how we learn languages well and how we can do a better job of teaching them.
In his bestselling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, author Daniel Kahneman
describes the two main modes of thinking used by the human brain. The first,
called System One by Kahneman, is our unconscious brain, which is responsible
for automated responses and habitual behavior. Its reactions are almost instantane-
ous. System Two is what we use for linear, analytic, conscious thinking, and problem
solving. It works much more slowly than System One (Kahneman, 2011).
Students in East Asia are typically trained to rely heavily on System Two in their
English learning, when what is required for successful oral communication is
management of the task by their intuitive, habit-executing System One. Lightning-
fast mental processing is required in order to listen to and decode linguistic input
and then come up with a reasonable response before the rhythm of the exchange
breaks down and the other party becomes impatient – and System Two is simply
too slow to handle this. So it is absolutely necessary that language learning be
automated to the point where System One can do most of the legwork. This
can be achieved by loading System One with commonly used stock phrases and
related vocabulary items to which System Two will make quick, minor alterations
to meet the needs of each specific situation when the learner is engaged in real-
life conversation.
Lack of understanding of these two complementary modes of brain function
and their respective roles in language learning lies at the heart of why English
education in much of East Asia so often comes up wanting. Under current prac-
tices, it is common for students to be taught English mostly from a paper text-
book. After a minimum of audio input from the teacher and recordings, students
learn the spellings and meanings of individual vocabulary items, which they must
memorize in order to pass tests. They mostly rely on murky impressions when
deciding how to pronounce the words, and in many cases, the teacher’s pronun-
ciation is not very accurate, measured by any standard. They also learn rules of
grammar, often in excruciating detail. To compose a sentence, they will attempt
Teaching pronunciation to adult learners 133
to analytically put together the two data sets they have on hand – i.e., isolated
vocabulary words + mechanical rules of grammar. Aside from a number of shorter
model sentences they may happen to get right – such as “Sorry!” and “How are
you?” – these self-composed sentences tend to end up quite garbled or awkward.
Many learners take the “think directly in English” exhortation often given them
very seriously before they have enough automated audio material in their head to
think directly with. They will produce sentences such as *“Where are you come
from?” for “Where are you from?” or *“I am very like traveling” for “I really like
traveling.” Here is a longer example from a recorded corpus: “I meet some stu-
dents in the Beijing University or other college. I interact of them is very happy,
but I think they are more interesting in politic issue than our student in Taiwan.”
Intended meaning: “I met some students from Beijing University and other col-
leges. Our interactions were very enjoyable, but I think they were more interested
in political issues than most Taiwan students are.” The English they produce in
this way sounds like panicked stabs in the dark with whatever raw data they can
grab onto as quickly as possible. In the heat of a conversational exchange, their
slow System Two, which they are relying on heavily, has no time for further gram-
matical processing. What they end up with can only be called an ad hoc variety
of Pidgin English. It is certainly not because of an inherent lack of aptitude for
language learning; there is abundant anecdotal evidence of Japanese, for example,
who have learned to a high level of proficiency any number of languages – other
than English.
Not just pronunciation

At this point, it may seem that we have digressed from our topic and are talking
about grammar and overall conversational ability rather than just pronunciation.
But, in fact, problems with both of these core issues, along with poor listening
skills, can be traced back to the same cause – insufficient audio input and practice.
These problems can also be fixed by the same solution: intensive listening and
repetition practice.
A little ‘listen and repeat’ now and then is not sufficient to create the kind of
phonetic awareness and stored mental audio files needed for learners to really
hear what is being modeled and to self-correct when they get it wrong. In the
limited listen and repeat that is done, students often ‘repeat’ mechanically even
before the model has finished playing – clear evidence that they are simply reading
and hardly listening at all beyond cues to ‘start’ and ‘stop.’ Once stuck in habits
such as these, students’ ears will have effectively shut down.
If you give such a student (Taiwanese, in this case) a correct spoken model such
as “the other one” (ði ‘ʌðɚ wʌn), he or she will typically register and retain it as
(li ˈʌlə ˈwʌn), and if asked to listen and repeat, that is likely what he or she will
say. The original pronunciation is initially received correctly – this is evidenced by
the student’s ability to distinguish a native from a non-native speaker of English.
However, in the process of matching incoming audio input with mentally stored
forms, the input is re-processed into the student’s own version of the words, and
that is how it stays, in fossilized L2 form. The reason for this is the default spoken
model that the student has more or less unconsciously adopted and identifies with.
It is based not on a native-speaker model but on how the student is used to hear-
ing his or her compatriots speak English and how the student has come to believe
English should sound when he or she speaks it.
Students may assert that they are (x nationality), and so of course they speak
with an (x L1) accent. They may point out a person speaking English with a
French, German, or Danish accent is fairly easily accepted and accommodated
(though they may at the same time complain how difficult Indian English is to
understand). There does indeed seem to be a wide consensus that a ‘light’ accent
is OK; in fact, a ‘light’ accent is often attractive or may add authoritativeness to a
voice (van Hoek, n.d.). A casual look around the Internet will quickly reveal that
in the popular mind, the accents most commonly considered ‘attractive’ are first
various regional native English accents, with Standard Southern British English
(BE) usually at the top of the list. Others, such as Australian, Irish, and Scottish,
follow and then come a number of European non-native English accents, often
led by French or Italian (Dahlgreen, 2014; The Telegraph, 2009). There is con-
siderable disagreement from here on.
So a ‘light accent’ is one thing. However, pronunciation that is too different
relative to the expected standard – e.g., with off-target vowels, wrong or missing
consonants, misplaced stress, or odd intonation – is another. If you do a search on
‘Asian accents’ or ‘Chinese accents,’ you most often find these described in popu-
lar discussion forums as ‘not very attractive’ (Giant Bomb Forum, 2014). And if
the grammar of someone speaking with an East Asian accent is incorrect as well,
the two together deliver a double whammy that often discourages a listener from
wanting to initiate or continue communication when not absolutely necessary.
One online note to a woman who complained about negative reactions to her
Chinese accent delicately suggests, “Lastly but by all means not least ensure that
you use the correct form of the third person singular of the verb [emphasis added]
so that you don’t immediately identify yourself as a foreign speaker, e.g., he walks,
she walks, it walks [not walk without the s]” (Yahoo Answers, 2008).
Beyond being judged as less attractive, a foreign accent can affect assessments
of one’s overall abilities. People who speak with a heavy foreign accent may
be viewed as less intelligent, and their style of speaking as “comical,” “cute,”
“incompetent,” “not serious,” or “childish” Beebe (1988). Credibility is also
at stake. Experiments by researchers Shari Lev-Ari and Boaz Keysar found that
speakers with a heavy foreign accent are perceived as less credible (Levi-Ari & Key-
sar, 2010). This makes pronunciation actually a pretty serious matter.
Assessments of foreign accents can be a politically sensitive issue and will often
set off academic partisanship and debate, sometimes even international furor (The
Guardian, 2015). However, some, such as entrepreneur Paul Graham, have had
the candor to come out and say what they think on this point:
The empirical evidence about very strong accents is striking. And I am talk-
ing about failure to communicate here. I don’t mean strong accents in the
sense that it’s clear that someone comes from another country. I’m talking
about accents so strong that you have to interrupt the conversation to ask
what they just said.
(Tiku, 2013)
We will make some brief comments here on the popular notion of English for
International Communication, or English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), in which
‘intelligibility’ is emphasized over attainment of native-like pronunciation as
measured against one of the standard dialects of English such as General Ameri-
can (GA) or BE (Jenkins, 2002). This approach stresses that some features of
spoken English are more important to intelligibility than others and that these
should be given the highest priority in English teaching and learning. There is
really nothing here to disagree with so far. While it would certainly be better to try
and cover everything we can to give our students the best preparation possible,
we do need to set priorities when teaching time and other resources are limited.
Jenkins proposes that certain features can be left as “optional,” to be acquired
and refined at the learner’s own discretion; for example, L2-influenced substitu-
tions such as /s/ and /d/ would be allowed for the “th” sounds /θ/and /ð/
(Jenkins, 2002).
In addition, however, proponents of this approach suggest that it is not reason-
able for the entire burden of successful communication in a foreign language to
fall on the speaker; the listener should do what he or she can to facilitate the pro-
cess and make it easier on the speaker (Jenkins, 2002). While this is undeniably
an admirable ideal, we need to be aware that we have at this point strayed beyond
the bounds of what we are here to do.
Let us take a minute to discuss the notion of ‘intelligibility.’ Intelligibility is
not just about what the listener can with effort correctly decipher from what the
speaker is saying. It is about cognitive load on the listener. With every little differ-
ence in pronunciation and grammar that diverges from the standard the listener is
most accustomed to and expects, the listener must make up for the deficit through
his or her own mental processing, just like our brain needs to supply the missing
information when listening over a bad phone connection – think back on how
long it took you to give up on a mobile phone conversation in such a situation.
Depending on how degraded the signal is, the brain may be able to partially
salvage and reconstitute it to what it was supposed to be. The problem is that this
mental processing burns up a lot of brain energy on the part of the listener –
energy they could use to do other important tasks – and causes what is called
“listening fatigue” (NPR, 2009). Speakers who cause listening fatigue in others
have a big strike against them when it comes to competing for social and other
resources. Who wouldn’t rather just deal with someone who doesn’t run down
his or her battery of finite available energy for the day so quickly?
As teachers, we must always remember who our paying customers are, who we
have been hired to serve – namely, our students. It is our job to give our students
the best preparation we can to help them compete as successfully as possible in an
often harsh professional and social environment. If you wish to help the general
public overcome their tendency to shy away from people with speech that tires
them out, more power to you – just make sure you do it on your own time and not
on the time your students have paid for. The students are in your class to learn,
not to be indulged or falsely told they’re wonderful just as they are when they
aren’t there yet. You don’t see lowering of standards in this way in such subjects
as math, history, science, or music. Why are we so ready to acquiesce to flabby
standards for language? We are doing our students no favor if we wave them
through with weak skills, thinking that it is enough. When students finally get
accurate information on what points they should fix in their speech, a frequent
reaction is anger – not at the correction, but rather that no previous instructor
pointed these things out to them before so they could have fixed them much
sooner. Students who have seldom been corrected will be in for some rude awak-
enings when they begin a new semester in a university program in an English-
speaking country, when they try to socialize and joke around with classmates, or
when they compete with hundreds of other applicants for a job requiring good
English and are simply not up to the task, and don’t even know how to improve.
The problem in these cases is not so much deficiencies in the students, but in us
teachers, in our ability and willingness to help and inspire our students to aim high
and do better, and in not giving our students enough informed feedback in order
to better guide them. This does not require that a teacher’s own spoken English
be perfect, but that he or she show students effective methods for learning English
well, beginning with intensive listening practice.
The value of mistakes

We conclude this section with one final and crucial point: there is no learning
without errors, or as Kathryn Schulz puts it, “wrongness is a vital part of how we
learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves
and amend our ideas about the world.” (2010, p. 5). East Asians tend to have
an especially strong aversion to making any kind of error in public – they would
rather just keep quiet than risk being ridiculed for getting something wrong. In
fact, questions and other class participation are discouraged in many East Asian
classrooms. Teachers have the same abhorrence of being caught in a mistake and
shamed since they believe it would threaten or diminish their authority. Many
would rather rationalize an assertion that is later proved to be wrong, insist that
they are right, or even reprimand the student. This never fools students, though
they may be intimidated to where they no longer venture to ask questions or
express a viewpoint and then end up passive and mechanical in their learning.
What the students learn from this playacting and capitulation is that they also
must always be right, or pretend to be right, regardless of how convincing evi-
dence to the contrary might be, and that this is how they should teach their own
future students and children. Mistakes = shame, which must be hidden, denied,
and avoided at all costs in the future.
We need to revise our view of errors as a source of embarrassment and shame.
Education is only meaningful in so far as it provides learners with what they actually
need, and teachers can hardly know what their students need without observing
their errors. Teach students that mistakes are treasures that can lead them to what
they need most – that is, when the errors are identified and addressed. Of course,
learners should try to avoid mistakes once they have been identified – but they
have to first make the mistakes in order for them to be pinpointed. Always give
kind, patient, constructive feedback in response to student errors. Ask your stu-
dents to compile the corrections that both they and their classmates receive and
to work actively on fixing them. Only by embracing error (Schulz, 2010) will they
see progress. And be open and honest about your own mistakes, and correct them
publicly so students can do as you do and not just what you say. Which brings us
to the next section on practical suggestions for the teacher.
Practical guidance and suggestions for teachers
Your own preparation: learn phonetics

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programs typi-
cally do not include rigorous training in phonetics; however, a mastery of pho-
netics is the one best way, whether English is your L1 or an L2, to prepare
yourself to help students with their pronunciation issues. It will give you valuable
tools to analyze what you hear, identify what the issues are, and then propose
ways for the student to improve. If you do not have a strong background in
phonetics, do consider enrolling in or auditing a course at a local university or
taking a course online.
The first and most important step is to learn the International Phonetic Alpha-
bet (IPA). You do not necessarily have to teach it to your students or otherwise
use it in your teaching, though students generally do just fine with it. Those
teaching in North America tend to rely on spelling and phonics since that is what
most grew up with and are comfortable with, but this really is no replacement
for solid competence in IPA transliteration in which each sound is represented
unambiguously by a single symbol rather than by a number of possible spellings.
It is in fact not that difficult and is easily mastered with practice if you prioritize
it in your learning. Dismissing it as ‘too hard’ for TESOL students to master
reflects a patronizing and even insulting attitude toward the students’ abilities.
Usually it reflects insecurities in the teacher rather than any lack on the part of
the students.
Language is constantly changing, but set a clear,

stable target for your students to imitate
All languages are in a state of constant change – for example, /ɑ/ (as in father)
and /ɔ/ (as in law) have merged into a single phoneme for many North Ameri-
cans, and the ‘t’ in ‘often’ is now being pronounced more frequently than previ-
ously. Standard Southern BE, previously called ‘RP’ (Received Pronunciation), is
no longer spoken in its textbook form by many people. In addition to the United
Kingdom’s numerous regional dialects, features of Estuary English, such as sub-
stituting /f/ for /θ/ (making three sound like free) and /v/ for /ð/ (making other
sound like [ˈʌvə]), originally Cockney features, are now commonly heard.
However, not sticking to some kind of a consistent standard when teaching
spoken English will lead to all kinds of sloppiness and an attitude of ‘anything
goes.’ Lack of consistency in speech is one way you increase the burden on your
listener. By choosing one of the established standard varieties of English as the
goal for your students to emulate, you will end up with at least something close
to a variety most easily understood by the largest number of English speakers
in the world. Listening, however, is another matter. English learners should be
exposed to as many varieties of spoken English, both native and non-native, in
their listening as possible so they can quickly adjust when speaking with someone
who has an unfamiliar accent.
Be comfortable with – and honest about – your own English

For L1 English speakers: We all have an accent. If the variety of English you
speak is close to one of the more standard varieties, then fine. If it has rela-
tively strong regional features, go ahead and use it in class, though some teachers
may choose to adopt more standard versions of certain features, and that’s fine
too. Whatever you do, be comfortable with how you speak and use English in
class, and try to be consistent. Point out which features of your speech are more
regional, and encourage students to notice and get used to them, just as they
should learn to adapt to many varieties of spoken English in their listening. You
may, however, choose for them to model their speech after recorded materials in a
more standard target variety.
For L2 English speakers: Many teachers may have a vague or not-so-vague
sense of their own strengths and shortcomings in speaking English. However,
in order to teach your students effectively, you will need to have a clear idea of
what you do well and what you still need to work on. You may want to get an
experienced and kind-but-honest native speaker to help you assess yourself. Once
you have greater self-awareness, you can capitalize on your strengths and work
around your weaknesses. It is a big step to try to overcome a clinging to cultural
notions and norms of Confucian patriarchy and authoritarianism, but your stu-
dents will respect you for it. You are not only teaching them English but also mod-
eling behaviors and attitudes for them to internalize and, above all, to embrace
honesty about your inevitable human limitations. Your goal is not to fool students
into thinking you speak perfect English – not even native speakers can claim this –
and most certainly not that you are right all the time. If you try to fool them,
you will miss an opportunity to break the dishonest, negative cycle of trying to
make others think you are more than you are and covering up for your shortfalls.
Most East Asian teachers tend to be fairly good at grammar; they may be less
proficient in listening, speaking, and, specifically, pronunciation. But this does
not have to hold you back from being a good teacher and helping your stu-
dents learn good listening and oral skills. Be up front about your limitations and
provide lots of opportunities for your students to work with audio and video
recordings, while constantly working to improve your own skills.
Learn a bit or a lot about the language(s) of your learners

The following is mainly directed toward L1 English speakers who are teaching in
Asia or elsewhere abroad, but it can also apply to local teachers who are learning
a new L2, or are working to further improve their English.
There are two highly compelling reasons why you should make a concerted
effort to learn your students’ L1 for classes in which most share the same L1. First
is for your own convenience, independence, and self-respect in all your dealings
in your host country. It will help enormously in enabling clear, ungarbled com-
munications with your students, colleagues, and everyone else, and it will win you
much additional respect and social and professional standing. We all learn more
from example than from explicit teaching. Any effort you put into learning the
local L1, however large or small, will bring you great benefits.
The second reason affects your effectiveness as a language teacher. It is easy to
hear the flaws in our students’ English and to jump in to correct them. However,
it is hard to empathize with their struggle to learn a language very different from
their own when we haven’t been through or aren’t currently going through a
similar struggle ourselves. The importance of close and repeated listening, and
in particular the power of the Echo Method (described next), for example, may
not be brought home to you until you are floundering yourself and have trouble
‘hearing’ certain crucial distinctions in the target language.
In addition, when you know the students’ L1, you will have a whole repertoire
of handy references and comparisons to the target language. The benefits of hav-
ing students relate sounds in the target language to similar ones in their native
language far outweigh any possible drawbacks (Abercrombie, 1991). Many
sounds will tend to be nearly identical in any two languages and thus present a
zero-learning load (Strevens, 1991). When two sounds are not exactly the same,
the small details that distinguish the two can be worked on once the student is
close. Instead of struggling over something that seems exotic and insurmount-
able, the students will produce a form immediately and with naturalness.
If you succeed in learning the students’ L1 well, you will probably also end
up with higher standards for your students. No one will be able to accuse you of
asking things of your students that you cannot do equivalents of yourself in their
L1. You will know firsthand the satisfaction, pleasure, and positive feedback that
go with getting a language right.
The classroom and beyond: methods that work
Choosing a personal internal model to emulate

A lot of what goes on when we are learning a language happens because of choices
we have ourselves made early in the process, often without even being aware that
we had choices and made them. One of the first such choices involves our own
internal model that we strive to match when speaking a new language.
We receive constant feedback from our own ears and brain on how we sound
to ourselves when we speak. If our internal checking system thinks what we said
is OK, it is allowed to pass. If we make a slip, our checking system alerts us,
and we either go back and correct it if we can, or we may just let it pass. People
speaking a foreign language get used to their own version of that language, which
is often based on the way many other L2 speakers in their environment sound,
and they come to identify with it. In the process, they essentially shut out native-
speaker models in which things are done differently. If they were at this point to
consciously stop and listen attentively to the native-speaker model, they could
probably imitate it quite well. However, upon producing a good imitation, they
might laugh, because it is so different from what they believe is the ‘correct’ way
for them personally to speak – i.e., what they are used to. Getting past this is one
of the biggest hurdles in learning a more authentic and easily intelligible accent.
The cycle can be broken by making the learner aware of his or her self-selected
internal model and guiding the learner to open his or her ears to a new model. If
the student is motivated and makes the effort, he or she will begin to see a big dif-
ference in how he or she both listens and speaks in the L2. Here is the procedure:
1 The student needs to find his or her own personal native-speaker model, usu-
ally someone in the media, a celebrity, or a personal acquaintance.
2 The student needs to frequently listen attentively to this person speak. Even-
tually, the student’s brain will be able to synthesize an auditory model from
this input and call it up on demand.
3 The next step is for the student, before speaking, to mentally ‘hear’ what
he or she is about to read or say just as the student imagines his or her chosen
internal L1 model would say it. Typical L2 errors will sound out of place on
the model.
4 The student will start to identify with a native-speaker model rather than his
or her original L2 model, and the student will improve. However, additional
tools are needed.
Fixing pronunciation and grammar at the same time:

the echo method
The interminable search in East Asia for a nostrum to learn English well is much
like the quest for a miracle diet – both more often than not lead to disappoint-
ment. In both cases, there is often an unwillingness to invest the needed effort,
willpower, and persistence. But then again, a lot of effort applied with the wrong
method will not succeed, and doing more of what brought poor results in the
past is not likely to bring better results in the future. The listen-and-repeat model
is a deeply ingrained default method in our approach to language learning that
we do not even question because it does not occur to us to question it. However,
conventional listen and repeat, together with ‘free conversation,’ will usually not
produce good results; in fact, the many repetitions of defective forms may further
entrench them and make them even harder to fix. Practice doesn’t make perfect –
it makes permanent.
There is, however, an alternative to listen and repeat, and it involves the use
of echoic memory. Though echoic memory is usually not something we are con-
sciously aware of, most of us have had the experience of not hearing clearly some-
thing that someone else has said, asking them to repeat it, but then suddenly
figuring it out on our own before the speaker is even finished repeating it. What
was said has just been ‘played back’ in your head, so you got the whole message
on the second go yourself – through echoic memory. Some works call it the ‘pho-
nological loop.’ Echoic memory lasts only for a few seconds and then vaporizes –
certainly one reason why we do not notice it more. However, it is strange that it
has not been exploited in language learning until very recently.
a The Echo Method: The Echo Method works first by disrupting mindless rep-
etition or extemporizing with one’s entrenched L1 patterns and by opening
up the ears and brain to actual audio input. It lets the brain relax in quiet for
a few seconds so it can play back and absorb the ‘echo’ of a spoken phrase,
enabling the learner to attend to it closely and fully internalize it before imi-
tating the phrase; for this reason, it is much more effective than shadowing.
Here is how it works:
1 Choose a suitable, interesting audio file in the target language with a

written transcription. Listen to the audio a few times and then look up
all the unfamiliar words and expressions. Focus first on a small portion
of the file, maybe about two minutes long.
2 Listen to the first four or five words of the audio file; intonational phrases
are best if not too long; if they are, divide them up.
3 Press the PAUSE button, and listen attentively to the internal echo in
your head.
4 Imitate the ‘echo’ you hear in your head; do not automatically use the
pronunciation you are accustomed to.
5 Follow this routine of listen-internal echo-repeat with the same phrase
over and over until it is thoroughly imprinted on your brain.
6 Move on to the next phrase and repeat the process in the same way.
Continue for 10 to 20 minutes. Do this daily and keep a record of time
spent on practice, noting milestones.
7 When possible, get feedback on how you are doing; at first, it may be
uncomfortable, but it is what helps us improve and grow.
When learners repeat after their own internal echo, their pronunciation is gener-
ally much more accurate than with simple listen and repeat, since their brains
have already fully and correctly internalized the utterance, much like a retinal
afterimage. This method has radically improved the pronunciation of many stu-
dents who started off with seemingly ‘hopeless’ problems. Successful learners
often unconsciously use this method themselves without identifying it by a name,
or realizing exactly what it is they are doing that works so well.
With the right preparation, students will catch on to the Echo Method in their
very first repetition in the first class of the term, without ‘jumping the gun’ and
repeating right after the model. From that point on, they are really hearing, not
just what is said, but exactly how it is said, and faithfully reproducing it them-
selves. This will get them started on mindful listening without the automatic
filtering and substitutions that usually take place. What you are really training,
beyond just the correct pronunciation of English sounds, is a high overall sensi-
tivity to sounds, which will eventually spread to all areas of the learner’s life, in
both concrete and abstract applications.
Watch that the students do not move their lips when listening to the model. This
may seem counterintuitive, but anything you do yourself while listening will dis-
tract the brain with proprioception – receiving and interpreting events generated
from the learner’s own thoughts and actions. This will blur the sharp focus that is
needed to hear the input clearly, with no distortions added in.
It is good to do as much echo practice in class as possible, but it will never be
enough. Students need to move from a default of learning only when pushed for
the sake of exams to wanting to learn better English for the sake of their own
future plans and for its own sake. This mindset may be the most important thing
your students take away from your teaching.
At the beginning of the semester, you can have the students record a written
passage in English, then play it back, and write a page of feedback on what they
hear. You can then have them replay this same recording at the end of the course,
and write a new page of feedback describing what they now hear with their ‘new
ears.’ This is useful in helping the students and you to see how much progress
they have made over the course of the semester or school year.
Students can be required to keep daily listening logs in which they write down
from what time to what time they did their 10 or 20 minutes of echo practice, and
a description of the material they listened to. It’s best at the beginning to offer
very short, simple conversations – ones they will think are too easy for them, but
which in fact they couldn’t produce correctly or colloquially on their own without
help. They need to listen-echo-repeat over and over and over until the conversa-
tion is finally engraved in their unconscious brains, at which point it will emerge
from their mouths when needed automatically, managed by their speedy, reactive
System One, and with perfect grammar and pronunciation. You can have the stu-
dents perform the dialogues in pairs in class every week and correct them where
their output strays from the recording. Having the students give feedback on their
peers’ performance can also help sharpen their ears and attentiveness to detail.
Ten or 20 minutes a day of echo practice is a big commitment, and not every-
body will follow through. However, as a teacher, you can do your best to assign
and check their listening logs and offer encouragement. As a convenience to the
students, the teacher can use a recording program such as Audacity to produce
pre-paused audio files for a., b., and c.-type practice and make them available to
the students.
In their echo practice at home, the following steps can be added as the student
is ready, for further reinforcement and to fully automate the audio content:
b Listen and repeat: Once the learner has practiced the Echo Method on a
chosen passage (say, a one-minute scene of an episode of a television series),
having captured as much phonetic detail as possible, the next step is to prac-
tice with conventional listen and repeat. This should be done until the mate-
rial is even more solidly mastered and can be produced without hesitation or
a single mistake.
c Synchronous reading: The next step is synchronous reading, or reading
along with the model, at the same pace. By this point, the material should be
so familiar that the learner can produce it without much conscious thought.
Synchronous reading can help the learner get the rhythm right – if there is
any deviation from the original, they will fall behind or (less often) surge
ahead. The goal is not speed per se but to be able to produce the sentences
with the same stress, intonation, and pauses as the L1 model.
Even with good listening, fine-tuning will be required. Phonetic categories and
allophonic processes in particular are often carried over unconsciously from
the native language, as are errors from previous learning. Therefore, a list and
description of common learner errors for each L1 learner group can be highly
useful to both teacher and student.
For more help in getting the rhythm right, the following method is useful:
d Arm circles: Some students have a tendency to read each syllable with equal
length. It is often not so much a problem of making stressed syllables long
enough, but of making unstressed ones short enough (Chela-Flores, 2001).
A whole-body aid in helping students get the stress-timed rhythm of English
right is to have them stand up near their desks and make large circles with
their dominant arm, making muscular effort to push the arm down on the
stressed syllables. Since the stress timing of English is not perfectly regular,
the circles sometimes have to be made more quickly or slowly depending on
the length and prosodic structure of the phrase, but the continuous motion
can help redistribute varying syllable lengths more in accord with native-
speaker rhythmic patterns. This falls under what Acton (1991) describes as a
“connection between certain non-verbal behaviours (such as speech-rhythm-
related upper-body movement) and suprasegmentals,” or haptic pronuncia-
tion practice (see h.).
e Cultivate sensitivity to feedback: The importance of feedback cannot be
overemphasized. McClelland et al. (2002; reported in Wyner, 2014) found
that Japanese adults were able to distinguish /r/ and /l/ – notoriously dif-
ficult for Japanese L1 speakers – after one hour of practice with automatic
feedback. Often speakers of an L2 are given explicit feedback outside of class
on how they do; for example, the person they’re speaking with may repeat
the same phrase with the correct pronunciation and grammar. Sometimes,
the feedback is more subtle – the listener may briefly knit his or her brow
when a wrong pronunciation or form is used. Teachers can help students
become sensitive to and avail themselves of both kinds of free training when
they come by and not just forge ahead down their own panicked path with
sensors shut down.
f Shadowing: Shadowing is mentioned here, not as part of the formal steps
of the Echo Method, but as an alternate form of listening and oral prac-
tice, borrowed from oral interpretation training. In shadowing, the learner
repeats what he or she hears in an audio recording almost the second that he
or she hears it. This trains the student in listening, attention, quick reactions,
rhythm, and pronunciation. One reason it is often recommended is because
few teachers know about the Echo Method, and it is the best method they
have encountered thus far. However, if you have a continuous audio stream
coming in (as with a radio broadcast), you are constantly being exposed to
new material without a chance to master the old. It also causes fatigue fairly
quickly. The method is more viable if you have only a relatively short loop
and you repeat it over and over.
g Repeated choral readings: Phonetician Olle Kjellin has developed a highly
effective method of repeated synchronous reading with the volume progres-
sively lowered on copies of the target practice form prepared with Audacity
(see the resources at the end of this chapter).
h Haptic pronunciation practice: Arm circles are in fact only one example
of using physical touch and body movements to learn and reinforce accu-
rate pronunciation. This approach is sometimes called Haptic Pronunciation
Practice (see the resources at the end of this chapter).
Conclusion: materials and tools

With the Internet and other kinds of digital media, it is now easier than ever for
students to be independent and self-directed in their learning. Here are some
resources you can encourage your students to use in their English improvement
plans.
a Online English dictionaries with sound files: Pronunciation keys in

American-published dictionaries are mostly ad hoc, differing from diction-
ary to dictionary, and they can be quite confusing. A better way to check or
learn the pronunciation of a word is with an audio dictionary. The following
audio dictionaries are available online for free, and all are excellent: Merriam-
Webster Online (GA), Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (BE and
GA), Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (BE and GA), the Macmillan Dictionary
(BE), and the Free Dictionary (GA and some BE). A Google search will turn
up more, but these are really more than adequate.
b TV series: In fact, good TV series are the very best way to practice English
listening and pronunciation skills, and they are the best materials to use
for Echo Method practice. Nearly all students with the best English in the
author’s experience, regardless of L1 and country of origin, learned it from
repeated watching, with active listening and practice, of good TV series or
movies. Encourage your students to choose a series, watch it first for enter-
tainment and to become familiar with it and then use it for their daily Echo
Method practice, starting with the pilot episode. It may take a semester
or even a year to work through a single episode with the thoroughness
required to automate what they learn. Some suggested series, new and old
include Gilmore Girls, Seinfeld, The Good Wife, Grey’s Anatomy, ER, Mad
Men, Six Feet Under, Modern Family, West Wing, The Office, Ugly Betty,
Roseanne, Ally McBeal, MacGyver, The Wonder Years, M*A*S*H, Cheers.
You can add your favorites to the list. Try to choose shows with relevance
to the students’ lives – Gilmore Girls is especially good – and avoid shows
(of which there are plenty) with too much emphasis on sex, drugs, crime,
violence, and slapstick or silliness. Encourage your students to watch legally
obtained versions; watching programs from pirate sites may cause harm to
the user’s computer.
c Movies: Movies can be good for learning and pronunciation practice, but
are not usually as good as TV series since often more extreme things happen
in movies, and you do not have the chance to get to know the same set of
characters from episode to episode and season to season. However, they are
another option. It’s best to choose a movie that is as close to real everyday
life as possible, avoiding adventure, science-fiction, horror, fantasy, cartoons,
and overly sexy or violent films, as well as other genres less suitable for lan-
guage learning.
d YouTube: Learners must be selective, but YouTube offers a virtually limitless
selection of free videos that can be used for English learning.
e Audacity: This is a free recording program with many features. Students
can use it to record themselves and self-assess, or for class assignments,
or to record online audio streams for practice, among many other things.
See Olle Kjellin’s tutorial on how to use it for pronunciation practice on
p. 148.
f Language exchanges: Students can set up language exchanges locally or
online, for pronunciation, speaking, and writing practice. One good one is
italki.com; a Google search with the keywords “language exchange sites” will
turn up many others. There are also many English and pronunciation learn-
ing pages on Facebook and other social media to explore. Students should be
reminded to exercise care and good judgment on any social media website to
avoid scams and other dangers.
g Websites, software programs, commercial apps: There are simply too
many of these to list; you can do an online search and see what you come
up with, or check in mobile-device app stores. But be selective – quality var-
ies greatly. Automatic feedback on pronunciation of recorded speech is not
yet completely reliable, but it is getting better and can be a useful reference,
opportunity for practice, and motivator. One good site is EnglishCentral.
com; there are many others.
References
Abercrombie, D. (1991). Teaching pronunciation. In A. Brown (Ed.), Teaching English
pronunciation: A book of readings (pp. 87–95). New York: Routledge.
Acton, W. (1991). Changing fossilized pronunciation. In A. Brown (Ed.), Teaching
English pronunciation: A book of readings (pp. 120–135). New York: Routledge.
Associated Press, Buenos Aires. (2015, February 4). Argentina’s president criticised
for seemingly racist joke on key China trip. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.the
guardian.com/world/2015/feb/04/argentinian-president-racist-joke-china-trip
Beebe, L. M. (Ed.). (1988). Issues in second language acquisition: Multiple perspec-
tives. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Brown, A. (Ed.). (1991). Teaching English pronunciation: A book of readings. New
York: Routledge.
Chela-Flores, B. (2001). Pronunciation and language learning: An integrative
approach. IRAL, 39, 85–101.
Dahlgreen, W. (2014, January 18). It’s true! Americans love British accents. YouGov.
Retrieved from http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/01/18/its-true-americans-love-
british-accents/
Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself. New York: Viking (Penguin)
Giant Bomb Forum. (2014). Are foreign accents attractive or unattractive?
Retrieved from www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/are-foreign-accents-
attractive-or-unattractive-1471529/
Jenkins, J. (2002). A sociologically based, empirically researched pronunciation syl-
labus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics, 23(1), 83–103.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. London: Penguin.
Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The
influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46,
1093–1096.
McClelland, J. L., Fiez, J. A., & McCandliss, B. D. (2002). Teaching the /r/ – /l/
discrimination to Japanese adults: Behavioral and neural aspects. Physiology &
Behavior, 77, 657–662.
NPR. (2009, December 31). The loudness wars: Why music sounds worse [Inter-
view with Bob Ludwig, record mastering engineer, and Andrew Oxenham,
Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota]. Retrieved from www.npr.
org/2009/12/31/122114058/the-loudness-wars-why-music-sounds-worse
Schulz, K. (2010). Being wrong: Adventures in the margin of error. New York: Harper
Collins.
Strevens, P. (1991). A rationale for teaching pronunciation: The rival virtues of
innocence and sophistication. In A. Brown (Ed.), Teaching English pronunciation:
A book of readings (pp. 96–103). New York: Routledge.
The Telegraph. (2009, November 3). Irish accent beats French as world’s sexiest. Retrieved
from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/6490202/Irish-
accent-beats-French-as-worlds-sexiest.html
Tiku, N. (2013, August 27). Major FWD.us Donor Says a “Strong Foreign Accent”
Makes You a Bad CEO. ValleyWag. Retrieved from http://valleywag.gawker.com/
major-fwd-us-donor-says-a-strong-foreign-accent-makes-1208418411
van Hoek, K. (n.d.). When Is a foreign accent an asset? Retrieved from www.chosen-
voice.com/news/news_article/when-is-a-foreign-accent-an-asset
Wyner, G. (2014, June 12). How to teach old ears new tricks: Learn a new language
more quickly by focusing on pronunciation first. Scientific American. Retrieved
from www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-teach-old-ears-new-tricks/
Yahoo Answers. (2008). Why Is Chinese accent ugly? Retrieved from https://answers.
yahoo.com/question/ index?qid=20081113000756AA9rYhN
Recommended pronunciation textbooks and references
For teachers wondering where to start, it’s here:

