To ensure smooth communication and collaboration, here are some troubleshooting tips to address common issues:
Check Internet Connection: Verify that you have a stable and reliable internet connection. Use a wired connection when possible, as it tends to be more stable than Wi-Fi. If using Wi-Fi, make sure you have a strong signal.
Update the Browser or App: Ensure that you are using the latest version of the web browser. Developers frequently release updates to address bugs and improve performance.
Clear Browser Cache: Sometimes, cached data can cause conflicts or issues. Clear the browser cache and cookies before joining the meeting.
Test Audio and Video: Before the meeting, check your microphone and camera to ensure they are working correctly. If you are a speaker, you can click on "Start Practice Session" button test to ensure audio and video devices are functioning.
Close Other Applications: Running multiple applications in the background can consume system resources and lead to performance issues. Close unnecessary apps to free up resources for the Dryfta meeting platform.
Restart Your Device: If you encounter persistent issues, try restarting your computer or mobile device. This can help resolve various software-related problems.
Use Supported Browsers: Ensure you are using a browser supported by the meeting platform. Recommended browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
Allow Necessary Permissions: Make sure the Dryfta meeting platform has the required permissions to access your microphone, camera, and other necessary features.
Disable VPN or Firewall: Sometimes, VPNs or firewalls can interfere with the connection to the meeting platform. Temporarily disable them and see if the issue persists.
Switch Devices: If possible, try joining the meeting from a different device to see if the problem is specific to one device.
Reduce Bandwidth Usage: In cases of slow or unstable internet connections, ask participants to disable video or share video selectively to reduce bandwidth consumption.
Update Drivers and Software: Ensure your operating system, audio drivers, and video drivers are up to date. Outdated drivers can cause compatibility issues with the Dryfta meeting platform.
Contact Support: If none of the above steps resolve the issue, reach out to the platform's support team. They can provide personalized assistance and troubleshoot specific problems.
By following these troubleshooting tips, you can tackle many common problems encountered on Dryfta meeting platform and have a more productive and seamless meeting experience.
20230719T101520230719T1315Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP38] Language and Critical Thinking Integrated Teaching: Content, Consumption and Production of EFL Course MaterialsHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Integrating Critical Thinking guided by Asset-based Pedagogical Principles to Achieve Success
Oral Presentation[SYMP38] Language and Critical Thinking Integrated Teaching: Content, Consumption and Production of EFL Course Materials10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 11:15:00 UTC
Our life and work as educators have changed significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other societal and global issues. Such challenges have placed ELT educators into unprecedented times. They must deal with increasing gaps of access and equity in quality education, especially for students from remote areas and from historically under-served student populations. They must also help students cope with pandemic disruptions and combat Coronavirus exhaustion. How can ELT educators integrate critical-thinking through asset-based pedagogical principles to prepare students to overcome challenges and be well prepared for the ever-changing global society and workforce? What role does critical thinking play in shifting the paradigm to asset-based pedagogies, equity-focused curriculum, and instructional materials? What other critical components can further strengthen the approach of LaCTIT? The speaker will engage participants in exploring these questions and challenge the notion that ELT is methods-based, focusing on the need to promote discrete teaching practices and skills that often ignore or marginalize where and for whom instruction takes place.
Our life and work as educators have changed significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other societal and global issues. Such challenges have placed ELT educators into unprecedented times. They must deal with increasing gaps of access and equity in quality education, especially for students from remote areas and from historically under-served student populations. They must also help students cope with pandemic disruptions and combat Coronavirus exhaustion. How can ELT educators integrate critical-thinking through asset-based pedagogical principles to prepare students to overcome challenges and be well prepared for the ever-changing global society and workforce? What role does critical thinking play in shifting the paradigm to asset-based pedagogies, equity-focused curriculum, and instructional materials? What other critical components can further strengthen the approach of LaCTIT? The speaker will engage participants in exploring these questions and challenge the notion that ELT is methods-based, focusing on the need to promote discrete teaching practices and skills that often ignore or marginalize where and for whom instruction takes place.
Short Summary: The speaker will focus on the following questions: How can ELT educators integrate critical-thinking through asset-based pedagogical principles to prepare students to overcome challenges and be well prepared for the ever-changing global society and workforce? What role does critical thinking play in shifting the paradigm to asset-based pedagogies, equity-focused curriculum, and instructional materials? What other critical components can further strengthen the approach of LaCTIT? The speaker will engage participants in exploring these questions and challenge the notion that ELT is methods-based, focusing on the need to promote discrete teaching practices and skills that often ignore or marginalize where and for whom instruction takes place.
