CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers Volume 5, 2009 Cover photo, Angkor Wat by Ian T Edwards CC BY-SA CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 Table of Contents Foreword Im Koch iv Opening address Im Sethy viii Selected Papers Complexities and challenges in training nonnative English-speaking teachers: State of the art Jun Liu Grammar and communicative language teaching: Why, when and how to teach it? Anne Burns Global English? Implications for the teacher Alan Maley 16 How intelligible is Cambodian English variety? A look from foreigners‘ perspectives Keuk Chan Narith 23 Globalization and the use of volunteers in ELT: Enhancing volunteer impact Marie-Madeleine Kenning 36 English for future careers: Globalization for mechanical technology students Steven Graham 45 Breaking the silence barrier: Language education and cultural appropriacy Yoko Shimura and Barnaby Ralph 55 Speaking in different communication styles Zhang Bei 64 Developing pragmatic competence: Study abroad and classroom instruction Joyce Maeda and Akemi Kawamura 72 Professional development needs of Cambodian teachers of English: International comparison with Japanese and Korean EFL teachers Koji Igawa and Naoko Tsujioka Page i 88 CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 Factors influencing EFL novice teachers‘ adoption of technologies in classroom practice Huong Thi Bao Dinh 99 Students‘ expectations and the language learning context Richmond Stroupe, Alex Chirnside, Danny Sasaki, Greg Lindeman, Lary MacDonald and Helen Smith 113 Promoting discovery learning through implicit grammar instruction: A measure to increase learner acquisition of English tenses Ngo Thi Trang Thao 131 Integrating English, science and liberal studies across the curriculum Elza Shuk-Ching Tsang and Barbara Pui Lai Choy 148 © Using Skype to connect a classroom to the world: Providing students an authentic language experience within the classroom Miki Tsukamoto, Brian Nuspliger and Yusuke Senzaki 162 Teaching seminar skills in the Asian context Grace H Y Wong 169 Objectivity, subjectivity, and getting the meaning in intensive English reading Shaun O‟Dwyer 175 Applying cognitive load theory in reading comprehension Huynh Cong Minh Hung 184 The use of effective reading strategies to improve reading comprehension Rajentharan Subbiah and Noriah Binti Ismail 197 A study of EFL instruction in an educational context with limited resources Nguyen Thi Thu Ha and To Thi Thu Huong 205 Teaching writing by modeling genres through the teaching-learning cycle Elizabeth Walter-Echols 231 English co-curricular activities: A gateway to developing autonomous learners Liangrong Xiao and Ming Luo 239 Music and song beyond the classroom: Strategies to aid the language learning process Tanya M McCarthy Page ii 252 CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 Gender differences in language learning strategy use Cao Thuy Hong 262 Can CLT be successful without a match between teaching and testing practices? Tran Dang Khanh Linh 278 Task-based language assessment: Developing an integrative task (IT) model with Iranian EFL learners Natasha Ghal-eh 287 About CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers Background Information 306 Editorial staff 306 Disclaimer 307 Notes to prospective contributors 307 Copyright and permission to reprint 308 Page iii CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 Foreword The Globalization of ELT: Emerging Directions was the theme for the 5th annual CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching held at the National Institute of Education, Phnom Penh, Cambodia on 21 and 22 February 2009 This year‘s conference saw a growing number of delegates, both international and Cambodian, and these selected papers of the conference reflect the globalization of the conference itself Papers from professionals working in 10 countries on a wide variety of topics are included The selected papers have been chosen from a total of 218 papers delivered at the conference from professionals in 20 countries This sharing of research outcomes, knowledge, experience, and, indeed, professional friendship over the last five years has brought Cambodia from relative ELT obscurity onto the international conference circuit CamTESOL was privileged to have HE Im Sethy, Minister of Education, Youth and Sport, open the 2009 Conference In his opening address, the Minister mentioned how important foreign languages have become to allow people to communicate internationally and how his ministry has put tremendous efforts into teacher training programs, academic curriculum development, and more productive teaching in Cambodia He spoke of the necessity of establishing links between the local ELT and the international ELT communities to build up quality ELT institutions The CamTESOL Conference provides a substantial forum for this in Cambodia The 5th CamTESOL Conference featured two plenary speakers Professor Jun Liu gave the plenary speech titled ―Complexities and Challenges in Training Nonnative English Speaking Teachers: State of the Art.‖ Liu made the point that the majority of ELT teachers worldwide are in fact non-native English speakers He discussed the state-of-the-art research in the area, the particular challenges and difficulties non-native English speaking teachers face, and the framework of training that can be developed to cater for these teachers The teaching of grammar, a popular area for ELT discussion, was the focus of the plenary speaker Professor Anne Burns‘ paper ―Grammar and Communicative Language Teaching: Why, When and How to Teach It?