Gilbert, J. (2012). Clear speech (4th edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The rest:
Baker, A., & Goldstein, S. (2008). Pronunciation pairs: An introduction to the sounds
of English (2nd edn.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Beisbier, B. (1994). Sounds great: Low-intermediate pronunciation for speakers of English.
Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle.
Brown, A. (2014). Pronunciation and phonetics: A practical guide for English lan-
guage teachers. New York: Routledge.
Brown, J. D. (2012). New ways in teaching connected speech (New Ways in TESOL).
Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Celce-Murcia, M. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A course book and reference guide
(2nd edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chan, M. (2009). Phrase by phrase pronunciation and listening in American English
(2nd edn.). Sunnyvale: Sunburst Media.
Chung, K. S. (2012, January–February to 2014, November–December). Professor’s
Corner. A series of 18 articles in Chinese explaining English pronunciation teaching
points in detail; in the bimonthly teacher’s magazine Hello! ET. Taipei: Cave’s English
Teaching (CET). Retrieved from http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/Karen/
Karen_Chung_publications.htm#CET
Dauer, R. (1993). Accurate English: A complete course in pronunciation. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Regents Prentice Hall.
Gilbert, J. B. (2008). Teaching pronunciation using the prosody pyramid. Cambridge,
New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from www.cambridge.org/
other_files/downloads/ esl/booklets/Gilbert-Teaching-Pronunciation.pdf
Gorsuch, G., Meyers, C. M., Pickering, L., & Griffee, D. T. (2010). English com-
munication for international teaching assistants. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
Graham, C. (1972). Jazz chants: Rhythms of American English for students of English
as a second language. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grant, L. (2010). Well said: Pronunciation for clear communication (3rd edn.). Inde-
pendence, KY: Heinle Cengage Learning.
Grant, L. (Ed.). (2014). Pronunciation myths: Applying second language research to
classroom teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Hahn, L. D., & Dickerson, W. B. (1999). Speech craft: Discourse pronunciation for
advanced learners. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Hancock, M. (1996). Pronunciation games (Cambridge Copy Collection). Cam-
Hancock, M. (2012). English pronunciation in use (Intermediate) (2nd edn.). Cam-
Hewings, M., & Goldstein, S. (1998). Pronunciation plus: Practice through interac-
tion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kreidler, C. W. (2004). The pronunciation of English: A course book. Oxford: Blackwell.
Levis, J., & Moyer, A. (2014). Social dynamics in second language accent. Berlin:
DeGruyter Mouton.
Miller, S. (2005). Targeting Pronunciation: Communicating clearly in English (2nd
edn.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Reed, M., & Michaud, C. (2005). Sound concepts: An integrated pronunciation course.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Shockey, L. (2003). Sound patterns of spoken English. Oxford: Blackwell.
Teschner, R. V., & Whitley, M. S. (2004). Pronouncing English: A stress-based
approach. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Vaughan-Rees, M. (2010). Rhymes and rhythm: A poem-based course for English pro-
nunciation study. Reading, England: Garnet Education.
Journal
Journal of Second Language Pronunciation edited by John M. Levis, John Benjamins.
Retrieved from https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/jslp
Pronunciation conferences
1 Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference http://10times.com/phonetics-
teaching-conference
2 Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching http://jlevis.pub
lic.iastate.edu/pslltconference/
Online dictionaries with audio files

1 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (GA) www.merriam-webster.com/
2 Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (BE and GA) http://dictionary.cam
bridge.org/dictionary/british/
3 Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (BE and GA) www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
4 Macmillan Dictionary (BE) www.macmillandictionary.com/
5 The Free Dictionary (GA and BE) www.thefreedictionary.com/
Easy online input of IPA symbols

1 i2Spi:k Smart IPA Phonetics Keyboard www.i2speak.com/
2 Online IPA Character Input: http://westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard/
Recording and phonetics software and tutorial

1 Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
2 Olle Kjellin. Quality practise pronunciation with audacity – the best method! a tuto-
rial https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51074116/Kjellin-Practise-Pronun
ciation-w-Audacity.pdf
3 WASP (Waveforms, Annotations, Spectrograms & Pitch) www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/
resource/sfs/wasp.htm
4 Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer www.praat.org/
Video resources
1 Karen Steffen Chung: Online Introduction to Phonetics Course Open Course
Ware, National Taiwan University (taught in English and Mandarin) http://ocw.
aca.ntu.edu.tw/ntu-ocw/index.php/ocw/cou/101S102
2 English Central Listening/speaking practice site with feedback www.englishcen
tral.com/videos#
3 Gabriel Wyner: The Pronunciation Video Series
http://fluent-forever.com/chapter3/#.VBKHM1Ps02Y
4 Adrian Underhill: Introduction to Teaching Pronunciation Workshop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kAPHyHd7Lo
Online language exchange sites

1 italki.com www.italki.com/
10 Fluency in language
classrooms
Extensive listening and reading
Alistair Wood
The pairing of reading and listening together in one chapter might seem at first
glance to be a somewhat strange combination since we have traditionally taught
the four skills separately. Even when we teach integrated skills (e.g., Nunan,
1989), this is usually in terms of more authentic uses of the skills, which in
practice are seldom separated. The justification, however, for discussing reading
and listening in the same chapter is not in terms of the authenticity of their use
together, but rather in the similarities that lie in the pedagogic approaches to
both. Both these skills have been described as ‘passive’ skills, and although the
active nature of reading is now widely recognized (e.g., Anderson, 2007–08),
with listening later following in this recognition (Nation & Newton, 2009), there
is a similarity between them in that both involve comprehension and decoding
rather than production.
Both skills are also related in that they have both traditionally been taught by
an emphasis on intensive study of relatively short sections of text, with a focus
on understanding that text, often at the expense of other aspects. More recently,
however, there has been a move away from the intensive study of short texts to
appreciation that students must be able to handle longer texts. In addition, more
broadly, there has been a recognition that students need to be exposed to much
more language, whether written or spoken, than they traditionally meet with in
the classroom (Day & Bamford, 1998).
Extensive versus intensive reading

Traditionally, language learning has been conceptualised as a long and arduous
process, with the language to be learned broken down in the syllabus into easily
learned chunks, whether these chunks are lexical, morphological, or syntactic.
Even in later communicative and subsequent eclectic methodologies, which rec-
ognise more overtly the linkage between different parts of the system and thus
the need for the learner to cope with these, there has still been an overall breaking
down of the whole into its parts.
In reading, this can be seen in the division of reading into a plethora of specific
skills: skimming, scanning, reading for gist, finding the topic sentence, and so on.
This is quite reasonable as it recognises that the umbrella term ‘reading’ is in fact
Fluency in language classrooms 151
a superordinate that covers a wide variety of skills. These components, however
we itemize them, would also include things such as being able to read quickly
for the main ideas of a passage or being able to establish the point of view of the
author. The focus on different types of reading skills and strategies has been clear
since the 1980s to most English teachers via Christine Nuttall’s influential book
Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language (1982), but there are numerous
other studies that ground the teaching of reading skills and strategies on a solid
research base (e.g., Anderson, 2005; Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989; Grabe,
2009). That teaching reading strategies can not only help students but also be
taught to students by teachers is also fairly generally accepted (Block & Pressley,
2002, 2007; Hudson, 2007; Koda, 2005).
Nevertheless, although the use of comprehension strategies is certainly valu-
able to students, there is clearly a sense in which such overtly taught strategies
are a help to reading rather than reading itself. If a fluent reader in his or her
first language (L1) does not normally use such strategies, then it would seem
to be the case that something more is necessary also in the reading classroom.
That additional approach is often encapsulated in the contrast between ‘intensive’
and ‘extensive’ reading (Al-Homoud & Schmitt, 2009; Carrel & Carson, 1997;
Day & Bamford, 1998; Mason & Krashen, 1997; Robb & Susser, 1989). Inten-
sive reading is the norm, the unmarked member of the pair, which is what takes
place in the typical reading classroom. Extensive reading, on the other hand,
would seem to require somewhat more of an explanation and justification.
The main difference between extensive and intensive reading, as normally
described, (e.g., Beglar, Hunt, & Kite, 2012; Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002;
Hafiz & Tudor, 1989, Mason & Krashen, 1997) would seem to be, as the name
suggests, that students read considerably more and at a lower level than they
would in a typical intensive reading class. Thus Mason and Krashen’s pioneering
study took place over one semester, while Beglar et al. (2012) had their cohort of
first-year Japanese university students read extensively over a period of one aca-
demic year. Judge’s study (2011) was for an even longer period – two and a half
years. Whatever the time frame, students are encouraged to read more materials
than they would normally.
The basic approach of extensive reading then would be the provision of
reading materials that students can cope with, often graded readers (e.g., Al-
Homoud & Schmitt, 2009; Beglar et al., 2012; Day & Bamford, 1998; Beglar &
Hunt, 2014), and for the reading to be of more materials than would normally
be met with in an intensive reading course. For students to read more in a read-
ing course would often be a goal in itself for many reading teachers, but there are
other aims which are normally claimed for such extensive reading courses. One
immediate aim is that students will find it pleasurable to read and enjoy an activity
that they might not otherwise enjoy. Extensive reading does seem to have such
positive benefits, and several studies have shown a correlation between exten-
sive reading and positive attitudes to reading (Al-Homoud & Schmitt, 2009;
Mason & Krashen, 1997; Robb & Susser, 1989; Taguchi, Takayasu-Maas, &
Gorsuch, 2004).
152 Alistair Wood
The most basic aim, of course, in any reading programme would be that stu-
dents become better readers, whether in terms of comprehension, reading rate,
or vocabulary development. Typically, students in extensive reading programmes
are measured against a control group who had a more traditional intensive read-
ing programme. Thus in Tanaka and Stapleton’s study (2007), it was found
that the extensive reading group did significantly better than the control group
in reading comprehension and reading rate. Similarly, Beglar et al. (2012) and
Belgar and Hunt (2014) found that all of their extensive reading groups made
greater gains in reading rate than the intensive group and that there was also a
correlation within the extensive groups between the amount of reading and the
corresponding increase in reading rate.
Extensive versus intensive listening

Extensive reading was a fairly straightforward response to some problems with
traditional reading programmes, but the applicability of the concept to other skill
areas is not obvious at first sight. Some people, whether students or anybody
else, obviously read more, even a lot more, than others. Turning our attention
to another skill, like listening, it would seem at first strange to apply the concept
of intensive and extensive to listening. If we are not deaf, we spend a good part
of our time listening to those around us, and while some may spend more time
listening to the radio or music, for example, that does not mean they spend more
time listening as such, in the way that someone who reads novels can be said to
spend more time reading.
However, if we consider how we traditionally teach listening, it becomes appar-
ent that the approach is very similar to that found when we teach intensive read-
ing. Both are typically taught for comprehension, and comprehension questions
are set after a listening passage just as they are after a reading passage. Similarly,
too, there was a move in teaching listening towards teaching listening compre-
hension strategies paralleling the move with reading comprehension (O’Malley,
Chamot, & Küpper, 1989; Rubin, 1994; Vandergrift, 1999). Thus learners are
encouraged, for example, to be aware of the process of listening. However, to
what extent this actually helps learners to understand more of what they are lis-
tening is debatable (Berne, 2004; Chen, 2005; Goh, 2002; Renandya & Farrell,
2010; Rubin, 1994; Siegel, 2013), as sometimes listening strategies are claimed
to be effective (e.g., Siegel, 2011) and at other times less so (e.g., Blyth, 2012).
On balance, nevertheless, it would seem to be the consensus that strategy instruc-
tion is useful.
However, it would seem to be more appropriate to adult and more advanced
learners than younger and more intermediate students. If we examine the kinds
of problems faced by learners when doing listening activities, they are likely to
include things such as too rapid speech rate (Hasan, 2000). Especially in the
initial stages of learning a language, it is often the case that we find it difficult to
comprehend speech that often seems too fast. There is also often an inability to
understand stretches of text despite the ability to understand specific individual
words (Goh, 2000). Similarly, it is often the case that the sound of a word is
rather different from the spoken form, and learners may find it difficult to under-
stand words that they in fact know in the written form (Field, 2003; Goh, 2000;
Wilson, 2003). None of these problems is particularly amenable to solving by
means of cognitive or metacognitive strategies.
Many of the problems listed here are likely to be, if not solved, at least given
the possibility of being ameliorated, if an approach similar to extensive reading
is applied to listening. In recent years, the concept of extensive reading has been
applied also to listening (Field, 1998; Renandya & Farrell, 2010; Waring, 2008).
If we allow listeners to listen to materials for a longer time, including repeated
listenings, then they are more likely to be able to understand the materials. As
Field (1998) points out, in many listening lessons there is not that much listen-
ing going on. The tape is played for only a short time, and much of the lesson is
made up of pre-listening activities and going over comprehension exercises. The
actual listening may take up only a few minutes of the whole period, perhaps only
about 5%. How are students then supposed to practice their listening when they
in fact do very little of it?
It could perhaps be argued that students are spending a lot of their time in
the classroom listening since they are interacting with other students and the
teacher. This is indeed true, but in fact it proves the point about the necessity
and appropriacy of extensive listening. Listening to other students is character-
ised by input which is at the level of the student, relatively slow, spoken in an
accent they understand, and likely to be relatively short. This type of listening is
not a problem – what is a problem is the rapid paced, often by a native speaker,
focused on comprehension questions, type of listening that is prevalent in many
schools. Even the English spoken by the teacher has the advantage of familiarity,
being targeted at the learners and on topics that are often repeated and whose
vocabulary is known.
In extensive listening, therefore, in a similar case to extensive reading, stu-
dents have the opportunity to listen to materials which are at their own level
and during which the listening takes place over a longer time than is normally
the case with comprehension-focused materials. Renandya and Farrell (2010,
p. 56) define extensive listening as follows: “Extensive listening is defined here
to mean all types of listening activities that allow learners to receive a lot of
comprehensible and enjoyable listening input.” As well as being enjoyable, it
is primarily the case that the material chosen should be at a level that is easily
understandable by students and the topics appropriate. For Waring (2008),
extensive listening “involves fluently listening to a lot of comprehensible lan-
guage” (p. 7).
Both definitions, whether in terms of comprehensibility or fluency, emphasize
the fact that learners should be able to understand the text they are listening to
without having to stop the tape or ask the speaker to repeat what they are saying.
Thus, as with reading materials, the speaking materials should be at a level that
is easily coped with by the speaker, whether in terms of vocabulary or grammar.
Since this is listening material, it should also be added that the pronunciation
154 Alistair Wood
should not cause problems, so the speaker(s) should not have an accent or speak
at a speed that makes the material difficult to follow.
Extensive reading and listening

Having looked at extensive reading and listening separately, we turn in this sec-
tion to look at a relatively recent development in the use of extensive materials
and that is combining together extensive reading and listening. Various authors
(e.g., Chang & Millet, 2014; Chang, 2009, 2011, 2012; Gobel & Kano, 2014;
Stephens, 2011; Woodall, 2010) have experimented in the last few years with
using both reading and listening simultaneously. This is not just from a feeling
that if extensive reading is a good idea and so is extensive listening, then the two
together must be even better. Sushi may be good and ice cream may be good, but
we do not normally eat them together!
It might be considered that if learners simultaneously listened to a text while
at the same time reading the written version of the text, they are not likely
to improve their listening skills since they may rely completely or mainly on
the written text for comprehension. However, Chang (2009, 2011) found
that learners improved their listening skills despite reading the text simultane-
ously. Although sometimes (Chang, 2009) the relative improvement in the
combined mode versus the listening only mode was not particularly great,
the students concerned greatly preferred the combined mode. Other studies
showed greater gains (Chang, 2011) but also sometimes not so great (Chang,
2012). Notice here that the same researcher found varying gains with different
groups, so it would seem to be the case that the type or the amount of listen-
ing does make a difference in how effective the combined mode is (Chang &
Millet, 2014). Sufficient listening activity must take place or else students may
simply rely on the reading channel for information (Chang & Millet, 2014). In
this latter experimental study, of the three groups, the reading only group was
outperformed by the listening only group, which in its turn was outperformed
by the reading and listening combined group. It should be noted that the
reading group was also given practice in listening via more traditional intensive
listening practice. This would seem to indicate that extensive listening and,
more particularly, combined reading and listening is effective in raising listen-
ing abilities.
In a completely different part of the world (Puerto Rico), Woodal (2010) also
found that the reading and listening group came out ahead of the listening only
group in comprehension. It should be noted, too, that this comprehension was
in terms both of gist and detailed comprehension. As well as improving listen-
ing comprehension, this combined reading and listening was found to improve
incidental vocabulary acquisition in a study by Brown, Waring, and Donkaewbua
(2008).
It would seem, therefore, that combining reading and listening does improve
listening comprehension. The most obvious reason for this is that reading while
listening gives students the opportunity to check their understanding via one
mode with understanding in the other mode. They thus have both (a) twice
the input as via the unitary mode and (b) a cross check on their understand-
ing. More exactly, reading a text while at the same time listening to it provides
a solution to several of the problems identified earlier as being symptomatic of
aural processing of input text. Thus a text that is spoken too fast for the learner,
has words that are not recognized but actually known in the written form, or
is spoken in a difficult to understand accent, can all be understood much more
easily in the written mode while listening. That this is the case can be appreci-
ated if we think how we react when seeing subtitles to a film in a language that
we speak but do not speak too well, as we use the subtitles to help us with the
incomprehensible dialogue.
The subtitles in a film example should show us that reading while listening is
not such a totally alien concept outside the classroom. Granted that as adults we
seldom listen to an audio text while at the same time reading it, this is not the
case with our children. Parents not only read aloud to their young children when
the child is totally unable to read but also when they are beginning to read, and
our first reading experience is often while simultaneously being supplied with
auditory input. If this is our experience in the L1, then it is reasonable to assume
that it might also be useful in the second language (L2). Learners of English as a
second or foreign language may have much greater reading skills than L1 listen-
ers and are thus more likely to be able to make use of their reading skills, but they
are also more cognitively advanced and thus able to more systematically compare
the input in the two modes.
Nevertheless, the fear that learners may come to depend on the written mode
is a reasonable one, and it is likely to be the case if learners do not get sufficient
aural input to become confident in their listening skills, as Chang (2012) found.
However, if the practice is really extensive, then students are liable to depend less
and less on the reading mode and more on the aural input. It should be noted
here that listening is a more natural mode than reading: everybody with normal
hearing and mental abilities naturally listens to language and understands it. Thus
as learners improve their listening, they will automatically begin to rely more on
the auditory and less on the written input.
It does seem, though, that much of the work on simultaneous reading and lis-
tening has been done in societies where the level of English among learners is not
particularly high and where often there is another script in use in the L1 (Chang
in Taiwan, Gobel & Kano, and Stephens in Japan for example). It may be the case
that for these learners the aural input and written input are mutually reinforcing
since they would also find the written text relatively harder to process than those
already used to the Western alphabet. Or it may be the case that the low level of
English and a traditional reliance on grammar translation as a method in both
China and Japan means that students have difficulty with activities that emphasize
understanding of natural spoken language input. It is nevertheless of interest that
much of the impetus towards combining extensive reading and listening is com-
ing out of Asia and the focus of this volume on the teaching of English in Asia
should make this approach of particular interest.
156 Alistair Wood
Extensive listening and reading and fluency

The definition quoted earlier from Waring (2008) was expressed in terms of flu-
ency, and having looked at the ideas of extensive reading and listening, we need
to turn now to the superficially familiar concept of fluency. Waring does not
explain what he means by ‘fluently listening,’ and it is a concept not as easy to
grasp as ‘fluently speaking,’ which we are all familiar with. In an everyday sense,
we all talk about being fluent in a language, a term which is used by teacher and
lay person alike to convey our idea about how much someone knows a language.
Clearly, as it has grown up over recent decades, the idea of fluency must be
taken to mean something rather more than just an ability to speak well. Looked
at a bit further, it is often contrasted with the idea of accuracy, as in titles such
as Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching: The Roles of Fluency and
Accuracy (Brumfit & Brumfit, 1984). In this communicative paradigm, the two
are often seen as being somewhat in opposition so that one develops while the
other does not. Consequently, there arises the idea that the one should not be at
the expense of the other, as encapsulated in Hammerly’s Fluency and Accuracy:
Towards Balance in Language Teaching and Learning (1991).
Before we accept that there is necessarily a trade-off between fluency and accu-
racy, perhaps it might be a good idea to examine a little more closely what we
mean by fluency. As indicated earlier, fluency can be said to have two separate
meanings (Lennon, 1990, 2000): ability in the language and something more
specific. What this something more specific is may be more difficult to pin down
(Housen & Kuiken, 2009) but is frequently considered to relate to the automa-
ticity of processing (Schmidt, 1992). This definition is more focused on fluency
in speech, but the idea can be broadened out so that it covers the “rapid, smooth,
accurate, lucid, and efficient translation of thought . . . into language under the
temporal constraints of on-line processing” (Lennon, 2000, p. 26).
Two things are of interest here: first that the definition of fluency now encom-
passes more than speech and thus can be applied to other language skills such as
reading or listening, and second, Lennon’s definition also includes the concept of
accuracy. This also relates to the other meaning of fluency, a high level of ability in
a language, thus uniting the two meanings of fluency into one composite picture
of smooth, fluid accurate use of the language. If we consider the link with online
processing, too, this helps us to get away from a conception of fluency as just
being an oral skill and broadens it out to cover all four skills, not only speaking
but also, writing, reading, and listening.
If we transfer the concept of easy processing in real time, without having to
rerun any language, from speaking, we can see its applicability to reading. Disflu-
ent reading would involve having to go back and read something again for com-
prehension so that it was not understood as the reader read the text. Similarly,
if the reader had to slow down from his or her normal reading speed in order
to comprehend the text, this would not be said to be fluent reading. Applied to
listening, this would mean that a student should be able to process the speech
heard and understand it in real time as he or she listens to the speech without
having to stop and re-process.
Taking into account the dual meaning of fluency, being able to process, but
also having high ability, and thus including accuracy rather than being a counter-
point to that term, it should be clear that listening could not be said to be at all
fluent if the listener processed the speech heard in real time but misunderstood
what was said. As applied to reading, a student who increased his or her reading
speed with extensive reading, but at the cost of comprehension, could not be
said to be reading fluently. Thus Beglar et al. (2012) included a measure of com-
prehension among the students they evaluated to make sure that any increase in
reading rate was not offset by diminished comprehension.
This would seem to go against the grain for extensive practice. In contrast to
intensive reading, it is customary in extensive reading not to have much or indeed
any comprehension activities since the aim is to increase reading speeds and foster
greater pleasure in reading. This does not mean, however, that we can totally for-
get comprehension; rather, it suggests that the balance should swing away from
too frequent or overt checking of comprehension, not that there should be no
control of comprehension at all. It is possible to monitor reading progress with-
out using comprehension questions (Renandya & Jacobs, 2002).
Given, therefore, that the conception of fluency does include accuracy, and
that we have some checking of comprehension to ensure accuracy, we can see
fluency as a necessary part of any foreign language programme. The two faces of
fluency, online processing in real time and accurate understanding of the text, are
therefore complimentary aspects of the same process. With extensive reading and
listening, we are able to expose our students to greater amounts of written or oral
text and thus give them greater opportunities to practice.
Extensive reading and listening in the classroom

Standard descriptions already exist of how to set up extensive reading programmes
(e.g., Bell, 1998; Day & Bamford, 1998; Susser & Robb, 1990), so this section
will focus more on extensive listening and extensive reading and listening. Com-
pared to extensive reading, intensive listening has a rather shorter history, so how
to run such programmes has not been worked out in practice to such an extent.
In addition, it is not so obvious at first glance just how to go about setting up an
extensive listening programme. Whereas graded readers have long been used and
are widely available, and borrowing books from libraries is standard practice, it is
not so easy to work out how to set up extensive listening.
The first problem is finding suitable materials. There are no exact equivalents of
graded readers in listening materials. Having said that, most textbooks for begin-
ning and intermediate learners include listening material, while it is also possible
to listen to the radio, and even find listening material on the radio, which is spo-
ken at a slower speed – e.g., the Voice of America broadcasts in Special English
(Renandya & Farrell, 2010). Nowadays, however, there are literally hundreds of
thousands of videos available on YouTube, most of which may be too difficult
for beginners or intermediate learners, but that still leaves tens of thousands of
videos which can be used. YouTube also has special channels where organisations
or individuals can upload videos, and it is possible to subscribe to these channels.
158 Alistair Wood
This makes available much specialised material, which may not be suitable for all
classes, but there is a lot of educational material around which can be used. Thus
channels such as BBC Earth or Discovery have a lot of material which is broadly
educational and can be used in the class, or similar websites can be used.
At higher levels, use can easily be made, for example, of Ted Talks, in which
excellent speakers give short talks to an audience. These talks can be on all sorts
of subjects and are not necessarily academic. Again, many will be too difficult for
intermediate learners or beginners, but there are so many, and they are so well
done, that it is easy to use them for listening practice. In the case of Ted Talks,
there are also relatively few visual elements since it is just the speaker talking to
the audience in most cases. This means that it is more truly just listening practice
since there is little visual help to the learner.
Other documentary-type material online will likely have a larger visual ele-
ment, but this can often be used as additional comprehension support and allow
intermediate learners to cope with language that would otherwise be above their
level. This is true obviously also of material on television, and film material should
not necessarily be discarded just because there is a visual as well as an aural com-
ponent. If the film is almost completely visual and can be understood just from
viewing, then of course it should not be used, but the precise balance between
visual and aural elements will depend on the learners’ levels and interests, as well
as the focus of the lesson.
It should not be forgotten that Internet radio now makes available listening
material from all over the world and with much better sound quality than is
traditionally available from, for example, the BBC World Service. Many such
traditional international broadcasters are now available online, and they can be
downloaded for use in extensive listening contexts. Aside from these, there are
thousands of Internet radio stations available, ranging from outlets run by one
individual to major international commercial organisations. However, the world-
wide reach of Internet radio and the corresponding availability of specialist mate-
rials means that all kinds of materials at all levels can be found, from the recondite
to the everyday.
Similar to this is the use of podcasts, which are also available on all kinds of
topics and have the advantage over Internet radio of being more focused on the
spoken word and less on music. Podcasts can be found on a huge array of sub-
jects, from sport to science to various hobbies, so learners can follow a podcast
that is in their area of interest. There are even podcasts available especially for
learners of English so that the problem of difficulty level is eased. Since such sites
are liable to change very quickly and sometimes have a commercial side, I do not
provide any specific links here, but they can easily be found via an online search.
One advantage of podcasts is that they can be listened to online on any personal
computer or laptop, or downloaded for listening to later, even on a smartphone.
Another possibility that should not be ignored is television. A lot of mate-
rial that might not be considered suitable for education can actually be used for
listening. Although much of reality TV is of very low quality from the point of
view of television, it does provide a lot of examples of people talking English
to each other. Keeping up with the Kardashians might not be high-class televi-
sion, but it is full of people talking to each other about everyday subjects and
repeating the same ideas, and therefore vocabulary and structures, seemingly ad
infinitum! Soaps are another example where the same topics are recycled and the
same speakers appear, so learners can become used to vocabulary and individual
ways of speaking.
If we turn from materials to how to use them, then there is a distinction here
between use in and outside of the classroom, as there is with extensive reading.
Some traditional teacher-centred techniques such as reading a story to a class or
dictation can only be done in class, while many other sources, such as television,
might more easily be done outside of class. However, a lot of sources, such as
podcasts, could be listened to either inside or outside of the class, and with a little
ingenuity they could be used in both situations; the determining factor would be
how you wanted to use the materials, how the course was constructed, and how
much work can be done inside or outside the classroom. Whether the listening
is done mostly in class or outside may be something that is largely outside your
control as a teacher in many cases, but it should not be a make-or-break decision
most of the time.
The kinds of activities that can be done with the materials suggested largely par-
allel those for extensive reading. Students can listen to the material once or more
than once, and there should be a fairly loose approach to monitoring. Extensive
listening, like reading, does not require close comprehension questions. As with
reading, as mentioned earlier, however, there should be some feedback from the
students on their listening. There are various ways this can be done:
• A diary of their listening, what they listened to online, on TV, or on radio,

with a commentary about what they liked, what they found difficult, what
they found interesting
• A critique of a TV series they are following with comments on interesting
characters
• A reaction report to a TV programme, podcast, online talk, or anything they
have listened to
• A comparison between different TED talks, or similar listening events online
• A discussion of their favourite or most hated character in a reality TV pro-
gramme or a soap – e.g., who they think should win a show like Big Brother.
The type of thing that is wanted should be clear. It is an overall impression to

show that they have indeed listened to the material and for you as a teacher to
gauge their response. This is a teaching programme not a testing programme,
and although it would be possible to gauge whether extensive listening improved
test scores (Gobel & Kano, 2014), this is not the focus of such activities. Over
time, it will become clear in intensive listening classes whether students’ listening
comprehension is improving or remaining static.
160 Alistair Wood
If we turn to extensive listening and reading, then there is an obvious addi-
tional problem involved in that we need to find listening material for which there
is also a written script available. In some cases, with commercially published lis-
tening materials, this is often the case. Where the listening material is available
but not the written text, transcription by the teacher is possible, and where writ-
ten material – e.g., a story – is available, the teacher may make an aural version by
reading it, either live to the class or by making a recording. Clearly, it would be
easier if we could find material, which is accessible both in aural and written form,
to save the teacher’s precious time if nothing else.
Either scripts or transcripts of television series are often available online. Since
television series are now commonly sold as DVD sets, it is possible to get hold of
both the script and the actual TV programme. With programmes currently run-
ning on TV, it is more difficult usually to get hold of the script. With students
simultaneously reading the script as the programme is playing on TV, it is clearly
impossible for them to both watch the television and read the script at the same
time. It is possible either to make this a more purely listening exercise so that they
just listen to the TV, or alternatively they first watch the programme and then
read the script.
Another alternative and a way of getting round this dilemma is of course to
watch television programmes or films which have subtitles. It is often possible
to get subtitles for TV programmes, even if the TV programme is in the same
language as the subtitles, for deaf viewers. Thus it is possible to get subtitles in
English for English television programmes. Similarly, many movies have subtitles
in English, even those films that are in English.
One unusual source for a listening text with written transcript that might not
immediately spring to mind is the availability on YouTube of songs with their lyr-
ics on the screen as they play. Although not something that could be used alone,
these might be a useful additional source and likely to be highly motivating to
learners if they can listen to their favourite groups or singers. Depending on the
song, this can even be used with beginners or lower intermediate learners.
As regards how the ‘extensive listening while reading’ materials should be pre-
sented, it is possible to either have the listening and reading materials accessed
simultaneously – i.e., the learner reads the text while listening to it – or alterna-
tively the reading can come after the listening. Since the listening is the focus
rather than the reading, it is preferable that the listening comes first rather than
the reading if the materials are not presented simultaneously. But mostly such
materials are presented simultaneously so that the learner is given support in
comprehending the material at the time they most need it: as they listen.
Extensive reading and listening is still rather in its infancy compared to the
other extensive approaches, but it is likely to grow in importance, and it is an
interesting development. Since it is relatively new, ways of tackling it are still
being developed, so there is still a lot of scope for development. Do not be afraid
to experiment and try out different ways of doing it, to find what suits your stu-
dents best. The best way is not what the book says but always what works best
for your students.
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11 Literature in an age
of distraction
Alan Maley
There can be no doubt that we live in an age of distraction. The impact of the
Internet offering access to unlimited information and entertainment (Postman,
1985); the ubiquity of handheld devices, which induce a form of universal com-
municative addiction (however vacuous); the availability of games, videos and
music; the advertising and peer-pressure to acquire goods in ever-increasing
quantities, and to discard them ever more quickly; the near-extinction of the
notion of silence as we are assailed by a barrage of music, sound and noise (van
Leeuwen, 1999) – all of these factors raise formidable problems for the concen-
tration and reflective modes of thought, which literature requires of its readers.
There is even some evidence to suggest that the structure of our brains is being
modified from exposure to the electronic envelope we are sealed in (Carr, 2010).
The survival of literature in the curriculum is also under threat from a con-
trol culture, which increasingly requires that everything be prescribed in detail
and tested for immediate results. As Eisner succinctly puts it, “Such an image of
education requires that schools be organised to prescribe, control, and predict
the consequences of their actions, that those consequences be immediate and
empirically manifest and that they be measurable” (Eisner, 1985, pp. 356–357).
When education is reduced to the level of ‘delivery’ (one of the current prevailing
metaphors), what chance does literature stand? And why should anyone bother
with it? What use is it anyway? I shall return to these issues in the course of this
chapter.
There are also a number of important differences in the current situation,
which will affect the way we approach the use and teaching of literature. What
are these new realities?
• As the demand for English as the language of opportunity continues to