Presenters Yilin Sun Professor Emeritus/ Honorable Professor, Seattle Colleges & Wenzhou University
Redesigning TED talks to develop EFL students’ critical thinking and English public speaking skills: Implications for material development
Oral Presentation[SYMP38] Language and Critical Thinking Integrated Teaching: Content, Consumption and Production of EFL Course Materials10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 11:15:00 UTC
With the popularity of the notion that English is used for communication purposes among EFL educators and learners, as well as the increased need for postgraduate EFL students to share their ideas and research globally at international conferences, there is a growing emphasis on the development of EFL students' academic communication skills. In response to the need, the English listening and speaking courses for postgraduate students in many Chinese universities have been through reforms that aimed at transitioning the goals from the learning of daily conversational English to English for academic purposes (EAP).
While EFL students encounter great challenges when developing their English language abilities for public speaking, the deficiency in critical thinking (CT) abilities has led to many obstacles to achieving effective academic communication (Chen, 2021). Therefore, developing students' CT abilities is often included as one of the key objectives in English academic communication (EAC) courses.
Although extensive research has been carried out on the integration of CT and EFL education, much of the research up to now has tended to focus on CT and reading or writing skills (e.g., Dong, 2017; Zhou et al., 2015). Few studies have particularly explored CT in English public speaking courses (Sun, 2018). And even fewer studies have focused on material development to help facilitate the development of both CT and English public speaking skills in EAC courses.
Many EAC teachers use resources like TED talks as authentic academic speech models. Recently, there is also a growing trend of using TED talks as supplementary learning resources in EAC textbooks. However, their use of TED talks is often limited to presenting speech models, or at most, providing topics for discussions, which is far from enough to facilitate students' development of CT skills and dispositions. The purpose of this presentation is to propose an approach to redesigning the use of TED talks based on Paul and Elder's CT model and Socratic questioning (Paul & Elder, 2001). Worksheets that facilitate students' deep thinking and peer interactions are also provided. The approach provides practical implications not only for the development of EAC course materials but also for CT-oriented English public speaking pedagogy that aims at developing multiple abilities (EAP, CT and public speaking) in one EAC course.
References
Chen, Y. (2021). Language and CT integrated teaching reform on English public speaking course in the context of "new liberal arts". Open Access Library Journal, 8, 1-8. Dong, Y. (2017). Teaching and assessing CT in second language writing: An infusion approach. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 40(4), 431-451. Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2001). CT: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Sun, M. (2018). A comparative study on the assessment of CT skills of English speech learners. Foreign Language World, 187(4), 51-58. Zhou, J., Jiang, Y., & Yao, Y. (2015). The investigation on CT ability in EFL reading Class. English Language Teaching, 8(1), 83-94.
Presenters Yanning Dong Lecturer, Tsinghua University
Validating a language test task with a multi-dimensional construct of critical thinking ability and intercultural competence: From test-takers’ perspective
[SYMP38] Language and Critical Thinking Integrated Teaching: Content, Consumption and Production of EFL Course Materials10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 11:15:00 UTC
This paper conducts a validation study on a language test task with a multi-dimentional construct, integrating critical thinking ability and intercultural competence. Drawing upon 30 test-takers' task response data and 6 test-takers' test-taking process data from two parallel task forms, it explores how critical thinking ability and intercultural competence are involved in task responses and processes. The findings show that test-takers do employ critical thinking ability. The basic elements of data and claim are the most frequent in their responses and in the test-taking process they pay more attention to the standards of logic, precision, and clarity applied to the element information. Engagement of intercultural competence has also been detected in test-takers' responses and the test-taking process. The most frequently employed elements in their responses are understanding of host culture and openness, and the test-taking process demonstrates test-takers' concern on the overall writing style as well as the application of effective language for achieving communication purposes. The two parallel task forms engage test-takers quite similarly on critical thinking ability while differences are found in intercultural competence, specifically in the elements of understanding other culture and skill.
