2011/12

Term 3 (April to June 2012)

Thursday 17 May (Week 4), 4pm-5pm, Room H0.51 (Humanities Building)

‘Listening to and learning from our learners’

Professor David Nunan

Abstract: 'In this talk, I want to revisit my professional development as a teacher through the eyes of my students. I will recount stories from several learners taken from different periods in my professional life – the first from many years ago in Australia, the final ones of more recent vintage in Hong Kong. I believe that all of them carry powerful implications for language pedagogy and research. In the talk I shall spell out the implications of the stories for language learning and teaching. These mesh with other collections of learners’ stories including Earl Stevick’s (1989) account of seven individuals who achieved success with foreign language learning and what worked for them, as well as the accounts in three edited collections I worked on (Benson and Nunan, 2002; Benson and Nunan, 2004; Nunan and Choi, 2010).
The learners whose stories provide the inspiration for the talk come from disparate backgrounds, were learning in quite different contexts, and had different attitudes, approaches and motivations in learning language. However, their stories play out a number of themes that tie in to and support experiential learning and learner-centred education.'

David Nunan, Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Anaheim University, USA, is a world-renowned applied linguist and best-selling author of English language textbooks for Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Cengage Learning. Recent honours and awards include a 2002 citation by the United States Congress for services to English language education and the 2003 TESOL Lifetime Achievement Award.

Term 2 (January to March 2012)

Wednesday 7 March (Week 9), 2pm Room A0.23

'ELT Coursebooks: Past, Present and Possible'

Richard Smith, Alice Kiai, Mayumi Tanaka and Dario Banegas

At the Annual International IATEFL conference in Glasgow on 21st March, Richard and PhD students Alice, Mayumi and Dario will each be presenting a 20-minute paper in a symposium on the above theme, They'd like to gain your feedback before doing so, and so invite you along to a 'dry run' of their part of the symposium! Your feedback will be much appreciated!

Overall symposium description: It is surprising that so little research has been carried out into ELT coursebooks, despite their continuing importance to teachers and students in so many classrooms around the world. This symposium has been arranged by way of redress - to showcase some recent research into coursebooks, to illustrate different kinds of research that can be undertaken; and to encourage more such research. The presentations report on recent investigations of both ‘global’ and ‘locally produced’ coursebooks. After each presentation there will be 5 minutes for questions, and some time for overall discussion at the end.

Richard Smith (University of Warwick) begins with A Very Brief History of ELT Coursebooks, highlighting past developments which have shaped the contemporary ‘shape’ of ‘the global coursebook’. Richard focuses in particular on books issued by UK publishers, and on developments up to the 1980s, illustrating both achievements and ‘roads not taken’ with reference to books in the ELT Archive (www.warwick.ac.uk/go/elt_archive), and with an emphasis throughout on the present-day value of historical research.

Alice Wanjira Kiai (Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Kenya / University of Warwick) then recounts ‘An English Language Textbook Story from the “House of TESEP”’. Suggesting that to fully ‘understand’ a coursebook we need to explore all the links from conceptualization to consumption, Alice follows these links in presenting a biography of one secondary school English textbook. Her story unfolds against the backdrop of recent market liberalization in educational publishing in Kenya.

Mayumi Tanaka (Nagaoka National College of Technology, Japan / University of Warwick) also considers ‘locally published’ materials in her paper on ‘Dealing with Constructed Cultural 'Reality' in Japanese High School Coursebooks’. She describes a critical reading course she has developed, reports on how the students interpreted texts, and presents their feedback as well as that of other teachers, indicating how these perspectives will influence the next phase of her action research project.

Dario Banegas (Ministerio de Educación, Argentina / University of Warwick) presents the concluding paper, on ‘Combining Marketed Coursebooks and Teacher-developed Materials: Reasons, Possibilities and Challenges’. Dario describes an action research project undertaken in response to students in his context suggesting that learning English could be more fruitful if teachers combined a grammar coursebook with teacher-developed materials featuring authentic sources and context-responsive topics.