increase, there will be more students, many of whom will never have been
exposed to literature before. This implies a democratic, inclusive, rather than
an elitist, exclusive teaching approach. We can no longer expect students to
come with a background in literary culture. And that may be no bad thing,
for it gives us opportunities to re-think the way we present literature in the
classroom.
Literature in an age of distraction 165
• As English itself spreads, both geographically and functionally, it will con-
tinue to change rapidly and become more varied. New varieties are coming
into being, and old ones are constantly evolving. This diversity has been
recognised for a number of years now and needs to be taken into consid-
eration. An exclusive focus on ‘standard’ English will no longer satisfy this
reality. Yet one sees very little evidence of this recognition in practice. Non-
canonical literature is one powerful way of acknowledging and celebrating
this variety.
• As English becomes a necessary condition for personal or professional suc-
cess, it will no longer be a sufficient condition to be able to use it averagely
well (Graddol, 2006). Increasingly, the premium will be on those who can
use it to a high degree of proficiency (Maley, 2009) and fuse it with ‘life
skills’ (Clandfield et al., 2011; Rogers, 2008). Literature surely has a role to
play, both as a counterweight to an excessively pragmatic view of language,
but also as a necessary enrichment of language learning at the highest levels.
• As the opportunities for international exchanges become more frequent,
there will be a corresponding need for social and cultural sensitivity. Social
and emotional intelligence will become more important (Goleman, 1996,
2006; Spendlove, 2008). As we shall see in this chapter, one of the functions
literature can usefully perform is to raise awareness of cross-cultural issues.
• As life in a consumerist world dominated by English becomes more demand-
ing and more pressurized, the value of reflection and critical intelligence will
be enhanced. (Fisher, 2001; Honore, 2004; Naish, 2008; Postman & Wein-
gartner, 1976; Unrau, 2008). There is an increasing awareness that language
learning is not simply a mechanical matter of acquiring the linguistic nuts
and bolts, separated off from the world we live in. Increasingly, language
learning is seen to include more broadly educational functions.
• As the demand for instant solutions and quick fixes in education becomes
more insistent, the value of a more deliberate mode of thinking will become
more urgent (Claxton, 1997). Literature is not usually about quick fixes, so
once again it has a clear role to play in offering an alternative mode of per-
ceiving the world.
• As English becomes more international, so will the movement to more local
independence become more pronounced. The tensions between English as
a medium for global communication and English as a badge of local cultural
identity will be intensified. Local literatures in English have expanded in a
spectacular fashion over the past 50 years or so. Literature in English is now
well established in the Indian subcontinent, in parts of Africa, in Malaysia, in
Singapore, in the Philippines, and in the Caribbean. That is hardly surpris-
ing given the colonial legacy of English in these territories. But we are now
beginning to see original literature in English emerging from the so-called
expanding circle (Kachru, 1992) – Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Viet-
nam, and so on. This provides a rich and varied resource for teaching, and an
opportunity to develop new perspectives on other cultures.
166 Alan Maley
Within the context of literature, I believe that such factors can to some extent
be accommodated through the way we select the texts to which students will be
exposed and by the manner in which we use these texts. The following sections
should, therefore, be read against the earlier list of realities to assess the value of
a new orientation toward the value of including literature in our programmes.
Why literature?
The justification for the place of literature in the language teaching curriculum
is commonly made with reference to three main models: the linguistic model,
the cultural model, and the personal-growth model (Carter & McRae, 1996;
Duff & Maley, 2007, pp. 5–6; Maley, 2001, p. 182). Literary texts certainly
offer a rich and varied linguistic resource and as such provide the kind of input
for phonological, lexical, syntactical and discoursal acquisition regarded by many
as essential for effective language learning, in contrast to the more restricted and
narrow exposure offered by many pedagogically driven texts. Contrary to what is
claimed by some critics, literary texts are not necessarily ‘too difficult.’ Literature
is such a vast resource that we can find texts at all levels of linguistic (and cogni-
tive) difficulty. They are also an ideal resource for the development of language
awareness: of language variation (historical, geographical, professional, sociologi-
cal), of social appropriacy and of ideological bias. Using texts like this can clearly
sharpen students’ critical thinking as well as their sensitivity to language.
In the international context of English use, where multicultural encounters are
increasingly frequent and significant, and where misunderstandings so easily arise,
the cultural potential offered by literature is also undeniable. This is not to claim
that literature can be used to ‘teach’ culture except in the most limited sense, but
it can illuminate the multi-faceted contexts, practices and beliefs our students
may be expected to encounter in their professional and personal lives outside the
classroom. This is particularly the case nowadays, when there is such a wealth of
literature in English available from across many cultures. In the words of Kramsch
(1993, pp. 233–259), it can create ‘third places’ from which students can criti-
cally examine both their own and other cultures. In the best of cases, this can lead
to increased awareness of ‘difference’ and greater tolerance of ‘the other.’
Literary texts have lost none of their power to promote personal growth, through
better understanding of human motivation and action, both one’s own and others’.
Students exposed to such texts are opened to better critical understanding of them-
selves and of others in this rapidly changing and often confusing and paradoxical
world. It is perhaps worth adding that literature has an enduring power to delight
and to console. One of the criteria for evaluating a text (or any other art form, for
that matter) is the extent to which we willingly return to it, relishing it anew each
time, and always finding something fresh in it. Those who learn to appreciate and
savour literature have the quality of their lives permanently enhanced. And in times
of pain and suffering, literature has the power to console. It also offers an escape
into an alternative world – which may be no bad thing sometimes!
Literature also has a unique potential to motivate and enthuse learners. The
awareness that they are accessing ‘real,’ meaningful texts does wonders for their
self-esteem. Literary texts are also highly salient and therefore memorable. Once
learners are hooked, they are hooked for good. But, in an age of distraction,
with so many competing attractions, just how can we hook them? The rest of
this chapter will make some modest suggestions, fully conscious that there is no
magic solution. All approaches are less than perfect, and no one approach will
ever satisfy everyone, but that should not inhibit us from making some practical
suggestions.
Approaches to teaching literature

Traditionally, there have been three major approaches to the use of literature in
language teaching programmes.
Literature as study
From earliest times, it has been traditional to focus on canonical texts as objects
of study: set books, line-by-line analysis and explication, dry as dust analysis. This
approach centres on teaching about literature. Typically, this involves a good deal
of transmission of received opinions about writers, their lives and times, their
influences, critical views of their work and so on. The whole emphasis is on ‘tell-
ing’ rather than on ‘discovery’ and on memorizing content and facts rather than
on critical reflection and inquiry.
The Literature as Study approach also tends to focus on canonical texts drawn
from inner circle countries (Kachru, 1992). Such texts are often far removed
from students’ lived experience and are often culturally inaccessible. Even when
more local texts are chosen, the transmission-dominated model of methodology
usually remains unchanged, and this is inappropriate in the current context where
there is a need for students to become active participants rather than passive
recipients. It is certainly unlikely to hook many students in an age of distraction!
Literature as resource
An alternative approach is to treat literary texts as a resource to draw on for the
teaching of language. The texts chosen tend to be drawn from a wider range and
are used either as samples of language use or as springboards into other language
learning activities. In a sense, the literature is secondary to the language learning
aims and objectives: it is a kind of vehicle for engaging with the language. This
might be characterised as teaching with literature.
The Literature as Resource approach may also prove unsatisfactory. It may
become nothing more than another way of introducing and practicing language
as part of a pre-determined syllabus. The specifically literary value of texts may
be overshadowed by the linguistic content and the methodological gymnastics
168 Alan Maley
played with it. There is a danger that this approach may be reduced to a box of
tricks, which students rapidly tire of.
Neither the Literature as Study, nor the Literature as Resource models there-
fore seem to offer the kind of access to literature needed in an age of distraction.
There is, however, a third possible approach, which may be called Literature as
Appropriation.
Literature as appropriation
In this approach, the aim is to encourage and enable students to make literature
their own, to appropriate it for their own learning purposes in ways they find
relevant to themselves and to the context in which they find themselves. Both of
the other approaches are to a greater or lesser degree external to the students,
what I have termed elsewhere literature from the outside in (Maley, 2010). In the
approach advocated here, I am suggesting ways of enabling students to engage
with the texts in such a way as to get inside the skin of the texts – to apprehend
them from the inside rather than simply to comprehend them from the outside –
what I have termed literature from the inside out. We may characterize this
approach as learning through literature, and it seems particularly appropriate in
current contexts where a personalised and critical appreciation of English is cru-
cial to students’ development as independent users of the language. How might
this be done? A number of possibilities suggest themselves: independent work
on Extensive Reading and Listening; Performance of texts; Creation of texts
by students themselves, both spoken and written; and a number of pedagogi-
cal techniques, including Project Work, where responsibility is passed largely to
the students. These types of work will be described in greater detail later in the
chapter. But first, a word about text selection may be appropriate, since the kind
of texts we offer our learners is a crucial factor in the likelihood that they will
engage learners.
Issues of text selection

To have any chance of engaging learners deeply with literary texts, we shall need
greatly to expand both the range of texts, which will form the basis of selection,
and the mechanisms used for making the selection greatly. This will serve at least
three purposes. It will better reflect the ‘balance of power’ between Englishes in
the increasingly globalised world. It will offer a window into the numerous dif-
fering realities in that world. It can also make access to literary texts less difficult
by offering students content with which they are relatively familiar. So how might
this all be achieved?
Extending the geographical range of texts

As already noted earlier, there has been a spectacular growth of literature in
English written by those for whom English is not a first language (Skinner,
1998). This abundance and sheer variety of new literatures, with their English
tongue rooted in non-English soil, offers unparalleled opportunities to extend
the boundaries of choice of texts for use in language teaching programmes with
an EIL (English as an International Language) orientation. Such texts greatly
expand the linguistic varieties learners are exposed to, the range of geographical
and cultural contexts they can learn about and the issues of living in a globalising
world they need to be aware of.
Extending the range of text types for inclusion

A second way of expanding the range of choice would be to include other gen-
res, not usually regarded as literature (with a capital L) (McRae, 1991). There is
an abundance of literature written primarily for children, for teenagers and for
fans of crime, mystery, romance and science fiction. We should also consider the
inclusion of certain kinds of graded readers. Many people would exclude graded
readers as exemplars of literature, but a persuasive case has been made for the rec-
ognition of a new genre: Language Learner Literature (Day & Bamford, 1998).
The argument is that, just as we can identify other genres that target particular
types of readers (children’s fiction, teen fiction, popular romance), the books
written for a language learner audience also constitute a specific genre. This is
particularly true of the latest generation of graded readers which, rather than
simplifying existing texts, create original works within the linguistic limitations of
their learner-readers. Some of these manage to create highly compelling fiction
within a limited vocabulary. They also deal with significant subject matter, which
can help develop world knowledge and critical thinking: civil war (Moses, 2004),
immigration (Hancock, 2005), Alzheimer’s disease (Maley, 2011), corruption
(McAndrew, 2006) and so on. Even simplified fiction would qualify for inclusion
if well done and oriented to non-inner circle worlds. The Oxford Bookworms
titles anthologising Asian and African fiction are a good example of this (Bassett,
2008; West, 2010).
There is also a strong case to be made for including literature written by teach-
ers and their students. The poems and stories produced by just one small group
of such teacher writers in Asia, is a case in point (http://flexiblelearning.auck
land.ac.nz/cw).
Opening up text selection to students

Typically, texts are chosen by syllabus authorities, by textbook writers and by
directors of studies and teachers. However well intentioned such choices may be,
it is rare for those who will use these texts to be consulted about them in advance.
One way of engaging with literature is to empower students by giving them a
say in decisions about text selection. Such choices would entail major shifts of
power and practice. For example, offering students the simple choice between
a class reader, which everyone would read at the same time, and a class library
from which each students would select a book, would imply massive change.
170 Alan Maley
Similarly, offering students small samples of books they might consider before
requiring them to choose one title is another form of student enfranchisement.
Asking groups of students to review different books or texts and then to make a
case for using them (or not) is another. For many more examples of extending
power of choice to students, see Bamford and Day (2004). In this way, students
acquire a stake in the texts they use, which can massively affect their motivation
and commitment.
Literature as appropriation
This approach to using literature in language programmes is informed by a num-
ber of key questions:
Why do we expect students to understand everything in a text?

The compulsion to understand every single word is destructive of enjoyment and
not necessary for overall comprehension. Students need to be educated out of
this debilitating habit. Perhaps teachers do too.
In deciding on poems, I wasn’t put off by some of the difficulties teachers are
often bothered by – unfamiliar words and difficult syntax, for example, and
allusions to unfamiliar things. . . I wasn’t put off, either, by passages in a poem
that I knew would remain obscure to them. To reject every poem the children
would not understand in all its detail would mean eliminating too many
good things . . . What matters for the present is not that the children admire
Blake and his achievement, but that each child be able to find a tiger of his
own (p li).
(Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? Kenneth Koch)
Why do we need comprehension questions to prove they have

understood a text?
There are many ways to demonstrate that a text has been understood, as we shall
see later in this chapter. And the very nature of comprehension questions, which all
too often focus on isolated particulars rather than on essentials, ensures that what
looks like comprehension is no more than a mechanical ability to retrieve details.
What is more important is to apprehend the sense and significance of the text.
Why do we need to tell rather than allow discovery?

By explaining everything, we pre-empt the students’ natural ability and inter-
est in finding things out for themselves. In line with Carl Rogers’s educational
philosophy, “true education involves a change in self-organization: learning is
maximised when learners have the freedom to select their own direction, formu-
late their own problems, discover the solution for themselves, and are responsible
for such choices” (Bao, 2014, p. 156).
Why do we kill texts by solemnising them?

We need constantly to remind ourselves that writers of literary texts did not
write them with a view to having them studied in educational syllabuses and
then examined with questions set by pedants, nor did they write them in the
expectation that they would become monuments of high culture. They wrote
because they had something interesting, amusing or compelling to say, or
because they needed the money! To treat literary texts as cultural icons is to
do them a serious disservice and to put them out of the reach of our learners
(Maley, 1989).
How can we engage students affectively and cognitively with

literary texts?
This is the nub of the issue. In the next section, I shall suggest five main ways
in which literature could be more effectively incorporated into language pro-
grammes. These are Familiarisation, Extensive Reading (and Listening), Per-
formance, Creative Writing and Techniques for getting inside the skin of texts.
I shall now briefly examine each of these in turn.
Familiarisation
It is important to de-mystify literature with the learners. There are many ways of
doing this, including the following:
1 Showing that literature is, in a sense, all around us. For example, giving
examples of shop signs, advertising slogans, newspaper headlines, book
titles, etc., all of which frequently use ambiguity, rhyme, rhythm, parallel-
ism and other literary devices to attract attention to themselves. This can
be done by routinely bringing in examples and briefly discussing them.
Here are a few examples: Lunatic Fringe (hairdressing saloon), You shop:
We drop (supermarket delivery service). This could also be made into a
project, where students produce a visual display of the examples they have
researched.
2 Setting up routines for making literature an everyday event. For example, the
teacher can start every class by reading or telling a short, engaging text – a
poem, a joke, a wisdom story, a mini-saga. This is done without any com-
mentary and is followed by no questions or activities. Students are only
required to listen (Tomlinson, 2014). Here is an example:
172 Alan Maley
A rich lady was having dinner in a restaurant. As she began to eat her soup,
she noticed a large fly in it. She called the waiter over and asked him, ‘Waiter!
What is this fly doing in my soup?’ The waiter bent down and looked at her
bowl of soup very carefully for a long time. Then he said, ‘Madame, I think it
is drowning.’
(This is not copyrighted material)
At the end of each class, the teacher makes available copies of the text for those
who want to read it again.
3 By reading aloud a complete extended text to students over a whole semes-
ter. This might only take up 15 minutes per lesson. But by the end of the
semester or year, the students will have listened to a whole novel, or a series
of short stories. Obviously, the text has to be carefully selected so as to be
of compelling interest and not too long or too complex, and it should lend
itself to being dramatized and serialised.
4 By bringing in book covers of recent books, including the back cover blurbs
to make a display. This can form part of a permanent book corner where
books too can be regularly displayed.
5 By choosing a poem for each week. The Poem of the Week can be read by
the teacher or by a student. The poems can be displayed on a special display
board or on the class website. At the end of each month, students vote for
their favourite poem of the month. When students are used to this idea, they
can be asked to bring in poems they have found and want to read. Here is an
example:
Time by Alan Maley
The terrible cascade of time-

The slow dripping of seconds,
Gathering into the rivulets of minutes,
Trickling into the streams of hours,
Flowing into the torrents of days,
Down into the rivers of weeks,
The flood of months,
And the great waterfall of wasted years.
6 By regularly giving out a text, prose or poem and asking students to choose
a sentence, a phrase or a word they particularly like. Here is an example:
Milmaq was a solitary person. He would spend hours in the forest, not
hunting, simply sitting still, watching, waiting for something to happen.
A spider would swing its thread across the canyon between two branches.
A woodpecker would drum at the trunk of a chestnut tree, its neck a blur
of speed. Above all, the trees themselves would speak to him. He would be
aware of them creaking and swaying in the wind. He could sense the sap
rising in them in the springtime; feel their sorrow at the approach of win-
ter. If he put his ear to the trunk of a tree, he could hear it growing, very
slowly; feel it moving towards its final, magnificent shape.
(The Man Who Talked to Trees, Alan Maley)
7 By making storytelling a regular feature of classes. There are few if any more
compelling resources than storytelling. If our aim is to hook our students
on literature, stories are an excellent way in. There are now some excellent
resources to help teachers use stories. (Heathfield, 2014; Wright, 2008)
The idea of all these activities (and many more could be devised) is simply to
make students comfortable with the idea of having literature around, as some-
thing non-threatening and pleasurable.
Extensive reading
There has been a growing interest in the potential of Extensive Reading (ER) to
promote language acquisition, especially of vocabulary, and collocation (Day &
Bamford, 1998; Goodman, 1996: Krashen, 2004; Maley, 2009; Smith, 2004;
Waring, 2000).
It is also obvious that, given the limited hours of instruction in most pro-
grammes, students will never be exposed to enough vocabulary, enough times, to
acquire the necessary quantum in classrooms alone (Waring, 2006). Out-of-class
learning is the only way, and one of the most convenient and proven ways of
doing so is through massive independent reading, entailing repeated encounters
with vocabulary in context.
However, as mentioned earlier, much of the material available for ER is literary
in nature, if we accept Day’s definition of Language Learner Literature. It gives
students a way of accessing novels and short stories in a non-threatening way. ER
does not only involve literary texts, of course, but they are among the most moti-
vating genres. Moreover, although we cannot hope to ‘teach’ the many varieties
of English which our students will encounter in the outside world, we can give
a certain limited exposure to them through the medium of literary texts drawn
from a variety of geographical sources (Bassett, 2008; West, 2010).
In a similar way, exposure to extensive listening texts can reinforce and extend
language acquisition. There is now a wide range of recorded fiction and poetry
174 Alan Maley
available in the form of talking books, CDs, DVDs and film. Most of the graded
readers’ series now come with an accompanying CD. One particularly rewarding
and motivating type of listening is to hear and watch authors reading from their
own work. This is especially valuable with poetry (see for example, Maley, 2008).
In this way, they can begin to tune in to the many authentic voices and accents of
living writers. In the absence of recordings, clear and sensitive reading aloud by
the teacher can be equally inspiring (Maley, 2009).
Performance
One of the most effective ways of getting inside the skin of a text is to perform it.
To do this well, the students have to have understood it and lived with it. There
are also clear benefits in memorisation (without tears), cooperation, self-esteem
and motivation. Performance can take a variety of forms. It may consist simply
of students performing short texts they have chosen and brought to class. The
more involvement they have in choosing what to perform, the more committed
they will be.
A more demanding and intensive type of performance is to ask students in
groups of about six to prepare an orchestrated performance of a text. In doing
so, they will need to consider parameters of volume, pace, pitch and rhythm, as
well as which lines will be spoken by one or more speakers (Maley,1999, 2000).
This is related to work in ‘Readers’ Theatre’ by Shirley Brice-Heath (1983) and
Courtney Cazden (1993) in the USA. The effects on retention and on motiva-
tion and self-esteem are remarkable. Students voluntarily spend long periods of
time working together, and alone, on texts so as to produce something they can
be proud of.
An even more demanding example is when students engage with the produc-
tion of a full-length play. Lutzker (2007) has investigated in depth the effects
of such a production on his students in Germany, in terms of their linguis-
tic and personal development, and reports strong evidence of growth in both
areas. If the plays for performance are well chosen, they can also lead to a
better understanding of social and personal issues in the real world. Lutzker
chose The Diary of Anne Frank, which led to some really deep reflection on the
part of his German students! Locally written texts may be chosen, but local-
ised versions of classics, including Shakespeare, can also be connected to local
realities (Kott, 1967). The teacher too should always be on hand to act as a
performer, giving a good model of reading stories and poems aloud to the class
(see “Familiarisation”).
Creative writing
The act of writing creatively has a number of well-documented positive effects
both on the learning of the language and on personal and social development
(for an example, see the website of the Asian Teacher-Writers’ Group: http://
flexiblelearning.auckland.ac.nz/cw; see also Maley, 2012). Taking the place of
the writer – in fact, becoming a writer – helps students develop greater sensi-
tivity to the ways the language functions, with particular benefits for vocabu-
lary, collocation, rhythm and syntactic variety. The gamelike activity of writing
creatively in the foreign language promotes willingness to take risks, to try out
new things in a blame-free environment, and in the process, it helps develop
awareness of the language, of the world and of oneself. At the same time,
the constraints which literary form places on the writer also acts as an impor-
tant kind of scaffolding support. Even more importantly, perhaps, the act of
creating original texts and ‘publishing’ them (whether on a notice board, a
website or as a leaflet), empowers the students and enhances their self-esteem
(Spendlove, 2008). They have in a sense appropriated the language – made it
their own.
Space does not allow for detailed examples here, but there are now many
resources available to teachers wishing to try out creative writing with their stu-
dents (Koch, 1990; Maley & Mukundan, 2012a, 2012b; Matthews, 1994; Spiro,
2004, 2006; Wright & Hill, 2009).
Techniques for getting inside the skin of the text

There are so many of these that it is not feasible to attempt a detailed catalogue.
Two examples must suffice:
1 Choose a short accessible text about the length of this one:

The first time we met, he smiled at me. The second time we met, we
laughed and joked together. The third time we met, we kissed and loved
each other. The fourth time we met, we argued about something silly. It
was not important. We did not meet again.
Students work in pairs. They take turns to read successive sentences in the fol-
lowing way: [S1] reads it very loud. [S2] whispers it. [S1] reads it very fast; S1
reads it very slowly. S1 reads in a happy voice. [S2] reads in a very sad voice, etc.
Finally, each student reads the whole in a normal way. The fact of having ‘made
it strange’ helps to familiarise them with it and to read it more effectively. It also
involves them in multiple repetitions of the text without the boredom we nor-
mally associate with repetition.
2 Take a longish poem. This poem has 24 lines. In groups, students have to use
lines from it to make an eight-line poem, which retains the essential meaning
of the original. To do this, students have to have understood the poem, and
they have to negotiate with group members until they can agree on their
eight-line poem. By the time they finish, they are thoroughly familiar with
the poem and will have processed a lot of language. Repetition without tears
again.
176 Alan Maley
The daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er dales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle in the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:-
The poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
The following titles are a good starting point: Lazar (1993), Maley (1993,
1995), Maley and Duff (1985), Maley and Moulding (1985), McRae and
Vethamani (1999), and Tomlinson (1986). Essentially, the activities offered in
these books encourage students to engage personally with texts in interesting and
challenging ways in order to uncover and discover them afresh.
Conclusions
I began this chapter by setting out the challenge which literature faces concern-
ing the many sources of distraction in the current context. I also listed the factors,
which characterise the new contexts in which English is being taught and used, all
of which impact on the way literature will need to be taught. I then argued that
literature might be perceived as more relevant if the way texts are chosen were to be
extended. I then discussed three possible approaches to the use of literature in lan-
guage programmes: teaching about, with and through literature, expressing a pref-
erence for the last of the three – literature as appropriation. I then proposed five
major types of activity: Familiarisation, Extensive Reading (and Listening), Per-
formance, Creative Writing and Techniques for Apprehending Texts from the Inside.
Throughout, I have had in mind the kinds of challenges students now face
with respect to English, learning and life. Among the most important of these are
• The need to survive the culture of speed and info-glut somehow, which
threatens to overwhelm them. This implies the need to restore control over
time and information, and to make available time for reflection, discrimina-
tion and criticism.
• The almost exclusive focus on the short-term utilitarian value of education,
with scant attention given to the long-term values of aesthetic appreciation.
This implies finding a place for texts and practices, which do help develop
aesthetic and affective appreciation (Jakobson, 1960).
• The all-too-frequent priority given to English at the expense of local lan-
guages and cultures. This implies the need to use English instead as a way of
validating the local rather than submerging it and restoring self-respect and
self-esteem to local languages and cultures.
• The gap between the model of English offered in the classroom and the
plurality of English uses outside it. This implies exposing students to many
of the varieties they will encounter, even if these cannot be taught explicitly.
I contend that literature can achieve some success in meeting these four chal-
lenges. Is this the answer to the challenge of living in an age of distraction? Of
course not. There are no easy options, and no ready-made solutions. Some peo-
ple will always regard literature as irrelevant; there will be a corresponding need
to make a case for it in contrast to the more fashionable, the more ‘modern,’ the
more technological, the more utilitarian approaches on offer. This entails con-
stantly reinventing the ways literature is deployed, so as to keep it fresh, interest-
ing and, thus, relevant. This seems to me to be an effort worth making.
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12 Expressing study abroad
experiences in second language
haiku writing
Theoretical and practical implications
for teaching haiku composition in Asian
EFL classrooms
Atsushi Iida
Constructing voice and expressing self in written form can be a challenging task
for second language (L2) learners, especially English as a foreign language (EFL)
students. This is partly because of a grammar-centered curriculum at the second-
ary level, which provides very few chances to express their thoughts or feelings in
the target language. The focus on error reduction and memorization of linguistic
forms leaves L2 learners at a disadvantage when they have to use English in real-
world situations. One of the principal issues in this context is that it restricts the
L2 learners from “learning around communicative contexts where students learn
to express their voice – the articulation of their personal needs, interests, and
ideas – in a social context that presumes an audience – the teachers, classmates,
and even the community at large” (Iida, 2010, p. 28). In order to learn to write
and communicate in the target language, however, it is necessary for the instruc-
tors to teach L2 learners how to discover and express their own unique perspec-
tives on the world.
Expressive writing has the potential to overcome this issue (Hanauer, 2010,
2011, 2012b; Iida, 2012), and poetry writing, especially, is viewed as a way for
L2 learners to construct, develop, and express their voices (Bishop, 1997; Elbow,
2007; Iida, 2010; Romano, 2004). According to Hanauer (2004), poetry is
defined as “a literary text that presents the experiences, thoughts and feelings of
the writer through a self-referential use of language that creates for the reader
and writer a new understanding of the experience, thought or feeling expressed
in the text” (p. 10). In this sense, poetry is the articulation of the writers’ voices
reflecting on their life experience and writing poems on personal life events is
a process of self-discovery (Hanauer, 2010). What has been known about the
study of expressive writing is that poetry is used as a form of literacy practice in
first language (L1) education (Bizzaro, 2004; Romano, 2000; Young, 2003); on
the other hand, there is scant reporting on empirical study of poetry writing in
L2 contexts (Hanauer, 2010; Paran, 2008). It is crucial, therefore, to investigate
whether poetry writing can be used as a means to explore L2 writers’ personal
Expressing study abroad experiences 181
experiences. The question is of interest both in relation to expressive abilities of
L2 writers and in relation to the personally significant events themselves.
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the way in which EFL students at a Japa-
nese university use haiku – a Japanese poem containing 17 syllables in a three-line
5–7–5 syllable pattern with the use of a seasonal reference1 and a cutting word2 –
in an L2 to express their personal histories. First, it reviews previous research on
expressive writing in L2 education. Second, it describes a case study of haiku
writing on study abroad experiences in the Japanese EFL classroom. The main
objective of the current study is to identify how EFL students understand and
express their study abroad experiences in haiku and clarify the role of expressive
writing in Asian EFL contexts. In doing so, this chapter intends to argue for the
use of poetry as literacy practice in the L2 composition classroom.
Personal history and expressive writing

in the L2 classroom
Expressive writing is the key pedagogical approach for the writers to construct and
develop their thoughts. Iida (2008) argues the necessity of expressive writing and
summarizes the potential contribution to L2 learning from two aspects. One per-
spective is to foster self-directed writers. Expressive pedagogy places students at
the heart of the learning process and develops the ability to take control over their
writing. The other is to develop their voices. Expressive pedagogy promotes their
intellectual and psychological development in the process of negotiating meaning
and constructing their voices in texts. Learner-centeredness, process-orientation,
and voice construction in the pedagogy allow for “a deeper understanding of the
connections between thought, words, and life” (Bishop, 1997, p. 17).
While expressive writing is still an unusual task for L2 writers (Chamcharatsri,
2013), Hanauer (2012b) has proposed a theoretical underpinning of teaching
L2 literacy – meaningful literacy – in English as a Second Language (ESL)/EFL
contexts. The concept of this literacy instruction is to decontextualize the tradi-
tional ESL/EFL pedagogy, which emphasizes the memorization of linguistic fea-
tures and translation into L1, and to humanize the classroom in the way students
reflect on their personal experiences, recreate each event through writing, and
express their emotions in texts. Meaningful literacy practice puts “the individual
learner and her/his personal experience, history and social contextualization at
the center of the learning experience” (Hanauer, 2012b, p. 4). The use of per-
sonal experiences enables L2 writers to negotiate and express their voices in the
target language and makes their learning more meaningful.
In addition to the theoretical rationale of expressive writing in the L2 composi-
tion classroom, a crucial issue in the field of applied linguistics is to investigate
the use of expressive forms of writing as research (Hanauer, 2010, 2012a). Vari-
ous types of literary writing have been used as a research method in L2 contexts:
autobiography (Fujieda, 2010; Pavlenko, 2001, 2007), autoethnography (Lapi-
dus, Kaveh, & Hirano, 2013), poetry (Hanauer, 2010, 2012b), poetic-narrative
182 Atsushi Iida
autobiography (Park, 2013), and personal narratives (Chamcharatsri, 2013).
Regardless of the difference in genres, the purpose of these studies is to inves-
tigate the writer’s, teacher’s, and/or researcher’s personal life histories through
L2 expressive writing. What has been known so far concerning the research on
literary writing and L2 writers is that expressive writing allows for a better under-
standing of experiences, emotions, and identities of the individual during lan-
guage and cultural learning.
Poetry writing, a form of meaningful literacy practice, has been viewed as a
means to understand the writer’s personal experience (Hanauer, 2010, 2011).
Taking this theoretical position, Hanauer (2010) conducted two case studies on
poetry writing and ESL writers. One study aimed to investigate poetic inquiry
in an L2 with the analysis of a book of poetry created by a Japanese ESL stu-
dent. The book entitled Family, consisting of ten poems, involved her parents’
divorce when she was 17. The results of content analysis of each poem illustrated
her different subject position, which is a history of change in which she moved
from shock and confusion at her parents’ divorce to a position of accepting the
reality, a more mature understanding of gender roles, and the ability to live by
herself. This study revealed that the collection of poems consisted not of her
simple descriptions of each moment, but of “the history of developing subject
positions designed to explore, understand and negotiate different ways of being
in the world” (p. 73).
The other case study conducted by Hanauer (2010) reported on the explora-
tion of ESL students’ study abroad experiences through poetry writing. A major
finding in this study was that 78 poems, which described a significant moment of
studying abroad defined by each writer, were categorized into five different expe-
riences: self-positioning and the emotional experience of language, emotional
responses to academic classroom experiences, experiencing American students,
negotiating American culture, and homesickness. It also revealed that each poem
involved ESL writers’ quite deep emotional situations in which their study abroad
experiences tended to be more negative than positive. The two studies indicated
methodological guidelines for using poetry as a way to investigate and under-
stand the writers’ personal histories including their own voices and emotions in
life experiences.
Park (2013) also conducted poetic inquiry into her personal identity. She
used autobiographic-poetic waves through which she blended autobiographic and
poetic discourse as a research method to look at four significant stages of her life:
the emergence of hyphenated identities, the legitimization of hyphenated identi-
ties, the epistemological and ontological revolution, and the perception of Mama
PhDs. The results of qualitative analysis of her poems and autobiographies illus-
trated her complicated, multiple identities, which consisted of a Korean-American
woman, L2 writer, English teacher, teacher-scholar, and Mama PhD. In this
study, she pointed out the value of autobiographic-poetic inquiry as a way to rep-
resent “snapshots of her personal, academic and professional life history” (p. 15).
In this way, previous studies report on the use of poetry as autobiographi-
cal research and suggest the potential to extend our understandings of the
relationship between L2 writers and their personal histories. Following this
theoretical and methodological framework, the current study aims to use
haiku as a research method and to identify the way in which EFL college
students at a Japanese university focus and express their personal histories in
haiku writing. Specifically, the following question will be addressed: In what
ways do EFL students understand and express their study abroad experiences
in haiku?
Method
In order to investigate the question, the task of haiku writing was incorporated
into a regular English writing course during a six-week period. In the current
study, each participant created a book of haiku as one of the course requirements.
The methodology chosen was a qualitative research design in which the use of
poetry was as an autobiographical research method.
Participants
Twenty English major students registered in a first-year college writing course at
a four-year Japanese private university. They were assigned in this class as a result
of taking the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) as a
placement test. Their proficiency levels ranged from 400 to 495 points on the
TOEIC, which is approximately equivalent to 435 to 470 points on the TOEFL
(Test of English as a Foreign Language) paper-based test. All participants had
experience reading and writing haiku in Japanese at the primary and/or second-
ary level in Japanese schools.
Data collection procedures

