ELT Connections- Volume 1, Issue 1

What should teachers know about assessment, and what should they be able to do with it?

EFL pre-service teachers’ experiences in the third space of an early community practicum

The younger the better? Assumptions in ELT

CONNECTIONS

Message of the Director of the Editorial Board

Letter to the Editor (María Jesús Inostroza)

Letter to the Editor (Diego Monasterio)

An interview with María Paz Pavez

INDEX 6-9

An interview with William Godoy

What should teachers know about assessment and what should they be able to do with it? Thom Kiddle

EFL pre-service teachers’ experiences in the third space of an early community practicum Mirona Moraru and Lucas Ríos

Coursebook Evaluation Using A Cluster Approach Thomas Baker, Kathy Montoya, Paddy Odu, Carola Villegas

Marking the English past tense: the interlanguage of a Portuguese native speaker Giovanna Brunetti and Vanessa Revheim

First and Second Language Learning: Child’s Protolanguage and Adult’s Interlanguage Juan Oyarzo

4-5 10-11 12-13 14-15 16-17 18-29 30-33 34-39 44-46

MESSAGE OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Dear Community,

It is a pleasure to be part of this academic project that started last year — amid the COVID-19 pandemic— and that today rises under Departamento de Idiomas and Escuela de Idiomas at Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, in conjunction with the recognised professional associations TESOL Chile and IATEFL Chile.

On behalf of the Editorial Committee, I would like to thank each of the authors who are part of this first issue of ELT Connections. We hope to be a bridge for expanding new knowledge and an anchor to socialise critical and contemporary issues emerging from the ELT world that often need more communication channels, thus giving space to an audience that requires permanent updates in the field.

We trust that this E-zine will be a valuable contribution for teachers, students, and the academic community in general immersed in the learning, teaching, and dissemination of the English language both nationally and internationally.

Kind regards, Prof Manuel E. Cortés, PhD Dean Faculty of Education Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, Chile

EDITORIAL BOARD

Director: Dr Manuel E. Cortés, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins

Chief Editor: Prof. Lorena Maluenda, Head of Departamento de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O´Higgins

Prof. Claudia Rodríguez, Departamento de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O´Higgins

Lorena Maluenda

has been a teacher of English since 2000. She holds a Diploma in English for Specific Purposes and a Master’s degree in Linguistics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is a Speaking Examiner for Cambridge English Assessment, and is currently Head of Departamento de Idiomas at Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago, Chile. Her interests are related to language learning through technology, teaching English as a foreign language, and international certifications in English.

Claudia Rodríguez

BA in English Literature and Linguistics and Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics in English as a Foreign Language (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile). Currently PhD candidate (The University of Warwick), and part of the teaching staff at Departamento de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins. Her main research interests include EFL teacher training and teacher identity construction.

Associate Editors:

Prof. Diego Monasterio, Departamento de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O´Higgins

Prof. Mirona Moraru, Escuela de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O´Higgins

Collaborators:

Prof. Ulises Sánchez, Head of Escuela de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O´Higgins

Prof. Bárbara Echard, President TESOL Chile 2021

Prof. Mireya Aguilera, President IATEFL Chile 2021

Prof. Billy Forward, Vice-president IATEFL Chile 2021

Maria-Jesus Inostroza Araos

J

PhD in English Language and Linguistics (University of Sheffield, UK). She also holds a BA in Education and ELT (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile). She is an assistant professor at Universidad de Concepción and a member of RICELT (Network of Chilean Research in ELT). Email: minostroza@udec.cl

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

In the last decades there has been an increase in the number of children that learn English at school as part of primary education (Garton & Copland, 2019; Rixon, 2013). This group of children would be called Young Language Learners (YLL hereafter) and will be understood as those from 6 to 10 years old learning English as part of the first four years of their primary school education.

There has been a long time assumption on the younger the better, with some elements identified in the literature used to support this early start, such as its enhancement of the use of

the language in action (e.g., Moon, 2005) and the promotion of a positive motivation (e.g., Fenyvesi et al., 2020). This assumption has influenced policy changes in primary educational curriculum worldwide (Barahona, 2016; Enever, 2011, 2019; Enever et al., 2012; Garton et al., 2013; Sayer, 2015, 2018). However, longitudinal research in the area has shown that attainment outcomes for early start do not always exceed those of the older learners (e.g., Cadierno et al., 2020; Muñoz & Singleton, 2011).

