ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 129, Issue 1, 2000

This paper presents the results of a study of the influence of attitudes and motivation on the acquisition of English by Turkish students. It investigates the following factors : attitudes. towards the British and Americans; motivational intensity; interest in English and foreign languages in general; instrumental and integrative orientation; anxiety in English classes; family encouragement; the English teacher and course.

Results indicate that students are highly motivated instrumentally as well as integratively although a moderate interest in the-British and the American community and culture is reported. Respondents' motivational intensity is high, their attitudes towards learning English and languages in general are positive. They do not show anxiety in class and their families are very supportive. Results about their attitudes towards their English teachers and courses vary according to the school they attend. Implications for EFL/ESL classrooms are also discussed at the end of the paper.

In this paper, I will examine esl learner attempts at a key component of narrative prose, its complication. The complication is the defining component of the four-part schematic structure of narrative (Labov 1981, labov & Waletzky 1967), because it introduces the crisis of the story. This is the most impassioned phase of the narrative and therefore one expects (following Labov) that the narrator is the least disposed to strive to uphold prestige norms, and adopted rules. It is ironical, then, that what is acknowledged to be effective development of the narrative crisis is highly convention-bound prose. I will describe the basic textual - semantic, informational, organisational and representational - conventions that govern the development of the narrative crisis. I will then take random samples from a body of 35 student narratives, written by Cantonese-speaking esl learners at a Hong Kong university, to illustrate the difficulties these learners face in conforming to these conventions. In a final section, I will discuss the pedagogical implications of this study.

The present study investigates the combined effects of different amounts of comprehension-based and form-focused instruction on skill-based proficiency and knowledge of grammatical structures of beginner-level efl students. Specifically, the study addresses the following research questions : 1) Does a basically comprehension-based program of instruction supported by form-focused instruction help beginner-level efl learners improve/develop their listening, reading and writing abilities more than a basically form- focused program of instruction? 2) Does a basically form-focused program of instruction help beginner-level efl learners improve their knowledge of grammatical structures more than a basically comprehension-based program of instruction?

One experimental and one control group, each containing 20 lycee prep level Turkish efl students, participated in the study. The subjects in the experimental and control groups were randomly selected from among lycee prep classes in two different schools. The experimental group enrolled in a program of comprehension-based instruction supported by form- focused instruction; whereas, the control group enrolled in a basically form-focused program of instruction. Both the experimental and control groups had 29 hours of efl instruction per week for 36 weeks.

Different instruments were used to see the effects of these two different types of instruction on their reading, listening, writing skills and knowledge of grammatical structures. At the end of the fourth month, both groups were given the listening, reading and writing components of the Key English Test (ket) and the grammar component of the Oxford Placement Test. At the end of the eighth month, they were given the Preliminary English Test (pet) and another version of the grammar component of the Oxford Placement Test.

The results indicated that the program of comprehension-based efl instruction supported by form-focused instruction was more effective than a basically form-focused program of instruction in helping beginner-level students develop their listening, reading, and writing skills as well as their knowledge of grammatical structures.

It has been widely acknowledged in language acquisition research that cultural learning is an inseparable part of language learning. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the culture of classroom learning which involves both teachers' and learners' cultural values, beliefs, roles, expectations, and conceptions of teaching and learning. Communication challenges become obvious when teaching methodologies developed in one educational context are exported to another educational context.

This paper reports on the findings from a case study conducted in 1997 in the People's Republic of China where pedagogical communication conflicts between English native speaking teachers and Chinese university English language majors became acute. The paper focuses on the problematic area - the discourse of participation that was highly valued, promulgated and practised by native speakers teaching English in China. It will point out some of the discrepancies between this discourse and the Chinese culture of learning. In transplanting Western educational models to Chinese classrooms, participants did not sufficiently acknowledge the cultural distance between these models and the Chinese local socio-cultural and educational realities. The discourse of participation was strongly resisted by Chinese students and teaching by native speakers often failed to achieve the desired results. In spite of the "good" intentions on the part of both native teachers and Chinese students, there existed a vast gulf in their perceptions of what constituted "good" teaching and learning, of what appropriate roles they were fitted in, and what they expected of each other. The paper argues that the gulf, the hidden source of the pedagogical communication problems, can be bridged through creating a cultural synergy in which common interests are to be found and shared, sources of problems identified, cultural differences understood and respected, and learning maximally enhanced.