Professional encounters in TESOL:Discourses of teachers in teaching

This book investigates the developing discourses of English Language teachers in a variety of international contexts. By analysing how professional development takes place through participation in professional discourse, the chapters shed light on what teachers do and why they do it.

From postgraduate student to published writer:discourse variation and development in TESOL

This thesis is part of a project whose overall aim is to assist participants on an MSc TESOL course who wish to begin to publish articles in the field to do so. The project, which is undertaken within a naturalistic paradigm, has two intimately related and mutually constitutive strands: one descriptive, one interventionist. The descriptive strand consists of an analytical model of the TESOL article genre, and it is instantiated in this thesis. The interventionist strand consists of a series of pedagogic interactions and materials intended to assist project participants formulate a text suitable for publication within the target genre, and it is reported on in this thesis. I begin the thesis by looking in detail at the research approach which characterises the project. I then attempt to explain the situational context of the work and to position it within the context of other research in the areas of discourse community membership, academic genres, genre learning and academic enculturation. Having thus contextualised the work, I next attempt a detailed exploration of the problems of postgraduate students in TESOL when first attempting to write in the TESOL article genre: this exploration is undertaken from both a linguistic and a pedagogic perspective. Then in subsequent chapters, both a linguistic and a pedagogic response to these problems are proposed: the first consisting of an analytical model of the target genre, the second consisting of a series of pedagogic interactions and materials. The relationships between the two lines of response are also examined in some detail. Then in the final part of the thesis, I report feedback from the interventionist strand and attempt to conduct an evaluation of the whole project to date. Criteria for evaluation are proposed and examined in some detail in the context of the research approach of the project. The concluding chapter is a brief discussion of future directions for this work.

Reacting and responding in TESOL Quarterly:a generic analysis of procedure and purpose in intertextual critical exchanges

A key feature of ‘TESOL Quarterly’, a leading journal in the world of TESOL/applied linguistics, is its ‘Forum’ section which invites ‘responses and rebuttals’ from readers to any of its articles. These ‘responses or rebuttals’ form the focus of this research. In the interchanges between readers reacting to earlier research articles in TESOL Quarterly and authors responding to the said reaction I – examine the texts for evidence of genre-driven structure, whether shared between both ‘reaction’ and ‘response’ sections, or peculiar to each section, and attempt to determine the precise nature of the intended communicative purpose in particular and the implications for academic debate in general. The intended contribution of this thesis is to provide an analysis of how authors of research articles and their critics pursue their efforts beyond the research article which precipitated these exchanges in order to be recognized by their discourse community as, in the terminology of Swales (1981:51), ‘Primary Knowers’. Awareness of any principled generic process identified in this thesis may be of significance to practitioners in the applied linguistics community in their quest to establish academic reputation and in their pursuit of professional development. These findings may also be of use in triggering productive community discussion as a result of the questions they raise concerning the present nature of academic debate. Looking beyond the construction and status of the texts themselves, I inquire into the kind of ideational and social organization such exchanges keep in place and examine an alternative view of interaction. This study breaks new ground in two major ways. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first exploration of a bipartite, intertextual structure laying claim to genre status. Secondly, in its recourse to the comments of the writers’ themselves rather than relying exclusively on the evidence of their texts, as is the case with most studies of genre, this thesis offers an expanded opportunity to discuss perhaps the most interesting aspects of genre analysis – the light it throws on social ends and the role of genre in determining the nature of current academic debate as it here emerges.

Integrating grammar in adult TESOL classrooms

This paper examines the beliefs and practices about the integration of grammar and skills teaching reported by 176 English language teachers from 18 countries. Teachers completed a questionnaire which elicited beliefs about grammar teaching generally as well as specific beliefs and reported practices about the integration of grammar and skills teaching. Teachers expressed strong beliefs in the need to avoid teaching grammar in isolation and reported high levels of integration of grammar in their practices. This study also examines how teachers conceptualize integration and the sources of evidence they draw on in assessing the effectiveness of their instructional practices in teaching grammar. The major findings for this paper stem from an analysis of these two issues. A range of ways in which teachers understood integration are identified and classified into two broad orientations which we label temporal and contextual. An analysis of the evidence which teachers cited in making judgements about the effectiveness of their grammar teaching practices showed that it was overwhelmingly practical and experiential and did not refer in any explicit way to second language acquisition theory. Given the volume of available theory about L2 grammar teaching generally and integration specifically, the lack of direct reference to such evidence in teachers’ accounts is noteworthy.

Joint colloquium on plurilingualism and language education:opportunities and challenges, (AAAL/TESOL)

This colloquium was organised by Ryuko Kubota (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Sue Garton (Aston University, UK) as part of the collaboration between the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and TESOL International Association.

Investigating EFL teacher beliefs about teaching and learning

This article reports on research into the beliefs of a group of teachers working in the field of TESOL, specifically teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In particular, the aim was to see if it is possible to identify a coherent system of beliefs about teaching and learning that may account for different approaches to teaching.

Learning and teaching through context: a data-driven approach

A word may have many potential meanings, but its actual meaning in any authentic written or spoken text is determined by its context: its collocations, structural patterns, and pragmatic functions. Large language corpora offer access to words in a wide range of natural contexts, which can improve and enrich both language learning and teaching.