Recently, studies strongly argued that early language learning is closely related to the experiences in classroom and their learning conditions(Enever, 2019), and that the creation of an appropriate learning environment seems to have a great impact on the effectiveness of an early start (Nilsson, 2020a; Wilden et al., 2020), particularly regarding exposure, attitude and motivation (Graham et al., 2016; Muñoz, 2017). For instance, Mihaljević Djigunović (2009, 2014), described that children learning English in regular conditions (two class periods of EFL a week, classes not split into groups where the class size was up to 32 pupils, and the teacher might not have had much training in YLL) would view English as a less favourite school subject and would be part of age-appropriate class activities less often. Moreover, Nilsson (2020b) found that young language learners’ behaviour and self-concept is highly influenced by the importance of peers, teacher and classroom atmosphere, concerns about comparison to others, false fear of laughter and reluctance to guess (p. 273).

The early onset of EFL learning is an international trend that has shaped the Chilean curriculum and the Ministry of Education (MoE) decisions. The Chilean MoE has clearly argued in its EFL Curriculum Framework for Primary Education that the English language “is a tool for global communication and a way to access current knowledge and information about technology, which allows people to face the demands from society” (Ministerio de Educación, 2018, p. 264). According to this, the inclusion of the subject of English in primary education entails access to good quality education and fair opportunities. These underlying principles, put forward in good faith, would remedy the segregated educational system in Chile. However, some authors (Glas, 2008; Matear, 2008; Toledo Saldoval & Hermosilla González, 2016; Yilorm Barrientos & Acosta Morales, 2016) indicate that the idea of being part of the globalised world community is more related to improving competitiveness by providing qualified human resources to attract foreign investors. In other words, the inclusion of English at school seems to be more of an economic decision than one based on education equity. Consequently, these economic pressures seem to have led to language policy being rushed through, and therefore not effectively implemented.

At the beginning of EFL implementation in primary school, tertiary education institutions were not prepared to enforce the changes proposed by the MoE, with most Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities (CRUCH in Spanish) curricula for EFL teachers focused on secondary education. This situation has not

changed much in the last decade; therefore, and to deal with this problem, training has been offered by the EODP (English Opens Doors Program, Ministerio de Educación, 2015). Despite the MoE showing an increase in the number of teachers with training in primary, there is still a shortage of qualified teachers at this level.

Regarding early primary schools (6-9 years old), the EODP has offered training courses as Diplomas in teaching YLL in 2015 and 2016. The situations described here show that instead of implementing a thorough planning language policy, it seems to have been carried out through constant remedial actions.

In addition to the shortage of qualified teachers, the theory underlying the primary EFL policy seemed to be based on practices and literature very distant from the Chilean educational context.

In fact, in the literature on MoE documents there is no reference to investigations, local or international, which had informed the policy. This poor planning based on a result-oriented vision has led to a discrepancy between the policy expectations and the local contexts (Aliaga et al., 2015; Barahona, 2016), which has had a negative impact on learners’ performance (British Council, 2015).

Within this lack of understanding of the school classroom context, teachers have been targeted by the media as being mainly responsible for this failure (Aranda, 2011; Muñoz, 2013). In a study about primary English language teachers and their working conditions (Inostroza A. & Yilorm, 2017), teachers reported that most of their planning and material preparation time was done outside their working hours and that they covered the expenses of material design for teaching children.

Currently, there is a compulsory curriculum starting from 5th grade which is implemented with national coverage, there is a suggested curriculum for early primary education, with partial coverage, and there is also a suggested curriculum for early years education, recently launched. The continuity among those three curriculum guidelines is still pending, as there is a scarce reference to the way they articulate to support children to achieve the expected outcomes by the end of primary education. After eight years of implementation of the suggested Curriculum for early primary education (Barahona, 2016), little is known about the learning conditions (Inostroza, 2015, 2018b; Toledo-Sandoval, 2020; Ulloa Salazar & Díaz Larenas, 2018), and less is known about children’s learning experiences (Inostroza, 2018a; Tabali, 2020).

