English Language Teaching Educational Journal

A work-based approach for improving students’ performance in the college general English class

2024-07-08T05:48:59+00:00

Many university students in Taiwan have complained that the general English class is not very exciting nor useful for the workplace due to its exam-oriented and teacher-centered instruction focus. Such negative impressions often lead to a low motivation toward learning English and affect students’ learning outcomes. This study aimed to establish an innovative work-based teaching approach and to explore whether it can help enhance students’ motivation to learn English, positively impacting their overall performances. The work-based teaching approach included job-seeking activities involving self-introduction and resume writing, as well as product introduction tasks, fostering student participation, teacher-student interaction, and balanced summative-and-formative assessments. The study recruited 129 second-year university students in the general English class for an 18-week course where they were required to complete work-based tasks and assessments. A triangulation of research methods was employed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from questionnaires, student formative and summative assessment, reflection journals, and student interviews. Three major findings arise from this study: 1) students’ score gain on TOEIC pre- and post-tests was statistically significant; 2) students offered positive views on the diverse, interactive, and communicative teaching methods that enhanced their understanding and application of workplace English; and 3) performance assessment played a more important role in increasing students’ learning interest and motivation than traditional paper-and-pencil tests. This study concludes with some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research.

Students’ perceptions and challenges in using writing outlines to write an exposition

2024-10-02T09:54:06+00:00

Problems in developing writing often comes from creative processes in developing ideas to write. Outlines are often recommended as a tool to help students organize their thoughts and structure their writing. This study aims to find out students’ perceptions and the challenges the students encountered when writing an exposition text using provided outlines among the students of English Department of UTY. This study used mixed method approaches. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were applied to collect data. Respondents of this study were 20 students (10 males and 10 females) from second year students of English Literature Department of Yogyakarta University of Technology academic year 2023-2024, and through a purposive random sampling technique. A questionnaire was used to figure out students' perceptions, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to find out the challenges encountered by students when writing an exposition text using provided outlines. Nine respondents (6 females and 3 male) were selected in the interview session based on their scores, they were four students with the highest scores, three students with middle scores, and two students with low scores to be interviewed. The semi-structured interview data were analyzed qualitatively using the interactive model. The results of this study show that most students agreed that outlines help them write exposition texts, with 80% agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement “The outline helps me write an exposition text.” However, students also reported three challenges, difficulty in developing connections between theory and research topics, with 60% indicating they found this aspect challenging, 55% found it challenging to translate their outlines into coherent exposition texts, and 30% students indicated a lack of confidence in their ability to use outlines effectively. This learning model may help students participate, engage, and enhance their confidence in writing exposition texts, and lecturers are aware of the importance of targeted instructional strategies, such as providing more examples and practice opportunities for developing connections between theory and research topics.

OpenAI ChatGPT vs Google Gemini: A study of AI chatbots’ writing quality evaluation and plagiarism checking

2024-09-21T07:51:34+00:00

This study explores the writing quality of two AI chatbots, OpenAI ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The research assesses the quality of the generated texts based on five essay models using the T.E.R.A. software, focusing on ease of understanding, readability, and reading levels using the Flesch-Kincaid formula. Thirty essays were generated, 15 from each chatbot, and evaluated for plagiarism using two free detection tools—SmallSEOTools and Check-Plagiarism—as well as one paid tool, Turnitin. The findings revealed that both ChatGPT and Gemini performed well in terms of word concreteness but demonstrated weaknesses in narrativity. ChatGPT showed stronger performance in referential and deep cohesion, while Gemini excelled in narrativity, syntactic simplicity and word concreteness. However, a significant concern was the degree of plagiarism detected in texts from both AI tools, with ChatGPT's essays exhibiting a higher likelihood of plagiarism compared to Gemini’s. These findings highlight the potential limitations and risks associated with using AI-generated writing.

The impact of blended-ESP instructional model on fostering English proficiency among students majoring in traditional Chinese medicine

2024-10-05T06:03:35+00:00

English proficiency is essential for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) majors to maintain strong connections with the international academic community and promote global academic interaction. However, the English instruction effect was not optimal due to large class sizes, limited class time and learning resources, less interaction, or outdated teaching and evaluation methods (Wang, 2016; Ren, 2017; Chen & Liang, 2020; Liu, 2022). This study aimed to investigate the impact of the blended-ESP instructional model (BEIM) on fostering students’ English proficiency as well as explore their attitudes and perspectives on the implementation of BEIM. The participants were 73 second-year TCM majors enrolled in the TCM English course at a TCM university in China. The instruments were pre- and post-tests, a questionnaire, and an interview. The data was analyzed using mean, standard deviation, paired t-test, segmented analysis, and thematic analysis. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of BEIM on fostering students’ English proficiency for the significant differences between the scores before and after implementing BEIM at 0.000 (P= 0.000). The results of the questionnaire and interview also revealed students’ positive attitudes and perspectives on BEIM. Students’ self-disciplinary, English proficiency, and national culture awareness and confidence should be highlighted when conducting blended-ESP instruction.

Capturing Psuedo-Innovation in ELT: The Analysis of implementing Differentiated Learning to suburban Private Madrasahs

2024-10-29T02:22:03+00:00

The implementation of differentiated learning in private madrasahs raises a big question mark regarding the suitability between theory and practice in the field. The principle of differentiated learning, which is claimed to accommodate diversity, turns out to be far different when implemented, especially in private madrasahs that are transitioning from the previous curriculum. The main purpose of this research is to explore the illusory construction of innovation in differentiated English learning that results in pseudo-innovation.

The approach used is a qualitative approach with the type of ethnography. The research was conducted in 4 private madrasahs in the suburbs of Sampit city. The research subjects were English teachers who implemented differentiated learning in the four madrasas. The stage analysis process was assisted by the theory of innovation-decision process by Everett Rogers.

The results of this study show that (1) the illusion of innovation in differentiated English learning occurs because the stages of the innovation diffusion decision process cause anomalies in the process. (2) Madrasahs are forced to follow the decision of the Ministry of Religious Affairs which requires the implementation of an independent curriculum including differentiated learning which results in madrasahs being trapped in pseudo-innovation. (3) Madrasahs are registered as institutions that implement differentiated learning. However, in practice, madrasahs still adopt old learning and ignore innovations because they are not considered to be following the characteristics of the madrasah itself. (4) this research implies that it will be an evaluation material for the Ministry of Religious Affairs to pay more attention to private madrasahs in implementing differentiated learning. (5) Confirming pseudo-innovation