卷 7, 编号 3 (2021)

One aspect of online classes that has recently experienced a paradigm shift is fully online language environments (FOLEs) – that is, learning settings where 100% of the content of the class is being delivered online. The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak in 2020 called for the use of fully online teaching in schools and universities in many countries due to confinement measures. Accordingly, schools have made extraordinary efforts towards implementing home-based schooling and delivered online courses to their students during the pandemic. In many universities, online platforms such as Blackboard Collaborate are being used to fulfil the need to keep up with the requirements of academic programmes. However, research findings addressing specific FOLE platforms are scarce, with even fewer studies focusing on learners’ engagement perceptions in those settings. Therefore, the purpose of this mixed-methods exploratory study was to delve into aspects involved in engagement, such as participation, group work, instructional materials, and learning strategies, regarded as key factors influencing the success of FOLEs. Thus, a FOLE questionnaire was administered to 54 EFL university learners, which was followed by semi-structured interviews conducted with seven participants. Our analysis drew from FOLE engagement research (Sun, 2014) and the community of inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison Arbaugh, 2007; Garrison et al., 2000). The main findings revealed that the poor interactions with peers and the lack of peer rapport negatively influenced the social presence of students (Garrison Arbaugh, 2007), that the instructor can use teaching presence to increase student awareness of the relevance of the online environment and overcome adaptation issues (Kebritchi et al., 2017), and that teaching presence can help increase cognitive presence and facilitate effective interactions with the content. Implications for pedagogy were put forward as part of a FOLE approach.

Bilingual education (BE) is widely recognised as a complex phenomenon, which constitutes a priority for key educational institutions and organisations. However, further research is needed to uproot common beliefs such as that bilingual students can easily interact with two or more cultures. The literature affirms that BE students need specific school training to improve intercultural competence. The main aim of this study is to describe the design and validation of a questionnaire to measure students’ perceptions of intercultural practices at bilingual schools. The validity of content and comprehension was carried out through the Delphi method, for which three methodological phases were established. The reliability of the scale (internal consistency) was measured through the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Factorial analysis was used to check the validity of the construct. The psychometric parameters of the scale were obtained from a pilot sample of 40 students, and later from a sample of 213 students from bilingual secondary schools in several European countries (i.e., The Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, France, England, among others). As a major conclusion, we can state that this questionnaire can be used as a tool for two research goals: the identification of good intercultural school practices in BE, and the development of relevant guidelines for the incorporation of intercultural education into BE.

Despite the fact that boredom appears to be one of the most commonly experienced emotions in school settings, this negative emotion remains vastly underappreciated in the field of SLA. This is the gap this article seeks to rectify by reporting the findings of a classroom-based study whose purpose was to investigate changes in the experience of boredom in an English language classroom during reading sessions. The sample consisted of 18 second-year students studying English at a Polish high school. The data were collected by means of session logs, observations and reading session plans. The gathered data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings showed that the participants reported different levels of boredom over the course of single reading sessions and from one session to the next. Factors responsible for the detected variation in the levels of boredom were related, among other things, to inactivity, performance of too easy/difficult tasks, teacher’s decisions regarding choice and use of language materials, the design of the reading sessions or individual characteristics of the learner.

This study aims to investigate the perceptions and self-reported practices of Moroccan EFL public high school teachers towards traditional and alternative assessment. The data were collected from 51 teachers in Northern Morocco using a self-developed online questionnaire. The questionnaire items about teachers’ perceptions and self-reported practices were valid and both their data and sampling were acceptable for factor analysis of three subscales (traditional assessment, alternative assessment related with assessment as learning, and assessment for learning), and all scales proved to be reliable. Based on the three research questions, the study yielded the following results: (1) Teachers perceived the objectives of alternative assessment to be significantly more important than those of traditional assessment. (2) Based on their self-reported practices, teachers mainly used traditional assessment methods more often than alternative assessment methods associated with assessment as and for learning. (3) When comparing teachers’ perceptions with their self-reported practices, we found that teachers’ perceptions regarding traditional assessment matched their practices; while the majority of teachers admitted that they found alternative assessment important even though they did not often use it in order to support students to be able to reflect on their own learning or to enhance their performance in the learning process. Thus, these findings are significant for researchers, teachers, and educators to help them reconsider their perceptions of alternative assessment and how they should be enacted in practice with the aim of resolving the mismatches found in this study.

Distance learners studying English confront emotionally demanding obstacles. A mixed methods study was conducted to explore the role that distance learners’ emotional intelligence (EI) plays as they learn English. In phase one of the study, 238 students responded to a composite questionnaire that yielded their EI scores, demography, and viewpoints regarding the English course. In phase two, 18 volunteers selected based on their EI scores were interviewed to obtain qualitative data to build upon the quantitative results. This paper presents a case study of a student called Aini. The findings revealed that Aini’s EI helped her manage her emotions, perceptions, and actions, and ultimately obtain her obligatory English credits for graduation. It is imperative to inculcate students’ EI to help them manage their emotions in order to adapt and persevere, not only when learning English via distance learning but also to successfully accomplish one’s goals in life.

Metacognition is known to be important for L2 listening comprehension. However, it is unclear how much variance in listening performance it can explain after controlling for vocabulary knowledge. To examine this, data from the listening section of the TOEFL Junior test, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), and the Listening Vocabulary Levels Test were collected from 76 high school EFL learners in Japan. The MALQ measured five subscales of metacognition representing metacognitive skills and metacognitive knowledge. Representing skills, the MALQ measured perceptions of the ability to (1) plan and evaluate performance, (2) direct attention, and (3) overcome listening problems. Representing knowledge, it measured strategic knowledge of (4) avoiding mentally translating speech and person knowledge of (5) maintaining positive attitudes about listening. The descriptive results showed that participants used their metacognition moderately. Of the subscales, they directed attention the most, planned and evaluated performance least, and perceived their ability to avoid mental translation, solve problems, and maintain optimism equivalently. The results from the hierarchical regression analysis further showed that vocabulary knowledge and metacognition overall predicted listening performance. Of the MALQ subscales, only person knowledge predicted comprehension. These findings indicate that, contrary to earlier findings, metacognition was important for listening comprehension after accounting for vocabulary knowledge.