Wednesday 29 February (Week 8), 2pm Room F1.11 (Engineering Building)

Demotivators Within ELT Contexts

Dr Keita Kikuchi, Tokai University, Japan

We are very pleased to welcome Keita Kikuchi who is a leading scholar in the study of demotivation in L2 learning. He has published a number of important empirical studies on demotivation among Japanese learners of English (e.g. Kikuchi 2009, Listening to our learners' voices: What demotivates Japanese high school students? Language Teaching Research 13(4). Sakai and Kikuchi 2009, An analysis of demotivators in the EFL classroom. System 37). Keita Kikuchi is a Junior Associate Professor at Tokai University, Japan. He holds an Ed.D. in TESOL from Temple University, Japan, and an MA in ESL from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His research interests include curriculum development and second language acquisition, especially individual differences.

Description of talk:

In my talk, I will introduce the idea of researching demotivation in English language learning contexts and present findings of studies conducted mainly in Japan. Then, I will discuss the future direction of demotivation studies. In order to facilitate a fruitful discussion on this topic, I will use examples from my own studies (Kikuchi, 2009; Kikuchi and Sakai, 2009; Sakai and Kikuchi, 2009). By the end of the talk, I hope to have demonstrated that demotivators may vary in different situations. Finally, I would like to encourage a reflective group discussion regarding the variety of demotivators within ELT and within the audience's own teaching contexts.

Wednesday 8 February (Week 5), 2pm, Room S1.71

L2 creative writers around us: How they are made, what drives them to write, and a glimpse into their story-writing processes

(Dr) Yan (Michelle) Zhao, Centre for Applied Linguistics

In this session, Michelle will talk about her recently completed doctoral research and discuss some of the problems and challenges she faced during her fieldwork and data analysis. Her talk will be of relevance not only to those who are interested in her research topic (L2 creative writers and writing processes) but also to all current PhD students who may be facing similar challenges in their research.

ABSTRACT

This presentation recounts the process of my rather explorative PhD research investigating the life histories and writing processes of fifteen L2 creative writers. It traces how a rather vague and ambitious visualization was gradually narrowed down to a specific and feasible agenda of research procedures, and how data analysis schemes were assembled through an ongoing and often frustrating recursive process of data examination, trial coding, and adjustments. In terms of its ontological stance in theory construction, my PhD research falls under the relativist paradigm. My approach to data interpretation adopts a hermeneutic, explanatory, and inductive model of analysing the identities of individual writers. However, despite its predominantly qualitative nature in data collection, the research embraces elements of quantitative coding methods.

There tends to be a typically romantic notion that creative writers and creative writing practices are primarily driven by inspiration, god-given talent, unpredictability and emotion - characteristics which are hardly amenable to analysis. This research attempts to show that L2 creative writing practices and identity issues can indeed be systematically investigated without resort to the pitfall of anecdotal story-telling by combining across-the-board quantitative coding with selective and highly descriptive qualitative interpretations. I will discuss in detail how I have addressed the practicalities and stumbling blocks encountered during my fieldwork with fifteen L2 creative writers coming from a variety of sociocultural and educational backgrounds and possessing diverse and vibrant personalities. I also will mention how I dealt with the ethical issues involved in making judgments (as a researcher always does) on personal creative writing performances. Overall, I hope to show how I tried to balance different research goals and integrate different sources of data into one coherent investigative endeavour.

Wednesday 1 February (Week 4), 2pm, Room R1.03 - in the Ramphal Building

Mind the Gap between TESOL Research and Practice

Parvaneh Tavakoli, London Metropolitan University

Dr Tavakoli has kindly made the powerpoint of her presentation available here.

Although the divide between TESOL research and practice has been documented for a few decades and has been defined as a “damaging split” (Allwright, 2005) and an “already significant, perhaps growing divide” (Belcher, 2007), not much research has been conducted to investigate why this divide has emerged or what has contributed to its development. This talk aims to provide an overview of the literature in this area and complements this with the findings of a recent research project that focused on investigating teachers’ views and beliefs about their engagement with research and its usefulness in their practice.