With the reform of foreign language education in China, students are expected to become capable communicators in cross-cultural context after taking English courses in tertiary education. To achieve this goal, critical thinking ability and intercultural competence have been identified as core abilities for EFL learners by official documents guiding college English teaching in China. In response, a new language test – English Test for International Communication (ETIC) – has been developed and administered to assess the core abilities. Different from conventional language testing practice which takes language ability as the single construct, ETIC has adopted a multi-dimensional construct, integrating critical thinking ability and intercultural competence. When the test results are supposed to be widely applied, it is therefore necessary to investigate how well such abilities have been reflected by the test, in other words, to validate the test. Following Bachman and Palmer (2010) AUA framework of test validation, evidence of test validation could be collected from the perspective of test developers, raters and test-takers. Although investigating test-takers performance should be the starting step and could provide most valuable information (Bachman & Palmer, 2010), relevant studies have been quite limited. In addition, to validate a language test with a multi-dimensional construct from test-takers' perspective has not yet been approached. The present study aims to address the gap by investigating test-takers' performance in a writing task from ETIC. In order to understand how the construct abilities of critical thinking ability and intercultural competence are involved in task accomplishment, this study examines both test-takers' responses and test-taking processes. To enable a confident claim about construct validity, two parallel forms of the task are included for investigating the consistency of abilities engagement across test forms. Specifically, the following research questions are answered: 1. To what extent are critical thinking ability and intercultural competence engaged in the ETIC writing task as revealed by task responses and test-taking processes? 2. Are critical thinking ability and intercultural competence equally involved in the task responses and test-taking processes of the parallel two task forms? Data are collected from thirty-six college students. Thirty participants finish the two task forms under exam-like conditions and altogether sixty responses are obtained. In order to collect test-taking process data, six participants complete the two task forms while thinking aloud, followed by stimulated recall interviews. The data are coded and analyzed by adopting Paul and Elder (2006) three-dimensional model for critical thinking ability and the adapted Deardorff (2006) pyramid model for intercultural competence. Findings can provide implications for EFL testing and teaching practice that aims at integrating multiple abilities.
Bibliography Bachman, L. F. & Palmer, A. S. (2010). Language Assessment in Practice: Developing Language Assessments and Justifying Their Use in the Real World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deardorff，D. (2006). Identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization. Journal of Studies in Intercultural Education, (3): 241-266． Paul, R. & Elder, I. (2006). Critical Thinking: Learn the Tools the Best Thinkers Use. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Cultivating critical thinking-oriented teachers in pre-service language teacher education
[SYMP38] Language and Critical Thinking Integrated Teaching: Content, Consumption and Production of EFL Course Materials10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 11:15:00 UTC
Critical thinking (CT) has been advocated as both a crucial component and outcome in many pe-service language teacher education programs around the world. To date, however, there is a dearth of research on how CT is conceptualized and operationalized in pre-service language teacher education. In particular, while CT entails various dimensions, including skill (e.g., critical argumentation and unbiased judgment), disposition (e.g., open-mindedness and inquisitiveness), and action (e.g., ethical and agentive practice towards social equality and transformation), we know little about how these dimensions are integrated to support language teachers' professional learning. In view of such research gaps, this study investigated to what extent and how a group of student teachers were prepared to become CT-oriented language teachers in a Hong Kong-based pre-service teacher education program. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews and relevant documents, the findings of the study reveal a rich yet unbalanced coverage of CT instruction, the transferability of CT learning to its teaching, as well as the rhetoric-reality gap in developing CT-related pedagogy. The findings provide useful implications at classroom and curriculum levels to facilitate the integration of CT into second language teacher education.
Based on a tripartite conceptual framework with an integrated focus on the coverage, coherence, and applicability of pre-service teacher education curriculums (e.g., Canrinus, et al., 2017; Goh & Wong, 2015), the study explores to what extent and how student teachers are prepared to become CT-oriented language teachers in Hong Kong. The findings show that the student teachers fostered their CT as both skills and dispositions through rich professional engagements (e.g., coursework, immersion, practicum, and final research projects) and continuous interactions with university-based teacher educators and school mentors. Additionally, the development of CT started from the content courses that addressed general topics, and moved to the language pedagogy courses and teaching practicum, where the participants applied CT to make sense of language teaching and learning through contextualized practices. Such a finding reveals a sense of coherence of the program that progressed with the gradual infusion of CT into the content and processes of language teacher education. The coherence and applicability of the program were also evident in the transferability of student teachers' CT learning to its teaching in language classrooms. Influenced by their own CT-related experiences, the participants learned to appreciate the constitutive relationship between CT and language education as another crucial attribute of a CT-oriented teacher. Moreover, they actively constructed their pedagogical beliefs about how to teach CT. For instance, the student teachers described a dialogic interactive approach to CT teaching derived from the modelling provided by their previous course teachers and teacher educators in the program.
