BC TEAL Journal

Scholar-Practitionership as a Way of Being in the Field of EAL Teaching and Learning

Scott Roy Douglas — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

The BC TEAL Journal continues to serve as an open-access peer-reviewed publication for scholar-practitioners in the field of English as an additional language (EAL) teaching and learning. This editorial affirms the multiple possibilities that exist within the scholar-practitioner identity and outlines key habits of mind that define a stance bringing together theory, research, and practice to strengthen teaching and learning. The current issue of the journal offers five examples of scholar-practitionership on topics related to LGBTQ+ representation in teaching materials, the transition from face-to-face to online learning, English for academic purposes (EAP) student presentation skills development, key issues in classroom language education research, and EAP curriculum intercultural communicative competence learning outcomes. The editorial ends with an invitation for readers to live within the hyphen of scholar-practitionership and offers support to contributing back to the field through publishing in the BC TEAL Journal.

An Examination of LGBTQ+ Representation in a Canadian ELT Newspaper

Hilda Freimuth, Leah Walter — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Up to 30% of the world’s population is part of the LGBTQ+ community. Yet, representation in English language programs and classroom materials around the world appears to be minimal to non-existent. This study conducted a content analysis of LGBTQ+ representation in one locally produced ELT newspaper in British Columbia, Canada to investigate if a more localized publication with less pressure to appeal to a mass readership would yield greater representation. The study found that five instances of representation occurred in a four-year span of production of thirty-nine newspapers. This finding is significant in that very few examples of this type exist in the literature.

A Preliminary Investigation Into the Effectiveness of Online Modules for Teaching Research and Writing Skills to Multilingual International Post-Secondary Students

Daniel H. Chang, Julia Lane, Hope Power — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This paper describes a pilot project undertaken in 2019 by library instructors at Simon Fraser University (SFU) to transition from in-person to online research and writing skills instruction within the context of a foundational course for multilingual international students at Fraser International College (FIC), an international pathway school to SFU. Our research and writing skills modules were integrated into a course with academic skill-building opportunities to support students’ successful transition to English-medium university studies. This article reports findings from our mixed-methods study about the effectiveness of these modules. The first semester after we transitioned online, we collected response data from course instructors and students. Preliminary findings suggest students benefited from the self-paced and flexible nature of the online learning experience and resources. Course instructor feedback suggests a blended learning approach combining in-person and online components might be more effective for developing students’ university-level research and writing skills. Our work on the modules was highly collaborative, involving an extraordinary level of commitment from FIC and SFU Library staff and instructors. Our findings suggest further collaboration with more specialists, especially with expertise in the area of English language learning, would produce more effective online resources for multilingual international students developing their research and writing skills.

The Problem of Presentations: An EAP Lecturer’s Approach to Teaching Presentation Skills

Jodie L. Martin — Sun, 05 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Presentations are often incorporated into higher education without any instruction on how to present, or the features by which presentations will be assessed. This lack of instruction risks disadvantaging many students judged by tacit criteria they may not meet, including English as an additional language students, first generation university students, and international and/or cross-disciplinary students coming from educational contexts with different presentation styles and values. This paper presents one lecturer’s efforts to meet the needs of her students to develop presentation skills by focusing a significant portion of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course on presentations over four years. The paper outlines the curricular design for this focus, which included multiple presentations in multiple formats and an explicit Teaching and Learning Cycle (Rothery, 1994). Further, it presents some of the concepts and approaches that are used to shape an intersemiotic awareness of presentations, including the grammar of bullet point form, image-language relations, how to talk about complex slides, presentation delivery strategies, and how to scaffold practising in class. Finally, it concludes with some challenges about the formal evaluation of such presentations. It offers both design and activity descriptions for interested teachers to consider incorporating, whether in EAP or in other courses.

Three Key Problems in Classroom Language Education Research

Andy Curtis — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0800

This opinion essay begins by describing the problematic difference between “doing-research-on” and “doing-research-with,” particularly in relation to classroom-based research on foreign/English language teaching and learning. In “doing-research-on,” the researchers are the primary beneficiaries of the research they publish, whilst those who provided the data, the researched—in this case, the teachers and the students—typically do not benefit from the research published. However, when research is done with the data-providers, such as teachers and/or students, all parties can benefit from the research, even if not to the same extent and not in the same ways. In the second part of this opinion piece, the publish-or-perish problem is acknowledged, with a brief consideration of how it has been shaping research and publishing for nearly a century. The third part of this opinion essay draws on “trickle down” economic theory to discuss some of the reasons the findings from published research in our field so rarely seem to feed back into the classrooms from which the data were gathered. In the last part of this opinion piece, I propose some ways of addressing these problems, with specific experiential examples.

Intercultural Communicative Competence Learning Outcomes in EAP: A Tool for Supporting Post-secondary Students with Life On and Off Campus

Michael Henry Landry — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

The ongoing trend of internationalization at Canadian post-secondary institutions has led to a growing need for support for plurilingual students using English as an additional language (EAL). English for academic purposes (EAP) programs are one support offered in a wide range of contexts across post-secondary institutions in Canada. However, there has been little research to date related to the efficacy of intercultural learning objectives in these programs. Drawing on a wider study into student views on the inclusion of asynchronous online intercultural learning outcomes in an EAP program in British Columbia within a theoretical framework that included literature on additional language socialization, EAP in Canada, and intercultural communicative competence (ICC), qualitative research methods were used to generate data from online questionnaires, student e-Portfolios, focus groups, and individual interviews with students and instructor participants. Meaningful units of text in the data were coded, and the codes were gathered together into themes. A major theme identified in the data in connection to EAL development and additional language socialization was that of life on and off campus, particularly in terms of academic transitions, friendships, and community engagement. The findings point to the benefits of including intercultural learning outcomes in EAP.