The crisis in education in Chile demands changes that bridge the gap in equality. If we assume that learning English at public schools from an early age could be a way to contribute to solving this situation, it is necessary to include teachers as key actors in policy planning. A dialogue between universities, the community, schools, teachers, learners and policy makers is needed. Finally, if the Chilean state decides to keep investing more resources in the development of English language skills, research to understand the Chilean ELT is crucial. English may open doors, but research involving teachers and children’s participation is needed to unveil where, how and why these doors can be opened.

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

How to cite this article: Inostroza, M.J. (2022). Letter to the Editor. ELT Connections, 1 (1), 6-9.

REFERENCES

Aliaga, L., Inostroza A., M.-J., Rebolledo Cortés, P., Romero, G., & Tabalí, P. (2015). RICELT: Creating a research community in Chilean ELT. ELT Research, The Newsletter of the IATEFL Research Special Interest Group, January(30).

Aranda, A. (2011). Inglés: asignatura reprobada en Chile. America Economía. www.americaeconomia.com/poli tica-sociedad/sociedad/ingles-asignatura-reprobada-en-chile

Barahona, M. (2016). Challenges and accomplishments of ELT at primary level in Chile: Towards the aspira tion of becoming a bilingual country. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.14507/ epaa.24.2448

British Council. (2015). English in Chile: An examination of policy , perceptions and influencing factors (Issue May). https://ei.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/latin-america-research/English in Chile.pdf

Cadierno, T., Hansen, M., Lauridsen, J. T., Eskildsen, S. W., Fenyvesi, K., Jensen, S. H., & Aus der Wieschen, M. V. (2020). Does younger mean better? Age of onset, learning rate and short-term L2 proficiency in young Danish learners of English. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17, 57–86. https://doi.org/10.35869/VIAL. V0I17.1465

Enever, J. (2011). ELLiE: Early Language Learning in Europe (J. Enever (ed.); 1st ed.). British Council.

Enever, J. (2019). Looking beyond the local: Equity as a global concern in early language learning. AILA Review, 32(1), 10–35. https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.00019.ene

Enever, J., Moon, J., & Raman, U. (2012). Young Learner English Language Policy and Implementation: Interna tional Perspectives. World Englishes, 31(3), 406–408. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971x.2012.01766.x

Fenyvesi, K., Hansen, M. B., & Cadierno, T. (2020). The role of individual differences in younger vs. Older primary school learners of English in Denmark. IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 58(3), 289–322. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2017-0053

Garton, S., & Copland, F. (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners. In S. Gar ton & F. Copland (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners. Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315623672

Garton, S., Copland, F., & Burns, A. (2013). Investigating global practices in teaching English to Young Learners. In S. Sheehan (Ed.), British Council ELT Research Papers Volume 1 (1st ed., pp. 35–68). British Council. http:// englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/ec/files/British Council WEB pdf_0.pdf

Glas, K. (2008). El inglés abre puertas... ¿a qué? Análisis del discurso sobre la enseñanza del inglés en Chile, 2003-2006. Revista Educacion y Pedagogia, XX(51), 111–122.

Graham, S., Courtney, L., Tonkyn, A., & Marinis, T. (2016). Motivational trajectories for early language learning across the primary–secondary school transition. British Educational Research Journal, 42(4), 682–702. https:// doi.org/10.1002/berj.3230

Inostroza A., M.-J. (2015). Examining challenges and complexities in the Chilean young learner classroom: a case of teaching English as a foreign language (Issue December). University of Sheffield.

Inostroza A., M.-J. (2018a). Chilean Young Learners’ perspectives on their EFL Lesson in primary schools. Ac tualidades Investigativas En Educacion, Universidad de Costa Rica, 18(1), 1–20.

