The Spring 2009 issue of the ATESL Journal presents a wide range of well-planned and clearly presented papers that illustrate the internationalism as well as the research skills of our contributors.
Mansoor Tavakoli and Behrooz Ghoorchaei, both from Iran, report an exploration of self-assessment of the oral proficiency of a group of Iranian students, but found no correlation between their self-awarded scores and the judgments of one of the researchers: they also found that the students¡¯ tendency to taking risks did not correlate with their self-assessments (the test in Farsi included in the appendix attests to the ability of our printer to handle foreign fonts). He An E (trained in China and Australia) and Elizabeth Walker (trained in Australia and Hong Kong), both teaching now in Hong Kong, describe a pioneering study of a corpus of content-based pedagogic monologues (at least 100 words long) of two Chinese speakers teaching science and geography in English-medium high schools. The study shows both the possibility and complexity of capturing the language of the classroom teacher.
Heng-Tsung Danny Huang, current studying in the USA, reports a study of a sample of Taiwanese students at a technological university showing the contribution of previewing to reading comprehension. Li Zhang, Tongshun Wang, and Yue Zheng all teach at universities in China; they analyze the strategies used by a group of university students to deal with communication difficulties. Mansoor Ganji, teaching at a university in Iran, describes a study of correction methods used for 8 weeks with some 50 Iranian students: least effective was correction by teachers, next was self-correction, and best was correction by peers.
Sawako Kato, teaching in Japan, studied the language learning strategies and personality traits of 187 Japanese university students; the results suggested that an enjoyable and interactive learning environment is beneficial. Yongyan Zheng is studying lexical learning among students in a Hong Kong university: she has interesting findings about progression and the relation between receptive and productive lexicon. Zorana Vasiljevic, a genuine TESOL cosmopolitan who has studied in Serbia, England and Australia and is presently teaching in Japan, describes a pilot study of the effectiveness of a successful approach to teaching vocabulary to adults.
Recalling that these are the carefully selected and edited papers from an even wider range of submissions, we must first congratulate the authors on demonstrating the professional and academic skills required for publication in an international journal, and thank the members of the editorial team who helped in the selection and suggested any needed revisions. But we must not sit back and imply full satisfaction with the quality of the journal, but ask rather how we can continue to improve.
The most apparent limitation of the studies is not in the selection of topic, or the defining of hypotheses to test, or the planning of studies, or the analysis and discussion of results and their implications, all of which show the high quality of the contributors, but in the tentativeness of conclusions determined commonly by the restricted size of the studies in both number and variety of subjects and length of the experiments.
You might fairly say that this is an unreasonable expectation, for our normal contributor is unlikely to have funds available for supporting large-scale research projects by allowing time off teaching or hiring research assistance or paying subjects. How might this be remedied, apart from the provision by sympathetic foundations and governments of generous funds for research, as some of us were fortunate enough to receive in the 1960s and 1970s?
One idea might be to emulate the example of an older international English teachers¡¯ group, International TESOL, which established 10 years ago TIRF (The International Research Foundation for English Language Education). I have just been looking at its web site (http://www.tirfonline.org/index.html) and notice that among its most generous founders (donors who have donated over $75,000 each) are four major testing and publication organizations whose extensive operations in Asia might encourage them to set an example for similar local organizations to start building a regional research fund.
Perhaps the Asia TEFL leadership might be willing to explore this method of funding ¡°a research and development program that will generate new knowledge and inform and improve the quality of English language teaching and learning.¡± Clearly, anything which would raise the resources to support research will contribute to raising the quality of the work being reported by the Asian cadre of highly qualified scholars and so of the Journal to which they contribute.

This study investigates the relationship between self-assessment and teacher¡¯s rating of speaking ability. Risk-taking (a personality factor) is also singled out to examine its relationship with self-assessment. 79 Iranian EFL Freshmen at the University of Isfahan were given a picture description task to elicit their speech samples. After the speech samples were recorded, they were asked to rewind the tapes and assess their own speaking ability based on a modified version of Farhady et al.¡¯s (1994) oral proficiency scale. Later, the speech samples were rated by their teacher based on the same scale. Moreover, the influence of risk-taking on students¡¯ self-assessment was investigated. To analyze the obtained data, Pearson Correlation, Independent samples t-test and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used as statistical procedures. The results revealed that the relationship between self-assessment and teacher¡¯s rating of students¡¯ speaking ability in the picture description task was not statistically significant. Moreover, there was not any statistically significant relationship between risk-taking and students¡¯ self-assessment, however, high risk-takers tended to assess their speaking ability higher than medium and low risk-takers. The findings have some implications for language pedagogy and language testing.

Key words: assessment, risk-taking, self-assessment, teacher¡¯s rating, speaking ability

A corpus approach was adopted as a methodological experiment in exploring the pedagogical monologues of two secondary teachers, teaching academic subjects through English in an EFL context. Through an analysis of word frequency and associated grammatical patterns, both instructional and regulative registers (Christie, 2000) were identified in the monologues, which indicated teachers followed a similar pedagogical direction, regardless of the subject matter, in formulating academic concepts. However, differences were found between the teachers in the ways they communicated the content to the classes and the ways they engaged students with the subject matter, regarding positioning of participants, and choices of independent and dependent clauses and verbs. This, we argue, resulted in two different learning environments. The corpus approach, while not unproblematic, enabled us to discern lexico-grammatical and discoursal patterns of the monologues by processing the data differently from labor-intensive line-by-line analysis of text in discourse analysis. The small-scale corpus approach provides a level of confidence that it can be applied to similar investigations on a larger scale. The findings help raise awareness of educators in bilingual classrooms of the workings of monologues in teacher-fronted subject teaching, and of different discourse orientations of two superficially similar semiotic events.

