scholarly journals The implementation of ICTs in the English language classroom in a Latin American university

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Rosario Ruiz-Ortega

This investigation was carried out in Mexico in the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH) with the purpose of exploring and analyzing to what extent the English teaching practices at the tertiary level involve the use of ICTs. Through and electronic survey, the opinions of 50 teachers of English at the UAEH were analyzed. The results showed that ICTs play an essential role in language teaching and they also have a significant field presence. However, despite their importance, ICTs are not being fully incorporated in the university and we are still not getting the most of it. The methodology for the initial phase of the project was a questionnaire. The qualitative part included a case study method that explore specific cases. For this stage, semi-structured interviews were carried out with key participants chosen from the information gathered in the questionnaires. The third source of data includes the analysis of the documents that make up the legal framework in reference to the implementation of ICTs in the teaching of a foreign language.

Telos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 692-709
Author(s):  
Lorena del Carmen Álvarez-Castañón ◽  
Rafael Palacios-Bustamante

The paper aimed to analyze the open innovation model from the Latin-American public university and the main factors that influence it. The interaction between the university with its ecosystem, its innovation and technology management, the profile of the academic community, and innovation policies were studied. The research methodology had a qualitative approach. And the process was integrated into three phases to identify the categories of open innovation, categorized the interaction between the university with the innovation ecosystem in four Mexican public universities, and triangulate the Latin-American behavior through semi-structured interviews to six academics. The main findings showed that open innovation is a feasible platform to link the Latin-American University with local enterprises despite the peculiar heterogeneous and unequal context of the ecosystem; furthermore, four collaborative flows between the university and the ecosystem were identified –inside, outside, mixed and hybrid-. In conclusion, the interdisciplinary approach, the techno-institutional networks, and the institutional policy influence open innovation from the university to the ecosystem, where the academic community is a mediator variable. Finally, it is highlighted that new re-institutionalization of innovation policies based on digital transformation and environmental sustainability are required; thus, Latin-American Schools of Innovation Taught are needed to encourage them.


Accurate pronunciation has a vital role in English language learning as it can help learners to avoid misunderstanding in communication. However, EFL learners in many contexts, especially at the University of Phan Thiet, still encounter many difficulties in pronouncing English correctly. Therefore, this study endeavors to explore English-majored students’ perceptions towards the role of pronunciation in English language learning and examine their pronunciation practicing strategies (PPS). It involved 155 English-majored students at the University of Phan Thiet who answered closed-ended questionnaires and 18 English-majored students who participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that students strongly believed in the important role of pronunciation in English language learning; however, they sometimes employed PPS for their pronunciation improvement. Furthermore, the results showed that participants tended to use naturalistic practicing strategies and formal practicing strategies with sounds, but they overlooked strategies such as asking for help and cooperating with peers. Such findings could contribute further to the understanding of how students perceive the role of pronunciation and their PPS use in the research’s context and other similar ones. Received 10th June 2019; Revised 12th March 2020; Accepted 12th April 2020


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 56-64
Author(s):  
Saifa Haque

Expectation influences motivation and performance in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Students’ expectation also plays a significant role in curriculum development. This paper focuses on the expectations of the students in an English language classroom and how they want to be taught. From a study on 45 students of Stamford University Bangladesh, the researcher tried to find students’ expectations about content, factors behind the expectations and effects of expectations in a language classroom using semi-structured interviews. It was found that students have expectations regarding their course content, teaching-learning style and education management. Several factors such as professional need, education background, social beliefs, personal goals and personality of the students worked behind their expectations and their expectations played a significant role in their classroom behavior and performance. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nelta.v19i1-2.12080 Journal of NELTA, Vol 19 No. 1-2, December 2014: 56-64


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. p1
Author(s):  
Martha Hakaya ◽  
Nchindo Richardson Mbukusa ◽  
Earle Sinvula Mudabeti

Total management of overcrowded classrooms have across-the-board effects for English as a Second Language teaching and learning environments as in any subject. Greater attainment and achievements in schools depend on the choices made with regard to teacher-learner ratios that consider of classroom management. Recruitment of learners and teachers should ensure that classrooms are enabled to meet the demands of professional teaching challenges, amongst other, inidvidualised teaching and learning. The aim of the research was to explore the challenges and related matters in managing English as a Second Language overcrowded classrooms. A qualitative approach, steered by a case study design, purposively guided the study. It was deemed fit in order to understand the phenomena with deeper understanding of beliefs and situated lived experiences. Semi-structured interviews and nonparticipant observations were used as methods to generate data for analysis. The research exposed that copious problems were experienced by teachers and leaners who were subjected to overcrowded classrooms. Amongst many, noise and unruly behaviour, poor time management and teaching approaches result in such classes. Guiding principles regarding sound teacher-learner ratios should be put in place by policymakers and schools in order to support both teachers and learners for the success of teaching and learning.