Inostroza A., M.-J. (2018b). Using Language Practice Games to Teach English in Chilean Primary Classrooms. In F. Copland & S. Garton (Eds.), TESOL VOICES: INSIDER ACCOUNTS OF CLASSROOM LIFE—YOUNG LEARNER EDU CATION (pp. 85–91). TESOL Press.

Inostroza A., M.-J., & Yilorm, Y. (2017). Enseñanza Temprana de Inglés (ETI) en Chile: perfil profesional y condicio nes laborales del docente en ejercicio. Matear, A. (2008). English language learning and education policy in Chile: can English really open doors for

all? Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 28(2), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188790802036679

Mihaljević Djigunović, J. (2009). Impact Learning Conditions on Young FL Learners’ Motivation. In M. Nikolov (Ed.), Early Learning of Modern Foreign Languages: Processes and Outcomes (1st ed., pp. 75–89). Multilingual Matters.

Mihaljević Djigunović, J. (2014). L2 learner age from a contextualised perspective. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 419–441. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2014.4.3.3

Ministerio de Educación. (2015). Caractersticas Postítulo (2015-2016): Orientado a docentes de básica con un nivel mínimo de B1, y para docentes de inglés de media sin la especialización en básica. Ministerio de Educación.

Ministerio de Educación, C. (2018). Bases Curriculares Primero a Sexto Básico. In Unidad de Curriculum y Evaluacion (Ed.), Ba ses Curriculares Primero a Sexto básico. Ministerio de Educación, República de Chile. https://www.curriculumnacional.cl/614/arti cles-22394_bases.pdf

Moon, J. (2005). Children learning English. Macmillan Education.

Muñoz, C. (2017). Tracing Trajectories of Young Learners: Ten Years of School English Learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 37, 168–184. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190517000095

Muñoz, C., & Singleton, D. (2011). A critical review of age-related research on L2 ultimate attainment. In Language Teaching (Vol. 44, Issue 01). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444810000327

Muñoz C, A. (2013, June 2). Un tercio de los profesores de Inglés no alcanzan el manejo mínimo del idioma. El Mercurio, C9.

Nilsson, M. (2020a). Beliefs and experiences in the English classroom: Perspectives of Swedish primary school learners. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 10(2), 257–281. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2020.10.2.3

Nilsson, M. (2020b). Young learners perspectives on English classroom interaction school: Foreign language anxiety and sense of agency in Swedish primary school [Stockholm University]. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1459724/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Rixon, S. (2013). British Council Survey of Policy and Practice in Primary English Language Teaching Worldwide. British Council. http:// www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/D120 Survey of Teachers to YLs_FINAL_Med_res_online.pdf

Sayer, P. (2015). “More and earlier”: Neoliberalism and primary English education in Mexican schools. L2 Journal, 7(3), 40–56. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fr9w0gv

Sayer, P. (2018). Does English really open doors? Social class and English teaching in public primary schools in Mexico. System, 73, 58–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.11.006

Tabalí, P. (2020). Learning English as a foreign language: eliciting young Chilean children’s views (Issue February). University of Warwick.

Toledo-Sandoval, F. (2020). Local culture and locally produced ELT textbooks: How do teachers bridge the gap? System, 95, 102362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102362

Toledo Saldoval, F., & Hermosilla González, A. (2016). El aprendizaje del idioma inglés y desigualdad: formación inicial docente y propuestas curriculares para primero básico. Revista Némesis, 13, 6–22.

Ulloa Salazar, G., & Díaz Larenas, C. (2018). Using an Audiovisual Materials-Based Teaching Strategy to Improve EFL Young Learners’ Understanding of Instructions. HOW, 25(2), 91–112.

Wilden, E., Porsch, R., & Schurig, M. (2020). An early start in primary EFL education and the role of teacher qualification and teaching quality. Language Teaching for Young Learners, 2(1), 28–51. https://doi.org/10.1075/ltyl.19002.wil

Yilorm Barrientos, Y., & Acosta Morales, H. (2016). Neoliberalismo y proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa en Chile: una mirada dialéctica al estado del arte en sectores vulnerables. Revista Cubana de Educación Superior, 3, 125–136.