Parvaneh Tavakoli mainly researches in the field of Second Language Acquisition, and is currently coordinator of the British Association for Applied Linguistics Language Learning and Teaching Special Interest Group. A longer abstract and a list of Dr Tavakoli's recent publications can be downloaded here.

Term 1 (October to December 2011)

Wednesday 23 November (Week 8), 2pm, A1.05

Researching vocabulary learning strategies in contexts: the role of learning environments, social agents and individual learners

Kaihui (Isobel) Wang, PhD Year 2, Centre for Applied Linguistics

In this session, Isobel will report on her research-in-progress in exploring students' vocabulary learning strategies. She will present the findings of her pilot study and raise issues for discussion. Isobel is keen to get feedback from ELLTA members on her findings and research progress, and we hope that her presentation will lead to some interesting discussion. To download the PowerPoint slides for this presentation, click here.

Conference organized by ELLTA: Language Testing Forum 2011 - 'Empirical research on language testing impact'. 18-20 November 2011.

Wednesday, 2-4pm,Week 2, Room A1.05

EAP for statistics students: issues in teaching, and findings from a learner corpus 

Sophie Reissner-Roubicek and Sue Wharton, Centre for Applied Linguistics

In this session Sophie and Sue will discuss the provision of support to Statistics undergraduates. Sophie will begin with a discussion of her experiences of teaching the group last year. Sue will then report on her study, based on a learner corpus collected from the same cohort of students, of linguistic repertoire for expressing nuanced stance. Discussion is invited on methods of implementing pedagogic goals arising from the findings, primarily taking a consciousness-raising approach in engaging students in work on the same corpus as was used in the research.

This is co-hosted by the English Language Learning, Teaching and Assessment (ELLTA) and Professional and Academic Discourse (PAD) research groups, and kicks off a series of collaborative sessions where we hope to explore possibilities of research into EAP in CAL. This is relevant to many of us in the Centre, so we're hoping for a strong turnout

Wednesday, 2-4pm, Week 3, Room L4 (across the bridge opposite the library, in the Science Concourse)

Neoliberalism, celebrity and ‘aspirational content’ in ELT textbooks for the global market

John Gray, University of East London

The global explosion of commercial English language teaching (ELT) is largely coterminous with the birth of the neoliberal era - a period which has been characterised by, among other things, the extension of the consumer society and the commodification of ever more aspects of human experience. Central to the exponential rise in commercial ELT is the development of a sizeable and financially lucrative publishing industry in which textbooks aimed at the global market are core products. In this paper I take the view that such artefacts can be seen not only as mediating tools of subject knowledge, but also as organs for the ideological reproduction and legitimation of ‘particular constructions of reality’ (Apple and Christian-Smith 1991). The paper focuses specifically on representations of celebrity in UK textbooks from the late 1970s until the present. Drawing on work by proponents of self-branding (e.g. Tom Peters) as a response to the challenge of the so-called ‘new spirit of capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2007), I argue that the increasingly pervasive use of celebrity in pedagogic materials is congruent with the neoliberal worldview and is directly traceable to what ELT publishers describe as ‘aspirational content’. The paper draws on data in which a group of English language teachers, working in a variety of global settings, outline their views on the nature and suitability of such content for language teaching, and concludes by arguing that ELT publishers need to confront the ways in which they are imbricated in the celebration and reproduction of neoliberal values and practices through the textbooks they produce.

2010/11

Term 3 (MAY to JULY 2011)

There will be a guest lecture (open to all) entitled Engagement with Language in the Language Classroom on Tuesday 10 May, 2-4pm, by Dr Agneta Svalberg (University of Leicester), room to be announced.

