RELC Journal

As a steady stream of recent papers indicates, ELT curriculum reform projects are not always as successful as they might be. One overall reason for this situation appears to be a failure to adequately take into account concepts and practices from the world of innovation management. This paper describes an attempt to contribute towards ameliorating this problem by detailing the content, activities, learning processes and outcomes of a short in-service training course on managing innovation in language education, delivered ‘on-site’ to a cross-section of change agents involved in a major educational reform initiative currently being undertaken in the Philippines. Data from the course are used to throw light on its value as an innovation management awareness-raising vehicle. Although illustrated in terms of a particular innovation context, the course is felt to be also of potential relevance to similar situations elsewhere.

School- and university-based writing tasks make demands on cognitive processing and socio-cultural knowledge that vary with the discipline in which the writing is situated. The variation in socio-cognitive demands makes the use of self-accessed, computer-mediated writing instruction more promising than conventional, teacher-fronted instruction. To be effective, self-accessed writing instruction should be constructed in partnership with student writers whose composing problems would form the basis of the content and organization of the instructional package. This paper demonstrates how a socio-cognitive model of writing informs the development of Essay Assist, a computer programme for guiding students towards appropriate decisions in the essay writing process. Results of a preliminary trial are reported and their implications discussed.

This paper analyses the use of the word where in texts written by Malay-speaking learners of English. Data from a learner corpus is compared with data from two corpora of academic writing by native English-speaker writers. Considerable over-use of where is found: this is explained as a consequence of various patterns of misuse of where and non-use of standard forms of relativization common in written academic English. Suggestions are offered as to (a) the causes of misuse and (b) teaching strategies for helping students avoid misuse.

Hoey (1991) claims that lexical patterns, which are a network of repetitious and synonymous words of a text, can be identified even by elementary foreign language readers. The present study investigates whether intermediate Japanese EFL readers can actually find elements of lexical patterns of a text Hoey uses in his book to demonstrate the concept of lexical patterns Pedagogical implications of using lexical patterns in teaching reading to English language learners are also discussed.

This paper looks at the functions of repetition of lexical items which fall within a single T-unit. Examining data from a foundation English course at a Thai university, transcripts of eliciting transactions from 12 lessons were divided into T-units. Within-unit repetitions were identi-fied and categorized. Categories of repetition found, in order of frequency, were emphasis, clarification, affirmation, left-fronting, choral units, re-initiation, and pedagogic reformulation. These functions were found to be related to the discourse move the repetition occurs in and to the type of repetition, but were not related to individual teachers. The findings suggest that within-unit repetition is primarily used to aid students’ comprehension of teacher talk.

The author first talks about the current situation of teaching EFL in higher education institutions in Taiwan, and indicates that the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach has been the most popular language teaching approach lately. Then he addresses the hybrid course approach which seems to be a trend as well as an appropriate way for teaching English. Despite the popularity of CLT, the situation regarding implementation of CLT in Taiwanese higher education institutions is complex. The author discusses the background of Taiwanese EFL instructors, the contradictory findings about EFL learners’ preferences and needs, and the existing English learning problem among college students in the effort to provide a solution. In addition, he emphasizes the implementation and application of the Internet in Taiwan for facilitating e-learning and English learning with the adaptation of instructor’s role and student’s role when using CLT at Taiwanese universities in the Internet age.

This account of English in the formal education system in Thailand traces briefly its historical background and then looks at the teaching of English today. The country itself has quite a complex sociolinguistic context and in order to understand the teaching and learning of English, one must understand the basic tenets of the culture. From this cross-cultural perspective, we can then understand some of the new initiatives that are presently being taken in English Language Teaching in Thailand.