Education Commons^™

Peer Interaction In The Haitian Public School Context, Fenel Pierre

MA TESOL Collection

The purpose of this paper is to define peer interaction and its major components. It identifies and examines the major challenges that language teachers in Haiti will face in incorporating peer interaction within the Haitian public school context. It explains the advantages of using peer interaction as a way to generate knowledge. The author concludes by providing practical guidelines and strategies of how to cope with these challenges and describing what he has learned from his research.

Since language is learned mainly through interaction with other learners and speakers of that language, this paper aims at persuading Haitian language teachers …

A Framework For Teaching A Foreign Language Class Based On The Principles Of Chaos/Complexity Theory, Michael Kozden

MA TESOL Collection

Chaos/complexity theory first emerged in the study of the natural sciences over thirty years ago. Through the years, experts from a variety of fields have held this theory up as a new way in which to view the world around us, including its applications to the study of second language acquisition. The language classroom, like the natural world, can also be observed from this perspective because it exhibits many features of chaotic/complex systems. Language instruction in a classroom setting not only produces strange attractors and fractals, but is dynamic, complex, nonlinear, chaotic, self-organizing, unpredictable, sensitive to initial conditions, open, feedback …

Teachable Articles: A Practical Approach To Teaching English Articles To Japanese Learners, Kayo Fujito

MA TESOL Collection

This dissertation is about English articles and specifically the difficulties that non-native speakers, particularly Japanese learners, face in mastering their use. In this dissertation, I will mainly focus on;

1. An investigation on teaching articles and the use of articles including a survey completed by teachers of English

2. Two charts for determining articles and categories with examples including my adaptation of the chart

3. Some ideas and practical suggestions for teaching articles

The findings from this study have led me to a belief that there are ways for Japanese learners to improve their ability to use articles and by …

Making Connections With Dialogue Journals, Catherine Elliott

MA TESOL Collection

This paper makes a case for the use of dialogue journals in the second language classroom. In Part One the author examines the research of experts in the fields of second language acquisition and writing instruction and presents their findings as a rationale which supports the use of dialogue journals. In Part Two the author draws from her own experience in the classroom to illustrate how dialogue journals can be used effectively with second language learners.

Promoting Student Self-Evaluation Of Their Learning Process, Diane Steigerwald

MA TESOL Collection

This paper describes classroom research on promoting student initiative through self and peer correction, record keeping, goal setting and evaluation. Promoting Student Self-Evaluation of Their Learning Process starts with a look at the author’s experience of self-initiative and authentic interaction among her students which sparked her awareness and began the transformation of her teaching beliefs and approaches. The old belief centered on the need to be the authority in control. The new belief focuses on empowering the students to see themselves as authorities. The paper then describes the forms and activities used in an adult high-intermediate English as a Second …

Applications Of The I-Thou-It Framework To Teaching English As A Foreign Language In Macedonia, Zora Busovska

MA TESOL Collection

This paper is based on David Hawkins’ framework of the I-Thou-It with an expanded and personalized interpretation. It aims at defining more precisely the roles of the I, the Thou, and the It in the author’s classroom. The paper also cites research related to this framework and compares the findings, differences and similarities of author’s research with those of other researchers. The paper examines each of the roles and the interplay that takes place between and among them.

The paper explains the advantages of the subject-centered classroom, i.e. dominance of the It. Thus, the emphasis of the paper is on …

Community Building Through The Production Of A School Newspaper, David James Mcleish

MA TESOL Collection

The focus of this paper is the teaching of writing skills for ESL or EFL students within the context of a learning community. References are cited from the literature on team building within business contexts and from the literature on a process approach to the teaching of writing. This literature as well as the author’s beliefs and commitment to experimental education led to the development of a course in writing that used the production of a student newspaper as an organizing principle for the course. The author presents multiple levels of input into the course design and classroom management for …

Using Innovative Language Learning Methods With Mombusho Textbooks, Janet Melinda Beane

MA TESOL Collection

This paper shows how chapters from two different textbooks at different levels might be taught using several different methods. The paper begins with a discussion of my reasons for choosing this topic and goes on to lay out what I feel a method needs to consider in order to be a good method. In the next section, I go on to introduce various innovative language teaching methods such as ALM, TPR and the Silent Way. For each method I include a short section of background information including the principles and techniques of each lesson. Then I contrast a typical lesson …