Abstract: There is widespread agreement that second/foreign language learning can be facilitated by learners’ conscious reflection on the language, whether it happens in teacher-student exchanges, or in dyadic or group interaction. Teachers sometimes make use of so called Consciousness Raising activities to stimulate this process. Conscious reflection on language (noticing, analysis, explanation, negotiation), including its affective and social aspects, is what I have called Engagement with Language (Svalberg 2009). Engagement with Language, and the factors which drive it or prevent it, can be studied in the classroom but extend well beyond it. It is central to the language learning process. Questions I will try to answer in this talk are: What precisely is Engagement with Language? How does a teacher or researcher know that a learner is Engaged? What might facilitate or hinder Engagement? Is Engagement with Language researchable? I will illustrate the talk with some examples from observations and interviews with adult English learners.

Term 2 (january to March 2011)

We will continue with our two themes/activities from Term 1: TEACHER RESEARCH / RESEARCHING TEACHERS; REFLECTIVE PRACTICE GROUP. Sessions will take place on Wednesday afternoons in Room A1.07, beginning Wednesday 19 January.

On Wednesday 2 March 2011 at 2pm (in Room S0.20, Social Sciences Building) Professor Simon Borg of the University of Leeds gave a guest lecture on The Impact of In-Service Teacher Education on Language Teachers’ Beliefs (see abstract below).

This talk presents findings from a qualitative longitudinal study of the impact of an intensive in-service teacher education programme on the beliefs of six English language teachers. Drawing on a substantial database of semi-structured interviews, coursework and tutor feedback, a key finding here is that while the teachers did not generally feel that the course had impacted significantly on their beliefs, a closer analysis of the data suggests that such impact was in fact not insignificant. Nonetheless, despite this evidence of impact, the data also indicate that the in-service course studied here could have engaged teachers in a more productive and sustained examination of their beliefs.

On Wednesday 16 February 2011 at 2pm (in room S0.20), there was a guest lecture by Neil Cowie (Okayama University, Japan) on 'Narratives of Teacher Identity and English Language Student Motivation in Japan', based on research he has been doing with Keiko Sakui (Kobe Shoin Women's University, Japan / University of Auckland, NZ). The talk, open to all postgraduate students and staff in the Centre, was well-attended and raised several interesting issues for teachers and researchers.

Term 1 (October to December 2010)

One of ELLTA's activities this term will be a Reading and Discussion Group on the theme of TEACHER RESEARCH / RESEARCHING TEACHERS. Many of us are involved in researching our own classrooms (i.e. balancing the roles of teacher and researcher) or in researching other teachers, and this interaction between teacher and researcher (and between teaching and researching) raises all kinds of interesting methodological, critical and ethical issues. We would like to explore these issues and share our experiences through this Reading and Discussion Group this term. We plan to meet every other Wednesday afternoon (Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8) from 2.30-4.00pm in Room A1.07, beginning on Wednesday 13 October. For details of sessions, please click here

Another regular meeting is that of the Reflective Practice Group - for those currently teaching, whether in the Centre or elsewhere - on Wednesday afternoons in Weeks 3, 5, 7 and 9 from 2.00 to 3.30pm in Room A1.07.

On Wednesday 8 December in Week 10 (2.30-4.00pm in Room A1.07), the ELLTA group plan to discuss issues in feedback and formative assessment. An excellent review article by Hattie and Timperley (2007) on 'The power of feedback', published in Review of Educational Research, will provide a focus for our discussion. The article can be downloaded here.

Keeping with the theme of assessment, the session will then conclude with brainstorming ideas for the next Language Testing Forum conference, which will be hosted by ELLTA and the Centre for Applied Linguistics in November 2011, with Claudia Harsch as chair of the conference organising committee. The LTF is an annual specialist conference for language testing researchers in the UK.

There was a very well-attended talk by Professor Jin Yan of Shanghai Jiao Tong University on Wednesday 24th November, 4.00 to 5.00pm, on 'The College English Test in China: Challenges and Opportunities'. Further details here. This was attended by a small reception for staff and research students to welcome Professor Jin and to celebrate the incorporation of assessment into the research group's activities.