Key words: corpus study, pedagogical monologues, secondary bilingual subject teaching

Previewing refers to the activity in which previews are provided prior to reading to equip readers with background knowledge essential for understanding the subsequent reading selections. Previews are introductory materials characterized by such information as thought-provoking questions, description of characters, setting, and plot up to the point of climax, directions for reading, and definitions of difficult vocabulary. In the current study, 68 EFL students read a difficult story either with or without the previewing treatment provided in advance. Immediately afterwards, all of them took a multiple-choice posttest that assessed their comprehension of the textual ideas. Independent t-tests performed on the results revealed that the previewing treatment significantly improved students¡¯ overall comprehension and comprehension at different levels. Furthermore, students generally embraced positive feelings towards the previewing treatment. In light of these findings, two pedagogical implications are then proposed.

Key words: reading, previewing, EFL learners

Strategic competence is one of the four components in the model of communicative competence. Since 1970s, researches have been done to deal with issues related to communication strategies. The current research tries to investigate what communication strategies are used by mainland Chinese learners of English to compensate for the deficiency of language resources through the analysis of communications in natural conversations, classroom interactions and oral English tests. 48 Chinese college learners of English participated in the study. The instruments include observation, retrospective verbal reporting and interview. The result shows that learners use various compensatory strategies to enhance communication. Besides, learners use such strategies as repetition, restructuring, circumlocution, literal translation, and all-purpose word more frequently than other compensatory strategies. Finally, the strategies learners use in three different learning environments are varied. The results can help teachers appropriately arrange for and guide the training and teaching of communication strategies according to different learning situations. It will also inform learners of what strategies are over-used or under-used and how to use compensatory strategies consciously to enhance successful communication.

Key words: compensatory strategies, qualitative analysis, natural conversations, classroom interactions, oral English tests

This study investigated the impact of Teacher-correction, Peer-correction, and Self-correction on the performance of Iranian advanced students on IELTS writing test. The participants of the study were 54 students who were chosen from among 75 IELTS candidates, and then divided into three groups of 18. All of the students took writing pre-test at the beginning of the term and, then the 8-week treatment in which they received different types of feedback started. One-way ANOVA results of the post-test revealed that there was a significant difference among the performance of the three groups. The results of the Scheffe Test showed that there was a significant difference between Teacher-correction and Self-correction groups, between Teacher-correction and Peer-correction groups, and between Self-correction and Peer-correction groups. The findings suggested that Peer-correction and Self-correction were much more effective than the traditional Teacher-correction, and Peer-correction was shown to be the best method of giving feedback.

Key words: corrective feedback, teacher-correction, peer-correction, self-correction, IELTS writing

The purposes of this study were to explore the primary language learning strategies used by Japanese university students, to determine how language proficiency levels relate to the use of language learning strategies and personality type, and to practically apply the findings to university teaching situations. Factor analysis, conducted in a sample consisting of 187 Japanese university students, identified five underlying factors: Authentic-language-use strategies, Heuristic strategies, Social strategies, Pleasure-oriented strategies and Entrance-exam-measured strategies. Correlation analysis showed that Authentic-language-use, Heuristic, Social, and Pleasure-oriented strategies had positive correlations with proficiency, however, Entrance-exam-measured strategies, the distinctive factor in Japanese students, had no correlation with proficiency. Though there was no relationship between personality traits and proficiency, this study found that the students with personality traits such as endurance and order, which are conventionally regarded as being beneficial to Japanese students of English, used impractical strategies. This study suggests that being immersed in an enjoyable and interactive learning environment is more effective than solitary, repetitive study.

Key words: language learning strategies, personality, English proficiency, Japanese university students

Vocabulary knowledge has attracted much attention from both EFL learners and teachers, as it consists of the building block of language learning. This study investigated 88 Chinese EFL learners¡¯ receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge at five word frequency levels, and the change of the receptive-productive relationship with the shift of word frequency and of the learners¡¯ receptive vocabulary size. The Vocabulary Levels Test and Productive Vocabulary Levels Test were administered to the participants, and test scores were collected and analyzed. The participants¡¯ knowledge of words at the 3,000, 5,000 and Academic Word Level was found to be closely related with one another and with the vocabulary knowledge as a whole, but the participants were particularly weak in word knowledge at the 5,000 level. The results also showed that the receptive-productive gap gradually narrowed with the enlargement of the participants¡¯ receptive vocabulary size, which is incongruent with what was documented in the literature. The findings suggest that the receptive-productive relationship may vary across different learning contexts, affected by the quantity and quality of the L2 input and the specific vocabulary teaching approach featuring the given context. Pedagogical implications for EFL vocabulary teaching are laid out in light of the findings.

Key words: second language vocabulary acquisition, EFL vocabulary teaching, receptive-productive gap

This study examined how rich vocabulary instruction can be incorporated into a language classroom in a time-efficient and pedagogically effective way. The instruction focused on developing lexical knowledge of higher-level learners, whose progress often comes to halt after they have reached the intermediate plateau. The assumption of the study was that explicit, regular, systematic teaching of word collocations will widen students¡¯ understanding of the meaning of the target words and, more importantly, their usage, and that this was expected to increase their communicative competence. Vocabulary treatment consisted of a set of homework and classroom activities whose sequence was based on their cognitive complexity and included both richness and fluency-building tasks. The adopted model of instruction proved to be highly effective in improving learners¡¯ receptive and productive vocabulary. It also raised learners¡¯ awareness about the nature of lexis and helped them to develop the skills they need in order to build their knowledge of collocations and word grammar independently of the teacher.