This is the first part of highlights from the upcoming conference "The Teaching And Learning Of English In Asia : Exploring New Frontiers" to be held from June 14 to 16th in Langkawi, Malaysia. For more information please contact Dr Hisham at [email protected]
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players – Are you ready to play a role?
Doris Ka I IP
Assistant Professor
Institute For Tourism Studies, Macau
Among the different methodologies for TEFL, role-plays / assimilations have been used as a common way for fostering students’ learning and practicing the use of English, especially students’ oral skills. It is naturally essentially of great importance for college students preparing to join the hospitality and tourism industry. These students, in their future career, will need to face different people with varied backgrounds, and they will need to solve problems for these clients / customers. Consequently, the students should acquire adequate communicative competence besides bettering their mastery of the English grammar.
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Correcting final plosives: A report of using suggestive signs for improving English pronunciation among Thai speakers
Mr. Hai Yang
Miss Pranom Jitklang
Mahidol Wittayanusorn School, Thailand
One obvious characteristic of English Thai accents is the incorrect pronunciation of final plosives. A Praat analysis shows that the typical pronunciations of final plosives in Thais have catching phases, but lack holding and releasing phases. This paper gives the results of an experiment in using suggestive symbols to improve native Thai students’ pronunciations using prompted cue cards as a training method. This study proves that our strategy is a practical method to improve English pronunciation in Thai students and would be helpful in the creation of text compiling and e-learning material.
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Journeying with Reflective Journals: The Learner’s Side of the Story
Kan Ngat Har
Jabatan Bahasa Inggeris, Fakulti Bahasa & Linguistik, Universiti Malaya
This paper investigates whether the instructor’s enthusiasm with using journals as a learning tool is shared by learners. The findings were culled from a questionnaire administered to 60 undergraduates after 14 weeks of instruction in an elective academic reading course during which time the learners submitted two journal entries which were supposed to report on their insight into their learning. The findings indicate that what local learners perceive as a useful learning tool hinges very much on their idea of what it means to do well.