2009/10

20 May 2010, 2-4 pm: Prof. Martin Cortazzi (staff member) on Researching and developing ELT with Chinese learners

 20 May 2010, 5-6 pm: Prof. David Nunan (guest speaker) on Approaches to Qualitative Research. Powerpoint here.

Followed by Tea Party for Research students to meet Martin Cortazzi and David Nunan

5 May 2010, 1.30-3 pm: Timi Hyacinth (PhD student) on her research seeking to identify more appropriate ways for teacher-led professional development in Nigeria

23 March 2010, 1:30-3pm: Hugo Santiago Sanchez (PhD student) on studying language teachers’ cognition and prior language learning experiences

17 March 2010, 1:30-3pm: Denise Santos (staff member) on Investigating the textbook: Methods, insights and challenges [talk open also to MA students]. Abstract: 'The objective of this talk is to explore different approaches to textbook research and their implications for language learning and pedagogy. It starts by providing an overview of investigations into the EFL textbook, from content analyses to studies involving those textbooks in situated practices. It then moves on to an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of those approaches, as well as a discussion on how EFL teachers can incorporate the findings from research in their own pedagogical practice'. Powerpoint slides here.

3 March 2010, 1:30-3pm: Focus on research students’ interests: All Centre for Applied Linguistics research students currently at Warwick and researching in the areas covered by the ELTED and LL&P research groups were expected attend this session. 1) Suhaida Omar (EdD student) gave a brief report of her field work in Malaysia (teacher cognition / teaching of reading); 2) 2nd year students brought their data and shared answers to the question 'How are you analysing your data?'

17 February 2010, 1:30-3pm: Ema Ushioda (staff member), with Szu-An Chen (EdD student) led discussion of an important recent paper in the field of motivation: Dörnyei, Z. 2009. The L2 Motivational Self System. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (eds), Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self (pp.9-42). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Click here to download the paper.

10 February 2010, 1:30-3pm: Claudia Harsch and Jinsong Fan (staff members): The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and its relevance for test development and WELT; and Drafting test guidelines for good practice in China.

3 February 2010, 1:30-3pm: Focus on research students’ interests

22 January 2010, 2-4 pm: Rod Bolitho (guest speaker) on In-service Teacher Training and Professional Development: some key issues.

Abstract: This talk for research students and staff will provide an overview of some of the important factors that professionals need to bear in mind when considering their own development priorities and facilitating the development of others; particular reference will be made to materials writing projects and their place in professional development. Video highlights here.

6 May 2009: Dr Fiona Copland (guest speaker), University of Aston, gave a talk on her research on feedback to teachers. Video highlights here.

25 March 2009: Dr Fauzia Shamim (guest speaker), Karachi University, Pakistan: Teaching and Researching in Large Classes. Dr Shamim's recent book Maximizing learning in large classes (2007), co-authored with the course tutors and participants in a Hornby school in Ethiopia, was published by the British Council. Currently, she is the joint coordinator (with Richard Smith) of the ‘Teaching English in Large Classes’ project. Video highlights here.

11 March 2009: Dick Allwright (formerly, Lancaster University) offered a morning session on Exploratory Practice for research students interested in or already doing practitioner research. In the afternoon, he have a talk which was also open to MA students. Video here.

25 February 2009: Dr Andy Barfield (guest speaker), Chuo University, Japan, offered a workshop based on data analysis of interviews with teachers engaged in teacher development via the JALT Learner Development SIG.

4 February 2009: Shelagh Rixon (staff member) focused on teacher trainers in this talk entitled "Cooperating across cultures in teacher education - the case of Korea" which relates to her continuing professional work in Korea.

18 June 2008: Prof. Zoltan Dornyei (University of Nottingham) on Researching L2 motivation: Towards combined qualitative and quantitative paradigms. Part of the 11th Warwick Postgraduate Conference in Applied Linguistics 

4 June 2008, 10.30: Richard Smith, Duncan Hunter (staff members) and Rajneesh Arora on The Warwick ELT Archive and Related Research

16 April 2008, 4pm. Harry Kuchah (Cameroon Ministry of Basic Education and CELTE alumnus): The Class is Too Hot! We Can't Move! (to inaugurate the TELC Project / Network).This talk was based on a presentation given at IATEFL, Exeter, 2008.