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

de Idiomas

de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas

de Educación

Facultad de Educación

Departamento de Idiomas

Escuela de Idiomas

Diego Monasterio

J J

Diego

is an EFL teacher. He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and is currently part of the EFL teaching staff at Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins. His research interests focus on neurolinguistics and grammar. Email: diego.monasterio@ubo.cl

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

These days, being an English teacher can open doors for international opportunities and well-paid jobs around the world. Educational institutions in continents such as Asia or Europe are posting more and more jobs with great benefits including fully furnished accommodation, round-trip tickets home, insurance, and paid vacations. Moreover, given the fact that those institutions look for highly qualified teachers (holding a master’s degree and teacher qualifications), the salaries offered are competitive and attractive. I myself have been attracted to such offers more than once and have been eager to apply for those teaching positions abroad. Those of us who love teaching English are always looking for a chance to work abroad and get international experience. However, although I hold all the necessary qualifications, there is always one requirement in particular I do not meet: being a native speaker of English. In this respect, I understand that native English teachers can provide students with great lessons to help them learn this foreign language, and they can be excellent models when dealing with pronunciation. These might be the main reasons

why institutions around the world insist on hiring native English teachers only. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that high-qualified nonnative English teachers from South America, for example, can also do the same and can help foreign students with the major obstacles they find when learning English because the teachers themselves have had to overcome similar difficulties in their preparation process such as language interference, pronunciation issues, high-levels of anxiety, among others. Then, the fact that nonnative teachers of English are left aside by these international recruiters just because they were not born in English speaking countries without even providing the opportunity for an interview seems like a possible bias.

That being said, I believe that current and future non-native English teachers in countries like Chile deserve the chance to demonstrate how useful and meaningful their lessons are for those seeking to learn English around the world. These days, teaching English is seen as a means for international communication among several countries around the world, not English-speaking countries exclusively, and language textbooks are starting to embrace this by providing teachers with language activities that talk about the culture not only in English-speaking countries, but also in nations such as Japan, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, etc. If content creators, experts in the

field, and even native teachers of English have shared the vision of English as an international language in conferences and seminars, recruiters around the world should jump on board the boat and give non-native teachers of English the opportunity they deserve. In conclusion, I am convinced that recruiters will continue to ask for all the teaching requirements they want according to their needs but offering or denying an English teacher the opportunity to seek for international development because of the country they were born in cannot continue being an issue these days. English should always open doors for all people regardless their nationality.

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

How to cite this article: Monasterio, D. (2022). Letter to the Editor. ELT Connections, 1 (1), 10-11.

María Paz Pavez

J J J

is an EFL teacher with more than 20 years of experience. She holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and is currently part of the teaching staff at Colegio San Sebastián de Melipilla. She specializes in English language teaching (high school and tertiary levels) and methodology.

Email: mariapaz.pavez@sansebastian.melipilla.cl

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARÍA PAZ PAVEZ

1. Is there anything that you wish you’d known as a first-year teacher?

The importance of empathy when teaching. We have to be able to put ourselves in our students’ shoes when teaching. That is something that has helped me a lot in all these years. There are some very hardworking grades; they are fast-learners and always do well, and therefore achieve the learning objectives rather quickly. But there are others who need more time; different methodologies and a lot of patience. So, after many years I am able to think they are all learning so, sometimes I have to stop and do things differently for their benefit. That is something nobody told me and I learnt just by doing and being empathetic.

2. What’s the best advice you’ve been given about teaching? Keep your students motivated and as happy as you can. If students are motivated to learn, everything will be easier and also me. I always try to be smiling; as nice as I can; to bring encouraging and fun activities for them to keep them happy. Therefore, I have seen those motivated students are the most hardworking and the ones who end up acquiring the language. Not only because they work during our classes but they do many things with the language outside the classroom as well.

3. In your opinion, what’s the best part of teaching? When you receive the payment! Ha ha… no, when you build a relationship with students, and going to school to teach them makes your day.

do my things the best I can, but when I´m not getting the result I hope I just breath; relax and turn the page. Some time ago, someone told me “don´t work as hard as you do; nobody is going to build a monument for you”. I try to do my best in everything I do but always thinking this is my job – a part of my life- the most important thing is my mental health; so, I go through life more relaxed and happier.

