RELC Journal

Although the paradigm shift towards English as an International Language (EIL) has been generally accepted within the academic community, a valorization of native speaker norms continues to be prevalent among many non-native speakers (NNSs). Through data drawn from a qualitative questionnaire and proficiency assessment results (TOEIC), this mixed methods study investigates the degree to which native speaker models of communicative competence affect the linguistic self-confidence (LSC) and performance (LP) of 83 Japanese employees of a large, international corporation. Although the results were inconclusive for the latter inquiry, they show that participants who lack experience using English in international contexts have a greater tendency to valorize Native Speaker norms, a belief which, in turn, negatively affects their linguistic self-confidence and attitudes towards the target language (TL). Supplementary data were also collected by interviewing the participants in person or by e-mail in order to discern deeper insights into this particular psycho-linguistic phenomenon, and responses indicated that employees with greater experience using English for their work were much more articulate in explaining or justifying the reasons for their attitudes towards native-speaker norms.

To explore the multimodality of two representative EFL textbook series for Chinese college students, their visual and verbal semiotic modes were compared. The target textbooks are Experiencing English and New Century College English. Through multimodal discourse analysis, the study aims to shed some light on how to develop high-quality multimodal EFL textbooks. The main findings are: (1) EE and NCCE are similar in the fact that their representative multimodal texts are visually-verbally coherent and both demonstrate prominent features for intersemiotic semantic relations; (2) their differences are EE displays a higher degree of interpersonal intersemiotic complementarity and multimodality facilitates the realization of different modern educational concepts — constructivism in EE and humanism in NCCE; and (3) such differences are related to or may partially result from the differences in the language difficulty of textbooks and English proficiency of target learners. As a pioneering attempt to probe into the possible relationship between multimodality and modern educational concepts in EFL textbooks, the study shows the importance of properly arranging the different modes in a double-page spread. It also suggests that EFL textbook compilers consider the learners’ English proficiency and appropriately employ the variety and number of multimodal resources to achieve optimal intersemiotic complementarity.

Although many language teachers resort to their first language (L1) at various junctures during their practice, not many studies have tried to understand the reasons for this from teachers’ personal perspectives. This study aimed at investigating English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ cognitive processes during their classroom codeswitching. Stimulated recall technique was used to tap into teachers’ cognition. An entire session of four EFL teachers’ classroom practice was video-recorded. This was followed by an interview session in which participants tried to recall their thoughts while watching their own performance. The recollections, which were recorded and transcribed, were then analyzed using a three phase model of theme assignment, categorization, and labelling. The findings showed that eight factors were mentioned by teachers as the reasons for their codeswitching with Students’ Better Comprehension and Efficiency constituting the most and least important ones, respectively. Implications are drawn for classroom practice and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study investigates the effectiveness of online versus paper-based reading strategy instruction on EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Fifty-seven university students from two intact reading classes with comparable proficiency levels were assigned to participate in either a paper-based or an online reading instructional module. Both groups received comparable reading strategy instruction in four areas: Global (keyword list, prediction, overview, and text structure), Problem-solving (reading rate, listening, summarizing, and concept mapping), Support (dictionary, grammar book, translator, highlight, and record book), and Socio-affective (music and peer interaction) strategies. The only difference was the medium: the instruction was paper-based in one class and computer-based in the other class. After each group’s four-hour training and reading period, students’ reading comprehension was measured using a written recall and further analyzed with a weighted propositional system. Results showed that the online reading group outperformed the paper-based group on overall reading comprehension. An interview session provided insights into students’ perceptions of the online module. Findings of this study can encourage teachers to incorporate web-based reading strategy training into their curriculum.

As content-based instruction (CBI) programmes involve certain degrees of integration of second language (L2) and content learning, collaboration between L2 and content subject teachers has been strongly advocated. Whether this type of teacher collaboration can be successfully implemented will depend on many factors, one of which is teacher beliefs and attitudes. This study compares the beliefs and attitudes of L2 teachers with those of content subject teachers regarding their roles in CBI and cross-curricular collaboration. Data collected from the 261completed questionnaires, complemented with six semi-structured interviews, administered to teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools which practise CBI, show that the two groups of teachers have significantly different beliefs about their roles concerning language teaching in CBI. Even though they generally believe in the effectiveness of collaboration, they perceive some potential problems and are not fully committed to it. Such findings have important implications for the feasibility of cross-curricular collaboration, which is a practice often advocated to facilitate L2 learning in CBI. The findings can also shed light on teacher education in CBI.

A major challenge faced in research seeking to investigate the underlying dynamics of problematic interactions is that, when asked about the rationale underpinning what they said and did – their ‘theory of action in-use’ (Argyris and Schön, 1974, 1978, 1996) – participants are often unaware of what prompts their behaviour – or decide to hide it – so instead produce their ‘espoused theory of action’, the rationale they think ought to have been underpinning what they said and did.

Using the left-right case protocol (Argyris and Schön, 1974), researchers investigating problematic interactions, especially interactions open to different cultural interpretations, are able to identify points of dilemma in these moments when participants report thinking X, then self-censoring and actually saying Y. The question ‘What prevented you from saying X?’ allows the opening up of participants’ theory of action in-use – where they thought they were, what they thought was happening, and what they thought their options were. This access to their theory of action in-use could then be opened up and examined with the participants. This paper will present the attributes of the protocol and its rationale, and give examples of its effectiveness in the study of Chinese-Australian problematic social interactions at work.