Cultural Knowledge and Values in English Language Teaching Materials


Book Description

This book provides a contextualized and balanced look into the timely topic of values in English Language Teaching (ELT) materials with a primary focus on the Chinese context. It features three distinct conceptual and methodological perspectives, namely, perceptions of stakeholders such as material writers, teachers and students, multimodal construction of values, and textual representation of values. It is a valuable resource for those interested in the social, cultural, moral, and ideological dimensions of English education in general, and in the textual and multimodal construction of values in language teaching materials in particular.




Situating Moral and Cultural Values in ELT Materials


Book Description

This volume accentuates how ELT materials can be a mediation of capitalizing on moral and cultural values, which are more locally-grounded in respective Southeast Asia (SEA) countries. It features critical studies on locally-produced ELT materials (textbooks) situated in the following SEA countries: Timor-Leste, The Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. The chapters, written by experts who know the ELT context of their respective SEA country, critically examine the design and use of ELT materials widely used in local and national contexts. Thus, the volume provides fresh insight into how values are uniquely manifested in language classroom materials. The present text also brings together empirical, conceptual and practical grounds for incorporating moral and cultural values into ELT materials development in such a way that it views morality and culture as a mutually complementing entity. This much-needed volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in the design and use of language materials in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts, such as in the Asia Pacific, America, Africa, and Europe.




Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows


Book Description

The English language is spreading across the world, and so too is hip-hop culture: both are being altered, developed, reinterpreted, reclaimed. This timely book explores the relationship between global Englishes (the spread and use of diverse forms of English within processes of globalization) and transcultural flows (the movements, changes and reuses of cultural forms in disparate contexts). This wide-ranging study focuses on the ways English is embedded in other linguistic contexts, including those of East Asia, Australia, West Africa and the Pacific Islands. Drawing on transgressive and performative theory, Pennycook looks at how global Englishes, transcultural flows and pedagogy are interconnected in ways that oblige us to rethink language and culture within the contemporary world. Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows is a valuable resource to applied linguists, sociolinguists, and students on cultural studies, English language studies, TEFL and TESOL courses.




Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning


Book Description

This book identifies the many facets of culture that influence second language learners and teachers. The paperback edition identifies the many facets of culture that influence second language learners and teachers. It addresses the impact of culture on learning to interact, speak, construct meaning, and write in a second language, while staying within the sociocultural paradigms specific to a particular language and its speakers. By providing a comprehensive introduction to research from other disciplines on the interaction between language and culture, this volume offers an important contribution to the field of second language acquisition.




Values in English Language Teaching


Book Description

This book offers a new perspective on language teaching by placing moral issues--that is, questions of values--at the core of what it is to be a teacher. The teacher-student relation is central to this view, rather than the concept of language teaching as merely a technical matter of managing students' acquisition of language. The message is that all language teaching involves an interplay of deeply held values, but in each teaching situation these values are played out in different ways. Johnston does not tell readers what to think, but only suggests what to think about. Values in English Language Teaching explores the complex and often contradictory moral landscape of the language classroom, gradually revealing how teaching is not a matter of clear-cut choices but of wrestling with dilemmas and making difficult decisions in situations often riven with conflict. It examines the underlying values that teachers hold as individuals and as members of their profession, and demonstrates how those values are played out in the real world of language classrooms. Matters addressed include connections between the moral and political dimensions in English language teaching, and between values and religious beliefs; relationship(s) between teacher identity and values; the meaning of professionalism and how it is associated with morality and values; the ways in which teacher development is a moral issue; and the marginality of English language teaching. All the examples are taken from real-life teaching situations--the complexity and messiness of these situations is always acknowledged, including both individual influences and broader social, cultural, and political forces at play in English language classrooms. By using actual situations as the starting point for analysis, Johnston offers a philosophy based in practice, and recognizes the primacy of lived experience as a basis for moral analysis. Examples come from teaching contexts around the world, including Brazil, Thailand, Poland, Japan, Central African Republic, Turkey, and Taiwan, as well as various settings in the United States. This book will change the way teachers see language classrooms--their own or those of others. It is a valuable resource for teachers of ESL and EFL and all those who work with them, especially teacher educators, researchers, and administrators.




Teaching-and-learning Language-and-culture


Book Description

Offers some theoretical innovations in teaching foreign languages and reports how they have been applied to curriculum development and experimental courses at the upper secondary and college levels. Approaches language learning as comprising several dimensions, including grammatical competence, change in attitudes, learning about another culture, and reflecting on one's own. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Social Identity and Discourses in Chinese Digital Communication


Book Description

Examining how diverse social identities are constructed in digital communication in China, this edited collection provides a multidimensional exploration of the diverse, discursive forms and practices used to construct and present the “self” online. Contributing authors provide analyses of China’s digital communication platforms, such as social media platforms, news websites and short video applications, drawing from a wealth of data to study daily practices of digital performance of identity and maintenance of social bonds. Comprised of nine chapters, this essential volume is divided into three distinct sections, taking a hierarchical approach to analysing social identities within Chinese digital communication at the micro, meso and macro levels. Diverse methodologies are applied throughout, incorporating insights from both linguistic theories and semiotic or textually oriented analyses, while also considering the wider societal contexts. Readers are encouraged to analyse the main features of this digital culture and to investigate how language and discourse are encountered through media. This book will be of value to a wide variety of scholars and students in sociolinguistics, communication studies and Asian studies.




Cultural Awareness - Resource Books for Teachers


Book Description

This very popular series gives teachers practical advice and guidance, together with resource ideas and materials for the classroom.




Funds of Knowledge


Book Description

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.




English Language Teaching Materials


Book Description

English Language Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice provides an overview of the current state of materials design in language teaching. This volume provides an incisive overview of the current state of materials design in language teaching. Seventeen original chapters explore the issues involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of materials in language programs in a wide variety of settings and contexts. This stimulating collection considers different approaches to materials design - including teacher-developed classroom materials, commercial materials, and technology-driven materials. Discussion questions and tasks follow each chapter to make this volume useful to both prospective and practicing teachers alike.