English Language Teaching

This study aimed to identify elements related to 'intercultural communicative competence' in the textbook series Life at A1 and A2 level published by National Geographic Learning which incorporates plentiful photographic content. Activities in the textbooks, based on the four skills and visuals, were analyzed through a checklist focusing on source, target and international cultural elements as well as big c and little c features. To explore opinions about the cultural content of the textbooks, a questionnaire was applied to six lecturers from two universities in Istanbul who used them in their English preparatory classes. An adapted version of the instrument was also applied to 26 students. Four of the six lecturers were interviewed. Findings indicated that the textbooks were quite rich in terms of covering a variety of cultures except for direct references to the source culture, which is Turkish. Big C and little c themes were found to be fairly balanced except for overrepr...

The work of researchers like Zumel(24) and Krashen (12) on the effectiveness of teacher feedback on second language writing does not support a focus on surface error to help students improve their writing. However, students of English as a SecondLanguage (ESL) may come to US. institutions of higher education with a notion different from that of their teachers here about what kind of teacher responses will help them improve their writing. Thispaperpresents the results of asurvey of 100 ESL students in freshman composition classes, asking thestudents to analyze their sense of what kinds ofpapr marking techniques help them the most to improve their writing, which kinds of Ilona Leki (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is Associate Professor of Enghsh at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

After briefly discussing techniques such as 'the cloze test' and 'gap-filling' employed in assessing reading, the main focus of the paper resides in the scoring process of 'ordering tasks', where students are asked to re-arrange the order of sentences given in incorrect order. Since the evaluation of such tasks is quite complex, Reading Teachers rarely use them in their tests. According to Alderson, Reading Teachers frequently tend to mark these tasks either wholly right or totally wrong since the partial marking process is very time-consuming. In this respect, the readers of this paper will be introduced to a new approach, namely Weighted Marking Protocol, developed by the author for ordering tasks in order to achieve a fairer evaluation. This new approach makes it possible for Reading Teachers to reward their students for all right answers and not penalize them just for a single mistake.

This study investigated the influence of cultural schema and reading activities on reading comprehension. It was carried out at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey with 3 rd grade students at the department of ELT through a 2X2 true-experimental research design where the participants were homogenously placed in different groups according to their GPAs. The first group were given the original story while the second group were given the nativized one. To find out the effect of reading activities on the comprehension of nativized and original stories, the third group read the original story with reading activities while the fourth group read the nativized story with the same activities. Post-tests were administered. ANOVA test indicated that the treatment groups who received the nativized version of the story, regardless of whether they received any activities or not, outperformed the other two treatment groups who received the original story. This implied that cultural schema appears to have a significant effect on the comprehension of short stories. Nevertheless, the treatment groups who were supported with reading activities outperformed the others who did not do any activities, which indicated that the lack of cultural knowledge can be compensated for through the use of reading activities.

This study aims primarily to investigate the impact of learning multiple foreign languages on the use of metacognitive reading strategies (MRSs) by foreign language teaching (FLT) department students. A number of factors such as gender, hand preference, class, and programme with reference to their belief orientation were also involved in the study. A five-scale Likert type questionnaire, consisting of 22 MRSs and 12 belief orientation items, was administered to 205 participants in the department of FLT at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey. Post Hoc test indicated significant differences among the participants in different programs, evidencing the contribution of learning a second foreign language to the use of MRSs. Participants of the Japanese Language Teaching Programme implied that learners' preference of MRSs would develop hand in hand with their difficulty with the target language. ___________________

This study investigated the influence of cultural schema and reading activities on reading comprehension. It was carried out at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey with 3rd grade students at the department of ELT through a 2X2 true-experimental research design where the participants were homogenously placed in different groups according to their GPAs. The first group were given the original story while the second group were given the nativized one. To find out the effect of reading activities on the comprehension of nativized and original stories, the third group read the original story with reading activities while the fourth group read the nativized story with the same activities. Post-tests were administered. ANOVA test indicated that the treatment groups who received the nativized version of the story, regardless of whether they received any activities or not, outperformed the other two treatment groups who received the original story. This implied that cultural schema appears to have a significant effect on the comprehension of short stories. Nevertheless, the treatment groups who were supported with reading activities outperformed the others who did not do any activities, which indicated that the lack of cultural knowledge can be compensated for through the use of reading activities.

This study aims to reveal English language academicians and postgraduate students’ ambitions about involving in research studies in a developing country, Turkey. To collect data, a questionnaire was constructed and delivered to 159 ELT academicians and students to learn about their knowledge of writing a research report, experiences in research and writing a research report, and perception of difficulty in different sections of a research report. Besides, semi-constructed interviews were also administered to 12 academicians. The results indicated significant differences between academicians and students. Besides, discussion was regarded as the most difficult part whereas writing references was the easiest. Although participants reported their experiences in constructing the skeleton of a research paper, they regarded themselves weak in long run studies.