On the other hand, the findings speak to the rhetoric-reality gap in learning to teach CT, which has been widely observed in many pre-service teacher education programs across the globe (Goh & Wong, 2015). While CT had been advocated in the program, there was generally an absence of practical resources and scaffolding on how to teach CT in language classrooms. Without sufficient and applicable training, the student teachers occasionally practiced CT at the surface level (e.g., during the teaching practicum) instead of approaching it as a systematic cognitive process based on relevant and meaningful content. This limitation of the program partially relates to the lack of coverage on the "action" dimension in CT instruction throughout program. As CT was mostly trained as a set of skills and dispositions that operated within individual student teachers' minds, the participants were not able to engage actively and critically with the complex institutional and socio-cultural reality for potential teaching innovation and transformation. It is therefore important for current pre-service teacher education programs to incorporate a direct focus on the teaching of CT in relation to the local school reality.
References Canrinus, E. T., Bergem, O. K., Klette, K., & Hammerness, K. (2017). Coherent teacher education programmes: Taking a student perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(3), 313-333. Goh, P. S. C., & Wong, K. T. (2015). Exploring the challenges for teacher educators. Journal of Research, Policy & Practice of Teachers and Teacher Education, 5(1), 37-45.
Examining political and ideological underpinnings in university English textbooks: A CDA and corpus linguistics approach
Oral Presentation[SYMP38] Language and Critical Thinking Integrated Teaching: Content, Consumption and Production of EFL Course Materials10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 11:15:00 UTC
China has had an ambivalent policy for the learning and teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) over much of its history. The status and role of English has thus changed over time, depending on the political period. This explicit and implicit implementation of language policy has had a particular impact not only on the content of EFL textbooks in China, but also the politics and ideologies underlying them. However, studies exploring such politics and ideologies remain sensitive areas in which little work has been done to date. By applying a combination of critical discourse analysis and a corpus linguistics approach, this paper critically investigates the political and ideological underpinnings embedded in 10 current English language textbook series that are widely used and officially approved for most Chinese universities. Unlike earlier historical periods, no explicit political philosophy is captured in any of the textbook series, reflecting China's more recent focus on wider economic engagement and the processes of globalization.
Goldberg and Noels (2006) argued that learners may gain a new perception or understanding of themselves, or, of people who speak that language, in the process of acquiring the language, and thus come to identify with that particular language community (Liu, Zhang, & May, 2022). This resulted in some cautious responses and stances toward cultural globalization, particularly the dominance of some hegemonic languages (chiefly, English). These concerns and attitudes may be reflected in educational and language policies as well as in English language textbooks in some countries, and China is a particularly interesting case in point (see also Liu, Zhang, Yang, 2022; Zhang & Liu, 2022). That said, Blommaert (2010) also asserted that these "hegemonic" languages "have not only become 'global' but also indigenized, both adapted to new communicative habits and subjected to local norms" (p. xi). Curdt-Christiansen and Weninger (2015: 4) observed that these localized trends are particularly evident in school textbooks, and they argued that textbooks, sanctioned in most cases by government bodies, represent the "official" texts that "often have an overt or covert agenda to promote/demote certain cultural values and ideologies". China's response to the challenge of cultural globalization in terms of English language education remains cautious, due to the fact that China has harboured an unstable attitude towards the learning and teaching of the English language over a long period of its history. It is understood that learning English in China exposes learners to various media, foreign cultural information, different values and life views, which may differ from the cognitive, affective and social implications conveyed through their first language and within the wider society (Lo Bianco 2009). In this sense, every choice in writing or compiling an English language textbook may reflect this caution. China has had an ambivalent policy for the learning and teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) over much of its history. The status and role of English has thus changed over time, depending on the political period. This explicit and implicit implementation of language policy has had a particular impact not only on the content of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks in China, but also on the politics and ideologies underlying them. However, studies exploring such politics and ideologies remain sensitive areas in which little work has been done to date. By applying a combination of critical discourse analysis and a corpus linguistics approach, in this paper we critically investigate the political and ideological underpinnings embedded in 10 current English language textbook series that are widely used and officially approved for use in most Chinese universities by the Ministry of Education, the central body for designing, overseeing and monitoring curriculum design textbook production. As we will report in more detail the findings in our presentation, we can briefly observe that, unlike earlier historical periods, no explicit political philosophy is captured in any of the textbook series, which reflects China's more recent focus on wider economic engagement and the processes of globalization.
Presenters Lawrence Jun Zhang Professor And Associate Dean Of Faculty, University Of Auckland
Yilin Sun
Yanning Dong
Lawrence Jun Zhang