The investigator implemented the instruction of reading and writing English
haiku in this context. The goal of this haiku project was for each participant to
create a book of haiku. A six-week teaching plan was designed in order for the
participants to achieve this goal. This project was consisted of three stages. The
first stage was to review the concept of haiku. The participants read both tradi-
tional Japanese and English haiku to discuss and review the concept of this poetic
genre. Writing haiku was the next stage in this project. In this stage, the class
format consisted of workshops and a series of exercises to help the participants
to express their voices. The workshops required them to reflect on their experi-
ences, choose 15 unforgettable moments in their lives, free write each moment,
write one haiku per moment, revise them based on feedback from the investiga-
tor and classmates, and complete 15 haikus. The last stage involved the creation
of a book of haiku. In order to publish it, the participants chose 10 haiku out
of 15 depending on their themes. The booklet consisted of a table of contents,
an introduction, and 10 haikus. In this way, the data collected were 20 books of
poetry including 200 haikus.
184 Atsushi Iida
Data analysis
Data were analyzed by Hanauer’s (2010) methodological framework to investi-
gate each writer’s subject position in poetry. Since the participants were free to
choose any topic to write haikus, not all poems collected were related to study
abroad experiences. Data analysis was needed to begin with the selection of the
thematic haiku.
The analysis was to collect haikus that came under the heading of study abroad
experiences. In order to choose the thematic poems, decisions were made to
define study abroad experiences according to the title and a description of each
poem in the book of haiku. As a result, four haikus written by four participants3
were chosen in the current analysis.
The second stage of analysis involved literary, linguistic, and content analysis of
each haiku while recreating the writer’s subject position expressed in the actual
descriptions of the poem (Hanauer, 2010). Each haiku was carefully observed
from the aspect of his/her specific perspectives, emotional contents, and under-
standing of the experience.
Findings
A Japanese female student, Kyoko Matsuyama, wrote a haiku entitled “Study
Abroad in America.” She participated in a homestay program in Kansas when she
was a high school freshman. In this haiku, she described her feelings as a reflec-
tion on her first visit to the United States.
Study abroad in America

Very cold winter day
I saw many Kansas’s view:
Want to go there again
This haiku expresses her emotion in visiting Kansas. The haiku starts with the
statement, “Very cold winter day” to describe the context of the memory (e.g.,
when she visited Kansas or what the weather was like there). The second line
addresses her experience in Kansas. She might have looked at the view of Kansas
City from the car window, or she might have walked around the town and saw
a different scene there. The last line, “want to go back again,” reflects her direct
response to this particular experience. This inner voice seems to be constructed
from her current subject position, but it is true that her experience in Kansas was
satisfactory, and that is why she wished to go back there. The use of “want to” in
the last line clearly represents her desire to be there again.
The second haiku entitled, “Studying Abroad” was written by another Japa-
nese female student, Shiho Kondo. She wrote the poem to reflect on the days she
spent in Vancouver when she was 14. It represents her emotion when she took
part in a homestay program there.
Studying abroad
Fantastic summer
Made friends with Canadian:
My heart filled with joy
This haiku starts with the statement, “fantastic summer,” which explains the situ-
ation in which the poet visited Canada in summer. At the same time, it makes
readers imagine that the writer had an extraordinarily good time there. The sec-
ond line addresses what made her feel fantastic. She made new Canadian friends
during her stay in Canada. Her emotions can be seen from the last line, “my
heart filled with joy,” which represents her excitement and satisfaction with the
experience of having made Canadian friends in ESL. Communicating and mak-
ing foreign friends in the target language seemed to be a challenging task for
her, but her emotion might have developed from a successful moment of making
friends. This haiku clearly reflects her positive emotion during the study abroad
experience.
A Brazilian student wrote the next haiku. Carlos Suzuki moved to Japan
when he was six years old. He commuted to the primary and secondary school
in Japan. He wrote a haiku, “Football Game with a Brazilian Team” to express
his inner voice concerning playing a soccer game with Japanese and Brazilian
friends.
Football game with a Brazilian team

Using two languages:
Japanese to make game plan
Portuguese, grumble
This poem describes the poet’s language use, Portuguese as his first language
and Japanese as his L2 in playing soccer. The first line, “using two languages,”
addresses his possibility to manage two languages and different use of his L1 and
L2. The next two lines clearly explain his different purposes of using the two
languages. He uses Japanese for game making, which reflects his feelings that
he does not want the Brazilian team to understand his strategy in the game. On
the other hand, he uses his first language, Portuguese, to complain about the
play in the game. He might not want to use Japanese to grumble to keep good
harmony with his Japanese teammates, or since Portuguese is his L1, he might
subconsciously complain in the language. However, it turns out that his strategic
use of the two languages, especially his intentional use of Japanese language,
refers to the representation of his desire to win the game as a member of the
Japanese team.
The next poem, “First Day of School in Japan,” was written by Kyine Nanda,
an 18-year-old Myanmarese male student.
186 Atsushi Iida
First day of school in Japan
Nobody knows me
But, drawing their attention:
“Can I make friends here?”
He moved from Myanmar to Japan at the age of 15. This haiku clearly signifies a
meaningful moment of his new school life in Japan. It captures the scene in which
the writer stands in front of the classroom, and his homeroom teacher introduces
him to the class on the first day in his junior high school. The phrase, “Nobody
knows me,” in the first line infers that he is not physically alone but feels lonely in
class. His loneliness is also seen from the next line, “drawing their attention,” and
as a new student, he just looks around the classroom while his classmates stare at
him. In this situation, the writer must wonder if he can “make friends.” His feel-
ing at that moment was the nervousness and anxiety rather than the expectation
or hope for his new school life.
The four haikus express each of the writers’ emotional responses to their own
significant moment during their study abroad experiences. The writer’s emotions
were directly expressed in both Keiko and Shiho’s haikus. The poems show their
positive experiences or good memories in English-speaking countries. On the
other hand, no emotional word was used in the poems written by Carlos and
Kyine. Carlos focused on his language use in playing soccer and expressed his
thought: strategic use of his L1 and L2 in the game. Kyine also captured a spe-
cific moment in the classroom on the first day of Japanese school to express his
worry in trying to adjust himself to a new social and cultural environment. Thus,
overall, each of the haikus represents each writer’s states of mind in his or her
personally significant life event.
Discussion
Following Hanauer’s (2010) theoretical and methodological framework for the
usage of poetry in the L2 classroom, the goal of the current study was to iden-
tify how EFL students express and understand their study abroad experiences in
haiku.
As shown in the haiku, each of the participants expresses their experiences of
studying abroad. Each haiku captures the writer’s own significant moments of
joining some activities (e.g., looking at the view of a city, making friends, playing
football, greeting to new classmates) in a foreign country and represents his or
her thoughts, feelings, and emotions as their reflections on those experiences.
Linguistic choices including the use of emotional words, seasonal references, and
punctuation marks such as colons, semicolons, or question marks allow for the
articulation of the writer’s emotional states. Every single word in the poetry has
a special meaning to construct and express the poet’s thought that is produced
as a result of a reflective and linguistic negotiation of a specific moment, which
is significant to the writer. In this way, the writer’s emotional concerns were
represented in the texts as the manifestation of the writer’s voices reflecting inter-
nal and external world of the individual.
The pattern of expressing the writer’s thought varies depending on the partici-
pants. The Japanese female, Kyoko, used a phrase “want to” to show her desire
to be back to Kansas City someday. Another Japanese female student, Shiho,
used some positive phrases such as “fantastic” and “filled with joy” to represent
her satisfaction with the experience of making friends in Canada. The Brazilian
student, Carlos, wrote haiku by describing his language use in the football game
to express his emotion. Regardless of whether the participants use explicit words
to describe emotions (e.g., happy, love, scary, embarrassed) in the texts, their emo-
tional contents were successfully presented in haikus. This finding extends our
understanding of haiku writing and L2 writers. What we have known so far is that
there was statistical evidence of a high frequency use of emotional words such
as “happy” or “hot” in English haiku and of the writer’s voice appearing more
directly in English haiku than Japanese traditional haiku (Iida, 2012a). However,
the results of the qualitative analysis of the haikus in the current study show that
while explicit words to describe emotions are used in poetry, the writer’s voice is
not necessarily presented directly in the texts. This means that a poem describes
a particular scene in the writer’s life story and leaves space for readers to interpret
the content including the poet’s emotional states. This feature can be seen in
Japanese traditional haiku: Japanese haiku consists of the description of a particu-
lar moment and the writers must insert spontaneous feelings in the texts through
which they must first focus on and capture the moment immediately observed
by the poets so as to share it with their readers (Higginson, 1985; Iida, 2012a).
Therefore, no emotional word appeared in the texts. In this sense, similar to the
characteristics of Japanese haiku, English haiku is based on the writer’s thoughts,
which develop with surface-level scenery and deep-level psychological descrip-
tions (Minagawa, 2007; Uesaka & Koushima, 2009).
Pedagogical implications: teaching haiku writing

in Asian EFL contexts
The current study exemplifies the ability of EFL learners to express and understand
personal events through L2 expressive writing. This finding provides implications
for teaching poetry writing as a way to humanize the L2 composition classroom.
As discussed earlier, one of the challenges of teaching English in EFL contexts is
to make the English class dynamic, communicative, and alive by deconstructing
the traditional language classroom. From theoretical and pedagogical perspec-
tives, poetry writing, as a form of “meaningful literacy” (Hanauer, 2012b), can
overcome this issue. As shown in each haiku, poetry writing can enable L2 learn-
ers to be at the center of the learning process, to explore significant memories
in their lives, and to work closely with their emotional contents in the moments.
The current study has focused on the study abroad experiences as a theme for
haiku writing, but EFL writing teachers can have students choose and write any
of their personal life events, which are defined as significant by each writer. The
188 Atsushi Iida
fact is that 200 haikus initially collected for this study included EFL college stu-
dents’ memories of high school life (e.g., entrance ceremony, commencement, or
club activities), family trips, and first-time experiences in their lives (e.g., first time
to play the guitar; first time to study English). Each of the students may explore
and choose different memories for haiku writing, but the usage of their personal
experience can motivate them to use the English and be students more engaged
in L2 literacy practice.
From practical viewpoints, it is meaningful for EFL writing teachers to teach
the process of haiku composing in the classroom. In general, poetry writing is
an unfamiliar task for EFL writers, and they may find difficulty in working on
this literacy practice. In order to make this language activity successful, teach-
ing a step-by-step procedure is more important than just having them start to
compose haiku. Following Hanauer’s (2010) practical approach to teaching L2
poetry writing, this composing haiku exercise starts with making a list of sig-
nificant moments in life. EFL students write down significant and unforgettable
life experiences in the notebook. The next activity is to explore and free write
each moment. This is regarded as a pre-writing activity for composing haiku,
and students are expected to capture the sensory and emotional details of each
moment. For instance, EFL writing teachers can ask the following questions in
order for the students to describe the memory: Who are you with? What are you
doing? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you taste?
What do you feel about? A series of these questions help EFL students to collect
materials for their haiku.
Once completing the free writing of significant memories, EFL students choose
one memory and start to compose haiku. EFL writing teachers may have students
underline some key words in the description of the free writing and use them in
their haiku. Of particular importance of teaching haiku composition at this stage
is to have students focus on their own emotional responses to the event and
consider what they really want to express in the poem. In composing haiku, one
of the challenging tasks for students is to adjust the 5–7–5 syllable pattern (Iida,
2012b). EFL writing teachers can provide some tips for this issue. For example,
students can make adjustments by adding or deleting the article (e.g., a, an, the),
using synonyms (e.g., thought, viewpoint, i-de-a) for a content word, or changing
verb forms to gerunds or infinitives.
EFL teachers can also incorporate a peer-review activity into the lesson. A peer
response activity for reviewing L2 poetry is useful for students in terms of devel-
oping the sense of voice in L2 writing while putting an emphasis on writer-reader
interaction. However, EFL writing teachers need to provide students with explicit
instruction and guide them to engage actively in the peer review activity (Iida,
2014). So it is important to for the teachers to train students to provide their
classmates with constructive feedback, which is characterized as useful comments
for revising poems. Based on Iida’s (2014) approach, EFL writing teachers can
pose some questions from the aspect of structure and content of the poem, and
assign students to prepare their own answers in the peer-review activity: How
many syllables are used in this haiku? If the haiku does not consist of the 5–7–5
syllable pattern, what advice would you give to the writer for the syllable adjust-
ment? What is the theme of the haiku? What emotion does this poet try to express in
the poem? What is the story behind the poem? In order to make this activity more
meaningful, EFL writing teachers encourage a pair of students to discuss their
poems together and have them understand how the reader interprets his or her
voice. It is also necessary for the teachers to have them clarify what to do for the
revision to express and communicate their voice more accurately.
In this way, the task of composing haiku makes L2 learning more personal
and meaningful. It also allows EFL students to engage more in literacy practice
in the target language by developing awareness of the relationship among the
text, meaning, and contexts surrounding them. Poetry as expressive writing has
the potential not only of building the foundation for constructing and develop-
ing the writers’ voices (Iida, 2012) but also of enabling them to understand
their personal histories in the process of language learning (Chamcharatsri, 2013;
Hanauer, 2004, 2010; Park, 2013).
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter was to identify the way in which EFL students used haiku
to focus on and express their personal histories. The results of the current study
illustrated the abilities of EFL students to express personal events in L2 poetry
writing. This study also revealed that haiku writing on lived experiences consisted
of both the description of each moment and the depiction of the writer’s emo-
tional states, and that the voice is articulated as a result of his or her reflective and
linguistic negotiations of personal experiences.
L2 poetry writing is still an unusual task in Asian EFL contexts, but it opens
a new possibility for L2 pedagogy in Asian English language classrooms. As dis-
cussed in this chapter, poetry writing as a form of meaningful literacy practice can
transform the language classrooms into sites not only for developing L2 linguistic
knowledge but also for exploring and reflecting on EFL students’ personally sig-
nificant life experiences. In this context, the students will be able to understand
themselves better during the process of poetry writing in the target language.
Notes
1 A seasonal reference is not always shown in English haiku.
2 A cutting word which can be seen either as an actual word or an exclamation
mark, including a colon or semicolon, has a specific rhetorical function: it is to
divide one haiku into two parts.
3 All the names shown in each haiku are pseudonyms.
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13 Exploring ICT tools in
English language learning
Language, technology, and the
globalized classroom
Paolo Nino Valdez, Neslie Carol C. Tan,
and Lindsey Ng-Tan
Since technology has revolutionized our ways of thinking and communicating

with each other, computer-mediated communication (CMC) and information
communication technologies (ICTs) have likewise changed the landscape of edu-
cation, becoming an essential part of twenty-first century pedagogy and literacy
practices (Reid, 2011). The United Nations (2003) recognizes the active partici-
pation of youth in the new developments in ICT: “Youth are at the forefront of
the information revolution,” and they are capable of using these in varied inno-
vative ways. Thus new forms of socialization overtake and challenge traditional
ones within the family or in the school context (pp. 328–329).
Prensky (2001) observes that students today have radically changed from
the students in the past. In fact, he asserts, “Today’s students are no longer
the people our education system was designed to teach” (p. 1). He refers to
these “new” students as ‘Digital Natives’ since they grew up immersed in new
technology, and are thus “ ‘native speakers’ of the digital language of com-
puters, video games, and the Internet” (p. 1). Their patterns of thinking and
processing of information are fundamentally different from their predecessors,
the ‘Digital Immigrants,’ who were not born into the digital world, but have
adopted new technology later on in their lives (p. 2). Digital Natives are used
to immediacy and connectivity, and have low tolerance for ‘slow’ step-by-step
lectures or ‘tell-test’ instruction/assessment methods. Prensky (2001) further
describes them thusly:
Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to par-
allel process and multi-task. They prefer graphics before their text rather than
the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best
when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.
They prefer games to “serious” work.
(p. 2)
In his book Grown Up Digital, Tapscott (2009) calls this group the ‘net gen-
eration’ and further explains the eight norms that characterize their experi-
ence: (1) freedom – they value flexibility and mobility in doing their work; (2)
Exploring ICT tools in English 193
customization – they tailor-fit technology to their personal needs and preferences;
(3) scrutiny – they use digital technology to carefully distinguish fact from fiction
given the amount of unreliable information (spam, scams, phishers, hoaxes, etc.)
online nowadays; (4) integrity – they tend to follow through with concrete action
what they have discovered through their scrutiny (e.g. not supporting companies
that are found to mislead consumers with false advertising); (5) collaboration –
they thrive in collective digital projects where their personal opinions matter and
they create connections with wider communities; (6) entertainment – they value
amusement in their work and in their digital tools since they tend to be bored
easily; (7) speed – there is a sense of urgency in their performance of tasks, and
they are used to instant responses; and (8) innovation – they are immersed in a
“culture of invention” and thus expect continuous novel and original ideas and
tools (p. 95).
With these new norms and expectations from the Digital Natives/Net Geners,
Prensky (2001) strongly advocates digital immigrant educators to adjust to the
changing learning needs and styles of their digital native students: “We need to
invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students
to guide us” (p. 6; emphasis in the original). He proposes a radical reconsideration
of both methodology and content. The former requires speed/urgency, more in
parallel, and with more random access means of teaching, while the latter involves
tackling both ‘legacy’ (traditional curriculum) and ‘future’ (technological mat-
ters) content.
This chapter aims to examine the context of use of social networking in a
writing class in the Philippines. The chapter is divided into three sections. The
first section presents the current thinking on ICT in ELT. The second section
explores the potential of social networking in the ELT classroom considering the
communities of practice framework, and the third section presents a sample case
study, which contextualizes these concepts
Current thinking on ICT in ELT

With several innovations in technology, ELT practitioners have explored different
tools to be used in the classroom.
The blog is the current inclination of Computer Assisted Language Learn-
ing (CALL) in reading into writing (Bakar, 2009; de Izquierdo & Reyes, 2009;
Hardwood, 2009; Pinkman, 2005). Feedback is promoted, reading and writing
are represented in blogging; moreover, informal language reading is offered in
blogging, which gives comfort to the student to use the language (Bakar, 2009;
de Izquierdo & Reyes, 2009).
Honing of the students’ grammar editing skills is supported in blogging (Har-
wood, 2010), and this kind of CALL can encourage learner independence (Pink-
man, 2005). Other than blogging, social networking sites (SNS) can be used in
language learning and teaching in the aspect of reading into writing. For instance,
the study of Valdez (2010) shows a case study on the usage of SNS as a platform
to showcase output in a reading and writing class in a form of e-portfolio.
194 Paolo Nino Valdez et al.
CALL is also widely used in developing writing skills, specifically in the prepon-
derance of corpora. First, the corpus-assisted creative writing is explored in the
study of Kennedy and Miceli (2010). Second, Yoon (2008) discusses the effects
of corpus technology in the development of students’ competency as second lan-
guage (L2) writers; this includes the modification in students’ writing process
with the usage of a corpus. Third, the study of Park and Kinginger (2010) elabo-
rates the integration of digital video and networked linguistic corpora in students’
writing and thinking process. On the other hand, synchronous online interaction
is used in a Taiwanese undergraduate EFL writing class (Liang, 2010), while
asynchronous text-stimulated forum discussion was explored as a writing assess-
ment (Kol & Schcolnik, 2008).
E-learning is also one form of CALL. Effects of e-learning on overseas student
awareness of culture and interactive learning environment to develop English
academic writing are studied by Xing, Wang, and Spencer (2008). As regards to
collaborative writing among L2 learners, an academic web-based project is inves-
tigated through the lens of honing a collaborative writing (Kessler, Bikowski, &
Boggs, 2012). In addition, the use of social technologies, such as wikis and chats,
for the development of students’ writing skills is a different treatment in collabo-
rative writing (Elola & Oskoz, 2010).
Honing listening skills is considered as the most difficult among the macro-
skills. Accordingly, technology plays a significant role in the use of authentic
materials for listening skills (Leloup & Ponterio, 2007a). The following are stud-
ies that discuss the usage of technology in listening skills. First, the impact of task-
based listening skills through CALL on Iranians’ learners is discussed in the study
of Nobar and Ahangari (2012). Second, video-based methodologies are effective
not only in the development of listening skills (Grgurovic & Hegelheimer, 2007)
but also in speaking skills (Shrosbee, 2008), while captioned videos are effective
for foreign language listening activity, as compared with non-captioned videos
(Winke, Gass, & Sydorenko, 2010. Videos are also used in listening comprehen-
sion (Verdugo & Belmonte, 2007) and in listening assessment (Wagner, 2007).
Not only in listening does computer technology also have a significant role in
honing speaking skills (Godwin-Jones, 2009). For instance, computer-based pro-
nunciation can not only assess the correctness of stress patterns of the language
learners but also develop stress patterns in words, phrases, and sentences (Abu-
Seileek, 2007). Furthermore, podcasts are another tool that could be used in
developing pronunciation skills (Ducate & Lomicka, 2009). Tanner and Landon
(2009) investigated a self-directed, computer-assisted technique in oral readings,
which hones students’ production of pausing, word stress, and intonation. Com-
parison was done among AudCMC (audio group), VidCMC (video group), and
FTF group (face-to-face) to explore the task-based, synchronous oral CMC (Yan-
guas, 2010). Collaborative dialogue through learners’ interaction in self-access
computer activities is investigated in the study of (McDonough & Sunitham,
2009). Moreover, a DVD player and a satellite are used to study the effect of
autonomous CALL in speaking abilities (Younsei, 2012). While usage of English
Pronunciation Perceptual Training Program software shows an effective result in
training pronunciation (Liao, 2010).
Social networking and communities of practice

Dudeney, Hockly, and Pegrum (2013) have also mapped out the digital litera-
cies that educators must help develop in their twenty-first century learners. They
explain that digital literacies refer to the combined media literacy skills and digital
competencies that allow us to effectively use technologies in meaningful social
contexts. They further classified the literacies into four main subgroups: those
focusing on language (print and texting literacies), on information (search and
information literacies), on connections (personal, participatory, and intercultural
literacies), and on (re)design (remix literacy). This complex mix of skills is recog-
nized as fundamental skills that will prepare today’s learners for life beyond the
classroom.
In their pilot study of ICT projects of English student teachers, Allen and
Richardson (2012) noticed that connection-based literacy, which involves social
media, is still quite underexplored compared to other areas of digital literacy
(i.e., language-based literacy, information-based literacy, and (re-) design-based
literacy) proposed by Hockly (2012). They surmised that this lack is due to the
general impression that social media sites are used more for recreational pur-
poses – “as part of their leisure identities rather than their professional practice
as language teachers” (p. 9). They thus recommend that teacher training ICT
courses “strive to emphasize the connecting possibilities afforded by Facebook
and Twitter while counteracting their potentially distractive influence in the class-
room” (p. 9).
Noting that collaboration is a key norm among the Net Geners, Tapscott
(2009) encourages educators to take heed: they must adjust their one-size-fits-all
pedagogy, which isolates the student in his learning process, and transform it into
a more collaborative and customized model that allows student-centered, multi-
way flow of information and learning.
Researchers (Blattner & Fiori, 2009; English & Duncan-Howell, 2008; Massi,
Patrón, Verdú, & Scilipoti, 2012; Reid, 2011) cite that some of the benefits
of incorporating Facebook within the English language classroom are stronger
learner motivation, increased sense of belonging with a group, improved use of
the language in authentic interaction, and developed sociopragmatic competence
(in terms of language awareness, participation, and language use in context/
specific situations).
Massi et al. (2012) in particular emphasizes how Facebook can empower learn-
ers by allowing them to assume more active roles in their learning process, thus
making them open up and construct their own identities without the usual con-
straints present in traditional methods. Facebook is thereby considered a ‘safe plat-
form’ for sharing both academic and non-academic ideas that facilitate learning
and strengthen relationships among peers and even with their teachers (p. 67).
The speed by which feedback is relayed also helps learners in their learning pro-
gress as they receive instant and regular responses and guidance from both their
teachers and their peers.
Massi et al. (2012) conclude that Facebook adds “another dimension to the
traditional ELT experience by contributing to an interactive space that promotes
the development of awareness-raising and peer group collaboration” (Reid,
2011, p. 68). Blattner and Fiori (2009) encourage educators to capitalize on the
tools such as Facebook that are already part of their students’ routines.
What is interesting in a globalized classroom that incorporates ICT in practice
is there is an extension of the notion of communities of practice. As Lave and
Wenger (1991, p. 98) emphasize, a community of practice is a “set of relations
among persons, activity and world over time and in relation with other tangential
and overlapping communities of practice.” In this regard, since social network-
ing provides a venue for different learners to be part of different communities of
practice, the extent of their participation has consequences not only in terms of
their language learning but also their socialization skills.
Sample case
This case study was carried out in a private tuition tertiary institution in the
Philippines, which is one of the leading research universities in the Philippines.
We involved students of English taking an Academic Reading and Writing class
in the school year 2012–2013. The class consists of 21 first-year college students
majoring in biology; however, only 19 students participated because the other
two students failed to comply with the requirements of the course.
The class met twice a week for their class, which is a foundational course
that equips first-year college students with the necessary academic writing skills
needed to become multiliterate and autonomous learners. The course has two
major learning outcome outputs: (1) extended-definition essay and (2) argumen-
tative essay/problem-solution essay (either of the two). In the case of this specific
class, their learning outputs are the extended definition of an argumentative essay.
Aside from the two major learning outcomes, by the last two weeks of the course,
the students made an e-portfolio through the usage of the Facebook (henceforth,
FB) note feature.
The class made an FB group as part of the course requirement and started with
the extended-definition essay. The class followed the academic writing process:
pre-writing, researching for topics, outlining, writing the thesis statement, draft-
ing, revising, final editing, and proofreading for six weeks. After the final revi-
sion, the students submitted their final extended-definition essay by posting it
to the note feature of FB on their respective accounts. The students then tagged
their essay to the main class account (which was created by the teacher) for the
checking process. The students were encouraged to solicit comments (at least five
comments consisting of positive and negative feedback) through FB’s commen-
tary feature from their FB friends regarding their extended-definition essay. This
solicitation of comments aimed to procure authentic feedback not limited to the
teacher’s and students’ comments. These comments were also used to assist the
students in revising their essay. The teacher gave a deadline for the solicitation of
the comments.
The same procedure was made with the argumentative essay for the next six
weeks. Out of the various feedback/comments that the students received from
authentic audience, the students were made to choose the best essay between the
extended-definition essay and argumentative essay. The chosen essay was then
tagged to the class account, which is the mother account of the entire course.
Through the class account, students were able to share their essays with other
students from other sections taking the course from different colleges. Conse-
quently, they were able to share, comment, and collaborate with their respective
essay.
Based on the data gathered, several initial impressions can be made. First, there
is a prominent use of other languages as a medium of providing feedback for
students. In the first episode, English and Filipino are used in commenting on an
extended definition about snakes.
Episode 1
1 A: Try mo maglagay nag according to. . . para hindi naman puro (Author,
date).
2 B: Grabe tong magthesis partner oh.
3 C: tama si mr. Erke para hindi mukhang copy paste. Definition essay to
diba? Lagyan mo nag personal definition mo:)) (yung yung turo smen) para
maemphasize nag pagka extended-definition niya:)
4 D: idol!
5 E: 4 1/2 inch or 10mm is the possible that a snake can grow “parang
kulang”?
6 F: A very well refined and educated essay I must say! Not only have you
informed the readers about the characteristics of snakes but you have deliv-
ered it in an interesting manner. Ups on a very good introduction as well!
I never knew you were a fan of snakes.
7 Writing is you asset, keep it up!
8 E: what I mean is parang ang gulo kung ano yung sinasabing “smallest pos-
sible” you mean be yung length niya?
All posts except for line 6 use Filipino and a code-switching variety to provide
suggestions for the work. In line 1, member A suggests that instead of doing a
parenthetical citation, ‘according to’ constructions may be used to show variety
in citation use. In line 3, C comments that there is a need for a personal defini-
tion of the term “snake” and not just definitions sourced from scholarly sources.
On the other hand, line 5 seeks clarification as regards the possible length of a
snake and uses a borrowed expression “parang kulang” (something seems to be
missing). The same participant (E) on line 7 further claims that there seems to
be some confusion as regards the possible size of the snake in terms of length.
As seen in these stretches of posts, Filipino is used as a resource to negotiate
meaning similar to other forms of classroom discourse (Ferguson, 2003; Valdez,
2008). From a community of practice perspective, this may be interpreted as
a shared repertoire among participants as they comment on their peers’ work.
Interestingly, this also illustrates the ranging ‘voices’ figuring in providing com-
ments. For instance, participant B in line 2, who pokes fun at the earlier post (the
thesis partner is so intense with his feedback!), shows the interaction, which may
not be related to the task of commenting itself but which shows ranging levels of
participation among students.
Moreover, the data show that the participants not only examined local aspects
of the work but also commented on the global changes that are needed to make
the essay of their peers better. In Episode 2, participants A, C, D, and E do not
only focus on the organization of the essay, which focuses on cloning but also
features the emotional states upon reading the work of their peer hinting at a
sense of mutual engagement in dealing with the piece.
Episode 2
1 A: Your opening line was quite an eye-catcher, it drew my attention and
helped set the mood for the essay. I understood the essay the first time I read
it and I also noticed.
2 That your main idea was clearly pointed out throughout the essay. . .
3 B: Thank you.
4 C: I admit that when I first saw your essay I felt lazy for it was quite long,
But as I start reading it, I found myself reading it up to the last line. The
topic was discussed thoroughly and clearly I admire on how you constructed
your essay for the flow of your ideas were consistent that each sentence were
related to each other.
5 B: Thank you.
6 D: The first sentence, in my opinion is not engaging as how it is not engag-
ing as how it is expected to be. It seems common for such an essay. The
thesis statement on the other hand, is explicitly stated. The paragraph and
sentences in general are related to each other.
7 B: Thank you.
8 E: The first sentence is catchy but set a negative mood on the reader. The
main idea is clearly stated and thoroughly discussed. It served its purpose as
the whole essay revolved around it. It served its purpose as the whole essay
revolved around it. The ideas in the paragraph are generally related to one
another and follow a flow within the essay.
As seen in lines 1, 3, 5, and 7, the participants not only focus on aspects of the
work that are positive but also provide a reader’s perspective, which the writer
may want to consider in revising his piece. For instance, citing a negative, unin-
terested mood in the introduction reveals emotional attachments from the audi-
ence’s perspective, which is important to holistically make the work better.
Another aspect, which is seen in the data is the use of other multimodal
resources such as icons, pictures that help reinforce the message posted using
text. It would seem, therefore, that the participants in the group not only rely on
their knowledge of language to providing meaningful feedback but also deploy
a range of resources to assure that the meaning they wish to convey is strength-
ened. This reveals that aside from language, other competencies (technological
and transidiomatic practices) are also at work in the feedback process.
Given these points, several inferences can be made. Considering the commu-
nity of practice perspective, the learners participate by contributing to the dif-
ferent aspects of the paper, leading to the notion of joint enterprise, as all seem
to have the goal of helping their peers improve their work through comments at
the local and global aspects of the work. As Massi et al. (2012) emphasize, since
social networking serves as a platform for collaboration, FB in our case study
provides a space for meaningful engagement for learners as they gain meaningful
input from peers. Moreover, the dialogic nature of this joint enterprise provides
greater opportunities for learners to interact with the actual discourse community
that will ‘consume’ their work. As observed in Valdez (2010), the use of social
networking creates a greater space for learners to reach a wider audience for them
to gain meaningful input to improve their work. Moreover, the use of FB affords
them the opportunity to minimize direct, face-to-face confrontations, which may
be face threatening if their peers criticize their work. This therefore leads to the
notion that while FB appears to afford students a certain level of distance from
criticism, they can gather meaningful input without being offended. This leads
to the ‘cultural’ aspect of using social networking: digital tools help maintain
smooth interpersonal relations, which are essential in cultural interactions.
Since these students are considered ‘beginning’ academic writers in the uni-
versity, the use of FB can be seen as a ‘safe practice’ that allows learners to not
only solicit feedback but also provide opportunities to improve their writing style.
Moreover, since there is a joint enterprise through the use of FB, there is a shared
repertoire among learners. This is not only confined in terms of the use of lan-
guages (English and Filipino) and styles of interaction (from informal-formal)
but also multimodal resources are deployed to enhance the effect of their feed-
back. Also, the shared repertoire observed in this case not only refers to the use
of linguistic, discourse, or multimodal resources but also technological compe-
tencies in using social networking. Characteristic of the net generation (Tapscott,
2009), the learners use technological skills acquired from familiar experiences,
which make their shared repertoire in this community of practice helpful in the
improvement of their writing skills. Based on the initial findings from this case,
it can be said that the use of social networking in the classroom is also an oppor-
tunity for students to exercise different languages in their repertoires, as the
highlight of activities done in an online environment is the negotiation of mean-
ing. This in a way creates greater learning opportunities for students to engage,
reflect, and improve their skills not only in language but also through the use of
technology. Moreover, since cultural norms are observed in online interactions,
they become more sensitive to the feelings of their peers.
Conclusion
As observed in the aforementioned case, the use of social networking in the ELT
classroom creates interesting points/issues for further investigation and discus-
sion. The use of social networking provides a virtual space where the use of lan-
guages (and not just simply the target language, English in this case) appears to
be the norm. This hints at the growing multilingual/multicultural character of
our teaching and learning opportunities, which should be positively recognized
by different stakeholders in the educational system (parents, administrators, and
subject area teachers).
First, given that the case study reported here was done in an English for Aca-
demic Purpose tertiary level setting, it would be interesting to find similarities
and differences when the strategy is tried out in different grade levels. Also new
insights may be gained if classrooms with students from different cultures take
part in online EFL/ESL communities of practice. Moreover, considering that
other content areas use FB as a means to improve instruction, it may be meaning-
ful to examine if the language/multimodal practices observed in this case study
are different or similar.
Second, multimodal resources appear to be a growing feature in the writing
classroom as it becomes an instrumental tool for learners to strengthen their mes-
sage. Therefore, the globalized classroom may no longer be confined to writing
in the strictest sense but may be considered a multimodal one. Moreover, since
multimodal resources require knowledge in technology use, educators need to be
aware of how these technologies are used to benefit writing. One caveat though
is that the notion of multimodal resources may also affect the notion of what
constitutes norms of academic writing, which may affect practices of assessment
focusing on aspects of writing.
Overall, the use of social networking in the language classroom may not only
be considered a trend but seems to be a growing prominent feature in globalized
classroom. This marks the effect of globalization as it not only creates a border-
less world but also transcends in creating a borderless classroom.
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14 The use of photo story in
the Indonesian English
language classroom
Working with multimodal tasks
Nur Arifah Drajati, Sri Rejeki Murtiningsih,
Winda Hapsari, and Hasti Rahmaningtyas
The integration of technology into English classrooms has gained in popular-

ity over the last 20 years. Despite the controversy whether this integration can
boost or impede learning, teachers are geared to try out this new teaching-
learning approach in their classes. As digital natives (Prensky, 2011), most of
the learners are often more familiar with technology than their teachers. This
fact motivates teachers and curriculum developers to include technology in the
lessons.
Using digital technologies to teach narrative texts in English classes is one way
to enhance learning as well as to facilitate the interests of the digital natives. One
specific type of implementation of digital technologies in the classroom is the use
of digital photo story (also known as digital storytelling). This digital tool uses
a multimodal approach that is more functional and compelling for both teachers
and students.
An array of research on digital photo stories has been undertaken to examine
various aspects of learning, such as linguistic aspects (Royce, 2002) and writ-
ing skills (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 2003; Hocks, 2003). However, very
few studies have been conducted to investigate the use of digital photo story
designed to teach narratives in English as an additional language (EAL) class-
rooms, particularly in secondary schools. Thus the present study attempted to fill
this gap. Anchored in multimodal theory, this study attempted to examine the
use of digital technology in the teaching of narrative texts as part of the Indone-
sian secondary-school curriculum.
Literature and theoretical framework
Digital photo story

