|
| The Journal of Asia TEFL |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
  Current Issue |
|
|
|
Go List
 |
|
|
| Volume 11 Number 4, Winter 2014, Pages 1-134 |
|
|
|
| |
From the Editor-in Chief
|
|
| |
Andy Kirkpatrick
|
|
Dear Readers and Colleagues,
Welcome to the latest issue of the Journal of Asia TEFL.
In this issue we publish five articles. In the opening article Alastair Pennycook argues that successful communication is not so much achieved by the speakers sharing a code or set of norms, but by the way speakers negotiate meaning with each other using their respective linguistic and cultural resources. In order therefore to ensure intelligibility in multilingual contexts, he thus proposes a model of principled polycentrism, a model that is more fluid and flexible than the World Englishes model with its reliance on the established norms of regional varieties.
In the second article, Sotoudehnama and Molavi investigated the influence of teachers' written feedback and their students' attitudes towards it. To this end they studied three groups of twenty learners each. Each group was given a different form of feedback. The authors concluded that feedback in the form of statements was not only the most effective form of feedback, but also the type of feedback that the learners appreciated the most.
The third article is authored by Webb, Doman and Pusey, three scholars from the University of Macau. They conducted research into a ‘flipped classroom' where the students ‘do homework in class and classwork at home.' Despite some scepticism being noted by both students and teachers, the authors report that, by the end of the fifteen week course, students were requesting an increased number of ‘flipped' materials and that a majority of teachers saw the flipped approach as a way of increasing creativity and higher order learning among the learners.
Vu Mai Trang and Pham Thi Thanh Thuy are the authors of the fourth article in this issue. They evaluated two of the train the teacher programmes which are just one part of Vietnam's current attempt to retrain teachers as part of the country's ambitious National Foreign Language 2020 Project. The two courses they studied involved the retraining of primary teachers in preparation for the introduction of English at Grade 3. Based on the self-assessment of the trainees, the authors conclude that, despite the best of ambitions, the training programmes still do not take into adequate account the local contexts and needs of the teachers concerned.
The final article in this issue investigates the issue of critical literacy in the EFL classroom. Jun-min Kuo studied how 34 non-English majors in their first year of university study react to activities designed to develop their critical literacy and how the students compared these new activities with earlier activities. Using a variety of methods including classroom observation and followup interviews with the students, the researcher found that the new learning tasks helped the students develop a critical perspective and concludes that such activities are crucial in helping Taiwanese learners develop much needed critical perspectives.
As many of you may know, this year we are preparing the journal for SSCI-indexing. It is all the more important therefore that we continue to receive high quality submissions from our members and readers.
Finally, on behalf of the editorial team, may I wish all of you season's greetings and a happy new year, both lunar and calendar.
Australia, December 2014
Andy Kirkpatrick
Editor-in-Chief |
|
|
|
|
|
The Journal of Asia TEFL
