Paraphrasing is a key skill for EAP students, and there are numerous techniques and tools that they can use to help them paraphrase. Whether they use these tools effectively to produce good paraphrases, though, is another question. A question, in fact, that Carol Bailey and Judi Withers at the University of Wolverhampton (UK) investigated in detail. This article is the report on their study, with its interesting findings and some useful take-aways for EAP teachers.
In this article, Jiang, Kalyuga and Sweller (2018) present their study into the ‘expertise reversal effect’ regarding the training of listening skills. This effect means that “instruction that is effective for novice learners is ineffective or even counterproductive for more expert learners.”
English language classrooms, even outside of English-speaking countries, are becoming increasingly multilingual, and many language teachers may be unsure of how to best cater to these more mixed groups of learners. This article highlights students’ and teachers’ experiences of multilingualism in their ELT classrooms, and strategies for utilizing linguistic and cultural diversity to benefit language learning.
This article explores criticisms of CLT put forward by proponents of TBLT and evaluates ideas that aim to counteract these, though do not manage to do so without encountering their own problems.
Language Learning Social Network Sites (LLSNS) combine tutorial software and opportunities to interact with others in order to improve one’s foreign language competence. However, details on how learners use these platforms and what they learn from them are rarely found in the research literature. This survey study by Chin-Hsi, Warschauer and Blake (2016) investigated learners’ attitudes towards, usage of, and progress made on Livemocha, a popular LLSNS. The results show the potential of these sites for language learning, but also some key questions that need to be answered before LLSNS-use can bring about real success.
In this article, Marsden and Kasprowicz report on two studies which they use to highlight how limited educators’ exposure to primary research is, why this might be, and how teacher trainers and other interfaces can help.
This article reports on a corpus-based study of the discourse of university lectures, which aimed to identify linguistic patterns that could help EAP / L2 students with note-taking. It finds some ‘standard’ formulaic expressions, as well as other discourse markers used by lecturers to highlight key terms or concepts.
This study proposes a New General Service List, compiled on the basis of four language corpora including a total of over 12 billion running words. ‘The New GSL is conceived of as a list of the most frequent English vocabulary [in British English] suitable for both receptive and productive use, primarily intended for beginner learners.’
This article explores discrepancies between the topics included in ELT textbooks and the actual topics of conversation in English learners’ encounters with peers.
This article argues that the lesson plan templates most commonly promoted on teacher training programmes are inappropriately premised on an outcomes-based approach to teaching, and instead proposes an affordance-based approach to planning, giving practical suggestions for modifying the template and its role in lesson observations.
