The New English Teacher: Vol. 11. No. 1, (January 2017)
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Browsing The New English Teacher: Vol. 11. No. 1, (January 2017) by Subject "Thailand"
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ItemDeveloping Thai learners' CIC through translanguaging in one-on-one English tutorial sessionsThis article presents a conceptual paper, which proposes a concept of employing translanguaging as a pedagogical tool to promote the learners’ CIC – Classroom Interactional Competence, which lies at the heart of learning. The aim of the concept is to bridge two practices of monolingualism between Thai teachers who teach English through Thai only and native speakers who use English only. Translanguaging reflects reality in terms of using both languages to interact to improve the interactional competence of the learners. When both the teachers and the learners translanguage in the classroom, ‘translanguaging space’ is established. This means boundary lines of the two languages are blurred and become so permeable that the learners are able to step in the space and utilize it to make their own ‘space of learning’ through interactions with the teachers. This concept implies that the more the learners interact with the teachers, the more they learn English. Thus, if the learners’ CIC develops in translanguaging classroom context, it can be argued that translanguaging promotes Thai learners’ CIC, which is seen the same thing as the progress of learning. The paper introduces the concept, reviews literature on translanguaging and CIC, discusses conceptual framework, and proposes significant issues in conducting a future study.
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ItemA study of reading questions in high school English textbooks and national testsThe lack of English language proficiency of Thai students has been acknowledged for years, and this is reflected in the national test scores i.e. O-NET, GAT, and GET, all of which fall below 50%. The question of concurrence between testing and teaching was raised when the revision of national curriculum (B.E. 2551) was implemented in prototype schools in 2009. Reading comprehension skills, in particular, were given attention as it contributes to other skills and overall learning. The aim of this study is to seek the connection between reading questions in the tests and textbooks in Thai schools. For this purpose, Barrett’s taxonomy (Pearson, 2009) was adapted. The findings indicate that Inferential Comprehension is dominant in the tests, but Literal Comprehension is dominant in the textbooks. However, there is a partial agreement between the tests and textbooks in terms of high-order questions such as Inferential Comprehension, Evaluation, and Appreciation. The findings imply that the design of tests and textbooks should be reviewed to reflect the effectiveness of the curriculum and learning, which will possibly improve test scores in the national tests. Textbooks are the most reliable source of learning English for non-native English speakers. Therefore, they are widely used by schools. Nowadays, there are plenty of commercial English textbooks that are produced for English language education worldwide. However, it is generally agreed upon that learning a second language pedagogy is influenced by the socio-cultural frame of reference of the learners, and the objectives of learning vary from place to place according to curriculum design. Selecting a good textbook that suits the learning context and curriculum is challenging for schools. This study provides further information to people who are involved in the textbook selection of all levels of educational supervision.