‖ Professor Burns gave an overview of various theories of grammar which have influenced ELT and discussed their key characteristics She examined the recent international research into the approaches teachers take when integrating grammar into their teaching practice, and the effectiveness they believe these approaches have Page iv CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 The featured speaker, Alan Maley, returned to the theme of Globalization in his discussion of the varieties of English: English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in his paper ―Global English? Implications for the Teacher.‖ Maley demonstrated his belief that the ELF model was untenable and offered some alternative suggestions for teaching English in international settings whether ESL teaching which deliberately targets and attempts to overturn existing social mores is the best way to proceed Intercultural communication is taken up by Zhang Bei in the paper ―Speaking in Different Communication Styles.‖ Zhang‘s research on international English speakers and local Chinese English speakers indicates that it is significant for bicultural and bilingual English speakers to learn cultural differences in communication styles so that they can develop their speaking skills to meet the needs of cross-cultural communication Globalization formed a thread in a further three of the selected papers from Cambodia, Thailand, and the UK Keuk Chan Narith‘s paper, ―How Intelligible is Cambodian English Variety? A Look from Foreigners‘ Perspectives‖ discusses how pronunciation, word choice, grammar, and cultural differences in English spoken by Cambodians can lead to unintelligibility Keuk‘s study revealed that when faced with communication difficulties, both Cambodians and foreigners successfully use strategies to help resolve communication problems The actual and potential impacts of globalization on the use of foreign English-speaking volunteers as English helpers in rural Cambodian schools is the focus of Marie-Madeleine Kenning‘s paper ―Globalization and the Use of Volunteers in ELT: Enhancing Volunteer Impact.‖ Kenning looks at the effects of globalization before, during, and after a volunteer‘s term of service In the paper ―English for Future Careers: Globalization for Mechanical Technology Students,‖ Steven Graham explains how, in a form of globalization gone wrong, the course English for Future Careers is taught in some Thai government universities to students who will not use English for their job interviews or indeed in their future careers The course has been creatively developed to comply with government requirements, while still meeting the needs of the students Issues in teaching and teacher training are a major area of focus for these selected papers, with six papers dealing with this topic Joyce Maeda and Akemi Kawamura, working in Japan, wrote their paper ―Developing Pragmatic Competence: Study Abroad and Classroom Instruction‖ on the effects of studying abroad compared with explicit classroom instruction on the development of the pragmatic competence of Japanese EFL learners on the speech act of requesting Maeda and Kawamura concluded that learners in a variety of EFL cultural environments in traditional classroom settings can develop pragmatic competence similar that of students who have completed study abroad programs A further paper from Japan, ―Professional Development Needs of Cambodian Teachers of English: International Comparison with Japanese and Korean EFL Teachers,‖ written by Koji Igawa and Naoko Tsujioka, shows how the stated preferred areas for professional development from a small-scale survey of Cambodian teachers widely differ from similar surveys of Japanese and Korean teachers Huong Thi Bao Dinh, in the paper ―Factors Influencing EFL Novice Teachers‘ Adoption of Technologies in Classroom Practice,‖ shows through research in Vietnam that professional development and technical support are required before teachers will implement technological changes in ELT Richmond Stroupe, Alex Chirnside, Danny Sasaki, Greg Lindeman, Lary MacDonald, and Helen Smith examined Japanese students‘ and English teachers‘ expectations in their The area of research into intercultural issues is explored in two selected papers Yoko Shimura from the University of New England and Barnaby Ralph from Aoyama Gakuin University wrote the paper ―Breaking the Silence Barrier: Language Education and Cultural Appropriacy.‖ Shimura and Ralph explore the culture of silence in the context of language education through interviews with Japanese and non-Japanese teachers and question Page v CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 paper ―Students‘ Expectations and the Language Learning Context.‖ The research investigated expectations of both groups and whether student expectations were reflected in classroom practice upholds, through his insights into the processes of gaining meaning in intensive reading with foreign/second language learners, that meaning is an objective, rather than a subjective construct, as assumed by radical constructivist theory Research by Huynh Cong Minh Hung in the paper ―Applying Cognitive Load Theory in Reading Comprehension‖ introduces and analyses the split-attention effect in reading comprehension tasks Huynh‘s research showed that the integrated format was more beneficial to student reading comprehension in EFL/ESL Reading comprehension was the focus of a second selected paper by Rajentharan Subbiah and Noriah Binti Ismail, whose research findings offer practical value to educators faced with students who lack appropriate reading skills for reading comprehension in ―The Use of Effective Reading Strategies to Improve Reading Comprehension.