6. What is your approach to classroom management?

Be patient; try to talk to students when they misbehave. Set rules at the beginning of the year; put them into practice whenever it is needed; be empathetic; speak loudly (that always helps). That´s all.

socioeconomical issues… and when a student tells you they didn’t do their homework, you never get to know the real reason behind that. So, we have to give opportunities to our students and be patient.

9. What advice would you give to future teachers of English? English is a beautiful language that opens doors. That´s true. Teaching English is beautiful too but it´s related to vocation. If you want to be a teacher you have to be aware you will not be rich in the future. It´s a career related to helping people develop their dreams; to have more tools for communication… so if you feel that call for social service this is your place. Be patient; prepare yourself mentally and academically to do your best to prepare your students for their future.

4. What’s the hardest part of teaching? All the paperwork we have to do which most of the times is useless. Also, many times when we have a problem at work with students who do not respect our work… all that makes you feel so disappointed.

5. How do you take care of yourself so you don’t burn out?

I consider myself a very organized person; so, I try to

7. What has been the most difficult time teaching online due to the pandemic?

To have black screens and not having enough communication with students. In that system you never know if all the students are listening and doing things; so, it is very frustrating most of the time.

8. What have you learnt during the pandemic?

To be tolerant. Many students have had so many problems related to bad internet connection; mental health;

10. How do you see the future of English teaching?

I think what happened during this pandemic is a preview of how teaching in general is going to be in the near future. Everything will be more technological and less face to face. But that is related to the system of teaching. I think leaning English will always be a necessity for most people since it´s spoken everywhere and if you want to reach a higher role in society you need to be prepared with the best tools. English is one of them.

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

de Idiomas

de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

María Paz

An interview with William Godoy de la Rosa

J J

William Godoy De La Rosa

William

is teacher of EFL and holds an MA in Applied Linguistics, University of Nottingham. He has written on corpus linguistics and material design. He is especially interested in crosslinguistic influence in SLA as well as formulaic language.

Email: william.godoy@ceelechile.org

1. Is there anything that you wish you’d known as a first-year teacher?

Well, that was a few years ago, but I would´ve really liked to know the number of tasks a teacher has to carry out. I remember my first year as a teacher in a high school; I didn’t know how to complete the class record book. I guess nowadays it is possible to get a closer look at that.

2. What’s the best advice you’ve been given about teaching?

I am not quite sure if it is, actually, a piece of advice about teaching, but I always remember all my university teachers saying: You are always going to be a model for your students which means that teaching is a lot of responsibility.

3. In your opinion, what’s the best part of teaching? The best part, I think, is when you teach your passion and you spark interest in your students. For example, in a foreign language it could be vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc.

4. What’s the hardest part of teaching?

I think that the time provided in certain programmes isn’t enough to reach certain goals. Learning a foreign language, for example, takes time and some students get really frustrated when they feel their performance is weak or poorly assessed. In that kind of situations, it is necessary to give them support and explain that learning a language isn’t easy or immediate. It takes time, effort and commitment.

5. How do you take care of

yourself so you don’t burn out?

I try to make some time for myself and do different activities such as cycling, watching TV, reading a book.

6. What is your approach to classroom management? Well, I think it is necessary to reach an agreement with the group you are teaching, set up some rules and stick to them.

7. What has been the most difficult time teaching online due to the pandemic?

The hardest time, I think, has been the reliance on computers and the internet, especially at the beginning of the pandemic.

Now, I guess, most of the connection problems as well as dealing with platforms, for example, are finally solved.

8. What have you learnt during the pandemic? Apart from other real-time meeting platforms such as zoom, I also learnt the

importance of setting a time limit to your work and get disconnected.

9. What advice would you give to future teachers of English?

Be passionate, love what you do and balance your work and personal life. Don´t let teaching

absorb your life and interests.

10. How do you see the future of English teaching?

Well, I think we are going to teach in multicultural contexts, on virtual settings, and the nonnative speaker model would be enhanced more than now.