Digital storytelling, digital photo story, is the practice of combining multiple
modes of technology, such as photographs, text, music, audio narration, and
video clips to produce a compelling, emotional, and in-depth story (Bull &
Kajdar, 2005; Castaneda, 2013) and to engage learners in authentic tasks that
204 Nur Arifah Drajati et al.
allow for self-construction of meaning (Jonassen, Peck, & Wilson, 1999) because
it involves critical cognitive experiences (Fulwiler & Middleton, 2012). This digi-
tal photo story serves as a tool to help students visually illustrate a completed
script as well as to make meaning of the story. Although this method of multi-
modal literacies is powerful, user-friendly, and affordable (Fulwiler & Middleton,
2012; Lambert, 2006; Robin, 2008), digital photo story is still under-practiced
in EAL classrooms.
Lambert (2006) offers a set of elements involved in digital photo story. The
first element is that students engage actively in developing a central theme of the
story (the point of view element) and in creating a story line that captures the audi-
ence’s attention (the dramatic question element). Other elements include allowing
students to narrate the story to communicate their meaning-making, and to help
the audience make meaning (the gift of voice element), and providing background
music (the power of soundtrack element) to evoke audience emotion (emotional
content element). These can encourage students to engage in digital photo story
activities. Lastly, students are encouraged to work on the linguistic part of the
activities to tell the story (economy of language element). This element also encour-
ages students to make sure that speech is at reasonable speed and clear enough
for the audience to understand the story (pace element). Taken together, these
elements are expected to enable students to engage with meaningful activities
that involve multiple modes yet still engage in language learning since students
have to produce a coherent and clear storyline both in writing and in speech.
Obviously, when engaged in digital photo story activities, students will learn how
to deal with computers and other devices because they need to organize selected
images, record their voices, and learn to use the software. Robin (2008) indicates
that digital photo story promotes other skills, such as cultural literacy, information
literacy, and media literacy that students need in the real world. With this in mind,
digital photo story needs to be included in language learning.
Digital storytelling provides students with a number of benefits. First of all,
students can learn how to critique their own work as well as the work of others
(Brenner, 2014; Robin, 2008). Using digital storytelling, teachers allow students
to work collaboratively with their peers, to look at their own work and apply
the revising skills they have learned. Also, teachers encourage students to pro-
vide constructive feedback to their peers’ work. This collaborative process also
facilitates social learning that stimulates students’ emotional intelligence as well as
critical thinking (Fulwiler & Middleton, 2012). According to Castaneda (2013)
and Yang and Wu (2012), digital storytelling improves students’ learning self-
efficacy because they are likely aware that their work would be viewed by others;
thus, they are motivated to create their best work and be more cautious with
possible errors in their work. In addition, digital story allows computer users to
be creative while going through the production process because students have
to work closely with computers to download and upload the various modes they
need to complete the tasks (Robin, 2008).
Despite the benefits of digital photo story, this tool presents a number of chal-
lenges. Empirical research conducted by Sadik (2008) revealed that collaboration
The use of photo story 205
in working on the digital story project was not done in an equal manner. Some
students were more dominant and involved in the process than the others. Only a
few students participated actively in preparing the content, design, and presenta-
tion of stories. These students showed a lower level of awareness towards views
and opinions of other group members. The study found that students even spent
more time browsing ideas and materials, which in turn caused them to pay less
attention to the quality of the linguistic aspects, such as language use, vocabulary,
and mechanics. The study also showed that teachers’ lack of technical proficiency
in the use of technology hampered the process. The teachers needed to allocate
more time to better prepare for the lesson.
Time constraints were one of the main challenges in employing Photo Story. This
challenge was reported in Brenner’s (2014) study. Brenner (2014) reported that
creating digital stories could be time consuming, especially for teachers and stu-
dents who had never used digital production software. When it came to technology-
mediated instruction in language learning, this unfamiliarity resulted in teachers
and students turning to a more traditional approach of language teaching and
learning.
Educational research on digital photo story

The use of digital photo story in the educational domain has been well-documented.
In their experimental study with 110 high school students in Taiwan, Yang and
Wu (2012) found that students’ academic achievements, along with their critical
thinking skills and learning motivation, improved after the use of digital sto-
rytelling. Digital storytelling also enhanced students’ language performance in
their speaking, writing, and listening. In terms of critical thinking skills, digital
storytelling shaped how students evaluated arguments. In Yang and Wu’s (2012)
study, the students also reaped benefits from working collaboratively in the pro-
cess of creating, revising, and clarifying the digital story that was instrumental in
fostering students’ performance in terms of evaluation of arguments. In another
study, Hur and Suh (2012) investigated students’ English language proficiency
and development through the use of technology, one of which was digital photo
story. This study showed that the digital photo story project helped students
improve their research skills with active engagement in learning. In terms of
writing and speaking skills, the students performed repeated practices, such as
revising texts and reading the scripts. The results demonstrate that the digital
photo story was an effective scaffolding tool. The activities allowed the students
to practice English in a safe environment (i.e., home) where they had access to
books and online resources. In addition to learning support, it was reported that
the students were excited because they received firsthand experience in creating
a digital photo story.
Castaneda (2012) used a case study to examine the effectiveness of digital sto-
rytelling in communicating students’ emotion and presenting information before
an audience. Overall, the findings of the study revealed not only that students
could create digital stories but also that they could exceed the expectations of
the teacher and the researcher. The students were able, willing, and proud to
share personal stories in a foreign language. Once students became engaged in
the process, in general, they found the drafting and editing process satisfactory.
An added benefit was observed during the digital storytelling process. As the
teacher pointed out, during the recording step, the students became aware of
their language use.
In addition, Sadik (2008) looked into the effectiveness of technology integra-
tion for teachers and students by using digital photo story in schools in Egypt.
The study showed that the use of technology could only be effective if teachers
themselves possessed expertise in using technology in a meaningful way. The
study also found that ineffective and inappropriate training in using the technol-
ogy and teacher’s lack of vision of technology’s potential for improving learning
became the main concerns in implementing technology-mediated instruction.
Multimodal approach
A multimodal approach refers to using a variety of resources or modes, which
may appear in different forms – visual and auditory – to enhance learning (Jewitt,
2006). Naturally, digital technologies offer visual and auditory sources, such as
images, background music, speeches, language, and movement. The multimodal
approach is used to combine these different modes to make meanings beyond the
language. Thus applying multimodality to an EAL classroom deals with learning
beyond the linguistic aspects of communication. This means that visuals, sound
effects, and colors are also tools for communicating meanings to others.
In terms of EAL learning, Krashen (1978) argues that exposure to English will
provide students with elaborative inputs in their language learning, which will help
students to make sense of the inputs. In turn, students will be able to use these
inputs to use, manipulate, and develop their outputs of the new language they
are learning. Similarly in multimodality, the use of multiple modes, particularly in
digitally based learning environments, will facilitate students’ understanding and
students’ language mastery (Moreno, 2002; Rance-Roney, 2010). Students learn
English in different ways. Some students are more visual than others, while other
students have a higher level of linguistic skills than their peers. Thus exposing stu-
dents to different modes can enable students to be aware of their learning style and
to focus on their strengths, but, at the same time, they also improve other skill areas
that are less developed. Similar to elaborative inputs in language learning, exposing
students to different modes is likely to encourage students to navigate, manipulate,
and understand how these modes relate to each other (Mayer, 2003).
Multimodality also concurs with the types of digital modes that students are
able to access from their environment quite easily these days. With the easy access
to visual modes, for example, multimodality helps students “extract what visuals
are trying to say and relate these messages to the linguistic aspect of the mean-
ing” (Royce, 2002, p. 198). These activities will encourage students to reflect
on their personal experience, to learn new information, to make meaning out of
what they have learned, and to communicate their ideas to others in a way that
they feel comfortable.
These days, different modes used in the multimodal approach may be presented
in the classroom. One of the most common designs to utilize the modes in the
EAL classroom is digital storytelling. In digital storytelling, students tell stories
using different modes, such as in speech or in writing, with the help of comput-
ers and software. Integrating digital storytelling into the teaching of writing has
also been a common practice in the EAL classroom. Studies show that the visual
and aural modalities can teach students new strategies and approaches, which
can be productively applied to their efforts at composing more traditional writ-
ten compositions (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 2003; Hocks, 2003; Kalantzis,
Varnava-Skoura, & Cope, 2002; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Wysocki, Johnson-
Eilola, Selfe, and & Sirc, 2004).
The study
Thirty-five students participated in this study. The participants were twelfth grad-
ers at a private secondary school in a city in Indonesia. The participants worked in
groups, which resulted in eight groups of four and a group of three. This digital
storytelling project spanned three weeks. The participating students volunteered
for extra grades in English.
For virtual discussion, the first author, an English teacher in the school, set up
a Facebook (FB) group account and added the participants to the group. The
other three authors were added to the FB account to analyze the data. Most
instructions were posted on FB as well as participants’ comments, questions,
and assignments. The participants were given a link to Photo Story 3 for Win-
dows, which was posted on the FB account. They were told to download photos,
provide a background voice for the photos, and write narrative stories based on
the photos and sound effects. The students were assigned to write individual
self-reflection on working collaboratively, to give peer reviews, and to write their
personal experiences in relation to being involved in the project. The teacher
provided samples of these three pieces of work for students. At the end of the
project, the students were interviewed to obtain richer data on the issues. The in-
depth interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. These journal entries were
later used as the sources of data. All the participants’ written assignments were
manually coded; the most frequently occurring codes were grouped into major
themes. Member checking, suggested by Merriam (1998), was used to deal with
trustworthiness of the data because the data were open for all the participants
and the teacher to comment on and revise. The present study only used the latest
revision if any work was revised.
Findings and discussion
Drafting and negotiating strategies for the creation of

multimodal narrative texts
Central to the idea of a digital photo story project was to help them become
autonomous learners. This was achieved by using a social medium, in this case,
FB, as the platform to learn new things, upload their work, and download others’
compositions on which they worked further to write their feedback. The students
were given freedom to choose their team members, topics, and photos for their
texts, as well as time to upload their work, although deadlines were given.
Another purpose of this study was to provide students with more opportuni-
ties to read and write by using a digital photo story. Narrative texts were created
in several steps, which moved from simple to complex types of writing, from
more familiar to less familiar topics, from short essays to longer ones, and from
concrete to abstract ideas. As the students were already familiar with the fact that
past tense was commonly used in narrative texts, Task 1 started with assignments
in which the students were required to write about their personal experiences.
Assigning students to write a narrative text using past tense was also considered
as encouraging students to tell their experience in chronological order (Yi, 2013)
before moving to the use of present and future forms to write their stories. Mean-
while, the students performed the reading mainly by reading the pieces of writing
from their peers.
During the process of creating narrative texts, the students were divided into
small groups. Grouping was aimed at minimizing mistakes in students’ writings,
as Dobao’s study (2012) found that working in small groups improved students’
writing in terms of the number of mistakes the students made. Also, grouping
was considered a form of learning from others, suggested by Vygotsky (1978) in
his social-constructivism theory. This peer learning allowed the students to learn
from each other.
In addition, the students were given freedom to decide how to complete a task.
For example, although the students were free to select photos prior to writing
the narratives, most – if not all – groups chose to write the narrative as the first
activity before they picked pictures and assigned one of the team members to read
the narratives as the background voice. This sequence was evident from Budi’s
writing about the narrative project. He wrote, “We [he and his group] discussed
what narrative that attracts people. This discussion is important because it will
become the foundation of our narrative.”
In Task 2, the the students were assigned to provide feedback on their peers’
writings. To help the students organize their feedback, the teacher provided a
guideline or a rubric, which included organization, word choices, fluency, and
sound effects. One group was assigned to review or comment on another group’s
work. This feedback was the basis for revising the work. While all groups wrote
the narrative texts in the form of essays, they wrote their feedback in this par-
ticular task only in a few sentences for each point suggested by the teacher. The
following was feedback provided by one of the groups:
Organization: You have a well-organized story, but there are some random plots.
Word choice: Your chosen words are easy to understand. That way, we enjoy read-
ing your story.
Grammatical pattern: Your story has a good grammar. This is great and makes
your story easy to understand.
(Group A, November 30, 2013)
In this feedback task, the students wrote a sentence or two for the feedback
without providing supporting details to the sentence. The feedback from Group
A mentioned previously, for example, showed that the group identified some ran-
dom plots from their peers’ work; however, Group A did not provide supporting
details to which random plots they were referring.
This particular finding was closely related to writing models provided by the
teacher. Tracey and Morrow (2006) argue that one way of learning is to observe
other people. In this project, while the teacher provided a rubric and text sample
for the students to write the narrative texts, she only provided a rubric for the
students to write the feedback. As a result, all groups wrote the feedback like the
model provided. The students were supposed to provide feedback beyond what the
teacher modeled. Particularly in a feedback task, the students should have received
different ways to provide feedback on each other’s work. Despite this drawback,
the students co-created the narrative texts using different negotiated strategies.
Framing the use of language in composing

Using the English language for the project was a challenge for most students,
both in written and in oral form when they had to tell the story accompany-
ing the photos. The data show that out of 23 reflection assignments submitted
online, 9 students mentioned that one of the challenges they found in participat-
ing in the project was using English appropriately. Using appropriate grammatical
patterns was understandable to the audience. This was one of the concerns the
participants reported. Dinda, for example, stated that using English appropriately
was one of the challenges she faced. She remarked, “Grammar is another chal-
lenge for me because, I think, using incorrect grammar gives a bad impression.”
Dinda was concerned that the audience of the video would not understand what
she and her classmates were trying to say in the video because of the inappropri-
ate use of grammar.
In addition to grammar, using standardized English became one of the chal-
lenges faced by the students. One of the students recounted that she and her
classmates were accustomed to using non-standard English on many occasions,
including for academic purposes, when they were supposed to use standardized
English. As a result, this student found it hard to identify if English they used
was standard or formal. For the purpose of the project, she and her peers felt that
they were pushed to use standardized English. The student did not provide any
examples or definitions of what she considered non-standard English. However,
there has been a phenomenon in which English words or sentences are adapted
based on the Indonesian context and are usually used in a non-formal daily con-
versation. This phenomenon commonly takes place among young people.
The students were also challenged with other language features, such as pro-
nunciation and intonation. In this project, they were required to upload a set
of pictures with read-aloud scripts, which were written in English. Reading the
scripts aloud encouraged the students to ensure they pronounced the words
properly so that the audience understood the story they presented. Choice of
words was also mentioned repeatedly in the data as one of the challenges in
relation to the language use. As a matter of fact, framing the language use was the
most challenging part of the project. One of the students remarked, “The chal-
lenge on script writing was we must choose easy-to-understand words so it made
sense to people.” In short, writing a script and reading it aloud so that it made
sense to the audience was a major concern among the students.
On the other hand, the students noted that they learned to use the appropri-
ate grammar and other language skills from participating in this project. Because
they were to show their projects to their peers and the teacher, they made sure
that the audience enjoyed their work. Atika reported,
Because we use our voice and pictures to tell the story, [the Photo Story
video] had to be interesting enough [for the audience] to hear and see. We
tried to fix our grammar and pronunciation, as well as be more careful with
our choice of words.
The fact that the project was conducted in the English class made the students
fully aware of their language. This was likely because they were aware that the
language features were important for their audience to understand the mean-
ing of the photos they presented. Some students even remarked that they made
major changes to their script because they found grammatical and pronunciation
mistakes in their first script. This awareness indicated that the digital photo sto-
rytelling activities also encouraged the students to do metacognitive activities in
their language learning.
Collaborating on text creation and improvement

Drawing on the 23 reflection journals submitted, several challenges in relation
to working collaboratively with their peers were identified. First and foremost,
the software provided by the teacher was specifically designed for PC computers;
thus, it posed a certain challenge for those who used Mac computers. Although,
eventually, all the students were able to obtain computers that worked with the
Photo Story software, they spent relatively more time familiarizing themselves
with the operating system. Two groups mentioned that they did not use PCs for
their daily technological work, which required them to design a strategy to solve
the problem.
However, not all of the groups found the Photo Story software challenging.
Nine students were happy with the software and stated that the Photo Story
software was “simple and easy to use,” “simply amazing,” and “simple software.”
The user-friendliness of the software did not give them as many challenges as
they had expected. In turn, they enjoyed using the software and the learning in
general.
To be involved in this project, students “must make a variety of decisions about
images, sounds and texts, and constantly address the effects” (Fulwiler & Middle-
ton, 2012, p. 48). Making a variety of decisions was part of the challenges faced
by students. While they were negotiating their other commitments, such as final
test preparation and other school projects, the students in this study had to make
decisions on topics, pictures, stories, and background music to meet the teacher’s
expectations. Atika articulated this challenge in her reflective journal: “The chal-
lenge is how to find a topic which is approved by everybody in the group.” Find-
ing certain types of pictures that matched their storylines was also a challenge.
One of the students addressed this issue by stating the pictures that they needed
were the ones that were eye catching and had a good resolution, and there were
not many pictures that met their expectations.
Although the students were unable to meet every day work on their projects
because of other school commitments, the collaborative work that they did with
their peers was quite effective. The interview revealed that some groups actually
finished the assignment in one meeting. This is evidence that the students worked
effectively and independently. Although they received little instruction from their
teacher, the students were able to solve the problems that they encountered.
Positioning roles of teacher and students in

the entire learning trajectory
The main role of the teacher in this project was monitoring the whole learning
process. The monitoring activities were also conducted through the FB account
set up when the project initiated. For example, the teacher constantly reminded
the students to make sure they did not miss the deadlines. In doing her role, the
teacher also provided praise and questions to direct students to the goals of the
learning process. At the beginning of the project, the teacher monitored the learn-
ing circle quite closely to make the students aware of the level of responsibility
ascribed to the project. As the learning progressed, the level of teacher control
was lowered.
In addition, one of the most significant roles of the teacher in the entire learn-
ing process was to provide scaffolding for the students. Since the project focused
on improving writing skills, the writing assignment progressed from one para-
graph for the first assignment to a journal entry that provided the students with
a large degree of freedom to express their opinions. The data showed that the
students wrote a paragraph, three paragraphs, and more than five paragraphs on
average for the first, second, and third writing assignments respectively. The topic
also moved from simple to more complicated. For example, for the first entry,
the topic given was related to students’ personal experiences. As the learning
progressed, the students were required to present their personal opinion on some
topics, to reflect on their learning, and to provide constructive feedback on their
peers’ works.
The most important role of the teacher in the learning trajectory was to facili-
tate a safe environment for students. This included providing a forum for stu-
dents to accept constructive feedback from their peers and their teacher, and for
students to provide justifications if they decided not to take the feedback. On
the other hand, the students were also encouraged to give constructive feedback
to their peers. They were encouraged to share their opinions in a respectful and
non-offensive manner; thus, they felt secure when giving and accepting the feed-
back. This learning process enabled students to learn meaningfully from their
social circle. Vygotsky (1978) maintains that students learn best from the social
environment. The social interaction that took place among the students moti-
vated them to use their social skills to solve various problems they encountered
during the process. In terms of language learning, the teacher provided a safe
environment for students to make mistakes in their work. Although grammatical
errors and pronunciation were not the main foci of the project, the students were
aware that grammatical and pronunciation errors might lead to misunderstand-
ings. As a facilitator, the teacher reduced the amount of control to encourage
student independence. For example, the teacher did not immediately intervene
when a student updated the status on the FB group chat and stated that she
encountered problems, although she closely monitored the interaction. This was
aimed at observing students’ attempts to solve the problems on their own. Also,
it was intended to see if other students would work collaboratively to help the
student solve his or her problem.
Likewise, the students played important roles in the whole learning process.
The main role that students played was taking full responsibility for their learning
in class and outside the class. Being more and more in charge of their own learn-
ing was a sign of students’ autonomy/independence. The data showed that most
students participating in the project did most assignments outside the classroom.
In fact, many students posted their assignment on the FB group chat late in the
evenings. The students participating in the project also set up meetings with
their peers without the teacher’s instruction. Students’ journal entries showed
that they made several attempts to solve the problems they encountered. For
example, when a group of students were not able to install the software, which
only worked with a PC laptop, they solved the problem by borrowing a PC lap-
top from one of their relatives without telling the teacher that they encountered
the problem, and they did not post their problem on FB. Instead, they worked
together to solve their problem.
In terms of language learning, the students were to be critical of their own
language learning. While they were encouraged to be critical of their peers’ lan-
guage learning, the students were required to look at their own language learn-
ing as well. They were encouraged to make sense of the whole process of their
language learning such as writing the script and understanding it when they read
it aloud. Without being able to make sense of the linguistic features they used,
it would be almost impossible to understand the effect of other features, such as
music and photos, accompanying the texts that were used to communicate their
ideas (Kress, 2000). On the other side, the students were also encouraged to
make sense of their peers’ work and provide comments that their counterparts
could use to improve their work. The data showed that nine students found the
comments and feedback they received from their peers insightful, and they made
some improvement in their Photo Story videos so that the videos made sense to
their peers.
Conclusion
The digital photo story is a way to introduce students to different modes and use
them to improve their English ability. In this project, the students were required
to perform a series of activities, such as selecting images and background music,
writing scripts about the images, and reading aloud the script. The students were
also involved in activating their background knowledge and providing construc-
tive feedback on the work of their peers.
These activities allowed students to use their technological skills to participate
in the project. This study found that drafting and negotiating the multimodal
activities as a challenge for the students. The students had little interest in partici-
pating in the project because of their various school commitments and their unfa-
miliarity with the activities required for the digital photo storytelling. Although
the students encountered problems with the technological devices, they were
able to solve these problems with very little help from their teacher. Writing down
their experiences and providing written feedback of their friends’ compositions
were activities that were new experiences for the students.
The digital photo story also improved students’ awareness of learning English,
especially their writing and speaking skills. At the outset, the students were con-
cerned about the non-standard English they had been using and worried that
non-standard English would interfere with their effort to make meaning and com-
municate their meaning to others. This concern led students to review their work
continuously for grammatical mistakes and pronunciation to ensure that their
peers were able to make sense of their work. It was evident that the students had
a higher level of awareness of self-correction, which is crucial when learning a new
or additional language. Additionally, the students worked collaboratively to per-
form digital photo story tasks, which proved that digital photo story had improved
students’ learning autonomy. With a decreasing level of control from their teacher,
the students performed tasks and uploaded their work at their own pace.
To be able to perform all the tasks with which students were unfamiliar, the
digital photo story project created a safe learning environment. During the pro-
ject, the students received full autonomy to provide and receive feedback to/
from others in a respectful manner. Digital photo story also enhanced students’
responsibility and critical thinking skills regarding their own learning. Being able
to make sense of their own work and others’ was one of the main outcomes in
the learning trajectory.
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15 Social psychology of the
language classroom
Hamzeh Moradi and Deepti Gupta
Social and psychological factors of language learning have been and indeed
remain the focus of a significant amount of research during the few past decades.
Whether it is Chomsky questioning the behaviorist stance or Krashen hypothesiz-
ing on the Affective Filter or Schumman placing social and psychological distance
centrestage, the importance of social psychology facets in the language learning
process is one of the most pervasive themes of research in second language (L2)
acquisition. In fact, L2 acquisition is not only an innate cognitive aptitude and
phenomenon but also a socio-psychological one and thus of great significance
and value in order to investigate and consider the social and psychological con-
ditions in which L2 learning occurs. This chapter reviews the most significant
models related to the socio-psychological facets of language learning and clearly
describes some of the indispensable concepts in the field such as self-efficacy,
attitude, motivation, effort, literacy learning strategies and self-awareness while
examining them further in the light of the Asian classroom. The focus of the
present chapter is on the socio-psychology of the classroom to help teachers and
language educators obtain a better understanding of socio-psychological forces
related to language learning in the classroom, be cognizant of the implicit psy-
chological features of the interaction between teachers and learners and, finally,
to manage the classroom and learning environment and optimize classroom
management.
Introduction
The continuous and ongoing process of globalization has led to the distribu-
tion and spread of English throughout the world, which stands reflected in the
demands of its acquisition, learning and use. This has been well documented by
sociolinguists (Crystal, 2003). As Dornyei, Csizer, and Ne´meth(2006) men-
tion, possibly there are linguistic implications regarding globalization as well as
economic interconnectedness. A substantial number of studies have been car-
ried out by scholars to investigate how individuals learn languages other than
their native language (e.g., Crystal, 2003; Dornyei et al., 2006; Kirkpatrick,
2007; Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008; Seidlhofer, 2004, 2008; Sharifan, 2009). The
Social psychology of the language classroom 217
literature on second/foreign language acquisition considers the social and psy-
chological aspect as an obvious link between the language learning process and
its success.
Those interested in the significance and intricacies of language in social life
look to psychology and especially social psychology for some insight. Most of an
individual’s behavior takes place in a social context and is manifested linguistically
and mediated by cognitive processes (Gardner, 1985).
Schools as the central societal institutions follow the goal of “to teach” and
“to educate” the students. The classroom is a mini-society (Babad, 2009). It
has a formal purpose and a fixed and defined structure. But beyond the uni-
versal formal and defined structure, every classroom has an informal structure
that develops through student-teacher interaction. Teachers have dual roles
in the classroom: as instructors who teach younger generations, help them to
develop their intellectual capacities and lead them to academic progress and
as socializers who help the students to develop values and social selves, their
social conduct and a specific cultural level (Babad, 2009). Therefore, teachers
should, first, consider the social and psychological forces in the classroom and
second, pay more attention to the implicit and hidden psychological facets of
the teacher-student interaction in order to improve their classroom manage-
ment. It is obvious that in school students can acquire the basic social percep-
tion and mode of social behavior. These kinds of experience affect the students’
self-esteem and self-concept, motivation and accordingly the formation of their
attitude and values.
A large number of researchers argue that motivation and effort investment
are variables which should not be neglected in the study of social psychology
of language learning. Endorsing this idea, Boekaerts and Cascallar (2006) hold
that learners should initiate activities that can set the scene for language learning,
assign values to learning activities, motivate themselves and be persistent. Mari-
nak and Gambrell (2010) point out teachers that can teach the learners reading
and writing strategies, but learners may never reach their full potential if they
lack intrinsic motivation to read and write and do not invest enough effort. The
Asian teacher belongs to a highly culture-specific society, and in such societies,
the teacher is usually looked up to as role model and guide, making the task of
socializer easier.
According to Elisha Babad (2009), motivation is the main and central field of
psychological theory and research. There are a large number of articles and books
dedicated to the discussion of motivational processes (e.g., Dweck, 1986; Perry,
1991, 2003; Perry, Hall, & Ruthig, 2007; Wentzel, 1999, 2006). Elisha Babad
(2009) mentions,
Motivation is the fuel of our mental system, the force and the energy which
activates us and leads our behavior to attain particular goals. Motivation is
usually caused by inner demands and by the requirement and indispensability
to satisfy those demands and needs.
218 Hamzeh Moradi and Deepti Gupta
Schutz (1958) and Schmuck (1978) were among the first who theorized about
social needs and introduced a variation of three central social motivations as indi-
cated in the following list:
1 The need for affection (the need for warmth, to be liked and loved by others)
2 The need for inclusion (the need to be a member of the group and to avoid social
rejection)
3 The need for power (the need to have control, power and influence in one’s social
environment)
Gardner (1985), in his research, asserts that the social psychology approach
straddles two domains:
“First, language and society are viewed as interdependent not as dichotomies as

reflected in much traditional sociolinguistics”. It is extremely difficult to dif-
ferentiate between linguistic and social processes in many instances. There-
fore, not only does the individuals’ language behavior reflect the norms of
circumstances as understood by them, but that language behavior itself can
usually function creatively to define or redefine the nature of the situation for
the participants engaged.
“Second, attention is drawn to the fact that language behavior is likely to be
dependent upon how speakers cognitively represent their social and psychological
characteristics and subjectively define the situation in terms of its norms and
their goals as is any objective classification of that situation imposed from with-
out (e.g. by investigators)”. In this sense, cognitive representations are con-
sidered to be very important mediators between social context and language.
(Gardner, 1985)
The notion that psychological adjustment and mental health should be per-
ceived by the magnitude of the incongruity between the “ideal self” and the
“actual self” was mentioned by Carl Rogers (1951, 1959, & 1961). The contri-
bution of this concept is that it is the subjective ideal end-state and its congruity
and incongruity with the real or actual self really matters (Babad, 2009).
John Dewey (1916) asserts that in order to give opportunities to students to
expand and optimize their capacity for growth, they need to live in a democratic
society. He mentions that mass education can occur only in societies where there
is mutuality and where there is a chance to alter the social habits of institutions
on a massive scale with great interest.
According to Gardner (1985), language learning should be culturally and
socially bound. Gardner (2001) introduced three major factors which were related
to social psychology to explain motivation: integrativeness, attitudes toward the
learning situation and motivation. “Integrativeness represents a socially relevant,
yet was opposed to an educationally relevant construct” (Gardner, 2005, p. 8).
Therefore, “It is a positive disposition toward the L2 group and desire to interact
with and even become similar to valued members of that community.” (Dörnyei,
1994, p. 78). It is very important since it is related to the L2 learners’ future
pragmatic fluency and proficiency. Thus Dörnyei (1994) added three related
components to the integrative motivation subsystem that include (1) interest in
foreign languages, culture and people; (2) desire to expand one’s view and avoid
provincialism; and (3) desire to experience new stimuli and challenges. Therefore,
integrativeness demonstrates a person’s interest in learning the L2 in order to be
much closer to the target language community. Integrative motivation orienta-
tion includes interpersonal (affective) temperament towards the target language
group; hence, the language learner is interested to interact with and even become
similar to the target language community in order to be a valued member of that
community (Dörnyei, 2003).
This process constitutes a positive attitude towards the target language com-
munity. Therefore, the attitudes towards the learning situation entail attitudes
directly associated with the learning process to describe simply how much the
language learners enjoy the teachers and the materials. Motivation is the third
factor that demonstrates the driving force in the system. This factor consists of
three elements to describe its function in the process. First, motivation depicts
how much energy a learner expends to learn the language. It means that students
need to put forth consistent effort to learn the material. The second element
demonstrates how much a learner states the desire to be successful and attempts
to achieve the final goals. The last element is how much a learner will enjoy the
task of language learning. So, in the Gardner socio-psychological system, Inte-
grativeness and Attitudes towards the Learning Situation play a significant role in
support of Motivation, so Motivation is considered the key element to support a
learner’s crucial behaviors to learn the target language.
Research on language learning motivation based on the social psychological
emphasis was initiated in Canada. Gardner and Lambert’s (1959) research was
in fact the first study to depict the significance of social psychology of language
learning as well as one of the first pioneering studies to use methodology in order
to research motivation. This research engendered the field of language learning
from the social psychological perspective and concentrated on attitudes towards
the learning situation and motivation. According to Dörnyei (2001a), a key prin-
cipal of the Canadian social psychological approach was the attitudes associated
with the target community which maintain a great impact on language learning.
The Asian learner of English is deeply influenced by the social attitudes towards
the language. Since in most Asian countries, using English proficiently is taken
to be a sign of inclusiveness in the global community, most learners are highly
motivated. Motivation supports the Social-Education Model in a primary role.
According to this model, motivation is the key concept in order to inspire a per-
son to learn a target language. It is linked with the attitudes towards integrative-
ness and the learning situation. This particular model concentrates on language
learner roles of various types while learning a target language. It brings together
the individual’s effort, favorable and positive attitudes towards learning a target
language and desire to achieve language skills and goals. The Attitude/Moti-
vation Test Battery (AMTB) (Gardner, 1985) usually measured these kinds of
variables. The AMTB is considered as a multi-component motivation test which
includes 11 subcategories that could be grouped into 5 categories. First, Integra-
tiveness, which involved integrative orientation, interest in foreign languages and
attitudes towards French Canadians. The second category was Attitudes towards
the Learning Situation, such as the Evaluation of French course and Evaluation
of French Teacher. The third category was Motivation, which included Motiva-
tional Intensity, Attitudes towards learning French and Desire to learn French.
The fourth category was Instrumental Orientation. Fifth, was Language Anxi-
ety. It has been used in many databased researches of L2 motivation (Dörnyei,
2001b). Nevertheless, L2 motivation research apparently is going through a new
and remarkable restructuring through the advent of a totally new theoretical
framework – namely, the “L2 motivational system” proposed by Dörnyei (2006,
2009). L2 motivational system has three major dimensions, which include the
ideal L2 self, the ought-to L2 self and the L2 learning experience:
• The ideal L2 self: Dörnyei (2005) asserts that the ideal L2 self is “the L2-specific
aspect of one’s ideal self” (p. 106). It demonstrates an ideal image of an L2
user, which bilinguals yearn to be in their future. As maintained by Ryan
(2009) and Taguchi, Magid, and Papi (2009), the ideal L2 self as one of
the main dimensions of L2 motivational system considerably correlates with
integrativeness.
• The ought-to L2 self: as Dörnyei (2005) demonstrates, this less internalized
facet of L2 self in fact describes the characteristics and attributes that indi-
viduals think they ought to possess on account of recognized and perceived
responsibilities, requirements and obligations. Csizer and Kormos (2009), in
their study in Hungary, revealed that there is a relationship between parental
encouragements and the ought-to L2.
• The L2 learning experience: considers the attitudes of students towards learn-
ing an L2 and can be influenced by context-specific motivational factors
associated with the immediate learning conditions, practical knowledge and
experience. According to Csizer and Kormos (2009), the L2 learning experi-
ence, as one of the dimensions of the L2 motivational self-system, demon-
strated the strongest effect on motivated and encouraged behavior.
Therefore, learning an L2 is mediated by a variety of cognitive representations

analytically beyond the particular conceptual briefs involving other language-
related procedures. In addition, Gardner demonstrates that not only is acquisi-
tion dependent on and influenced by individuals’ social psychological structure
but also social psychology makeup is moulded in part by the language fluency and
proficiency attained by them.
Another important factor in the investigation of the social psychology of
language learning is attitude. Attitudes have been, and actually remain, the
central concern of a significant amount of research throughout the social sci-
ences. Specifically, attitudes have been a key informative and explanatory vari-
able in the field of social psychology. Research on attitudes has been conducted
by social psychologists since 1920. Attitude has been defined from different
perspectives according to various theories, which has led to semantic disagree-
ment on the term.
Bohner and Wanke (2002, p. 5) define attitude as “a summary evaluation of
an object or thought”. According to this definition, an attitude is considered
a “hypothetical construct”, which means it cannot directly be inferred from
observable responses (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 2). A specific problem with
the definition of attitude is that it may overlap with some other concepts in social
psychology such as “opinion”, “value”, “belief”, “habit”, “trait”, “motive” and
“ideology”. However, Shaw and Wright (1967), state that it is in fact possible
to differentiate between attitude and other related terms. Schwartz (2007, pp.
170–171), demonstrates that as compared to attitudes, values are more abstract
because they transcend particular actions and situations. For example, the value
of “freedom” may involve a number of attitudes towards public smoking, censor-
ship and political correctness (Perloff, 2003, p. 44).
There are a few other terms which can be distinguished from attitudes in the
field of social psychology. Bohner and Wanke (2002, p. 13) think that habits
are considered fundamentally behavioral routines, while attitudes essentially
can be determinants of behavior. Ajzen (1988, p. 7) distinguishes attitudes
from personality traits, mentioning that, though both terms refer to a latent
construct, attitude responses are considered to be evaluative, while traits are
tendencies to behave in a particular way and do not concentrate on any spe-
cific external target. Garrett et al (2003, p. 11) state that ideology refers to “a
naturalistic set of assumptions and values connected with a specific social or
cultural group”, while attitude is a central term in the field of social psychology
and is less important in that of sociology where ideology is significant, central
and crucial.
Sociological and psychological approach

