Play to Learn: Shakespeare games as decolonial praxis in South African schools

The place of Shakespeare in South African secondary education has become highly contested in light of calls to decolonise the English Home Language curriculum through intentional inclusion of indigenous authors and knowledge systems, and the removal of colonial impositions such as Shakespeare. Yet removing Shakespeare from the curriculum is not the only or even the best solution for countering the violent legacies of colonialism and apartheid. This article argues that a more effective decolonial approach would be to change the way Shakespeare is taught in schools by cultivating horizontal, instead of hierarchical, dialogue within classrooms and between secondary educators and Shakespeare scholars. The authors describe their own horizontal collaboration to produce “Blood will have Blood”, a series of lesson plans and assignments centred on scenes of violence in the Shakespeare set works. Using the digital theatre game Play the Knave, the programme engages secondary school students in creative experimentation and embodied play with Shakespeare’s texts. As learners access the curriculum from their own epistemological standpoints and through their own bodies, they come to understand gendered and racial forms of violence represented in the plays and manifested in their personal and historical contexts. The article contextualises the project in terms of Practice as Research (PAR) methodology while offering preliminary findings from the programme’s implementation in Cape Town schools.

CLIL, Bilingual Education, and Pluriliteracies

The so-called language gap is not a modern invention, since language is power and a form of taking dominion over the world in humans' intellectual confrontation with reality. Historically, there has been inequality in language learning and mastery as a way to access knowledge and to achieve self-fulfillment in both the public and private spheres. This chapter explores the concept of language gap from a diachronic perspective and the way in which the Andalusian education system has taken actions emanating from European language policies, aimed at bridging the language gap among young people through initiatives of great impact on content and language education, such as the consolidation of bilingual education programmes through the CLIL approach and pedagogical tools like the Integrated Language Curriculum, the European Language Portfolio, and the School Language Project.

Innovating English Syllabus Design for Twenty-First Century Skills of 4Cs

English syllabus design plays as an essential role in the language curriculum. It helps the teachers to make a plan for their teaching performance. The syllabus should describe many skills to be taught. In designing an English syllabus, the teachers not only describe English skills in the syllabus but also other skills. The skills to be accomplished in English teaching and learning nowadays is 4Cs 21st-century skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. English teachers are suggested to do some innovations in designing the English syllabus based on 4Cs skills in order to prepare the students to face 4.0 society and globalization era. Considering the importance of these skills, the purpose of this article is to describe some innovations of English syllabus design for 4Cs skills. A library research method is used to provide an overview of the integrating of these skills into the syllabus design, including challenges faced by teachers in designing the syllabus based on 4Cs skills as well as a set recommendation for English teachers in designing English syllabus for 21st century of 4Cs. The article concludes with a discussion around the innovation of designing an English syllabus of 4Cs skills.

Employment Profile and Program Relevance: Bases for Quality Measures Towards Language Curriculum

This research involved a comprehensive review of a graduate program’s competence for enhancements responsive and relevant to the standards of the new educational landscape and of the employment agencies’ growing needs and demands. Descriptive survey method embedding interview was used to address the objectives. Employing total enumeration, 70% retrieval rate of the instrument administered was recorded. Statistical and thematic analyses revealed that the MA- ESL degree, as similarly concluded, is contributory to the professional advancement of the graduates as supported by the high employment rating obtained consistent with the graduates’ regular status in professional occupational classifications and business lines. Significantly, the school- related factors were generally found very relevant- giving premium to curriculum, goals and objectives, and faculty and instruction. The work- related values on the other hand were rated highly useful- assessing perseverance and hard work of utmost importance. Of the general competencies, communication, knowledge and technical, and research were primarily found useful. Meanwhile, the feedback derived from the graduates, crosschecked with the above results, provided quality and timely enhancement measures. It is then forwarded that the proposed plan highlighting specific measures in the areas of curriculum and faculty and instruction may be adopted and accorded periodic evaluation.