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Facultad de Educación

Vicerrectoría Académica

Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Although my main focus in this article will be on language assessment, I think that many of the ideas and challenges to teachers are also very relevant to teachers of other subjects across the curriculum, and particularly so when those subjects are taught through a different language from the learners’ own first language. I am also keen to make the point, somewhat inelegantly framed in the title, that this is not just about teachers’ theoretical knowledge, but about classroom practices, and teachers’ own competences as designers of assessment instruments, and users of them, to enhance their teaching, and their learners’ learning.

As one of my colleagues says, “Practice without theory has no head; theory without practice has no feet”.

Having started with a metaphor, I will keep the ball rolling with another – a really powerful one from Professor Lynda Taylor, President of the UK Association of Language Testing and Assessment. She invites us to consider the analogy of the process of taking a photograph – imagining with the photographer as the teacher, the camera as the assessment instrument (a test, for example), and the test-taker as the subject of the photograph. This allows us to draw parallels on many levels, but especially for this article, the empowerment of the photographer (teacher) to decide the focus of the photo, what is captured in the frame of the photograph, when and how many times to take the snapshot, and how to guide the subject to pose!

This empowerment is something which I feel is often lacking among teachers’ competences, reflected in a lack of confidence in their approach to testing and assessment, and is shared across many of the global contexts where I’ve worked with language teachers. We know that proportionally, very little attention is given to assessment theory and practice in initial teacher-training courses and programmes, whether that’s four-week intensives or fouryear degrees. There are also contexts where tests and exams can be seen as sticks to beat the learners, with the accompanying fear and pressure on teachers, and perhaps worse, as sticks to beat the teachers, when their career progress, professional identity,

Thom

is an EFL teacher with more than 20 years of experience teaching English as a second and foreign language. He has a Master’s degree in Language Testing from Lancaster University and the Cambridge Delta, and is currently the Director of Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE) in the UK.

or continued employment may be based on the exam results of their students. There may also be the fear, particularly among language teachers, that testing and assessment is all about complex statistics and terrifying concepts such as construct validity and inter-rater reliability. We also see the impact of standardised assessments across international education settings, and the feeling that these reduce learners to data sets, and neglect the individuality and

whole-learner nature of modern approaches to learning and teaching. And finally, for this article at least, the challenging contradiction that we as teachers are expected to foster in our learners those critical 21st Century skills such as creativity, teamwork, collaboration and use of digital resources; yet when these are viewed through a testing lens, they are seen as leading to one outcome… cheating! So what are those areas of language assessment competence which I feel teachers should feel confident with and empowered to use for the benefit of their learners?

Firstly, I think teachers need to understand the principles of Learning-Oriented Assessment, and particularly its intention to demystify assessment tasks for both teachers and learners, and to re-imagine typical test tasks as learning activities in the classroom. This is so that exam preparation doesn’t mean simply taking and reviewing past papers, but rather collaboratively exploring the skills which a test task is trying to measure, building those skills up, and using the feedback from this practice as feedforward, to help learners further develop that knowledge or the associated skills. A simple example might be a multiple-choice Reading Comprehension test, where the teacher asks the learners to read the text for a non-testing purpose first, then asks the learners to make their own questions for the text, and only then introduces the M/C questions… but without the answer options, to see if learners can find the answer without the cognitive load of four competing alternatives. And only as a final stage, introducing the original questions from the test, and discussing the key words

and phrases from the text which make one option correct and others wrong. Second, I think teachers need to feel comfortable with adapting or designing, and using, performance descriptors for assessment of the productive skills – Speaking and Writing. This includes using rating scales to give personalised, useful feedback to learners, and also validates a focus on productive skills in the classroom, and encourages learners to develop self-awareness and even selfassessment skills. Perhaps one of the most fundamental resources here is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and its new (2018) Companion Volume (https://rm.coe. int/cefr-companion-volume-with-newdescriptors-2018/1680787989), which really supports the understanding of how we can describe action-oriented language use at different levels across different domains of use, and for different skills. So many, if not all, language assessments claim alignment to

the CEFR these days, that an understanding of, and ability to work with the original framework can be very empowering, and something I’ve worked with teachers on for many years, in contexts from Trinidad to Israel to Poland and in Chile!