Since the present research study incorporates a socio-psychological orientation,
the two related approaches can be examined and discussed. They include the
sociological and psychological approach.
Sociological approach
Language and society are inseparable. Hence the notion of language is regarded
to be an index of social class and also as a symbol of family, status, home, coun-
try, ethnicity, etc. This means that acquiring a language involves acquiring the
cultural and social norms of the language. In the situation of second/foreign
language learning, learners need to adjust or adapt to the cultural and social
norms of the target language. So teachers of languages should keep in mind
that teaching a language as a second/foreign language to the students requires
alignment into the life patterns, social and cultural norms of the members of the
targeted speech community. For instance, a study of the Indian classroom proved
that learners who were not motivated enough towards learning English earlier
became strongly motivated when the liberalization of the Indian economy in the
1990s led to widespread use of the language in everyday professional contexts
(Gupta, 2006, p. 102)
In his Social-Education model, Gardner (1985) introduced a number of
factors that take into account the function of social factors throughout L2
acquisition. This particular model places four aspects of L2 learning within
a mutual relationship, which includes individual learner differences (associ-
ated with the motivation and aptitude), the social and cultural milieu (which
establishes beliefs about language and culture), the context (formal/informal)
and, finally, learning outcomes (linguistic/non-linguistic). Within this specific
model, motivation is thought to consist of three elements that include effort,
desire and affect.
Effort, as its name suggests, refers to the time that individuals spend study-
ing a language. Desire demonstrates how much the individual wants to become
proficient and fluent in the language and affect indicates the individual’s emo-
tional reactions regarding language study. As mentioned before, there is a direct
relationship between the attitudes of learners and their motivation towards learn-
ing an L2. Beginning with attitudes (motivation will be discussed in the next
section – i.e. in Psychological approach), attitude is defined as a set of reference
points to a set of values and beliefs that individuals hold and retain regarding the
community of the target language – for instance, whether they are considered
honest, dishonest, interesting or boring, etc. – and as well about their own cul-
ture and community.
In line with Wenden (1991), attitudes consist of three components: cognitive,
affective and behavioural. A cognitive component comprises beliefs, values, ideas
or opinions towards the object of the attitude. The affective component identi-
fies the feelings, the impression and the emotions that an individual has about
an object, “likes” or “dislikes”, “with” or “against”. Finally, the behavioural one
which refers to an individual’s consistent actions or regularly followed activities or
behavioural motives and intentions towards the object. Attitudes can also func-
tionally be crucial because they can contribute to the organization of knowledge
and the guidance and avoidance strategies (Perloff, 2003, p. 74). Attitudes, thus,
can carry out the knowledge function since they permit and enable individuals to
enforce order on the world, make it more predictable and believe that individuals
function efficiently and properly (Erwin, 2001, p. 11).
Language and social facets are integral and essential parts developing together
in the language acquisition process and the learner simultaneously develops inter-
nal inducements that help acquiring first language (L1). These inducements are
generally observed via an individual’s cognitive, behavioural and affective pro-
cesses. Nevertheless, in L2 learning, it is the external inducements that often are
the reasons for the low proficiency of L2 learners.
Besides the aforementioned types of attitude, Gardner and Lambert (1972)
have also introduced a number of different types of attitude that they regard as
relevant to L2 learning. Stern (1983, pp. 376–377) classifies these types of atti-
tude into three categories:
1 Attitudes towards the members of the target language community

2 Attitudes towards the learning of the language concerned
3 Attitudes towards languages and language learning in general, viewpoint
Considering these types of attitude, therefore, the more ethnocentric an L2

learner is, the less achievement or linguistic attainment can be achieved in learn-
ing the target language and the less ethnocentric the learners are the more lin-
guistic achievement they attain. A
Psychological approach
Motivation as a cornerstone component of the psychological approach to lan-
guage learning plays a substantial role in the acquisition of an L2. A highly
motivated language learner attains desirable achievement in learning the target
language. Gardner (1988), for example, thinks that “motivated learners are more
active in the learning process”. Harter (1981) points out that “motivated stu-
dents consider themselves to be more competent and skilled learners”. According
to Cook (2001), “highly motivated individuals can perceive pragmatic functions
of language”. Therefore, to sum up, motivation is a fundamental and essential
factor in L2 learning. It is one of the key elements that determines and fosters the
achievement of L2 learning. The more the learner is motivated and encouraged,
the more s/he can develop her/his language skills. Motivation is an essential
factor for the success of second/foreign language learning. Motivation plays an
indispensable role in the learning process. From a psychological point of view,
motivation can be defined as a force or push within the learner characterized by
a highly effective stimulation and arousal which drives the learner towards the
expected objective, such as the objectives of second/foreign language program
(McDonald, 1965). According to Crookes and Schmidt (1991), motivation is
the learners’ orientation with regard to the objective of learning an L2.
Motivation and attitudes to L2 learning are essential and crucial integral com-
ponents in the process of language learning. Lack of motivation and sufficient
enthusiasm of students may result in a situation where individuals do not dem-
onstrate interest and desire for learning the target language. This kind of circum-
stance will probably influence the learner’s success and achievement in language
learning. Motivation is a key and significant factor that affects the success and rate
of second/foreign language learning.
Similarly, the learners’ attitudes towards the target language or towards the
native speakers of the target language as an important social psychological factor
of language learning may be positive or negative, and this can also influence the
learners’ motivation in language learning. Verspoor (2005, p. 72) points out that
learners, teachers and researchers will all agree that a positive attitude towards
an L2 and its speakers and a high motivation affect and help second language
learning. These two factors, thus, are very important in the process of language
learning.
The relationship between motivation and attitudes has been regarded as the
primary concern in language learning research; there is a direct relationship
between learners’ attitudes and their motivations towards learning an L2. The
motivation to learn a second/foreign language is dependent on the attitudes
towards the other group or community, as well as the orientation towards the
learning activity itself. Attitudes are very essential for learning language yet they
provide inadequate indirect conditions for linguistic achievement; only if com-
bined with motivation can suitable attitudinal tendencies related to the actual
levels of the individual engagement in language learning provide appropriate
conditions for linguistic attainment. To put it briefly, a better understanding of
students’ attitudes and motivation may well assist English as a Foreign Language
(EFL)/ English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum designers to create and
develop language teaching programs that produce the motivation and attitudes
most favourable to the creation of more successful language learners. Further-
more, it can assist material writers as well as teachers to choose activities or tasks
that enhance and inspire learners’ motivation and attitudes.
Self-efficacy, motivation, effort and literacy

learning strategies
Some particular learner variables such as motivation, self-efficacy and effort can
play a significant role in L2 learning. Bandura (1997) defines self-efficacy as the
learner’s perceived capabilities for learning or performing actions at designated
levels. So as Schunk and Zimmerman (2007) also hold, the learners’ level of self-
efficacy can affect their choice of activities, persistence, effort and achievement.
Individuals with positive self-efficacy have a strong sense of control over their
learning and feel that they have the power and the capability to succeed, while
learners with less self-efficacy feel just the opposite. Hence it is very important
for language teachers to evaluate learners’ self-efficacy and provide meaningful,
systematic and motivational activities that will help the students to improve and
enhance confidence in their ability. Therefore, self-efficacy, motivation and effort
investment are variables that can make the teaching-learning environment much
more fruitful and can be very effective and helpful for efficient learning.
Apart from self-efficacy, motivation and effort investment are also variables
that should not be neglected. Learners need to trigger and perform activities
that establish a particular arena or scene for learning, designating values towards
learning activities, motivating and encouraging themselves and persevere. Teach-
ers can certainly teach students writing or reading strategies; however, students
may never ever achieve their total potential if they do not have the intrinsic moti-
vation to read and write and do not invest adequate effort in learning the skills.
Reading and writing are two basic skills of literacy which are very important to
individuals’ survival in this modern society. Reading, apparently an effortless,
automatic, simple and easy activity in real-life situation is in fact a process that
involves lots of strategic behavior on the reader’s part. Since usually the main
objective of authentic reading is for comprehension, it is therefore referred to
as reading comprehension. Block and Duffy (2008, p. 21) depict that “com-
prehension is a strategic process” – i.e. good readers actively seek out the mean-
ing of unknown words by using their background knowledge and text clues to
create predictions, to keep track of those predictions, to re-predict whenever
required and, usually, to create representations of the author’s meaning. Affler-
bach, Pearson and Paris (2008, p. 368) assert that reading strategies are “deliber-
ate, goal-directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode
text, understand words, and construct meanings of text”.
Writing also is a process that involves different strategic activities. Writing, as
a productive skill, involves more deliberate control and objective-directedness,
since, as Harris, Graham, Brindle and Sandmel (2009, p. 132) mention, the writer
should consider the rules and grammatical frame of writing while preserving a
focus on factors including purposes and objectives of the writing, organization,
features and form, audience needs and considerations, efficacy and evaluation of
communicative intent.
To enhance learners’ literacy improvement, it is essential and significant to
boost their awareness regarding the strategic nature and dynamic of the reading
and writing process and make them familiar and conversant with the efficient
strategies that good readers and writers usually use. Furthermore, we should also
consider the learners’ variables such as gender, motivation, self-efficacy, effort
and contextual facets such as home language and culture. These types of factors
are also identified to be closely associated with the literacy learning and strategy
use. Learners’ involvement and exuberance in literacy learning, self-rated writing
and reading capabilities and effort in literacy learning are directly related to their
strategy use.
Therefore, language teachers need to strengthen and reinforce the mutual ties
between motivation, self-efficacy and effort and as well the frequent use of the
effective learning strategies. By escalating the L2 learners’ intrinsic interest in
reading and writing activities, encouraging them to develop and enhance their
self-efficacy and effort, language educators can make learners much more pro-
ductive and active in performing strategic behavior in their literacy learning.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness in language learning is another crucial component of the socio-
psychological aspect of language learning/teaching that has received a significant
amount of research in recent years. Ways of improving students’ self-awareness
and its influence on language learning should be regarded as a significant phe-
nomenon in the language learning and teaching process that can augment moti-
vation and successful learning.
The last decade has demonstrated significant changes in language learning
environments. The main objective of the latest strategies for language learning
and teaching is to augment and boost learners’ control over the learning process.
These teaching/learning strategies concentrate on the importance of learning
to learn. Therefore, it is essential to teach students the strategies that help them
handle new technology as well as changed learning environment.
It is important for teachers to make students aware of the particular proce-
dures involved in language learning and also to assist them to discover learning
environments that suit their socio-psychological and linguistic requirements best.
Language learners should be helped to engage exuberantly in the principles of
autonomy in a gradual progressive way, but there should be a reasonable balance
between providing chances for the students to take control over their learning
environments and supporting those students who are not yet prepared to accept
this responsibility for themselves.
The importance of students’ self-directiveness and autonomy has been empha-
sized by many researchers. The improvement of student autonomy and self-
directiveness at least to some extent seems to be almost universally considered as
a significant and general goal of education.
The most commonly accepted definition of autonomy was introduced by
Holec (1981). He defines autonomy as the capability to take responsibility of
one’s own directed learning. The students, therefore, need to improve specific
skills for identifying and figuring out their own objectives, needs, methods of
learning and evaluation. This is not simply something intrinsic that individuals
are born with; the students need to be taught ways to help themselves and man-
age and control their own learning.
Boosting the awareness of one’s own learning and attaining the perception
of the procedures involved is a central and essential key for the improvement
of autonomous learning. Developing the students’ self-directiveness and self-
awareness in L2 learning is very important, because without an explicit aware-
ness about the procedures involved in L2 learning, language learners will not be
in the appropriate state to make conscious decisions about their own learning.
Therefore, language teachers should help students develop their understanding
of the learning process so that they can acquire the linguistic skills consciously
and consequently, they will be able to take control of their learning process.
Second/foreign language teachers should choose proper approaches for
enhancing learners’ awareness. They should take into account that learning a
second/foreign language is a process of learners’ progress in three interrelated
areas – viz,
• personal awareness: self-direction, self-esteem and self-concept

• task-awareness: knowledge and understanding of language and communication
• awareness of the language learning process: process management and control
As a result, effective improvement in the learners’ linguistic competence

demands systematic and organized advancement of all three factors and the learn-
ers should acquire both cognitive and metacognitive strategies.
As mentioned, the role of language teachers in developing learners’ self-awareness
is crucial. They can help students discover, determine and make use of their own
individual learning process and thus increase self-awareness. The enhancement of
self-awareness and self-directed L2 learning should be an integral part of the lan-
guage learning/teaching paradigm. Teachers should increase learners’ awareness
of their responsibilities and capacities; they should encourage students’ self-study
and take into consideration the students’ interest and requirements that lead to
an enhancement of their motivation in L2 learning.
Differentiated instruction: teachers’ roles

The classroom is a stage for constant and ongoing role conflict between teach-
ers and learners. Teachers have a clear image of the methods they would like to
apply in their own roles and possess a clear perception of how they expect the
learners play their roles. But the learners have their own image, expectation and
perception that sometimes are in conflict with those of teachers. Some learners
may have problems with learning and struggle with it, some may succeed beyond
the expected level and still some others may be in between. Within each of these
groups of learners, individuals furthermore learn language in a variety of different
ways and have various interests. To fulfil the needs of a diverse learner population,
many teachers differentiate instruction.
Differentiation involves the attempts of teachers to interact with and respond
to variance among students in their classroom. When a teacher encounters a
student or a group of students and decides to vary and alter his/her teaching
method in order to create the most effective learning experience feasible, that
teacher is in fact differentiating instruction. Based on the learner’s interest, learn-
ing profile and readiness, teachers can differentiate among the four components
of the classroom: one, content; two, process; three, products; and four, learning.
Content can be defined as what learners need to learn and how they will get
access to the needed information – for instance, (a) using reading materials and
resources at different legibility levels, putting text resources on visual tapes; (b)
making use of spelling and vocabulary lists at readiness levels of learners; (c)
delivering ideas and concepts via both auditory and visual means; and (d) meet-
ing with a small group of students struggling with learning in order to re-teach
an idea or concept, as well as organize meetings with the advanced learners to
extend their thinking and skills.
Process includes differentiating activities or process such as (a) employing activi-
ties by which all students use the similar significant perceptions and skills; however,
they carry on together with various amount of support, challenge and intricacy;
(b) fluctuate the length of time a learner may need to complete an activity to give
additional support for a struggling student or to motivate an advanced student to
continue a topic in greater depth; and (c) developing personal agenda containing
activity lists written by the teacher and consisting of both in-common tasks for the
whole class and tasks that addresses personal and individual needs of students.
Products that implement differentiation include (a) providing learners options
of how to express and convey expected learning, (b) employing rubrics which
match and expand learners’ various skills degrees, (c) letting learners to work
individually or in small groups on their own products and (d) motivating learners
to produce their own product assignments.
The learning environment can ensure differentiating by (a) ensuring that there
are sufficient places in the room to work silently and without disturbance as well
as places for collaborative working, (b) providing learning materials which can
reflect a number of various culture settings of the target language and as well as
native culture and (c) providing clear and unambiguous guidelines for working
independently that matches individual demands.
If teachers want to increase their learners’ individual potential, they need to
consider the differences. There is a plethora of research evidence that learners
are more successful and productive if they are taught in a manner which is more
responsive to their interest, readiness level and learning profile. If teachers want
to be more professional, competent and creative, they should work at differenti-
ating instruction.
Differentiation helps learners to be more motivated to achieve and feel more
engaged in the learning process and classroom activities. It will encourage stu-
dents to engage in the tasks and thus learn more effectively. Therefore, it is of
great help if teachers balance their own needs with those of learners if they want
to become more effective and productive at differentiation. Living in a world that
shrinks every day, dexterity in differentiation is definitely an asset for any teacher
of language.
Conclusion
On taking an overview of the models available in this field to date, it is clear that
each model is more complex than its predecessor and takes more variables into its
field. While this means greater accuracy, it also implies that the realities of social
psychology in the language learning paradigm are more complex than researchers
recognize. This gives research a more fertile and busy field to work with. In order
to be more effective as pedagogy, social psychological studies of language learn-
ing will need to have a greater empirical base. Just as the native-user construct has
been re-modelled, once empirical data is firmly established, the next stage would
be the testing of the hypotheses formed by the researchers on the basis of that
data. Once a clear proposal emerges, then it would be possible to link research
and pedagogy, leading to positive synergy in the field.
However, with respect to the Asian English language (EL) classroom, it should
be understood that besides considering the socio-psychological aspects of lan-
guage learning, it is essential to pay much more than usual attention to their
social norms which are a set of fixed and standard rules that usually control the
social behavior of the group members in a specific social context. Social norms are
the particular reflections of a people’s belief, values, culture and goals. Norms are
usually shaped and preserved through the group, but they control and moderate
the individual’s behavior. Therefore, considering the fact that social norms of
Asian students can sometimes significantly vary from Western social norms and
hold the power to affect learning outcomes, it is essential that language teachers
be aware of even those social norms that usually are hidden and implicit in Asian
students. Language and society are interdependent, and it is extremely difficult
to separate language and social process as the individuals’ linguistic behaviors
reflect significant social norms. Therefore, in addition to the discussed socio-
psychological facets of language acquisition, in the Asian EL classroom, it is very
important to consider the linguistic, social and ethnic diversification of Asian
language learners.
As Moradi (2014) writes, “language and culture on the surface may appear
to be two different and distinct fields, but it is obvious that they have an inter-
twined relationship and affect each other mutually”. Learning a second/foreign
language is different from other curriculum subjects, since it in fact requires
language learners to incorporate and integrate elements and factors from another
society and culture; as a result, reaction towards another culture and its social
norms is of significant consideration. Such types of considerations shed light
on the importance and complexity of motivation and attitude or the socio-
psychological aspects of language learning especially when it comes to the EFL/
ESL EL classroom.
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16 The role of pragmatics
in teaching English as an
additional language
Andrew D. Cohen
For many learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Asia, the prag-
matics of the language poses a major challenge. The concern is with meaning
as communicated by speakers (or writers) and interpreted by listeners (or read-
ers), with a focus on intended meanings, assumptions, and actions performed
when speaking (e.g., making a request) (based on Yule, 1996, pp. 3–4). I person-
ally have studied 12 languages beyond my native English over the course of my
lifetime, and this has included two Asian languages, Japanese, and Mandarin.1
While I have achieved relative pragmatic control in, say, four of these languages
(Hebrew and three Romance languages), I have the sense that even with these
languages I am capable of pragmatic failure (see Cohen, 1997, 2001). In fact, it
is more my pragmatic failures than my pragmatic successes that have made me
acutely aware that pragmatic performance benefits from explicit instruction – that
learners do not just acquire pragmatic niceties through osmosis.
My concern in this chapter is to shift continually from theory to practice in
providing insights for Asian learners of English as to how to be pragmatically
appropriate in a host of language performance situations, whether in their per-
ception and production of speech acts or in other areas. Speech acts are often,
but not always, the patterned, routinized language that natives and pragmatically
competent nonnative speakers and writers in a given speech community (with
its dialect variations) use to perform functions such as thanking, compliment-
ing, requesting, refusing, apologizing, and complaining (see Olshtain & Cohen,
1983, pp. 19–21; Cohen, 1996, pp. 384–385). Speech acts are a challenging
area of pragmatic behavior because of the possible misfit between what one does
or does not say or write in a language in the given speech act and what is meant
by it. Speech act theory, in fact, provides a reliable and valid basis for examining
pragmatic patterns that are primarily focused on selected utterances from the dis-
course (Mey, 1993). Beyond speech acts, there are numerous other areas of prag-
matic focus. Thus this coverage of second language (L2)2 pragmatics issues for
Asian learners will start by looking first at the notion of research altogether, then
at politeness, and then at speech acts, the favorite focus of pragmatics research.
In addition, I will look at other areas of pragmatics: conversational overlap, back
channeling, phatic communication, humor, sarcasm, and the pragmatic function
of discourse markers. I will end by considering the teaching of L2 pragmatics,
234 Andrew D. Cohen
and the learning and performing of pragmatics. The main purpose of this effort
is to identify areas of research on pragmatics, which can help to inform Asian
learners of English as to how to be more pragmatically appropriate in their own
uses of the language.
Themes in the research literature
Study abroad
Study abroad is a popular context these days for conducting L2 pragmat-
ics research. One of the more creative studies was that conducted to describe
pragmatic development of students while in study abroad, focusing on service
encounters recorded in situ between L2 learners of Spanish and local Span-
ish service providers in Toledo, Spain (Shively, 2011). The participants in the
study were seven US students who studied abroad for one semester. What made
the research design innovative was that the data consisted of naturalistic audio
recordings that participants made of themselves while visiting local shops, banks,
and other establishments. The study was longitudinal with recordings made at
the beginning, middle, and end of the semester by each student, for a total of 113
recordings. Additional data included students’ weekly journals and interviews
with participants. The analysis focused on openings and requests, and examined
the ways in which students’ pragmatic choices shifted over time, considering the
role of language socialization and explicit instruction in pragmatics in that devel-
opment. Overall, the changes in openings and requests suggested that the stu-
dents learned and adopted some of the pragmatic norms of service encounters in
the Toledo speech community.
Describing variation in intercultural pragmatics

Whereas in the Toledo study the innovation was in the way the data were col-
lected, another line of research still in need of actualization would be to get at
true variation in intercultural pragmatics. While cross-cultural pragmatics com-
pares the pragmatics of one culture or subculture with that of another, intercul-
tural pragmatics (at least as I define it) looks at cultures in contact and the hybrid
forms of pragmatics that result from this interaction. So if we were to conduct
genuinely intercultural pragmatics research, it would be important to include in
the sample subjects who are likely to have elements of hybrid pragmatics in their
data.
A hypothetical study was proposed in Cohen (2012a), focusing on doctor-
patient interactions in the US Southwest in which intercultural pragmatics would
be involved. The paper identified and discussed research design issues, types of
data employed, the measures used, and concerns about data analysis. The pro-
posed study was intended to highlight the number of variables that can lead to
pragmatic variation in the research outcomes. When doctors use Spanish as a
nonnative language, the question is how their pragmatics is perceived by their
Pragmatics in teaching English 235
Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrant patients and with what impact. The pro-
posed study suggested comparing the pragmatics of this context with that of native
Spanish-speaking doctors interacting with these same patients, English-speaking
doctors interacting with mainstream patients in English in the US Southwest, and
doctors in Mexico interacting with their patients. The purpose is to problematize
just what the study of intercultural pragmatics involves when looking at speech
communities in flux and taking into account individual variation.
So, for example, when an Asian learner speaks English, whose pragmatics is
being used? Is it English with a pragmatics overlay from the first language (L1)
language and culture? Even if there is an effort to reflect English language prag-
matics, which English-speaking country’s pragmatics are being adhered to, and if
the speakers do not include any native English speakers, does it really matter if the
pragmatics reflect approaches used by native speakers? In other words, in these
cases is the issue of pragmatic failure due to violation of native-speaker norms
even an issue? More will be said about this topic under the section “Teaching
English as a Lingua Franca.”
Politeness
A pervasive concern addressed in the pragmatics literature is that of politeness.
Here let us sample just a few of the recent studies involving politeness – first
looking at cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness and at ethnic
variation in perceptions of politeness within a country, and then at jocular insults
and swearwords.
Cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness

An investigation of cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness was
conducted based on 500 impoliteness events reported by students in England,
China, Finland, Germany, and Turkey (Culpeper, Marti, Mei, Nevala, & Schauer,
2010). The analytical framework looked at rapport management, covering vari-
ous types of face as well as sociality rights. An analysis of differences between the
geographically separated data sets revealed that the England-based data had a
preponderance of impoliteness events in which quality face was violated, whereas
the China-based data had a preponderance of instances where equity rights were
violated – where group values were prized more highly than individualistic ones.
Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties

Building on earlier research describing pragmatic features of New Zealand (NZ)
English, and identifying ways in which politeness was expressed in NZ workplace
talk, Holmes, Marra, and Vine (2012) extended the sociopragmatic analysis of
New Zealand English (NZE) in several ways. Using the theoretical model that
the researchers had developed to analyze workplace interaction, they focused on
intercultural interactions between Māori and Pākehā (i.e., Kiwis of European
236 Andrew D. Cohen
descent), and data from both Māori and Pākehā workplaces to throw light on
distinctive features of politeness in NZE workplace discourse. For example, they
examined the value of egalitarianism in NZ society, and explored its pervasive
influence on the ways in which politeness was interactionally achieved in different
NZ communities of practice. They then discussed how this related to the dimen-
sion of formality, exemplifying some distinctively NZ ways in which formality
and informality were indexed in workplace interaction. The analysis illustrated
how these influences were manifest in small talk, humor, meeting protocols, and
extension of the distinctive pragmatic particle eh to new domains. So the findings
from the study suggested how Māori ways of doing things were subtly influenc-
ing Pākehā norms and thus contributing to the development of a distinctively NZ
set of values and pragmatic norms.
Jocular insults
A research project on leadership discourse and gender in Hong Kong workplaces
looked at jocular insults in data from a business meeting in a small factory outlet
involving three male and three female staff (Ladegaard, 2012). The two female
leaders used jocular insults and other forms of verbal abuse repeatedly in what
was interpreted as instrumental rudeness on the part of the two leaders. These
discursive strategies were seen as having the purpose of attacking their interlocu-
tors’ face and thereby enhancing the leaders’ power. The researcher pointed out
that whereas jocular insults may not only function as a means by which superiors
maintain their position in the workplace but also as a socially acceptable strategy
by which subordinates challenge their leaders, in the present context, these strate-
gies were used predominantly by the two leaders. The researcher argued that a
careful consideration of the sociopragmatic norms of the micro- and the macro-
context may explain why the subordinates would accept these insults.
In this particular case, the power distance and hierarchical relationships would
explain why these leaders’ demeaning discourses were not directly challenged.
The researcher pointed out that normatively masculine and feminine management
styles may be culturally specific. Generally, it is considered legitimate for Chinese
leaders to adopt a paternalistic autocratic management style, and employees are
expected to be deferential and obedient. In a culture that places great emphasis
on power distance and filial piety, there is little to protect employees from exploi-
tation. Bearing in mind that this study reported data from just one meeting in
one workplace in Hong Kong, the study nonetheless lent support to more recent
accounts in sociolinguistics arguing that women are not intrinsically more polite
or considerate than men.
Swearwords
Knowing how to perform in a pragmatically appropriate way does not just mean
knowing how to be polite. It also means knowing when and how to be impolite,
and sometimes knowing how to swear plays an important role. Unfortunately,
language teachers are often reluctant to teach learners how to swear, especially
when teaching Asian students whose sensibilities may be easily offended by such
instruction. In a study in NZ, over 2,000 interactions were collected in English
(mostly English as an L1) (Daly, Holmes, Newton, & Stubbe, 2004). An exten-
sive analysis of the corpus showed that among what was necessary for fitting in
and becoming an integrated member of the workplace was the ability to curse
affectively, especially using the f-word with fellow employees and even with the
boss, as a way to fit in and bond. Nonnatives apparently can find themselves
ostracized for not cursing like the rest. On the comprehension side, the learner
may hear these invectives and be put off or even shocked, and certainly not eager
to learn when and how to use them
Another study published at the same time investigated the perception of the
emotional force of swearwords and taboo words (S-T words) among 1,039 mul-
tilinguals (Dewaele, 2004). The study was based on data drawn from a large
database collected through a web questionnaire on bilingualism and emotions.
As to the findings, t-tests revealed that the perceived emotional force of S-T
words was highest in the L1 and gradually lower in languages learned subse-
quently. Self-reported L1 attriters were found to judge S-T words in their L1 to
be less powerful than for those who were still dominant in their L1. Participants
who learned their language(s) in a naturalistic or partly naturalistic/context gave
higher ratings on emotional force of S-T words in that language than instructed
language learners.
Cross-cultural speech act research

