Materials develpoment for ELT classes

The Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación (Interinstitutional Doctorate on Education) (DIE) program has a strong history of academic publications and the current volume continues that important tradition. The book takes part in the ongoing Enfasis series and introduces a new line, titled ELT Local Research Agendas. The student chapters found in the current volume are derived from research agenda position papers they wrote during their first year in the PhD program. The position papers are testament to the high quality of scholarship led by the three core ELT Education faculty.

The students have assembled comprehensive literature reviews for each of their selected topics. They engage deeply with theories across interdisciplinary spaces tying together theoretical strands developed in the fields of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, among others. As position papers, the student texts close with research questions and suggested courses of action. Now placed in this new context, the student chapters read as informed calls to action of high interest to all ELT researchers, both junior and senior, and across contexts. Put another way, they have formulated critical questions of glocal scale in that they are of immediate, timely interest to ELT scholars in the local context of Colombia but also at the much wider global scale across the world. One anticipates the demonstrable impact that these research agendas will have on continued ELT scholarship world-wide.

Also, it is valuable to note that, taken as a whole, the student contributions assert a decolonial and critical stance, and thus speak directly to issues of authority and legitimacy that current ELT professionals are struggling with (e.g., decolonialism, standard language ideology, language identity, teacher education, and poststructuralism). It is my understanding that this positioning within the decolonial and critical literature is part of a strategic effort to develop a local epistemology, or school of thought, to be identified with the ELT Education major. Without a doubt, this movement is clear to see in the current volume and one eagerly looks forward to continued articulation of that epistemology in subsequent edited volumes emerging from the program.

The present study focuses on the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) coursebooks Magic Book 1 and Magic Book 2 that have been designed and developed for third graders in the Greek state primary schools under the PEAP project. It aims to examine the lexical items selected for those coursebooks and set out the criteria that render them a useful tool for teaching EFL to young learners. More specifically, this paper aims to: (a) examine the frequency of the vocabulary included in the two books by using the frequency data of the British National Corpus (BNC), (b) compare the vocabulary of the books with the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP) issued by Cambridge University Press, and (c) examine the thematic areas covered in these books in order to investigate the extent of their continuity with the interests and needs of the target age group.

This workbook is designed to help nurses and nursing students to write precise and concise nursing notes (with a focus on receiving/admission notes). The material included in the workbook was initially developed by students enrolled in Educational Linguistics unit (LNGS 7102) in semester 1, 2017. In developing this workbook, we drew on the NurD (Nursing Documentation) Project, which aims to support nursing students’ English language and literacy needs at the Aga Khan University (AKU), Pakistan. In particular, we carried out register analysis on sample nursing notes written by professional nurses and nursing school educators to develop an understanding of the linguistic features of receiving/admission notes. While many of the examples and material for this workbook are taken from AKU, we hope that nurses, nursing students, and nursing educators in other contexts will find it useful as well.

The majority of the literature of English Language Teaching is fundamentally derived from published course books. In many language teaching situations, much of the materials fail to meet the instructors’ expectations, and the materials are criticized for
their isolation, irrelevance on taking into account of personal and local contexts and inadequate coverage of the essential aspects of language learning/teaching. Moreover, the existing materials are almost all developed and flourish in the western context, which pose some difficulties both for the teachers and for the learners to bridge them into various local contexts. This paper explores some of the strategies for ESL/EFL teachers
that they might incorporate to enhance the use of textbooks in the classroom. For this, we examine some of the popular textbooks that are commonly used by different English
Language teachers at the tertiary level and we pilot some of the strategies in the classrooms in a controlled situation to observe the outcome of the implementation of these strategies. It is found that in almost all cases learner-centred work with a course book and extension of text-based tasks with real life experience have produced positive results.

The Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación (Interinstitutional Doctorate on Education), ELT Education Major, at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas was one of the stakeholders supporting the 51st ASOCOPI’s Annual Congress. Named after the title of this introduction the Congress was a vivid forum for English language teachers and experts interested in discussing how technology has been integrated into English language teaching (ELT) and learning. This book shows a selection of papers presented in the Congress that reflect achievements and challenges for English language teaching and learning development. There are three parts to this book, which constitute the three Rs of technology in ELT as a contribution of this Congress for the academic community: Rethinking, Researching and Re-experiencing.

The two chapters in Part I are based on reflections that operate as a response to the paradigm shifts within education where the use of information and communication technologies have transited from technical and instrumental curricular views to more praxis-based or critical ones. Reinhardt (this volume) presents a “literacies-informed approach to developing autonomy that balances agency and awareness” within a social media framework. In presenting a state of the art of research on social media in second language teaching and learning, Reinhardt establishes that social media technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, as well as SNECSs are the context where L2 learning could be facilitated. They should also be constrained if conditions for learners’ investment and autonomy are not sensitive to the “micro-politics” of social media use for educational purposes. In order to develop social media enhanced learner-autonomy it is challenging to bear in mind the interrelationship between agency and awareness. Méndez and Guerrero (this volume) critically examine potential contributions of virtual learning environments to the professional development and profiles of English language teachers. It is suggested that in such contexts of professional development, the teacher as an intellectual, the possibilities for actual teaching, the emergence of other voices and situated practices should be taken into account. Méndez and Guerrero also introduce virtual learning environment competences that have become part of language teachers’ profiles incorporating resistance practices. Such practices if appropriately understood could aid to more adequate and context sensitive programs for language teachers’ professional development.

The chapters in this book illustrate a central debate: “Technology in ELT: Achievements and challenges for ELT development”. Surrounding this debate, one could draw on the relationships of agency and awareness in social media incorporation to education and L2 literacy development. One could also draw on the idea of (re)configuring resistances to fixed language teacher profiles and professional development opportunities for in-service teacher working within virtual learning environments. The book also illustrates research on preservice English language teacher, which aids to fuel the debate whether one incorporates strategies for lesson planning, for pedagogical reflection or for planning language instruction. Finally, within this debate, workshops inspired in principles of flipped learning explore the usefulness of thinking language instruction, skills development and professional development differently. What next? This book is a contribution to the debate and hopefully will be used as basis for continuing debating the issues that would open doors for new Technology in ELT achievements and challenges.

The kind of instructional materials given to students in a literature class is believed to contribute to the improvement or deterioration of students' achievement. This study addresses this gap by finding the potential criteria for selecting the appropriate instructional material for literature teaching. It makes use of a systematic literature review surveyed from published studies in refereed journals available from various databases. To plot the responses to the formulated research questions, a repertory grid was used. The data on the grid were analyzed to be able to identify the various gaps in the conducted researches. The surveyed materials underwent thematic analysis. Subsequently, this study yields the following criteria, encapsulated through the acronym "CARE," namely: cultural enrichment, authenticity of the material, relevant language enrichment, and ease requirement for understanding. It recommends that language teachers, especially those specializing in literature teaching, try the use of the criteria proposed by this study. Finally, this paper presents pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research along this vein.