International Perspectives On Teaching And Learning Academic English In Turbulent Times

This volume shares proven strategies for Academic English teaching, research, and development in challenging circumstances. Through original first-hand experiences from around the world, the collection reveals how educators in higher education have responded to the specific needs and challenges of teaching second language learners in turbulent times, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organised thematically, the book covers rapid responses to crises, adapting to teaching online, collaborations and online learning communities, and assessment practices. The volume provides original insights and practical suggestions for a range of practices across English for Academic and Specific Purposes that can address new and unfamiliar circumstances, both now and in future challenging times. The collection includes a wealth of effective strategies, varied research methodologies, and resources for practice making it an invaluable reference for practitioners, students, and researchers in the field of academic English, ESL/EFL, and online language instruction.

This book offers a holistic practitioner and research-based perspective on English Language Teaching and teacher education in difficult circumstances. In addition to extending the current conceptualization of ‘difficult circumstances’ in ELT to include the broader policy issues that may affect ELT in low-to-mid income countries, the book focuses on the challenges faced by practitioners and learners in contexts of confinement, conflict and special education. The chapters in this collection examine the challenges and problems that emerge from the complex current ELT environment, and present examples of contextualized inquiry-based strategies and interventions to address these challenges. Underlining the need to extend the boundaries of the discipline of ELT to include teaching-learning in less privileged contexts, this wide-ranging volume will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners of English Language Teaching.

University and college teaching is an important topic in the study of higher education around the world. This collection of original essays provides a broad perspective on the issue by examining preparation, assessment, and reward from cross-cultural perspectives, and exploring the cultural and social influences that affect these dimensions.

This book articulates an understanding of what is meant by the term social justice from a global perspective, drawing upon examples of practice from across a range of English for academic purposes (EAP) and English language teaching (ELT) higher education contexts. Presently, within western higher educational systems, there is a drive for greater integration of approaches that lend themselves to social justice. However, questions still remain about what that means in practice. This book seeks to answer that not by telling but by showing. It presents a series of chapters that act as vignettes into a diverse set of classrooms, contexts and countries, offering examples of how and where an epistemology of social justice has been put into practice in teaching and learning situations. Such situations range from cross-continental higher educational partnerships between east and west to instances of EAP practitioners' work with refugees from North Africa and the Middle East. These examples are threaded together by the common goal of understanding what it is that defines an enactment of social justice and what the shared denominators are across these contexts. Through looking at these various examples, the authors produce a set of codes and themes that are common to practice across contexts and discuss how these might help inform practice in other areas of language education, higher education and educational development work in general.

COVID-19 and increased attention to how institutions of higher education (IHEs) serve an increasingly diverse student population have brought conversations about “standard” practices from the margins to the center as faculty explore how to improve learning and student success for all students. Historically, IHEs were built by a privileged class for a privileged class, a system, and structure built on specific epistemologies, practices, and habits of mind and language that replicate privilege and leave many students underserved in their academic pursuits. One way faculty have increased equity in their college classrooms is through the use of alternative assessment (alt-assessment) practices. This volume aims to share the experiences of faculty who have leveraged “non-traditional” grading paradigms for the sake of increasing student learning, a sense of belonging, and equity in their classrooms. Meant to orient faculty who are considering how to implement alt-assessment in their own classes as well as those who are already employing various grading frameworks, this volume will celebrate new and innovative approaches, share lessons learned, and invite a broader coalition of faculty into the stream of conversation about pedagogical innovation. Faculty, educators, and practitioners share their approaches to alternate assessment in this volume, as well as the critiques, lessons, and outcomes associated with their pedagogical decisions. Written by practitioners for practitioners, we hope the book will provide theoretical and practical guidance for alternative assessment practices such as ungrading, contract grading, standards-based grading, and labor-based grading across various disciplines and within different academic contexts.

Teacher research is recognized, in ELT and education more generally, as a powerful transformative strategy for teacher development and school improvement. This volume provides original insights into this issue by focusing on the processes involved in becoming and being a teacher researcher.

Transforming Learning: International Perspectives is a must-read for all educators who want to impact the lives of the students who attend their classrooms. It presents indigenous frameworks applied to subjects in education, the humanities and sciences that transcend the boundaries of culture and inform critical praxis in teacher education.

This book focuses on private tutoring (sometimes also known as “shadow education”), an important but neglected topic in applied linguistics and language education research. Private tutoring has become a popular out-of-school learning activity worldwide. While its scope and definition are expanding, private tutoring commonly refers to the “paid service students used to supplement their learning of academic subjects at school outside school hours” (Yung, 2019). Around the world, English language is one of the most popularly enrolled subjects in private tutoring, including both English as a first language and English as an additional language (EAL). Despite its popularity and implications for theories, practices, and policies, research on English private tutoring is still in its infancy. This book aims to provide an international perspective on the interface between applied linguistics and comparative education and open up an agenda for discussion in theories, practices, and policies in English language teaching (ELT). It will be of interest to students, scholars, and policy-makers in these and related areas.