Research on speech acts often uses the paradigm of comparing L1 perfor-
mance across languages. As an early researcher in the field of L2 speech acts,
it is a pleasure for me to see how robustly this field has developed in the last
40 years – especially with regard to English as a second language (ESL) and
EFL studies. Back in the late 1970s, there was little empirical data available
on how natives and nonnatives performed pragmatics. Now there is a size-
able quantity of such data. Clearly, native speakers of certain languages have
gotten greater focus, such as Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean speak-
ers of English, but work has also been done in collecting ESL/EFL data
from speakers of other languages, such as Persian, Arabic, and German. And
every day there are new studies looking at pragmatics in languages other than
English.
One area of development is an increase in the study of certain speech acts, with
a focus on speech acts that had not been studied at all or only on a limited basis,
such as the speech act of giving condolences or that of criticizing someone (i.e.,
beyond academic or literary criticism, as encouraged by teachers). Another is to
look at written speech acts, such as in email messages. The following are two such
studies.
238 Andrew D. Cohen
Complaints
One study selected complaining as an under-represented speech act in cross-
cultural pragmatics. Unlike the well-defined speech acts such as apologizing,
requesting, and complimenting, the researchers viewed complaining as compara-
tively more complex in that it has no pre-determined forms and the interpreta-
tions are often negotiable (Chen, Chen, & Chang, 2011). In this study, a total
of 20 Americans in the United States and 20 Taiwanese university students were
recruited and asked to respond to a discourse completion task (DCT) contain-
ing eight complaint-provoking scenarios: the waiter spilling a drink on a patron’s
new shirt, discontent with the late shift at work, background noise while on the
phone, someone cutting in line at a theater, a hole found in a new T-shirt, the
tutee not paying attention, the chairperson forgetting an appointment with a
member of staff, and a mother opening her child’s mail. The DCT was used in
the study because it clearly elicited the complaints under study and allowed for
cross-cultural comparisons. Six complaint strategies (opting out, interrogation,
accusation, request for repair, and threat) were identified and analyzed in terms
of their overall and combined use across the eight scenarios. The quantitative
results indicated that the American and the Chinese participants shared similar
distributions in both overall and combined strategy use across the complaint situ-
ations. The qualitative findings, however, showed differences in choice of linguis-
tic forms and expression of semantic content. The study revealed that compared
to American complaints, the Chinese complaints seemed to be more sensitive to
social power.
Requests
Another speech act study examined 200 email requests written in English by
Greek Cypriot university students (non-native speakers (NNS) of English) at a
major, English-medium university in Cyprus over a period of several semesters
(Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011). The emails were sent to 11 faculty members, 2
natives of English and 9 nonnatives, but with residence in the United Kingdom
or United States for more than 10 years. The study examined forms of address
(salutations), the degree of directness employed, and the degree and type of sup-
portive moves and lexical/phrasal modifiers used by students in order to soften or
aggravate their e-requests. The faculty members’ communication style with their
students could be characterized as friendly but formal (e.g., they did not encour-
age first name use with students and had contact with students only during class
and office hours). Two of these faculty members were native speakers of English
but had lived in Cyprus for more than 15 years at the time of the study. The rest
were of Greek or Greek Cypriot origin, had lived in the United Kingdom or the
United States for more than ten years, and had native-like proficiency in English.
Twenty-four lecturers from 12 universities in the United Kingdom evaluated 6
archetype responses drawn from the email data. They were all British English
native speakers and were teaching various subjects in higher education (other
than linguistics).
Findings from the study showed that the NNS students’ emails were char-
acterized by significant directness (particularly in relation to requests for infor-
mation), an absence of lexical/phrasal downgraders, an omission of greetings
and closings, and inappropriate or unacceptable forms of address. Consistent
with previous email studies, the results revealed that the NNS students resorted
largely to direct strategies (“please” + the imperative) rather than more appro-
priate conventional indirectness, both in the case of requests for action and for
information. The researcher argued that such emails could be perceived as impo-
lite and discourteous and therefore capable of causing pragmatic failure. This
was primarily due to the fact that such messages appeared to give the faculty no
choice as to whether to comply with the request and failed to acknowledge the
imposition involved.
Conversational overlap
One area of real concern for Asian speakers of American English beyond speech
acts is how to break into an ongoing conversation, especially given the preferred
politeness patterns in their native languages and cultures. Typically, the nonnative
misjudges which kind of pause means it is OK to break in, since native speakers of
different languages may have different attitudes about someone cutting into the
conversation during someone else’s turn. For example, research comparing con-
versational strategies in French and Australian English found that French speak-
ers not only tolerate, but indeed expect, a variety of incursions into a current
speaker’s turn, unlike speakers of Australian English, and that these incursions
are generally treated as collaborative strategies (Beal, 2010). Apparently, a con-
versational overlap in French is considered a feature of involvement and liveliness,
lending a sense of joint purpose to verbal exchanges. By contrast, members of
Anglo-Saxon speech communities, like English native speakers, regarded it as
aggressive and unacceptable (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2005).
Against this research backdrop, a study was conducted focusing on overlap-
ping talk as a feature of conversational management in multi-participant talk
in advanced L2 French, in relation to L1 French and English (Guillot, 2014).
The data collected consisted of multi-participant simulated television discus-
sions on the topic of anti-smoking campaigns. They represented the commu-
nicative behavior of two main groups of subjects: advanced learners of French
(four groups, two of pre-year-abroad subjects, two of post-year-abroad subjects)
and native speakers of French (two groups) (25 subjects in all, four to eight
per group). All groups were recorded twice, first in their L2 and then in their
L1: The L2 recordings thus encompassed L1 and L2 French, and L1 and L2
English. The findings confirmed the active propensity of French speakers to use
overlapping talk as an interactional resource than Australian English speakers.
The frequency of use of overlaps in the L2 French post-year-abroad data, closer
240 Andrew D. Cohen
to L1 French than to L1 English, suggested that the greater interactional and
strategic value of this type of overlap in L1 French may have been recognized
and built on.
Back channeling
Another area of concern in terms of conversational management is how listeners
use back channeling to signal that they are following a conversation. A recent
study focused on listenership (consisting of back channel feedback) and its effect
on intercultural communication in 30 dyadic conversations in English between
Japanese and American participants (Cutrone, 2014). The findings of this study
demonstrated several differences in how members of each culture used back chan-
nels in terms of frequency, variability, placement, and function. This study also
found evidence supporting the hypothesis that back channel conventions that are
not shared between cultures contribute to negative perceptions across cultures.
The results of this study showed that, when compared to the American group,
the Japanese group sent back channels far more frequently overall, which most
notably included a greater percentage of simultaneous speech back channels and
minimal responses. The American group, predictably, spoke a great deal more,
posed a far greater number of questions, and produced a greater percentage of
extended responses.
In addition, this study demonstrated a tendency in the Japanese participants
to produce unconventional back channels in situations when they did not under-
stand what their interlocutor was saying. The interpretation for this behavior
was that Japanese L2 English speakers may sometimes feign understanding and/
or agreement in order to keep conversations pleasant. This belief was further
strengthened by several of the JEFLs’ admission in the playback interviews that
they often had employed a continuer, a sign of understanding, agreement, and/
or support and empathy as back channels in situations when they did not under-
stand (71%) and/or when they disagreed with what their interlocutor was saying
(100%). Thus the findings of this study supported the conclusion that listenership
warrants more attention in EFL classrooms in Japan, and by extension, in EFL
classrooms in other Asian countries as well.
Phatic communication
Phatic communication or small talk has an important role in pragmatics. This
non-referential use of language is enlisted in order to share feelings or establish
a mood of sociability rather than to communicate information or ideas. It can
be used to create, maintain, and/or enhance friendly relationships. The problem
for Asian learners of English, however, is that they may not know how to make
small talk effectively, since it requires a metapragmatic awareness of a wide range
of complex and subtle issues, such as when and with whom to engage in it, the
underlying reasons to do so, the types of phatic tokens that may be exchanged,
the topics that such tokens may address, and the potential effects achievable
(Padilla Cruz, 2013). Although many didactic materials implicitly deal with some
elements related to phatic communication, they apparently tend not to include
it as an independent topic, nor do they neatly define it, distinguish its different
manifestations or, address its sociocultural peculiarities.
It is this gap in the didactics associated with L2 pragmatics, which prompted
a methodological proposal for teaching the pragmatics of phatic communica-
tion and for raising learners’ metapragmatic awareness (Padilla Cruz, 2013).
Based on an approach to teaching the pragmatics of specific L2 aspects (Mar-
tínez Flor & Usó Juan, 2006), this proposal integrated relevant findings about
phatic communication from pragmatics and other neighboring disciplines, com-
bines different approaches to teaching intercultural pragmatic issues in class, and
includes tasks.
Humor
Also of great challenge Asian learners is to understand English language humor.
Humor may fail for many reasons and the ways in which this happens are just
beginning to be explored. One such exploration was aimed at examining L2
understanding of humor systematically (Bell & Attardo, 2010). Six advanced
non-native speakers (three Japanese, two Korean, and one Chinese graduate stu-
dent) of English, all studying to get a degree in an MATESOL program, kept
diaries in which they recorded their experiences with humor in English over an
eight-week period. Group meetings were held every two weeks during this time
to allow the participants to elaborate on, interpret, and discuss their experiences.
All instances of failed humor were extracted, coded, and used to construct a
typology, which identified seven ways in which a speaker may fail to engage in a
humorous exchange successfully:
1 failure to process language at the illocutionary level,

2 failure to understand the meaning of words (including connotations),
3 failure to understand the pragmatic force of utterances (including irony),
4 failure to recognize the humorous frame,
5 false negative: missing the joke,
6 false positive: seeing a joke where none was intended,
7 failure to understand the incongruity of the joke.
A follow-up study by one of the same researchers focused on native English

speakers’ handling of humor, as if to accentuate just how problematic responses
to attempted humor can be, even for native speakers (Bell, 2013). The researcher
looked at native-speaker responses to a joke that hinged on a rather subtle pun
(“how’s” = “house”). The pun situation involved the mailman inquiring about a
homeowner’s dog that had attacked him in the past but was not outside the last
few days. When the postman asks, “How’s your dog?,” the homeowner, hearing
(or pretending to hear?) “House your dog,” responds, “I did.” The joke was
impossible for most hearers to comprehend without an explanation.
242 Andrew D. Cohen
A total of 278 L1-hearer responses were elicited by 22 undergraduates enrolled
in a sociolinguistics course at a large, public university in the Western United
States. The most common reactions included non-verbal responses, explicit
expressions of non-understanding (e.g. “I don’t get it”), laughter, silence, and
repetition of the punch line. Significant differences were found when analyzing
the responses by gender and social relationship, but not age. The joke was met
with laughter 28% of the time, even though many hearers did not understand it
and so they responded with uncomfortable or nervous laughter.
Sarcasm
Equally as daunting for L2 learners as perceiving humor is perceiving sarcasm.
According to Kim (2014), successful understanding of sarcasm in L2 can be a sub-
stantial challenge for learners for at least two reasons: (1) the inherent incongruity
of meaning that is frequently exhibited in instances of sarcasm, and (2) the highly
context-dependent nature of sarcasm. Native speakers of English possess top-down
knowledge (e.g., intuitions and experiences) through which they can (in many
cases) successfully interpret their interlocutors’ sarcastic intent, while Asian learn-
ers have to use a bottom-up approach. As an example of recent research on this
topic, a study examined how Korean adult learners of English interpreted sarcasm
in spoken English (Kim, 2014). Twenty-eight Korean adult employees of a trad-
ing company in Korea participated in the study. Participants were asked to identify
instances of sarcasm in video clips taken from the US TV sitcom Friends and then
to assess the possible speaker intent and communicative goals associated with these
sarcastic utterances. During individual interviews, participants reported the cues
that they attended to while processing sarcasm. Analysis revealed that learners drew
upon certain features of L1 schema during the L2 comprehension process.
According to the researcher, there were various explanations for why Korean
participants did not perceive the use of sarcasm in Friends, such as lack of knowl-
edge about how sarcasm is generally used in the specific L2 context, lack of
linguistic data about highly conventionalized sarcastic utterances, and lack of
knowledge about the types of cues used to convey sarcasm (Kim, 2014). For
example, the majority of native-speaker participants not only saw the use of
“Yeah, right” in Friends as an example of a conventionalized sarcastic remark, but
also as a way of disagreeing or making fun of the interlocutor. For those 60% of
the Korean participants who did perceive it as sarcasm, they all misperceived the
intent as being that of simply trying to be funny. Many Korean participants also
apparently lacked knowledge about how to interpret speakers’ facial expressions,
especially the use of a “blank face,” which is one of the cues that sarcasm users in
the United States typically adopt.
The pragmatic function of discourse markers

Discourse markers are an important means for signaling pragmatic functions,
both in speaking and in writing. The following are two studies that highlight the
issue.
Frequency of use of discourse markers
One study investigated the use of pragmatic markers by college learners of English
in China (Wei, 2011). It compared the use of pragmatic markers by 141 English
majors from three Chinese universities. The data consisted of responses to inter-
view questions such as “How might your life look ten years from now?” Responses
included descriptions of their homes, recent activities, and an apology to a friend
for having missed a dinner engagement. While intermediate and advanced students
used similar discourse markers and in the same order of magnitude (“I think,”
“well,” “yes/yeah,” “you know,” and “please”), quantitative and qualitative analy-
ses indicated that advanced students tended to be more spontaneous in their speech
and more effective in managing spoken interactions and performing social functions
to cater to contextual needs than were the intermediate students. These discourse
markers – which the researcher referred to as pragmatic markers – were found to
play a dynamic role in accomplishing more contextually bound coherence and to
perform the important function of maintaining smooth interactions.
The cross-cultural misuse of discourse markers

A second study investigated the effect of native language (Mandarin Chinese)
on the use of English discourse markers by L1 Chinese speakers of English (Liu,
2013). Ten graduate students originally from mainland China and five Ameri-
can English native speakers at the University of Florida served as subjects. All
students were interviewed for 15 minutes in English by native English speakers.
Topics for the interviews included hobbies, weekends, sports, favorite teachers,
favorite movies and TV programs, and happiest experience. The Chinese stu-
dents were interviewed on the same topics in Chinese. Results showed that three
Chinese discourse markers were found to influence their corresponding English
expressions. The finding that the L1 Chinese speakers used the deliberative func-
tion of “I think” in medial or final position, while the native English speakers did
not, would suggest that they transferred this use of “I think” from their L1 (woˇ
juéde). Second, the L1 Chinese speakers used “yeah/yes” as a back channel after
the interlocutor’s reaction “uh huh” or “OK,” while the native English speakers
did not. This use was also interpreted as negative transfer from the corresponding
Chinese expression duì because duì has this function in Chinese. Finally, Chinese
L1 speakers used “ah” to perform a clause-medial function (followed by self-
correction) in the same way that a would be used in Chinese, while the native
English speakers did not use “ah” in this way.
Teaching L2 pragmatics
Now that we have looked at a variety of issues regarding the “what” of L2 prag-
matics, let us consider how to teach some of these important aspects of language
behavior. Over the last few decades, the theme of interlanguage pragmatics
and in particular the link between language and culture has gained increas-
ing appeal internationally and has enjoyed attention in the field of language
244 Andrew D. Cohen
education. It is probably fair to say that pragmatics has become a mainstream
concern in L2 teaching and learning. Nonetheless, there is a noticeable gap
between what research in pragmatics has found and how language is generally
taught today – thus a rather weak link between theory and practice. The reason
why this chapter has concentrated on pragmatics research in leading journals
was precisely to underscore the importance of a research basis for choosing
pragmatic materials to teach. For example, research findings have tended to
favor a deductive approach rather than an inductive one. Generally, explicit
teaching about how language functions in discourse has been found to be more
beneficial than leaving learners to figure pragmatic behavior out for themselves
(Cohen, 2012b).
That said, a study by Takimoto (2008) found that learners who had to discover
the underlying rules for downgrading requests were better able to process infor-
mation about the target features and store it in working memory than those who
simply received explicit information about making requests, without having to
link the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic features in the information to vari-
ous meanings conveyed by means of downgrading requests.3 So it is still an open
question as to how best to instruct learners regarding pragmatics, probably in
part because learners differ as to their learning style preferences (see, for example,
Cohen, 2012a).
Teaching criticism in an L2
Looking at the explicit teaching of a less taught speech act, a study evaluated the
relative effectiveness of two types of form-focused instruction on the acquisition
of the speech act set of constructive criticism by 69 Vietnamese learners of English
(Nguyen, Pham, & Pham, 2012). Three high intermediate EFL intact classes
(N = 69) of pre-service EFL teachers were recruited. Over a 10-week course,
the explicit group (N = 28) participated in consciousness-raising activities, and
received explicit metapragmatic explanation and correction of errors of forms
and meanings. The implicit group (N = 19), on the other hand, participated
in pragmalinguistic input enhancement and recast activities. The two treatment
groups were compared with a control group (N = 22) on pretest and posttest
performance, consisting of a DCT, a role play, and an oral peer feedback task.
There was also a delayed posttest comprising the same production tasks to meas-
ure long-term retention. The results revealed that both of the treatment groups
significantly improved in the immediate posttest over the pretest, outperforming
the control group. The treatment groups also maintained their improvement in
the delayed posttest. Of note, the explicit instruction group performed signifi-
cantly better than the implicit group on all measures.
Teaching refusals in an L3
Another approach to pragmatics research regarding speech acts has been to
look at the learning of pragmatics among multilinguals. One study examined
the benefits that teaching the speech act of refusal from a discourse perspective
had on third language (L3) learners’ pragmatic knowledge (Alcón Soler, 2012).
Retrospective verbal reports were used to examine the impact of instruction on
attention and awareness of refusals, and to explore whether receptive and produc-
tive bilingual learners resorted to pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, and linguis-
tic information in different ways during the planning and execution of refusals.
There were 92 university students learning English L3 pragmatics in the study,
40 who had acquired Catalan as their L1 and Spanish as their L2 (referred to in
the study as productive bilinguals), and 52 students who had acquired Spanish
as their L1 and Catalan as an L2 (termed receptive bilinguals). Pragmatic input
was provided using excerpts from the Friends sitcom series with the focus was on
refusals to invitations in a situation of power and social distance. Retrospective
verbal reports were used to examine the impact of instruction on attention and
awareness of refusals, and to explore whether receptive and productive Catalan
and Spanish bilingual learners resorted to pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, and
linguistic information in different ways during the planning and execution of
refusals.
The findings showed that teaching refusals at the discourse level increased the
learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness of refusals in English L3, regardless of their
degree of Catalan and Spanish bilingualism. In contrast, productive bilinguals
outperformed receptive bilinguals in L3 metapragmatic awareness. The inter-
pretation provided was that the productive bilinguals had greater communica-
tive sensitivity, in large part because they were already making more contrasts
between the Catalan and Spanish linguistic systems and thus had a better sense of
intended meanings and social variables affecting language use.
Teaching English as a lingua franca

In an increasingly global world, more and more people are communicating in
English that is not the native language of either of them, in a context where
there are no native speakers of English around to evaluate their pragmatics.
So, as already queried earlier in this chapter, whose pragmatics do they use?
A recent study performed qualitative analysis on a sample of data produced by
a multicultural group of MA students for whom English was the lingua franca
(Maíz-Arévalo, 2014). More specifically, the researcher sought to answer the fol-
lowing research question: In a multicultural class where English is the medium
of instruction and students’ peer-to-peer communication, whose pragmatic
“rules” are followed? In other words, do these speakers stick to their own cul-
tural pragmatic rules or follow native-like ones? More specifically, she focused on
the speech act of disagreement, given its face-threatening nature and its disrup-
tive potential if carried out in what interlocutors might perceive as the “wrong”
way. Disagreement was also chosen because of the relative paucity of studies on
this speech act.
Ten students from very different cultural backgrounds, studying English Lin-
guistics at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid were asked to carry out a
246 Andrew D. Cohen
group assignment. The negotiation and discussion process was computer-medi-
ated via the use of forums within their university’s Moodle program rather than
face-to-face. This allowed the researcher to collect 15,598 words of naturally
occurring, spontaneous written data. By participating in an online asynchronous
discussion, the students did not have to fight for conversational turns, but rather
were able to contribute to the discussion at their own pace. Disagreement expres-
sions were classified according to two main categories: strong and mitigated disa-
greement. The findings revealed that students on the whole showed a tendency
to avoid strong disagreement and instead to favor mitigated disagreement – such
as the use of hedges, asking for clarification, and giving explanations. Moreover,
students with high linguistic proficiency displayed a wider range of strategies,
following a more native-like pattern, following the pragmatic rules of British
English, since most of them had lived in the United Kingdom for a while before
coming to Spain. Students whose linguistic proficiency was lower also showed a
tendency to avoid strong disagreement, but were much more limited with regard
to their mitigating strategies, favoring the nonnative overuse of expressions of
regret and hedges.
Materials development for L2 pragmatics

While textbooks are often authorized and treated as unproblematic, especially
in foreign language contexts (Ishihara, 2011; Pulverness, 2003), many of them
still fall short in terms of appropriate language use in context. However, publi-
cations in L2 pragmatics have begun to provide samples of instructional mate-
rials and lesson plans (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig & Mahan-Taylor, 2003; Houck &
Tatsuki, 2011; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010; Martínez-Flor & Usó-Juan, 2010;
Tatsuki & Houck, 2010). More extensive curricular materials include Riddi-
ford and Newton (2010) for teaching a range of business or workplace interac-
tions in ESL contexts, Sykes and Cohen (2006) for teaching communicative
acts in Spanish, and Ishihara and Maeda (2010) for teaching speech acts in
Japanese.
In order to provide an updated treatment of this topic, Ishihara and I looked
at (a) what we know, (b) what we think we know, and (c) what we need to find
out with respect to materials development in L2 pragmatics (Cohen & Ishihara,
2012). We concluded that although pragmatics is often neglected or only mar-
ginally treated in existing L2 curricula, further development of L2 pragmatics
materials would support teachers in preparing learners to understand and use
language effectively in context and to express their own voice as they wish in the
target community.
Construction of websites
An area that has come into its own in research on L2 learning is that of lan-
guage learner strategies and the application of strategies to the learning and
performance of L2 pragmatics (Cohen & Sykes, 2013). The underlying concern
is with the potentially important role of strategies in heightening learners’ ability
to make informed choices with regard to how they handle intercultural situa-
tions. The focus is on assisting learners in developing a more robust repertoire of
strategies for their handling of pragmatics within intercultural communication.
The aim is to support learners in building a toolkit of common pragmatic options
that can be used as they co-construct communication in a variety of intercultural
interactions.
To begin addressing these issues, a strategic approach to L2 pragmatics was
included in a general pragmatics website that was launched under my direc-
tion in 2001 at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
(CARLA), University of Minnesota (www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/index.
html). Then a Japanese pragmatics website was launched in 2003 (www.carla.
umn.edu/speechacts/japanese/introtospeechacts/index.htm), and a Spanish
pragmatics website in 2006 (www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/sp_pragmatics/
home.html) (see Cohen, 2016 for more on these websites). Both the Japanese
and the Spanish websites benefited from research in cross-cultural pragmatics
and from interventional studies investigating the effects of explicit pragmatics
instruction on the development of pragmatic ability. Their goal was to employ
web-based strategy instruction: to enhance learners’ development and use of
language learner strategies, to provide guidance in complex pragmatic language
use that is difficult to ‘pick up,’ and to facilitate learning through web-based
materials.
A taxonomy of strategies for learning and performing L2 pragmatics was
applied to the construction of the Spanish pragmatics website, Dancing with
Words, aimed at facilitating the learning of pragmatics appropriate for Spanish-
speaking world, with strategy material integrated into the website. Research
was conducted by means of two studies, involving both this Spanish pragmatics
website and a synthetic immersive environment (SIE), Croquelandia, which was
designed as a 3-D immersive space for the learning of pragmatic behaviors in
Spanish (Cohen & Sykes, 2013). Results showed some reported differences in
strategy use in the two different kinds of digital environments, with the finding
of most relevance to the notion of intercultural education being that in the SIE
learners reported an increased use of metapragmatic strategies for dealing with
L2 pragmatics. This finding highlighted the role of strategies in making informed
choices about pragmatics.
A more recent expansion to the work begun at CARLA has been to set up a
wiki focused on the teaching of L2 pragmatics, the Second and Foreign Lan-
guage Pragmatics Wiki – wlpragmatics.pbworks.com. The main strategy is to
use crowdsourcing, namely, soliciting contributions from a large group of people,
and especially from the online community. The work has just begun to solicit a
wide range of practical teaching materials and advice from language teachers and
researchers worldwide who have successfully taught pragmatics to their students
in a number of languages (see Cohen, 2016).
248 Andrew D. Cohen
Assessment of pragmatics
Classroom teachers may avoid the assessment of pragmatics, especially nonnative
teachers who feel that they themselves are incapable of judging what constitutes
correct behavior. Nonetheless, there are various reasons for assessing L2 prag-
matics in the classroom (Cohen, 2014):
• It sends a message to the students that their ability to be pragmatically

appropriate in the comprehension and production of language in different
sociocultural situations is a positive thing.
• Having such items on a test motivates students to study about the perfor-
mance of speech acts.
• It gives teachers an opportunity to see the relative control their students have
in what may at times be a significant area for L2 performance.
• It gives teachers an opportunity to see whether learners have learned the
pragmatics that was included in the instruction.
A number of possible tasks have been suggested for assessing the comprehen-
sion of pragmatic performance. One approach is to have learners indicate how
well they think someone else has performed pragmatically. There are also vari-
ous ways to collect students’ pragmatic production, such as through oral role
play, written discourse as if spoken, multiple-choice, or short-answer responses.
It would appear that if speech act situations, for example, are made realistic and
if guidelines are provided to teachers on how to rate key aspects of pragmatics,
assessment of pragmatics would be more prevalent (Cohen, 2014).
Bardovi-Harlig and Shin (2014) argued that testing in pragmatics had for
too long relied on the same six measures of pragmatics assessment introduced
by Hudson, Detmer, and Brown (1992, 1995). They demonstrated that there
was a wealth of potential test formats in the L2 pragmatics acquisition literature
that were as yet untapped resources for pragmatics testing. They introduced
tasks that were used in pragmatic research which they considered innovative in
the context of assessment, and addressed the potential of each task to enhance
task authenticity, their practicality for testing, and their potential for broad-
ening our construct representation. By format, the tasks that they presented
for consideration included oral production (oral for oral), written production
(written for written), and audio and/or audio-visual conversational excerpts
with written/read interpretations. By area of pragmatics, the tasks covered
conventional expressions, pragmatic routines, conversational implicature,
pragmaticality judgments, sociopragmatic judgments, interaction of grammar
and pragmatics, and speech act identification tasks. The production tasks sim-
ulated turn taking by providing unanticipated turns through computer gen-
eration or audio presentation, requiring responses from the test takers. They
started with the production tasks, and then moved on to consider interpreta-
tion, judgment, and prediction tasks.
Learning and performing pragmatics
While it is crucial to focus on teachers and their teaching of pragmatics in Asia, it
is equally important to focus on learners and the strategies that they employ in an
effort to ensure that the input that they process is pragmatically comprehensible
to them. Likewise, attention needs to be given to the strategies that learners can
make use of so that their output is comprehensible pragmatically to their inter-
locutors (Cohen, 2011). This entails taking a close look at specific examples of
what comprehensibility of language at the level of intercultural pragmatics actu-
ally means. In looking at both the comprehension and production of pragmatic
material, the strategies that might be called on in order to avoid pragmatic failure
need to be considered (Cohen, 2005). So this means looking at what it might
take strategically in order to effectively comprehend input pragmatically, whether
the input is through language, through gestures, or through silence. A strategy
for understanding cursing at the workplace, for example, would be to pull over a
working associate and ask to be briefed on the various ways to curse appropriately
in that context (e.g., when in anger, when in jest, considering issues of age, status,
and gender, and so forth).
In addition, it would be advisable for learners to consider using strategies for
avoiding pragmatic failure in the production of language. Hence, they would
need to know which strategies to use in order to avoid negative transfer of norms
from the L1 or another language, overgeneralization of perceived L2 pragmatic
norms, and the effect of instruction or instructional materials. They would also
need strategies for communicating appropriately even if they have only limited L2
grammar ability, and strategies for dealing with their own resistance to abiding by
the perceived L2 norms. Just with regard to avoiding negative transfer in dealing
with speech acts, for example, learners may benefit from checking with local peers
as to the most appropriate ways to respond to a compliment, as well as how to
make requests that are likely to be responded to favorably in various situations in
the given speech community. The ultimate concern is to identify strategies that
might assist learners in their efforts to have their conversational partners correctly
interpret the intended pragmatics in their communications, all the while being
mindful of the role that ESL/EFL teachers can play in facilitating this process.
Conclusion
This review of research literature on L2 pragmatics has sought insights for Asian
learners of English by first looking at approaches to research methods and by sug-
gesting avenues for innovation since new technologies have provided us a host of
new ways to gather and analyze data. We then looked at the issue of politeness,
making the point that control of pragmatics includes knowing how to perceive
impoliteness and how to actually be impolite at times when called for (e.g., know-
ing how to curse). Next, examples of recent speech act research were presented,
both to illustrate study of a less commonly researched speech act (criticism), as
250 Andrew D. Cohen
well as to consider an innovative approach to research on a popular speech act
(requests). After that, the focus was on other areas of pragmatics of concern to
ESL/EFL teachers: conversational overlap, back channeling, phatic communica-
tion, humor, sarcasm, and the pragmatic function of discourse markers.
In an effort to move from theory to practice, the chapter also focused on L2 ped-
agogy: teaching L2 learners a less-commonly taught speech act (criticism), teaching
L3 learners a commonly taught speech act (refusals), teaching pragmatics to learn-
ers for whom English is a lingua franca, materials development for L2 pragmatics,
construction of pragmatics websites, and assessment of pragmatics. Of these issues,
perhaps the ELF issue is the most provocative. Whose pragmatics should speakers
of Asian languages use if they are interacting with other Asians without intervention
by any native speakers? This issue is just beginning to be explored.
Finally, we focused on the learner and on strategies for the learning and per-
forming of pragmatics. Teachers can do lots of exciting things in the language
class, but learners need to take responsibility for their own learning. It helps if
the learners make an effort to be strategic about their learning, especially when it
comes to the challenging area of pragmatics.
Notes
1 Aside from numerous trips to Japan and China, I have traveled repeatedly to other
Asian countries like Thailand and South Korea where cultural aspects of pragmat-
ics are at times in noticeable contrast to those in English-language cultures.
2 In this chapter, L2 is used generically to represent either the teaching and learn-
ing of a second language – that is, one that is spoken in the given context – or a
foreign language, namely, one that is not spoken in that context
3 Pragmalinguistic refers to what constitutes appropriate linguistic forms for
expressing the intent of the speech act, taking into account the norms of behavior
that apply in the given situation. Sociopragmatic refers to the norms of behav-
ior for realizing the given speech act in a given context, taking into account (i)
the culture involved, (ii) the relative age and gender of the interlocutors, (iii)
their social class and occupations, and (iv) their roles and status in the interaction
(Thomas, 1983).
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17 Language classroom
management
Zekiye Müge Tavil and Arif Sariçoban
In the process of teaching and learning, classroom management is of great impor-

tance. Effective teaching is generally synonymous with effective classroom man-
agement. Management on its own cannot be said to be teaching itself, but it is
one of the cornerstones of teaching because many studies in the field suggest that
if a classroom is managed effectively, teaching and learning are accordingly effec-
tive. However, the opposite spoils the teachers’ desire to teach, increases burn
out, and blocks the productive setting – no matter how well a teacher has been
prepared for the lesson. This situation is the same in a language classroom.
The aim of learning a foreign language is basically communication. To achieve
this aim, the ultimate need of learners is to develop four language skills, which
are reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Active participation of the students
facilitates communication and creates opportunities to speak, read, listen, and
write; however, this circumstance may easily cause too much noise and disorder
in the classroom. Owing to this, disruptive behavior and discipline problems
may occur in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, for exam-
ple. The problem is how to manage and provide discipline by minimizing the
disruptive behavior in the classroom. So here, it is better to make discrimina-
tion between classroom management and discipline. Martin, Sugarman, and
McNamara (2000) define classroom management as the activities that classroom
teachers apply in order to have effective teaching and learning within a positive
classroom climate. Classroom management refers to the activities of classroom
teachers that create a warm atmosphere within which effective teaching and
learning may occur (Martin et al., 2000). Successful classroom management
does not draw a picture of a class in which all the students sit at their desks and
just listen to the teacher while copying all the instructions down. Conversely,
effective classroom management is to provide student involvement and moti-
vation, which facilitate a fruitful learning environment. Discipline focuses on
misbehavior and punishment of an individual whereas classroom management
underlines not only the positive behavior but also the teachers as decision mak-
ers. In other words, classroom management is teachers’ strategies to enhance
an effective learning environment whereas discipline is the teachers’ attitude
towards misbehavior.
Language classroom management 255
Table 17.1 Strategies for handling disruptive behavior
Before the disruptive During the disruptive After the disruptive

behavior behavior behavior
• Set rules and standards • Anticipate problems and • Explode yourself and
and be consistent in act quickly. display anger without
applying them. • Deal with the problem losing your temper.
• Have a good quietly. • Give in.
knowledge of the field. • Keep cool; do not take • Avoid oppositions.
• Plan and organize your things personally. • Make them an offer
lessons carefully before • Do not threaten your they cannot refuse
entering the classroom. students (unless you are (postponement,
• Make the aim of the prepared to implement arbitration,
lesson clear. them!). compromise).
• Make sure instructions • Get help from
are clear and brief. administration if
• Create a positive and necessary.
stress-free atmosphere.
• Keep in touch with
what is going on.
Classroom management starts before the students enter the classroom. Simon-
sen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, and Sugai (2008) state that teachers should
organize the lay out of the classroom, determine student routines and expec-
tations before the school year. Classroom management is a crucial area; thus,
teachers should be trained about the strategies that they can use before, during
and after the disruptive behavior. Some of the steps to be taken before, during,
and after disruptive behavior that Wragg mentions include (cited in Sarıçoban &
Barışkan, 2005) the strategies outlined in Table 17.1.
Although the importance of effective classroom management is often under-
lined, many novice teachers highlight the problems that they face because of lack
of knowledge. Owing to the very important role language plays in education,
the subject of the language instruction has been given a prominent place in the
school curriculum in Asia (Chew, 2005). Therefore, this chapter is vital in pin-
pointing the key points not only for pre-service teachers but also for in-service
ones who wish to combine theory with practice in EFL classroom management.
A single model by itself may not provide adequate management strategy, so teach-
ers should interweave all to coordinate the appropriate behavior in the classroom.
The intervening model

In the traditional theory of classroom management, the aim is to control the class-
room, and this is teachers’ responsibility. A traditional approach mainly focuses
on behavioral principles in a teacher-dominant environment (Garret, 2005). “In
a traditional EFL class, the teacher tends to achieve a control over the whole class
by strict discipline so that s/he can convey her/his instructions and the students
256 Zekiye Müge Tavil and Arif Sariçoban
can copy them down” (Yi, 2008, p. 129). The teacher is the authority and the
source of the target language, and tries to transmit the knowledge to the learners.
The basic principles of the interventionist model are stated as follows by Wolf-
gang and Glickman (1986).
• a teacher has primary responsibility for controlling the classroom

• the teacher sets the rules
• primary focus is on the behavior of the learners
• minor emphasis is on the individual differences of students
• a teacher should be quick to control behavior
• types of intervention are generally rewards and punishments
Management in traditional approaches is based on a behavioristic approach.