1967 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Felipe Herrera

The degree conferred upon me by the University of America with the concurrence of the 24 universities of the Republic of Colombia is a powerful incentive to the work of the Inter-American Development Bank in the field of higher education and research in Latin America. You will forgive me, then, if I take this occasion to mention the role of the Inter-American Bank as the “Bank of the Latin American University,” a role which has placed it in the vanguard of an impressive process of international cooperation for the modernization and decisive expansion of higher education in the Hemisphere. The $55 million it has loaned to 71 institutions in 17 countries bear eloquent testimony to an abiding preoccupation of the Bank in its brief years of existence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tan Yuan Yi ◽  
Norhanim Abdul Samat

The latest Malaysian Educational Blueprint (2013-2025) asserts the importance of producing value-driven Malaysians through education. English language teaching should be aimed beyond producing more proficient users as it possesses a nature that is particularly suitable for value incorporation. This research aims to investigate how English teachers communicate values to students, the kinds of values communicated and whether the values communicated are stipulated by the Ministry of Education. This research utilized a qualitative case study approach on two respondents, an experienced English teacher and a novice English teacher. Their lessons were videotaped, transcribed and coded based on a set of established analysis tool. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to further understand the values depicted by the respondents. The results of the research show that teachers consciously incorporated values through selected topics, tasks and explicit moral statements. They subconsciously transmitted values through classroom rules and regulations, curricular substructures and expressive morality. It is found in this research that teachers applied much more subconscious approaches to communicate values than that of conscious ones during teacher-student encounter, with classroom facilitation being used as the medium most frequently. The kinds of values communicated included spiritual, intellectual, esthetical, positive, interactional, citizen, economical and modernized values. About half of the values communicated were stipulated by the Ministry of Education. This research provides new insights into how Malaysian English teachers can improve the quality of their teaching by harnessing the full potential of a language classroom to educate values.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2325-2329
Author(s):  
Lulzime Kamberi ◽  
Majlinda Nuhiu

Autonomous second language learning (SLL) is a topic of focus in every educational setting and almost universally supported by institutions and scholars in the whole world. One aspect of autonomous learning is peer evaluation (Harmer, 2001; Benson, 2001; Cottrall, 1999; Everhard&Murphy) Seeking to make students more autonomous leaners and take more responsibility for their learning, as well as assess the effect of peer assessment, on language acquisition, peer assessment has been introduced to student of the final semester of their studies. This paper reports initial results from a study into the effectiveness of peer assessment in an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom instruction, in a methodology course, conducted in the second semester of the academic year 2017/2018, at the Department of English Language and Literature, at the University of Tetovo, Macedonia. Applying frequency statistics, Fraenkel&Wallen, (2003), the study has analyzed peer assessment; in contrast to teacher assessment of student presentations. Content analysis (Leedy & Ormord, 2005) to identify themes biases and meaning, the study investigated the validity and reliability of peer assessment. Convenience sampling among students enrolled in the seventh semester identified a non-random sample of 20 students representing 41% of the possible cohort. The findings of the study revealed that students were not prepared to assess each other and rather acted on their personal feelings towards their peers. In conclusion, it is argued that research designs involving an extended period of time and with a larger sample will be needed to confirm these results.


Author(s):  
Andres Bernasconi

Postindependence Latin American universities developed during the 19th and most of the 20th century largely under the normative influence of a Latin American idea of the university institution. In the last few decades, factors both related to the development of higher education and external to it have combined to challenge the clout of that model. As a result, notwithstanding the persistence of elements of the old paradigm, the model of the Latin American university is now related chiefly to US research universities.


1966 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald C. Newton

The National University of Buenos Aires, the largest and for many years the most prestigious in Latin America, is today more commonly taken as the archetype of the political Latin American university—and the connotations of “political” are wholly pejorative. This notoriety may be due in part, as Kalman Silvert suggests, to the high visibility of the University, especially to touring North American newsmen. Nevertheless, as its numerous critics allege, there seems to be abundant evidence to link politics to the manifest disarray of the educational process: in the well-publicized brawls among contending student factions and confrontations between demonstrators and the police, student strikes in opposition to procedural reforms desirable on grounds of efficiency, the reputed “terrorization” of heterodox professors, several student homicides in recent years, the distressingly high incidence of abandonos (for it is assumed, erroneously, that many withdrawals from the University are motivated by disgust with its politics); student political behavior as in the abusive reception tendered W. W. Rostow by a student group in Economic Sciences in February 1965, may have international repercussions. Such depressing phenomena have led even temperate and knowledgeable observers to speak of the “failure” of the University, and to call for a thoroughgoing structural overhaul, conducive, among other things, to depoliticization.


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