Others: (not yet incorporated above)

January – March 2008

Week 6: Experienced language teachers designing materials in teams: research so far, and aspirations (JK, AMP)

Week 8: Teacher education capacity-building for countries in transition: sharing some ideas (RS)

Wednesday October 8th 1.30 to 2.30

This first session will begin with a welcome to all new members, followed by a session centred around the ELTED journal. The 11th edition is now almost complete and awaiting final editing by the current journal editors, Ema and Judith. Firstly we will be considering the suggestion for a regular book review section in the journal with a view to obtaining contributions from Research Students. Secondly, we hope to have a lively discussion around the paper by Adamson and Muller titled ' Evolving Academic Journal Editorial Systems' which is 'in press' as it were. The aim of the discussion is to reflect on our own practice in editing a journal and we hope the outcome will be that we write a reflective commentary on our own practice to accompany the article in the next issue of ELTED. You can download a copy of the paper here.

Wednesday October 22 1.30 - 2.30

'Impostership' Ema Ushioda will lead a discussion on the concept of impostership. The focus of the discussion will be an article submitted by Eva Bernat to ELTED entitled 'Towards a pedagogy of empowerment' .

You might be interested to know that Eva Bernat made the following comment "... a few days ago, I presented a paper on this topic at a conference and the response was overwhelming! There was floor-sitting room only and a majority were NNSTs. ..... after the presentation many came up to me to thank me for being their advocate and having their voices heard. One even said 'Thankyou! Everything you said.. it was all about ME!"

Eva Bernat also recommended another article that you might like to browse which gives an overview of history and research into non-native English-speaking English language teachers. That is by Lucie Moussu and Enric Llurda and is called "Non-native English-speaking English language teachers: History and research" and was published in Language Teaching (2008) 41:3,315-348.

So it should be an interesting session!

You can download a copy of the Bernat paper here.

You can download a copy of the Moussu and Llurda paper here. 

Wednesday November 5th 1.30 - 2.30

Maggie Kubanyiova from the School of Education , University of Birmingham will be talking about her recent research project into Teacher Development. Details to follow.

Wednesday November 19th 1.30 -2.30

Link research projects. This session is for STAFF only as it is concerned with an ongoing research project(s).

Wednesday December 3rd 1.30 - 2.30

Shelagh Rixon will be presenting "Lessons observed - a new teacher development tool" .

Week 8 (Wednesday 2pm, Room S2.85): Teachers’ intuition (JK) (open to all)

Week 6 (Tuesday 2pm, Room A1.05): Teachers' use of metaphor in making sense of the first year of teaching (SM) (open to all)

 Week 4: Action research as a strategy to develop teacher-learner autonomy in pre-service teacher education: Phase 2: Tracking former participants (PB, SM, RS, EU).

29th April 2008, 2-4pm, Room MS03 (Maths Building): Talk by Simon Borg: ‘"Please answer the questions as accurately as possible": The use of questionnaires in studying teachers’ beliefs’

Term 2, 2007-8

Week 6: Experienced language teachers designing materials in teams: research so far, and aspirations (JK, AMP)

Week 8: Teacher education capacity-building for countries in transition: sharing some ideas (RS)

Week 10: Teachers' use of metaphor in making sense of the first year of teaching: pre-conference talk (SM)

Term 3, 2007-8

Week 2: Action research as a strategy to develop teacher-learner autonomy in pre-service teacher education: Phase 2: Tracking former participants (PB, SM, RS, EU)

Week 4: Teacher education for learner autonomy: background (RS)

Week 6: Teachers’ intuition: pre-conference talk (JK)

Week 8: Use of audio feedback in teacher education: sharing ideas (SM)

Week 10: ‘Teacher education for learner autonomy’: draft papers (RS, AMP)

Other activities: ELTED meeting(s); one or two sessions with students to explain what we’re doing / see whether they might participate; separate meetings of ‘Experienced language teachers designing materials in teams’ and ‘Developing teacher-learner autonomy’ sub-groups