Behaviorism focuses on learners’ behavior and deals with them individually
to encourage positive behavior in the classroom. The stages of the behavioral
approach are as follows:
• establish clear expectations for positive behavior

• monitor positive behavior
• reinforce positive behavior
The aim of management in behavioral approaches is to replace inappropriate

behavior with the appropriate one. Throughout the process, there are five basic
behavior operations.
1 Positive Reinforcement: It is the effect that can be realized when a behavior

continuously exists.
2 Negative Reinforcement: It is the removal of stimulus. In order to reach
behavioral change in a positive way, the teacher removes the stimulus.
a Extinction: Extinction means ignoring in behavioral approaches.
b Response Cost Management: It is the removal of previous reinforce-
ment owing to an inappropriate behavior.
3 Punishment: It is an application of stimulus when the students do not want
to minimize the inappropriate behavior. Kauffman, Pullen, Mostert, and
Trent (2011) underline the crucial aspects of punishment as follows:
• punishment should be applied for serious misbehavior
• instituted only in the occasion of ongoing behavior management
• fair and consistent
• reasonable intensity
• should involve response cost
• related to misbehavior to practice an appropriate behavior
• discontinued if ineffective
• written guidelines for specific punishment behaviors.
Table 17.2 Examples of setting rules
Elementary Level Secondary Level

• Be polite and helpful. • Bring all needed materials to class.
• Take care of friends. • Be in your seat and ready to work when the bell
• Take care of yourself. rings.
• Hurt no living thing. • Get permission before speaking or leaving your
• Take care of your school. seat.
• Do not hit or hurt others. • Respect and be polite to all the other people.
• Keep the bathroom clean. • Respect other people’s rights.
In a behavioristic approach, setting rules is significant to conduct positive rela-

tionship and to prevent inappropriate behaviors. Brophy (1983) gives some
examples of the rules in Table 17.2.
The interacting model

There are various key factors of the interacting model. The basic principles of the
model are stated as follows by Wolfgang and Glickman (1986).
• Students and teacher should share the responsibility of control.

• A teacher sets the rules with the help of the student input.
• Initial focus is on behavior followed by the emotions of the learners.
• Emphasis is on individual differences of the students.
• The teacher allows some time for students to control behavior, but she or he
decides at last.
• Types of intervention are consequences and class meetings.
Interactive models are basically based on logical and natural consequences, coop-
erative discipline, positive classroom discipline, and noncoercive discipline.
Logical and natural consequences

The result of an action a person does is called a consequence. In order to give
responsibility to the learners, teachers should let the learners experience conse-
quences. A natural consequence is directly related to the learners’ actions whereas
logical consequences include interference of teachers or parents.
Allen and Boelter (2008) categorized the use of logical and natural conse-
quences as follows.
1 Define reasons: It is crucial for the teacher to understand why the learners
misbehave. If the teacher understands the reason, then he/she can find out
solutions to the problem easily. For example, the student may misbehave in
order to get the teacher’s attention, so it is better to ignore and pay no atten-
tion; otherwise, the misbehavior will go on.
2 Try to understand whose problem it is: As language teachers, we cannot
solve or understand all the problems occurring in the classroom; however,
some of the inappropriate behaviors may result from learner’s personal prob-
lems. So if the results of the behaviors are not dangerous and cause much
intervention during the lesson, teachers should give responsibility of the
behavior to the learners.
3 Offer choices: The aim is to give responsibility to the learners and let them
face with the consequences of their behaviors. If the learner insists on the
misbehavior, the teacher may give alternatives to the learner such as “You
should complete your homework; otherwise, it will be very difficult for you
to play a role in the game because we need the information that you write in
your homework in order to give you the appropriate role. You should make
your own choice.” By this way, the teacher tries to create a need for the
learner to complete a task.
4 Stand firm and calm: At the end, if the student does not do his/her home-
work, the teacher should play the game with the students who have com-
pleted their homework. She/he should stand firm and not let the learner
who does not carry out his/her responsibilities and take part in the game.
5 Talk to your learners about choices in a positive way: Giving a choice is
better than threatening the learners. Offer them alternatives and let them
take the responsibility of their own choices.
6 Let your students know when they have done something good: When
the inappropriate behavior is replaced with the positive one, let your student
know that and appreciate the appropriate behavior.
7 If possible, let the learner help to decide on the consequence: As the respon-
sibility of the behavior is the learners’, let the learner understand the results of
the choices and talk about the positive results that may occur if the choices are
different. This will help the learner make good choices.
Allen and Boelter (2008) underline the guidelines of using logical consequences
and state the following:
1 Logical consequences acknowledge mutual rights and mutual respect.

2 Logical consequences are related to inappropriate behavior.
3 Logical consequences are not judgmental.
4 Logical consequences are directly related to current and future behavior.
5 Logical consequences are done in a firm but kind manner with a soft friendly
voice.
6 Logical consequences give the learner an alternative.
Cooperative discipline
According to Albert (1992), the basic principles of cooperative discipline are
capability, helping students connect and helping students contribute.
1 Capability
Albert (1992) defines a capability level as “I can” level, and it refers to the stu-
dents’ accomplishment capacity at school, and she suggests five tactics to increase
students’ performance.
• make mistakes normal

• build confidence
• focus on past achievement
• make progress tangible
• recognize success
Making mistakes is a natural part of language learning. When learners feel anx-
ious, they stop trying. Albert (1992) suggests that teachers should talk about
the natural sides of the mistakes with their learners in order to minimize the
fear they may feel. Positive reinforcement and appraisal are very important in
cooperative discipline as they help learners build confidence. Apart from that,
teachers should focus on the success rather than mistakes in the classroom, and
portfolios encourage the positive learning environment and make the progress
tangible.
2 Helping students connect
According to Albert (1992), positive relationships with peers and teachers are
really vital for management because when learners have good relations with their
mates, they become more cooperative, and this not only increases acceptance but
also supports achievement.
3 Helping students contribute
When a teacher is the authority and source of knowledge, students feel purpose-
less in the classroom. Thus, the teachers should make the contributions of the
students to the learning and teaching process. Albert (1992) suggests some ways
of doing that:
1 encourage student contributions in the class (asking for their opinions, hav-
ing discussions in the classroom)
2 encourage student contributions to the school (dusting shelves, cleaning
grounds)
3 encourage student contributions to the community (opening doors for peo-
ple, preparing meals)
4 encourage students to work for protecting the environment
5 encourage students to help the other students
Positive classroom discipline
The aim of positive classroom discipline is mutual respect and relationship.
By this way, effective communication and problem-solving skills develop in the
classroom. The key points of positive classrooms are as follows:
1 Before starting the lesson, teachers should get the attention of each student.
First, the teachers should settle down the class and then start lessons, so the
students will understand that it is time to work. Novice teachers may try to
speak loudly in order to catch all the students’ attention, but it is better if the
teacher speaks softly because the students will keep quiet in order to hear and
understand the teacher.
2 The teacher should tell the aim of each activity and put time limit; thus, the
students will be aware of what they are expected to do.
3 The teacher should walk around and observe the students while they are
completing a task. By this way, the teacher may easily observe the problems
and help the learners immediately. This can prevent the inappropriate behav-
iors to occur.
4 The teacher should provide examples to the learners. Teachers are the mod-
els in the classroom.
5 The teachers should use their body language properly. By their faces or
mimes, teachers can control the classroom and express what they want to say.
6 The teachers can integrate personal items in their lesson plans, as the learn-
ers are curious about teachers’ lives. This can increase their motivation and
involvement.
7 The teachers should directly state how they want their students to behave,
such as “I want you to stop that noise!” While listing the things the teach-
ers should use positive sentences; for example, instead of “Don’t fight,” the
teachers should say, “Work cooperatively.”
8 Encourage, reinforce, and praise good behaviors.
Noncoercive discipline
Motivation is the key aspect of involving learners in the teaching and learning
process. Students should make their own decision about their behaviors. Teach-
ers have the power to guide students to the appropriate behaviors. Glasser (1986)
states the nature of the behavior as follows.
• Virtually, all human behavior has intrinsic motivation and is chosen by the
individual.
• All of our behavior is our best attempt to satisfy one or more of five basic
needs built into our genetic structure.
• All human behavior is purposeful.
• We are responsible for our own behavior.
• Effective discipline is based on meeting students’ needs for survival, belong-
ing, freedom, fun, and power.
• All students can competently do some kind of work in school.
Noncoercive discipline gives equal rights to the students. It is no use to force a
student to pay attention if he or she is not willing to participate, so the first rule
is to catch the attention of the learners. As none of the behaviors are purposeless,
there is a reason of inappropriate behavior in the classroom. The teachers should
find the cause and then try to find solutions to misbehaviors in the classroom.
The learners should have fun in the classroom; thus, the teachers should integrate
enjoyable activities appealing to their learner’s interest in order to involve the
learners and increase motivation. The aim of the curriculum is to meet what the
students need because of this; cooperative and collaborative activities should be
placed into the lesson plans of the teachers. Generally, in language classrooms,
students are given too much grammar, and they cannot use the language; there-
fore, the curriculum should be revised, and an adapted one should be imple-
mented considering the needs of the learners.
Glasser (1998) argues that quality teaching can be accomplished by the fol-
lowing things.
• Provide a warm supportive classroom atmosphere.

• Use lead teaching rather than boss teaching.
• Ask students only to do work that is purposeful.
• Always ask students to do their best.
• Ask students to evaluate work they have done.
• Help students recognize that doing quality work makes them feel good.
• Help students see that quality work is never destructive to oneself, others, or
the community.
The guiding model

In the guiding model, there is a shift from a teacher-centered classroom to a
learner-centered classroom. With the help of this new perspective, during the
last decades, management strategies have become constructive. A constructivist
approach centers on the belief that learners should be involved in the process
of learning and teaching actively rather than simply receiving knowledge from
teachers; it reinforces critical thinking skills to become autonomous learners.
There are several methods based on a constructivist approach, but most of them
focus on learners’ discoveries and elicitation instead of spoon-feeding. Teach-
ers are just tutoring in a positive atmosphere; hence, creating a stress-free and
warm atmosphere is one of the key points of management in the constructivist
approach as learning takes place in a positive environment.
In a non-native language-learning environment, generally the learners’ only
chance to use and hear the target language is the classroom. The students are
definitely in need of interaction as the primary aim of learning a foreign language
is communication. When learners feel anxious, they are not taking part in the
process and become passive. This reflects the importance of a positive classroom
atmosphere in which the learners feel relaxed and are willing to get involved
in classroom activities. As mentioned earlier, creating a positive atmosphere is
crucial in a constructivist approach; however, the question is how to establish a
positive setting in an EFL class.
The basic principles of the guiding (non-interventionist) model are stated as
follows by Wolfgang and Glickman (1986).
• Students have primary responsibility for controlling their behavior.

• Students develop the rules with the teacher guidance.
• Primary focus is on emotions.
• Major emphasis is on individual differences of the students in the classroom.
• Teacher gives time to students to control behavior.
According to Fan Yi (n.d.), motivation, involvement, a relaxed atmosphere,

and fluency are the major factors of creating a positive atmosphere.
1 Motivation
Motivation is a precious tool to prevent management problems because if stu-

dents are interested in particular activities, they will not cause problems. In
order to motivate the learners, the teacher should be aware of students’ interests
and prepare lesson plans considering the communicative needs of the students;
thus, the students will produce language when they feel the need (Pitsoe, 2007;
Simonsen et.al., 2008).
2 Involvement
Having students involved is a difficult task for teachers. Whilst preparing for par-
ticular activities, a teacher should prefer challenging ones because if the tasks
are too easy, students may get bored and if they are too difficult, they may feel
frustrated. Thus the teacher’s job is to be aware of the learners’ levels and prepare
activities in accordance with the interests of the students. Apart from that, discov-
ering a technique is very beneficial for the learners rather than copying from the
board. Learning is learners’ responsibility; they should formulate the rules from
the context created in the classroom. By this way, the students will be busy with
various tasks to complete, preventing the possible problems in the classroom.
3 Relaxed atmosphere
“Anxiety hinders learning” (Yi, 2008, p. 131). When the classroom is a place
where learners feel nervous, they will feel reluctant to get involved in particular
activities. Additionally, Brophy (1986, p. 6) mentions that “all research results
show that in addition to dealing with the misbehaviors and problems effectively,
to prevent them from occurring is an important aspect of efficient classroom
management.” Focusing on negative behaviors and criticizing the learners all the
time because of their mistakes or errors may result in silent and passive learners.
This is generally knowledge-based; learners learn grammar and memorize the
formulas given by the teacher but cannot communicate in the target language
because of lack of practice. However, the teachers’ aim is to enhance communica-
tion in the classroom among students. Language teachers should keep in mind
that mistakes are natural, and they are a sign of learning.
4 Fluency prior to accuracy
The teachers should be tolerant to the mistakes of their learners (Amarjit, 2009).
When the learners’ speech in the target language is understandable, the teacher
should appreciate and motivate the learners to speak as the aim is to enrich com-
munication. If the learners are always conscious of accuracy, then they will not
become fluent (Oliver & Reschly, 2007).
Key factors in language classroom management

Effective teaching can be provided by effective management. In an effective class-
room, students work together with their peers. Group work or pair work leads
to cooperation and facilitates a positive environment. An educational environ-
ment, a social environment, a curriculum, teachers’ and students’ roles, setting
rules, time management, lesson planning, reacting to inappropriate behaviors,
and facilitating communication in the classroom are some of the key factors that
the teachers should consider.
Educational environment
An educational environment cares everything related to a physical structure,
such as size of the classroom, material appropriateness, or seating. The students
should feel comfortable in the learning environment. To enhance communica-
tion and encourage learners to speak, seating arrangements are of great impor-
tance. In the traditional seating, teacher generally lectures, and there is not much
space for teachers to move. In a language classroom, teachers need space to
play or to complete information-gap activities whereas in a traditional seating,
students generally sit still while listening to the teacher. This type is applicable, if
the class is not crowded. It is easy to control students, and let them work coop-
eratively. This seating chart is called a horseshoe. It creates a space in the middle
of the classroom. Everybody can see each other; students can easily cooperate.
The teacher should choose the appropriate seating considering the needs of the
learners.
Social environment
Social environment of a learner affects his or her behaviors in the classroom. There
are two types of environments: close and distant. A close environment is directly
related to the learners’ lives like a classroom, school, and family. A distant envi-
ronment is life styles, customs, cultural aspects, and beliefs. These surroundings
affect a student’s learning and teaching environment, and the teachers’ one of the
main aims is to minimize the negative influences of these factors.
Lesson planning
Good lesson planning is vital to improve communication in the classroom.
Although teachers prepare the best plans, they may sometimes become worthless
if the teachers cannot manage the classrooms. The lessons should be challenging
and appealing to the needs and interests of the learners. The code of conduct
in the classroom should be fair, responsible, and meaningful. While planning
the lessons, the interactions should be considered. Student-student interaction
increases the student talking time in the classroom. Individual difference should
be considered, and the lesson plans should cover visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
learners. The environment should be unthreatening to involve the students in
the teaching and learning process. The instructions should be clear to help the
learners to understand what they are expected to do. The first activity can be
a motivating one to take the attentions of the learners. After the activities, the
teacher should praise the learners to provide encouragement. The last but not the
least important aspect that should be considered in the classroom is developing a
positive teacher-student relationship.
Teachers’ and students’ roles

In the first lesson, the teacher should build a positive relationship in the class-
room. He or she accepts student autonomy and involvement. In a constructive
classroom, the teacher should use various materials to guide learners to classify,
analyze, predict, and create things. Students are responsible learners. They for-
mulate and test their opinions, make inferences, and draw conclusions. Students
should work collaboratively and cooperatively. If the students are busy, they do
not cause disruptive behaviors; the teacher should keep the learners busy with
different and challenging tasks. The language that is used in the classroom should
be in the target language. The teacher should reinforce the students to com-
plete information-gap and opinion-gap activities together with their peers or in
groups. The authentic and real materials facilitate communicative and grasp the
students’ attention.
Setting rules
Learners generally want to know the expectations of the teacher. The first les-
son is ideal time for conducting classroom rules together with the learners by
pointing out the expected behavior like “Look at how your friends at this table
are listening.” The rules should also be posted in the classroom in English with
pictures to make the meaning clear. Making positive sentences is important while
constructing rules (Table 17.3).
Table 17.3 Examples of constructing rules
Negative rule Positive rule
Don’t hit anyone Have good relations with everyone

Don’t push other students Respect each other
Time management
Students should work more than teachers in the classroom. Time management
is one of the crucial factors in the classroom management. Teachers should give
enough time for certain activities. He or she should be aware of the learners’ level
of proficiency because time management of a lesson is related to the students’
capacity. If the teacher gives too much time, the students who complete the task
earlier may cause problem behaviors. If the time is not enough, the students may
not complete the activity, and they may feel frustrated, which can bruise their
self-confidence.
Reacting to inappropriate behavior

A positive reinforcement improves appropriate behavior. A classroom climate
should also be positive. Students should feel relaxed. If the students are seated
properly, this proper seating arrangement also lessens the inappropriate behavior.
For example, Ata and Ege fight when they sit together, then it is better allow
them to sit with other people in the classroom. Any appropriate behavior fol-
lowed by a positive reinforcement becomes strong. Such behavior is more likely
to occur again. A positive reinforcement becomes a reward here (Minden, 1982).
Rather than punishment, teachers should focus on a reward and praise. Ignor-
ing the negative behavior but reinforcing the positive behaviors is key points of
enhancing appraisal behaviors in the classroom.
Communication
Students’ lack of access to English-speaking users or native speakers is one of the
drawbacks of learning a language in a non-native environment. Owing to this, hav-
ing linguistic knowledge is no longer a goal of EFL learners, students need to be
communicatively competent. Teachers should create needs for the learners to use the
target language. This can be enhanced in a positive environment. Students should
feel free to speak, and the teacher should praise their speech. Meaningful activities
and authentic materials can take the learners’ attention. The interaction should be
student-student by the help of information-gap activities. Interaction may over-
come the barriers and facilitates the communication in the classroom. Although
studies reflect that the East Asian students as a group are reserved, so there are
differences in the degree of their classroom involvement. For example, focusing on
the researcher’s observations in studies across several East Asian populations, East
Asians from Hong Kong have a tendency to be more interactional than students
from Japan, Taiwan, or Korea.
Conclusion
Teachers play several roles in a language classroom, but surely the most dominant
one is the role of a manager. Effective teaching and learning cannot take place in
a poorly managed classroom. In a well-managed classroom, learning and teaching
are fun, and the outcomes of learning will be fruitful. The responsibility of man-
agement should be shared by students. Students should be responsible for their
own behaviors, and a teacher should be sensitive to the needs of the learners.
By this way, a positive classroom climate will be enhanced, and well-established
learning and teaching environment can be constructed, which also reinforces
communication in an EFL classroom. It is known that anxiety blocks learning.
When teachers manage their classrooms by threatening their students or through
punishment, the communication breaks down. In order to reinforce students and
to facilitate communication, positive behaviors should be encouraged.
Appendix
1 What is the significance of classroom management in a language classroom?
2 What is the difference between management and discipline?
3 What are the key factors of positive classroom atmosphere?
4 What are the basic differences of three management models (interventionist,
interactionalist and non-interventionist)?
5 What are the key factors of a language classroom?
6 Mary was working as a teacher of English at a state school. There were 35
students in total in her class. It is really crowded. Two of the students were
talking. Mary started the lesson, but they kept on talking. What would you
do if you were Mary? Explain in accordance with each one of the models
mentioned (intervening, interacting, and guiding).
7 What is the role of the teacher in a constructive classroom?
8 What is the difference between positive and negative reinforcement?
9 Which one is more efficient punishment or a reward?
10 What is the difference between a reward and punishment?
11 How should a teacher arrange the time of the activities?
12 When and how should a teacher set the rules?
13 How can you place your students if your classroom is crowded?
14 How can a teacher lessen inappropriate behaviors of the learners?
15 What can a teacher do to facilitate communication in the classroom?
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Index
accent 77, 134, 135, 138, 140, 146 – 8, changing nature of text 49 – 51
153, 154, 155, 174 Chinese learners 36, 41, 44, 47, 119
Albert, L. 258, 259, 266 choral readings 144
AMTB 219 – 20 classroom discipline 257
Anderson, J. R. 15, 17, 24, 26 – 7 classroom management 10 – 11, 63,
Anderson’s model and top-down and 216 – 17, 232, 254 – 5, 262, 265 – 7
bottom-up processes 6, 12, 24, 26 – 7; code-breaking activity 55 – 6
see also Anderson’s model of language code-switching 197
development coding competence 52 – 3
Anderson’s model of language collaboration 63, 193, 195 – 6, 199, 204
comprehension 15, 17 collocations 8, 99 – 101, 106
anxiety 14, 19, 22 – 3, 28, 124, 127, community of practice 1, 10, 196,
186, 220, 262, 266 198 – 9
Asian contexts 1, 3 – 4, 63 – 4, 66, 92 comprehension questions 6, 16, 18,
assessment 54, 62 – 3, 65, 117, 125, 194 26, 72, 74, 79, 80 – 1, 152 – 3, 157,
assessment of pragmatics 11, 248, 250 159, 170
attitudes 64, 66, 85, 90, 94, 107, 115, connections 59, 181, 193, 195; see also
127, 138, 218 – 24, 239 collaboration
Audacity 142, 144 – 5, 148 constructivist approach 261 – 2
awareness-raising tasks 123 cooperative discipline 257 – 59, 266
Corbett, N. 32, 35, 38, 45
back channeling 11, 233, 240, 250 creative thinking 6, 30, 35 – 6
behavioral approaches 256 creative writing 6, 9, 175, 189
Biber, D. 99, 110 creative written responses 7, 72, 74,
Blyth, A. 6, 12, 14 – 16, 18, 27, 76, 78
152, 161 critical competence 52 – 4, 67
bottom-up process 6, 15, 17, 18, 22 – 3, critical thinking 30, 36, 45, 166, 169,
26, 27 178, 204, 215
Brophy J. 257, 262, 267 cross-cultural pragmatics 234, 238,
Brown, H. D. 21, 28, 147 247, 252
Buck, G. 17, 19, 20, 23, 28 cultural identity 165
Bygate, M. 101, 110 Culture Corner 41
Byram, M., 32 – 3, 45 culture of learning 63 – 6
Cummins, D. D. 36, 46
CALL 193 – 4, 201
Cauldwell, R. 25, 28 Day and Bamford (1998) 71 – 2, 79,
Chamcharatsri, P. B. 181 – 2, 189 – 90 104 – 5, 150 – 1, 157, 169, 173
Chang, A. C-S. 23, 26, 28, 72, 81, 154, deconstruction of text 7, 86, 95
155, 161 deliberate learning 106, 108
changing concepts of reading 51 – 4 differentiation tasks 123
Index 269
digital literacies 195, 201 Iida, A. 9, 180 – 1, 187 – 90
digital photo story 203 – 8, 213 images 7, 23, 49 – 67, 88, 92, 165, 204,
digital storytelling 203 – 5, 207, 213 – 15 206, 210, 213; see also images
discourse markers 11, 101, 233, innovating practice 7, 50, 63
242 – 3, 250 Innovation and creativity 11 – 12
Dörnyei, Z. 65, 68, 218 – 20, 230 instructional discourse 84 – 5, 95
intelligibility 135
ecology of English in Asia 63 – 4 interacting model 257
Elbow, P. 180 intercultural communication 33 – 5,
embarrassment 39, 132, 136 38 – 9, 41 – 2, 44, 51, 240, 247
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) 8, intercultural pragmatics 234 – 5, 249 – 52
14, 36, 50, 71, 92, 98, 180 – 1, 224, interpersonal function 84, 90, 92
233, 254 intonation 25, 27, 41, 109, 134, 141,
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) 1, 143, 194, 209
135, 235, 245
English as an additional language (EAL) Jackson, J. 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 46 – 47
10, 203, 233 Japanese learners 6, 14 – 15, 22, 25,
English as a Second Language (ESL) 8, 73, 231
101, 181, 224, 237 Jenkins, J. 135, 146
English for International jocular insults 11, 235 – 6
Communication 14, 135 Jones, D. 19, 20, 23, 28
errors 114, 126 – 7, 131, 136 – 7, 140,
143, 204, 262 Kress, G., 49, 51, 212, 214
expressive writing 9, 180 – 2, 187, 189
extensive listening 7 – 9, 72 – 3, 103 – 5, L2 motivational system 220
153 – 4, 156 – 7, 173 language comprehension 17, 106, 109
extensive reading 71 – 4, 76, 77 – 8, language-focused learning 103, 107, 110
80 – 1, 104 – 5, 151 – 4, 157, 159, 171, Language Learner Literature 169, 173
173, 177 language production 106
extensive reading and listening 7, 9, 72, Laufer, B. 98, 110
74, 80 – 1, 154 – 7, 160, 168 learning environment 113, 194, 206
lexical coverage 21, 23
Facebook 123, 145, 195 – 6, 199 – 200, 207 listen and repeat 133, 140, 141, 143
feedback 128, 131, 136, 137, 139, 140, listening activities 16, 23 – 4, 26, 152 – 3
141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 149, 159, listening anxiety 23
183, 188, 193, 196, 198, 208 – 9, 212 listening comprehension 72, 77 – 8, 81
Field, J. 18, 26, 153, 162 listening comprehension process 17
formulaic sequences 99; see also listening difficulties 14, 19, 20, 22, 23
multi-word expressions listening strategies 23
functional use 7, 84, 86 literature as appropriation 9, 168, 170, 176
literature as resource 167 – 8, 178
Gardner, R. C. 217 – 23 literature as study 9, 167 – 8
genre-based pedagogy 83, 85 – 6, 93, 95 local contexts 12, 50, 63
Glasse, W. 260 – 1, 267
globalized classroom 196, 200 Maley, A. 9, 165 – 6, 168 – 9, 171,
Goh, C. 23, 24, 28, 152 – 3, 162 173 – 6, 178
grammatical processing 133 materials development 5, 11, 30, 179,
guiding model 261 246, 250 – 1
meaning-focused input 103, 105 – 6,
Haiku 9, 181, 183 – 9 109; see also vocabulary teaching
Hanauer, D. I. 180 – 2, 184, 187 – 90 meaning-focused output 103, 106 – 7,
Holliday, A. 36, 46 110; see also vocabulary teaching
meaningful literacy 10, 181, 187, 189, 190
ideational function 84, 86 – 9, 92 meaning-making 51, 53 – 4, 56 – 8,
ideology of text 63, 66 63, 204
270 Index
metacognitive strategies 23 – 4, 26 – 7, self-awareness 10, 138, 216,
153, 226 225, 227
meta-functions 84 semantic competence 52 – 3
metalinguistic awareness tasks 123 semiotic resources 49 – 50
methodology in ELT 2 – 3, 5, 12 setting rules 257, 263 – 4
motivation 1, 10, 65, 94, 170, 174, shadowing 25, 109, 141, 144
216, 217 – 24, 227, 229, 254 – 5, simultaneous reading and listening
260 – 2 72 – 4, 78, 155
multimedia resources 38 social media 10, 51, 145, 195; see also
multimodality 206 social networking
multimodal reading 6, 52, 54, 62, 65 social networking 10, 193, 195 – 6,
multimodal resources 50 – 1, 54, 199 – 200 199 – 200
multimodal texts 6, 50 – 4, 59–60, sociological approach 221
62 – 3, 67 sociopragmatic competence 195
multi-word expressions 7, 98, 101 speaking skills 26, 31 – 2, 34, 44 – 5, 72,
194, 205, 213
narrative texts 10, 95, 203, 208 – 9 speech acts 100, 233, 237 – 9, 244,
Nation, I. S. P. 7, 21, 29, 98 – 101, 246 – 9, 251
103 – 4, 106 – 7, 108 – 9, 111 Spiro, J. 175, 179
spoken language comprehension 98
online grammar tasks 8, 116, 120, stock phrases 132
125 – 8 study abroad 9, 31, 35 – 7, 181 – 7, 234
online tasks 8, 116, 120, 125 – 6 swearwords 11, 235 – 6, 237
systemic functional linguistics 84
participation activities 6, 30, 41 – 2
personal histories 181 – 3, 189 target cultures 32, 34
phatic communication 11, 233, 240, tasks 7, 10, 18, 39, 53, 93, 100,
241, 250 117 – 18, 120, 122, 125 – 8, 204, 213,
phonological loop 25, 73, 141 224, 228, 241, 248, 262
photo story 10, 203; see also digital Ted Talks 158 – 9
photo story television 74, 104 – 5, 143,
Piller, I., 35, 47 158 – 9, 160
plasticity 132 text-analyst 53
poetry writing 9, 180, 182, 187 – 9 textbooks 6, 16, 32 – 4, 38 – 45, 50 – 1,
politeness and impoliteness 11, 235, 252 54, 64 – 6, 116, 157, 246
pragmatic competence 52 – 3, 60; see also text selection 9, 54, 168
sociopragmatic competence textual function 84
pragmatic linguistic competence 100 text-user 53, 58–9
prefabricated language 99; see also think-aloud 86, 95
multi-word expressions Tomlinson, B. 50, 70, 82, 123, 130,
psychological approach 221, 223 171, 176, 178 – 9
top-down process approach 18, 27
reading competence 52 traditional approach 78, 205, 255
reading comprehension 72 – 3, 75, 80,
152, 225 Vandergrift, L. 17, 18, 23, 152, 163
reading-while-listening 72 – 3 visual texts 50, 52
reinforcement 143, 256, 259, 265 – 6 vocabulary teaching 8, 98 – 9, 103 – 4,
repeated listening 22, 77, 139 107
repertoires of reading 6, 50, 54 voice 9, 50, 60, 62, 75, 134, 188 – 9,
repetitions 104 – 5, 132, 141, 175 210, 246
rhythm 22, 25, 27, 132, 143, 144, 148, Vygotsky, L S. 75, 82, 208, 212, 215
171, 174 – 5
Robin, B. R. 204, 214 Yoshida, K. 14, 15, 29
YouTube 145, 149, 157, 160
sarcasm 11, 233, 242, 250
Schulz, K. 136, 137, 146 Zhu, H. 32, 35, 38

Asian English Language Classrooms - Where Theory and Practice Meet

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Asian English Language Classrooms - Where Theory and Practice Meet

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Asian English Language

Handoyo Puji Widodo, PhD is an Associate Professor at the English Language

Alistair Wood, PhD is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at

The Routledge Research in Language Education series provides a platform for

Books in the series include:

Teaching EFL Learners Shadowing for Listening

Teacher Agency and Policy Response in English Language Teaching

The Space and Practice of Reading

Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages

Edited by Handoyo Puji Widodo,

List of contributors vii

1 Introduction: re-contextualizing English language teaching

2 Teaching listening in pre-tertiary and tertiary English

3 Developing speaking for intercultural communication:

4 Teaching reading through multimodal texts 49

5 Supplementing extensive reading for Japanese EFL learners 71

6 Teaching writing to multilingual learners using the genre-

7 Teaching communicative vocabulary 98

10 Fluency in language classrooms: extensive listening

11 Literature in an age of distraction 164

12 Expressing study abroad experiences in second language

13 Exploring ICT tools in English language learning:

14 The use of photo story in the Indonesian English language

15 Social psychology of the language classroom 216

16 The role of pragmatics in teaching English as an additional

17 Language classroom management 254

Eveline Chan is a senior lecturer in English and literacies education, Univer-

Andrew D. Cohen is an emeritus professor of second language studies from

Martin Cortazzi is a visiting professor at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo,

Atsushi Iida is an associate professor in the University Education Center at

Hamzeh Moradi holds a Ph. D in Linguistics from Panjab University of India.

Sri Rejeki Murtiningsih, called Jackie, received her BA in English educa-

Paul Nation is an emeritus professor of applied linguistics in the School of Lin-

Lindsey Ng-Tan is a lecturer in the Department of English and Applied Lin-

Justina Ong is a lecturer at the Department of English Language and Litera-

Hasti Rahmaningtyas earned her bachelor degree in English language teaching

Arif Sarıçoban has been working as an associate professor of ELT at Hacettepe

Anna Siyanova-Chanturia is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics in the School

Meredith Stephens is on the faculty in the Department of Comparative Cul-

Neslie Carol C. Tan obtained her masters in English language education in De

Handoyo Puji Widodo is an Associate Professor of English Language Center

Zuocheng Zhang is a senior lecturer in TESOL Education at the University of

Despite an increasing number of Asian speakers of English, the English language

As echoed in the special issue of the Journal of Multilingual and Multilingual

A need for re-contextualizing ELT in Asia today

Aims of the book

1 explore and unpack what English language pedagogies mean to English

Readership of the book

The foci of the volume

Future directions: teacher innovation and creativity

Listening is an important skill for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL)

The current situation of English

Insight of listening process for comprehension

Anderson’s model of language comprehension

Top-down and bottom-up processing framework

The importance of focusing on the process

Difficulties that students in Japan encounter

Spoken language is characterized by assimilation as well as unclear articu-

Research on Japanese college students by Noro (2006) reveals that main

The difficulties and the affective reaction

Proposed approach as a solution

Teaching listening strategies for developing the top-down process

Teaching metacognitive strategies for better managing the