Role of Immigrant Parents' Attitudes and Practices in Emergent Bilingual Students' Language Use and Translanguaging Performance

Given the issue of heritage language (HL) development or attrition among children of immigrants in the U.S., this study examines Korean emergent bilingual students' HL use and translanguaging practices in an HL classroom. To extend our understanding of immigrant families' vital roles in their children's establishment of bilingualism, the study further explores the role of immigrant Korean families' language practices and attitudes towards their children's bilingualism. The chapter addresses the following research question: What was the relationship between the parents' attitudes toward bilingualism and their children's language use and translanguaging performance in an HL classroom? The findings show the emergent bilingual students' classroom language use, including their translanguaging performance and the immigrant parents' views and practices towards their children's development of bilingualism. The findings indicate that there is a close relationship between parents' attitudes and practices at home and the children's language use and development both in Korean and English.

Creating an Inclusive Classroom Culture

The chapter discusses creating an inclusive classroom through a language socialization perspective. The authors suggest that to create an inclusive culture in a multicultural and multilingual classroom, language educators should engage in explicit language socialization practices that promote development of critical cultural consciousness and language awareness. They propose that in the process of creating an inclusive classroom, educators need to attend to affective, individual, and interpersonal domains. Specific practices for use in a language (including ESOL) classroom and a teacher preparation program are provided.

The Plight in Foreign Language Learning in Tunisian Context: Classroom Language Assessment v.s Foreign Language Learning Anxiety

The assessment of language proficiency from a psycholinguistics perspective has been a subject of considerable interest. Many literatures are devoted for the explanation of certain psychological phenomena related to first language acquisition and foreign language learning like language disorders/impairments, critical/sensitive period and language anxiety. This paper sheds the light on foreign language anxiety, which is in my conviction the hardest problem that concerns the foreign language learner as well as the teacher. The origin of this conviction is that foreign language anxiety hampers learner performance on one hand, and on the other hand effects, negatively, the classroom language assessment which in turn sharpens learner’s anxiety more and more. There is a significant negative correlation between foreign language anxiety and classroom language assessment. Three issues are to be tackled in this paper: (i) The implication of ‘anxiety’ as a psychological issue in foreign language learning, (ii) classroom language assessment in Tunisian schools and (iii) the relation between foreign language anxiety and classroom language assessment.

Speaking Performance and the Types of Code-switching of Senior High School Students

English proficiency is considered a frontline skill especially among Humanities and Social Sciences students in the locality. This study was conducted to explore what particular types of code-switching affect the speaking performance among HUMSS. It determined the students’ demographic profile, types of English reading materials, time spent in reading, types of media, time spent in viewing and length exposure to English conversations, frequency of code-switching, and their level of speaking performance. The study used the Spearman rank correlation coefficient to determine the relationships between the demographic profile and the types of code-switching used in the conversation and the relationship of the types of code-switching and the level of speaking performance. The findings revealed that the speaking performance of the respondents is not generally affected by their exposure to English conversation. Nonetheless, it was found out that exposure to English reading materials and media corresponds to students’ fluency in speaking. In addition, using intra-sentential and tag code-switching make students speak fluently in the conversation. With this, it is concluded that intra-sentential and tag code-switching are communicative pedagogical approaches that can be adopted to meet classroom language needs. Likewise, the availability of learning materials either English reading materials and media or multimedia sources at home and in the classroom are crucial factors to foster students speaking performance. Thus, the study highly recommends that the conduct of intervention to students’ low level of speaking performance through the exposure to English reading materials and media, as well as the creation of home libraries and innovative media sources to promote students’ literacy skills.

English Language Teacher Agency in Rural Sarawak: Exploiting Teaching Materials

This paper explores English language teacher agency in rural Sarawak, Malaysia within the context of materials exploitation. The introduction of an international textbook series in all primary schools in Malaysia has brought about significant challenges for teachers who work in socially and economically deprived educational settings, where resources are scarce and where the textbook’s cultural references may be alien to the learners. In order for it to be meaningfully used in the classroom, language teachers need to adapt and localize the textbook for their learners. However, diverting from the officially prescribed material and scheme of work may be a risky business and it requires high levels of teacher autonomy and agency. The data show that although research participants find the materials in need of adaptation, not all make changes due to possible deficiencies in their capabilities or their lack of willingness to act. Those who make changes and thus enact their professional beliefs and values are motivated by completely different reasons. The study found that teachers’ interpretation of their work context significantly influences their agential roles and that teacher agency emerges from an interaction of individual capability, professional action, and the professional and social contexts in which the teacher operates.

The price of immersion: language learners as a cheap workforce in Malta’s voluntourism industry

This contribution treats “language immersion” as a linguistic ideology and explores narratives, practices, and subjectivities pertinent to that notion in the context of language-motivated voluntourism. Voluntourism programs offer short-term sojourns abroad, which combine voluntary work with holidays while promising “immersion” as an efficient alternative to classroom language learning. In the Mediterranean island state of Malta, whose population is mostly bilingual in English and Maltese, voluntourism has become an attractive product for the booming English language travel industry. Since there is a lack of critical sociolinguistic and second language acquisition research on the language learning trajectories of voluntourists, this piece examines the promise of immersion through the example of a hostel that figures as a workplace. Drawing on ethnographic data, it investigates how learning English through immersion while working abroad is imagined and promoted, whether or not it occurs, and what gains (linguistic or otherwise) it generates and for whom. The article argues that the voluntourism industry appropriates the discourse of immersion to responsibilize English learners for their linguistic self-skilling, thereby constituting them as neoliberal subjects that can easily be exploited as a cheap workforce.

Assessment and feedback practices in the EFL classroom

This study explored the implementation of Language classroom assessment and feedback within the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. This research was conducted using a qualitative research design and the obtained data were analyzed descriptively. Data were collected by conducting direct classroom observation using observation checklists and in-depth interviews with the three professional English instructors using an observation guide. The data were transcribed and coded according to their categories. The findings of the study indicated that the students learning progress were assessed through a short question-answer and completion test. Verbal feedback merely provided by the teachers, and feedback was given only occasionally. The teacher hardly provided any follow-up action in order to modify their way of teaching. Consequently, there was a slow, gradual improvement of the students' learning achievement. Therefore, teachers were recommended to utilize various classroom language assessments to assess the students' learning. The teachers should provide both verbal and written feedback for their students to enhance the students' achievement continually.