‖ Subbiah and Ismail offer ways to overcome the problems by teaching a variety of reading strategies A second paper on reading from Vietnam by Nguyen Thi Thu Ha and To Thi Thu Huong titled ―A Study of EFL Instruction in an Educational Context with Limited Resources‖ reports on Content-Based Instruction (CBI) in reading classes at a university English department It was found that there was a mismatch between the beliefs of teachers and students and a lack of professional-subject-related topics in the reading programs, as well as faulty design and implementation of the intended curriculum Suggestions for using CBI to improve the teaching of ESP and curriculum/materials development are offered Student motivation to learn grammar through implicit grammar instruction was found to be high among intermediate level students at Can Tho University in Vietnam Ngo Thi Trang Thao‘s paper, ―Promoting Discovery Learning through Implicit Grammar Instruction: A Measure to Increase Learner Acquisition of English Tenses‖ documents the extent to which discovery-learning enhanced students‘ acquisition of verb tenses and their motivation to learn grammar A genre-based approach to ‗language across the curriculum‘ (LAC) was found to be useful to English and content teachers when mapping out LAC teaching in a secondary school curriculum in Hong Kong as shown by Elza Tsang and Barbara Choy in the paper ―Integrating English, Science and Liberal Studies Across the Curriculum.‖ Papers on the teaching of reading, writing, and speaking skills were well represented in the selected papers this year Miki Tsukamoto, Brian Nuspliger, and Yusuke Senzaki show how technology has provided Japanese students with the opportunity to speak English using web conferences with high school students in the U.S in their paper ―Using Skype to Connect a Classroom to the World: Providing Students an Authentic Language Experience Within the Classroom.‖ As a result of these conferences, the students were more motivated to speak English They increased the amount of time spent speaking English and found added enjoyment in their classes A second paper on speaking skills by Grace H Y Wong titled ―Teaching Seminar Skills in the Asian Context‖ outlines how the challenges of teaching seminar skills in a Hong Kong university were overcome through the application of ongoing research The paper offers guidelines for teachers of seminar skills to Asian students Elizabeth Walter-Echols‘ paper ―Teaching Writing by Modeling Genres Through the TeachingLearning Cycle‖ provides a brief recent history of writing pedagogy and some background to the genre approach, before demonstrating the use of the Teaching-Learning Cycle to teach students the ‗Instruction‘ genre through recipes Three papers are included on Independent Learning, all from the Asian region Liangrong Xiao and Ming Luo examine a number of English cocurricular activities and explore the functions and impact of these on learner independence and Four papers focus on the skill of reading Shaun O‘Dwyer‘s paper ―Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Getting the Meaning in Intensive English Reading‖ Page vi CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 Learners,‖ is from Iran Natasha Ghal-eh shows how task-based assessment models are not good predictors of language learners‘ performance on real-world tasks The validity of predictions of Iranian EFL learners‘ performance in relation to current measures of construct validity is discussed interdependence in learning English at a large university in Southeast China Xiao and Luo‘s paper is titled ―English Co-Curricular Activities: A Gateway to Developing Autonomous Learners.‖ Tanya McCarthy, working in Japan, reports on the process of designing song worksheets for independent study which can help foster autonomous learner development in her paper ―Music and Song Beyond the Classroom: Strategies to Aid the Language Learning Process.‖ The influence of gender on Vietnamese language learners‘ choice of language learning strategies was the topic for Cao Thuy Hong‘s paper ―Gender Differences in Language Learning Strategy Use.‖ The students in this study were found to be medium strategy users, with the overall strategy use by male and female students was not significantly different However, females were found to be more frequent users of affective and social strategies The 2009 CamTESOL Conference brought together ELT professionals, both local and international, to discuss and debate areas of their practice and relevant theoretical issues at presentations, workshops, and poster sessions, not to mention in the informal discussions that took place in and around the conference itself As host of the conference, I would like to thank the many organizers and volunteers who made the conference a success, and the presenters for generously contributing their professional research, ideas, and experience to their colleagues It has not been a simple or speedy task to write or to select the papers and produce this volume, and so I would like to thank all those who submitted papers for selection and the Editorial Board for its work Particular gratitude is due to Dr Richmond Stroupe for his guidance in the production of this volume and his untiring work as Assistant Editor-in-Chief The final two papers in this volume address issues of testing The first examines how the backwash effect distorted the teaching practice at a lower secondary school in Central Vietnam Tran Dang Khanh Linh, in her paper ―Can CLT Be Successful Without a Match Between Teaching and Testing Practices?