The evaluation of the Arabic language book for the twelfth grade from the viewpoint of its teachers in Jordan: تقييم كتاب اللغة العربية للصف الثاني عشر من وجهة نظر معلميه في الأردن

The study aimed to evaluate the Arabic language type for the twelfth grade from the point of view of the subject teachers and to know the evaluation estimates for the teachers, as the researcher used the descriptive approach for its suitability for this type of study, and the sample of the study consisted of (61) teachers who filled out the questionnaire after it was published electronically. A questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data, and it was distributed electronically to the subject's teachers through various social media channels, in compliance with the prohibitions laws related to the Corona pandemic (COVID-19) that Jordan and the world was exposed to in 2020; Where the questionnaire included (30) items distributed to include three axes (educational content, educational activities, and evaluation questions), and the results of the study found that there were no statistically significant differences between the rate of evaluation of the Arabic language book for the twelfth grade from the point of view of its teachers in government schools of the Directorate The education of Qweismeh Brigade is attributed to the gender variable. or due to the variable of years of experience. The researcher recommended the necessity of holding training courses for new teachers to enable them to explain and give the Arabic language curriculum easily and conveniently for the twelfth grade, taking into account individual differences and encouraging self-learning among students in the educational activities received.

Malaysian ESL Teachers’ Practice of Written Feedback on Students’ Writing

Feedback to students’ writing plays an important role as a scaffolding technique to help the students to improve their writing skills. With the introduction of school-based assessment and the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) into the new Standards-based English Language Curriculum (SBELC), teachers are expected to adapt the process writing approach in their classroom, where feedback is at the core of the process writing approach. This present study aims to explore Malaysian ESL teachers’ practice of written feedback in their writing classrooms. Two sample essays were used in this study. The sample essays were written by a Form Three student of a secondary school in Kuantan, Pahang, and a Form Five student from a secondary school in Manjung, Perak.The sample essays were sent to all secondary schools in Pahang, and teachers who teach the English Language at the schools were asked to mark the essay as how they would normally mark their students’ essays. The participants of this study were selected using purposive sampling. A total of 89 student sample essays with the teachers’ marking were returned, and the teachers’ feedback were analysed. This study found that most of the participants mark their students’ essays comprehensively and implicitly. However, some of the respondents did not give any feedback at all, and even if they did, the feedback would be retracted from the marking rubric. It has also been found that the respondents of this present study did not utilise comments on goals to work towards or specific activities for improvement. This paper further discusses the findings in view of the assessment of learning (AfL) and gives recommendations for future practice.

Mind Your Gap between Entry English Proficiency and Graduation Expectation

In recent years, the trend of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Thai universities have changed drastically. This can be seen by the changes in the English as a foreign language curriculum and the manner it is being taught in schools as well as in the universities. The main objective of these changes is to prepare students to participate more aggressively in the ASEAN community, where English is the universal language. Thai universities launched a new policy about English graduation requirements aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). One area of interest is whether there is a gap between the entry English proficiency and English graduation expectation. Thus, this study sought to gauge the gap between English oral proficiency among the Thai 1st year undergraduates and the expected exit proficiency level (B2 CEFR). Results suggest that almost all 1st-year university students in Thailand have a tremendous gap between the real entry English oral proficiency level and the high expectations exit proficiency level. This information about the gap would allow the universities to prepare their students accordingly.

THE PROCESS APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF WRITING: FOCUS ON PROCESS RATHER THAN PRODUCT

Composition writing has always been an integral part of the English Language curriculum in primary, secondary and tertiary education in Malaysia, yet being the most difficult of the four skills in English as a Second Language; the teaching of writing has often been neglected. Process writing, as distinguished from ‘Product Writing’, is playing a large role in ESL classes. Writing is seen as a communicative act with an intended purpose and audience. The teacher and other learners help the writer find a topic and revise drafts of a written piece until it conveys the intended meaning. While working to make their meanings clear, learners are assumed to acquire competence using the style, syntax, grammar and surface features of the language. During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning, drafting and post-writing activities. However, learners do not necessarily engage in these activities in that order because the writing process is recursive in nature. Language rules are taught in teacher-led- mini-lessons but always in the context of expressing the learners’ own ideas. This paper reports on a study that explores how a process-oriented approach to writing influences a group of university ESL students.