This study mainly aims to investigate the preferences of language learning strategies by English Language Teaching Department students. Oxford’s five-scale Likert type inventory, consisting of 50 items on the use of language learning strategies, was administered to 189 participants at the ELT department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey to identify the impact of gender, class, and period of English study on the use of strategies. Descriptive statistics indicated that the participants mostly preferred compensation and metacognitive strategies. Controversy, affective and social strategies were the least preferred strategies by the participants. A significant difference was found between preparatory class and 3rd year students in terms of use of strategies. However, t-test and post hoc test did not indicate significant differences among the participants in terms of their gender, age, and period of English study.

This study presents the processes of developing and establishing reliability and validity of a reading test by administering an integrative approach as conventional reliability and validity measures superficially reveals the difficulty of a reading test. In this respect, analysing vocabulary frequency of the test is regarded as a more eligible way of measuring validity. A study was conducted at Dokuz Eylül University and Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University with three colleagues and 100 undergraduate students to establish validity and reliability along with readability and vocabulary frequency of a 32-item reading test which was developed by the researcher. Such detailed assessment is highly recommended for researchers who are in need of preparing pre and post tests which are different from each other.

This true-experimental design research study investigated the effect of pre-listening relaxation and self-affirmation exercises on the listening comprehension test scores of 70 learners of English in the English Language Teaching department of a state university in Turkey. Participants in the experimental group completed relaxation and self-affirmation exercises before six listening comprehension practice tests while those in the control group took the same tests without exposure to such exercises. The t-test results did not reveal any significant difference, indicating that pre-listening exercises had no significant effect on listening comprehension test performance. Anxiety levels were tested through the Test Influence Inventory (TII). Pre TII results did not show any relationship between participants’ self-perceived test anxiety levels and listening comprehension test scores and groups did not differ significantly in terms of anxiety levels, although there was a significant gender difference. However, post TII results using an independent samples t-test revealed a significant difference, indicating that the pre-listening relaxation and self-affirmation exercises had a positive effect on the reported test anxiety levels of learners in the experimental group. ANOVA analysis revealed a significant main effect on the anxiety levels of the time that TII was administered, that is when it was given before versus after the experiment, as well as significant effects between time and gender, time and group, and time, gender and group. Tests of between-subject effects also revealed a significant main effect of group on TII scores.

As culture and language learning are regarded as inseparable, language teaching classes are expected to cover some elements of cultural values. The present study aims to deal with the components of culture by explaining the construction of the Inventory of Cultural Components which was developed by the researcher. The initial version of the 5-scale Likert type inventory which constituted of 58 items was administered to a number of 580 participants at the departments of English Language Teaching and Turkish Language Teaching during the spring term of 2011-2012 academic year. Reduction and categorization of the items were provided by factor analysis and reliability of the scale was calculated. The overall results indicated Cronbach’s alpha reliability of .94 for the nine-component 45-itemed scale. Thus, researchers might benefit from the instrument to identify the cultural components being included in language teaching curriculum.

This study investigated the effects of the metacognitive reading strategy training programme (METARESTRAP) on metacognitive reading strategy employment and reading comprehension. The quasi-experimental study was conducted with 46 preparatory class students at English Language Teaching and English Language and Literature Departments of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Pre and post tests of reading comprehension and metacognitive reading strategy questionnaire were administered and the METARESTRAP was implemented to the experimental group. The results revealed that the experimental group participants stimulated their metacognitive reading strategy employment after the implementation which resulted in better reading comprehension as they were familiar with strategies in terms of declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge. It might be concluded that the participants benefited from the implementation specifically for matching and multiple choice questions.

This study investigated the impact of a metacognitive reading strategy training programme (METARESTRAP) on metacognitive reading strategies and reading comprehension. The quasi-experimental study was conducted with 93 freshmen in the English Language Teaching Department of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. After pre and post reading tests and a metacognitive reading strategy questionnaire were administered, the six-week METARESTRAP was implemented. The results demonstrated that METARESTRAP significantly fostered reading comprehension skills by providing awareness of metacognition along with declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge about metacognitive reading strategies. It can be concluded that METARESTRAP worked well specifically for matching- type cohesion, coherence, text structure, and global meaning questions along with multiple- choice-type main idea, opinion, detail, and reference questions.

Similarity reports of plagiarism detectors should be approached with caution as they may not be sufficient to support allegations of plagiarism. This study developed a 50-item rubric to simplify and standardize evaluation of academic papers. In the spring semester of 2011-2012 academic year, 161 freshmen’s papers at the English Language Teaching Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey, were assessed using the rubric. Validity and reliability were established. The results indicated citation as a particularly problematic aspect, and indicated that fairer assessment could be achieved by using the rubric along with plagiarism detectors’ similarity results.