‖ makes suggestions for reform in language testing practices for stakeholders of provincial Vietnamese education The final paper, ―Task-based Language Assessment: Developing An Integrative Task (IT) Model with Iranian EFL Dr Im Koch National Institute of Education Editor-in-Chief Page vii CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 Opening Address Her Excellency Margaret Adamson, Australian Ambassador Mr John Johnson, Public Affairs Officer of the US Embassy Honorable Speakers Distinguished Participants Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen Today I have the great honor and pleasure to be present at the gathering of scholars and academics at the Opening Ceremony of the 5th CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching, ―The Globalization of ELT: Emerging Directions.‖ On behalf of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Kingdom of Cambodia and myself, I would like to deeply and sincerely thank Her Excellency Margaret Adamson, Australian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia, and Mr John Johnson, Representative of the US Embassy, who always provide support and make their kind contribution to Cambodia through their many projects in education, health, governance, agriculture, and environment sectors I would also like to express my profound gratitude to the representatives from a wide variety of institutions and partners, particularly Mr Paul Mahony, Country Director of the International Development Program Education Australia (IDP) in Cambodia, for providing technical and financial assistance to organize the Conference Along with this, I would like to warmly welcome you all, in particular, our honorable overseas speakers and distinguished participants from 25 countries, to Phnom Penh and wish you a pleasant stay in our country I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Australian Government and AusAID for their support of the Cambodian English Language Training Program (CELT) since 1985 The CELT Program was designed primarily to provide English language training to government officials and to improve secondary school teachers‘ language abilities It was then extended to the University of Phnom Penh English and Education Project (UPPEEP) As a result, the Institute of Foreign Languages‘ (IFL) Department of English at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) is now regarded as one of Cambodia‘s leading ELT institutions, offering two full-time undergraduate degree programs and one full-time Master‘s-level course Page viii CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching: Selected Papers, Volume 5, 2009 less variance, even proportionally, than Integrative task ratings At the same time, the minimum and maximum statistics indicated that the examinees had utilized most of the one to three scales for all items The skew statistics, also, showed that none of the scores were markedly skewed As Table summarizes the results for the average ratings across all Integrative Tasks on SelfFamiliarity, Self-Performance, and Self-Ease, the obtained qualitative data might suggest that the examinees properly and consistently perceived differences in their performance on Integrative Tasks, in terms of the familiarity with the tasks, the ease with which each task was performed, as well as their own performances on individual tasks Next, the researcher computed the correlation statistics for both measures of examinee performance, that is, Integrative Tasks and selfratings, in order to find the extent to which these two sets of quantitative and qualitative data were significantly correlated As Table shows, the performance measures in this study - Integrative Tasks and self-ratings - exhibited strong correlations with one another, ranging from r=.64 (between IT Ratings and Self-Ease) to r=.96 (between IT Ratings and Self-Performance) Average examinee self-ratings correlated quite well (r=.64 to r=.96) with IT Ratings as well as with each other In addition, the average examinee self-ratings for their own performances (Self-Performance) correlated consistently higher than the average selfratings for familiarity with the tasks (SelfFamiliarity) or the ease in performing the tasks (Self-Ease) In short, the overall correlation among two sets of ratings in this project was quite better than expected Discussion The call for a valid and theory-founded assessment model that sets language learners free to demonstrate their language competence by performing on a variety of graded tasks and to reflect on their own performance was the researcher‘s first and foremost concern in this research project The difficulty of predicting future success for language learners who performed differently on different types of tasks led the researcher to the additional question of the predictive adequacy of a language assessment model (Armstrong, 2003; Bachman, 2004; Hancock, 1994) Table Self-ratings Variable Self-Familiarity Self-Performance Self-Ease M 1.91 2.36 2.80 Min 0.14 0.36 0.48 SD 36 42 49 Max 2.27 3.00 3.00 Skew 0.55 0.59 0.80 *p