Abstract
In this August issue of RELC Journal, we have curated articles on various topics that are pertinent to English language learning and language teaching in the 21st century. Readers of the RELC Journal will be exposed to both thought-provoking articles and those that remind our practitioner-readers of their key responsibilities as language teachers, which range from responding to learners’ needs to improving one’s language proficiency.
As widely claimed by various English Language Teaching (ELT) scholars, a one-size-fits-all curriculum or teaching approach does not always deliver the learning outcomes or results we want to see our students achieve. The first three articles for this August issue remind us of the importance of understanding and/or exploring our learners’ personal and learning needs, and using these as a springboard to develop better and more effective pedagogical strategies and curricular offerings. In the first article, Saeedeh Jafari Pazoki and Minoo Alemi investigate Engineering students’ motivation in learning technical English in an Iranian university. The insights gained from their empirical investigation have led them to urge language educators to consider various factors behind students’ high and low motivation when designing or revamping a language course. Moving from personal to learning needs, the second article by Sujata Surinder Kathpalia, Kenneth Keng Wee Ong, and Alvin Ping Leong explores the communication needs of both local and international graduate Science majors at a university in Singapore. The differences in the needs of highly proficient and less proficient students highlighted in the article further emphasize just how crucial it is for language educators to adjust their teaching strategies according to students’ learning needs. Echoing a similar emphasis, the next article by Anna Chang and Willy Ardian Renandya explores students’ feedback on their reading experiences after being engaged in various narrow reading activities. It is from this feedback that pedagogical strategies for enhancing learners’ reading skills are proposed.
Although understanding our learners’ needs is essential, there are also other agents of successful learning whose roles and contributions cannot be overlooked. The article by Benjamin Luke Moorhouse and Andrew Mark Beaumont has brought to our attention the importance of involving parents in helping students to learn a language. With a specific focus on English writing skills in a Hong Kong high school context, Moorhouse and Beaumont suggest that parents should be familiarized with the digital language learning platform used in their children’s schools, and be encouraged to actively use such platforms in a way that contributes effectively to their children’s literacy skills development. In addition to receiving support from parents, we cannot overlook the direct contributions of classroom teachers and a series of dialogues between teachers and students that regularly take place in classrooms. This is emphasized by Nugrahenny T. Zacharias through the lens of Bakhtinian dialogism. Also focussing on writing skills but in a tertiary setting, her critical exploration of an academic writing journey of a Chinese international student in an American university has showcased how pedagogical strategies that facilitate constructive classroom dialogues can help students take a more agentive role in constructing their own writer’s voice. In order for students to learn language through a series of fruitful dialogues with teachers, Karim Sadeghi, Jack C. Richards, and Farah Ghaderi, in the next article, remind us that those dialogues will not be possible and effective if teachers themselves are not ‘proficient’ in the language.
However, how is proficiency defined in light of today’s messy sociolinguistic reality of English? On what basis do we evaluate someone’s, especially an English language teacher’s, proficiency? Is it based on an idealized native-speaker model of proficiency or a linguistics-informed view of proficiency? These questions are crucial to be pondered upon because any practices, perspectives, or syllogisms that institute and ‘naturalise’ linguistic practices of a certain speech community while marginalising others can affect one’s well-being and identity as a teacher, one’s teaching confidence, and thus, the overall quality of teaching. This is addressed in the article by Hao Wang, who explores the detrimental effect of a monolithic and ‘native-speakerist’ view of English on the professional identities of three Asian teaching assistants at an American University, and on their linguistic practices in their professional workplaces. Concepts such as intercultural communication, multilingualism, and multiculturalism, as advised by the author, need to be introduced in a professional development course for prospective teaching assistants. A similar concern is also voiced in the article by Rui Yan, who explores the emotional, social, and pedagogical barriers faced by Chinese university lecturers teaching in an English Medium Instruction (EMI) tertiary institution where English is the preferred or ‘mandated’ language of instruction. Not only does the author suggest equipping EMI educators with effective EMI pedagogical strategies, but also instilling in them a sense of linguistic ownership in light of the implications of English as a global language. A comprehensive discussion on this suggestion can be found in several of Ernesto Macaro’s published works. His latest book, English Medium Instruction, is critically reviewed by one of our own RELC Language Specialists, Marie Yeo, in this August issue.
As we begin the editorial for this issue with articles that focus on learners, we also wish to end it with a Tech Review and a ‘Conversations with Experts’ that also address learner-centric issues. In the review article, Lucas Kohnke invites us to consider using a web-based comic-making application, Make Beliefs Comix, in an ELT classroom. Kohnke has found the web application to be beneficial in creating an engaging language-learning classroom and, most importantly, in fostering creativity in language use, which is a starting point for students to develop a sense of linguistic ownership. Once again, language teachers need to be aware of the importance of promoting linguistic ownership because every learner has his or her own idiosyncratic ways of using language, and preferred language learning styles and strategies. As revealed in various well-established findings in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research, language learners do not leave behind them at the classroom door their linguistic practices and rich language learning history. Instead, they bring those practices and history in with them. Such complexity of learning a second language can be read in the conversations that Ton Nu Linh Thoai, another of our very own RELC Language Specialists, has with a world renowned SLA expert, Robert deKeyser. Since ELT has been ‘complexified’ by the theoretical complexity of SLA, Robert deKeyser hopes to see more interdisciplinary research collaborations in order to enhance the quality of language research, our teaching, and most importantly, our own students’ learning.
We hope that this issue of the journal gives our readers invaluable insights into ELT in the 21st century. We also hope that the issue generates more thought-provoking questions, prompting you our readers to embark on empirical enquiries to address these questions and to consider sharing the results from those enquiries in future issues of RELC Journal.
Happy reading, reflecting, and researching!