Third, I believe teachers need to embrace assessment of the four skills, but to develop their own critical perspective on the place of grammar and vocabulary within this – for example, whether grammar and vocabulary should be measured independently in a separate test paper, or whether they are better seen as enabling competences within the skills. This demands an awareness among teachers of different reasons for assessing learners, or test purposes, different methods of assessing, or item and task types, and different ways of giving feedback, with a formative purpose or a summative purpose.

A fourth aspect of teachers’ language assessment competence is the understanding of the impact of assessment on the wider educational environment. This may be at a

local level in the washback which a particular choice of end-of-course assessment method can have on the teaching and learning which precedes it. However, it can also be at the societal level in the way in which tests and exams are gatekeepers for access to privileges and progress in a given context, perhaps for entrance to or graduation from university, or migration and social mobility. The power of tests has perhaps never been stronger in a globalised world, and this places huge responsibility for quality and fairness on the designers, and also the users of tests and exams, and teachers are often both. So, I’ve laid out some key challenges for the development of professional assessment competences for language teachers in this article, and I’m well aware I haven’t even touched on the ‘elephant in the room’ –the area of online, digital, and automated assessment – which has become even more present for teachers in the last eighteen months. That’s for another article, but I firmly believe that the competences described above relate just as much to online assessment as to face-to-face or pen-andpaper assessment.

For anyone interested in profiling their own competences in the areas of teacher language assessment outlined above, I recommend the Eaquals Framework for Language Teacher Training and Development (https:// www.eaquals.org/our-expertise/teacherdevelopment/the-eaquals-framework-forteacher-training-and-development/), and specifically the section on Assessment of Learning. There are a huge number of resources supporting teachers’ continuing professional development activities in the area of language assessment, and it would be remiss of me not to mention our own

NILE Online Testing, Evaluation and Assessment course (https://www.nile-elt. com/product?catalog=Testing-Evaluationand-Assessment-Online) which I developed, and which has supported hundreds of teachers worldwide to develop their competence and confidence in assessment… something I hope I’ve helped convince you is relevant, important and achievable in this article!

How to cite this article: Kiddle, T. (2022). What should teachers know about assessment, and what should they be able to do with it?.

1 (1),

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Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Facultad de Educación

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Departamento de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

Escuela de Idiomas Facultad de Educación

International Feature with Thom Kiddle, Director of Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE)

What should teachers know about assessment, and what should they be able to do with it?

Thom Kiddle J

she has a PhD in Language and Translation Studies and an MA in Translation Studies from Cardiff University (Wales, UK). Her main research interests include EFL teacher training and the relationship between multilingualism and immigration in different geographical contexts.

Lucas

is a teacher of English from the Instituto Profesional Chileno-Británico. He holds an MA in English Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics (King’s College London).

His main research areas are gender and ELT, sexual identities and ELT and identity and teacher education.

EFL pre-service teachers’ experiences in the third space of an early community practicum

Mirona Moraru & Lucas Ríos

1.Introduction

The present article explores the experiences of three third-year Chilean EFL pre-service teachers who took on the role of teachers in a community engagement project based in Santiago, Chile. During this early community practicum, the students’ task was to conduct extracurricular English workshops for a group of pupils coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Using Homi Bhabha’s concept of third space, the article focuses on the impact that this practicum had on the professional trajectory of the pre-service teachers. During this practicum they find themselves in a third space, being neither students, nor teachers, but somewhat in-between. It is argued that this hybrid space entails a partial transition from student to teacher, which manifests itself through a series of tensions that are negotiated during this process. As a result, the article analyses some of their most important beliefs that change as a result of this practicum. The article consists of four sections. The first section introduces a brief literature review focused on the teaching practicum in Chile. The second section explains the theoretical underpinnings of Homi Bhabha’s concept of third space and its affordances to understand the experience of pre-service teachers. The third section presents the community engagement project and explains why it could be considered an early community practicum. The fourth section outlines

the methodology of the research project. The fifth section discusses the results of the article with a focus on how the early community practicum allows for a transition process from student to teacher.

2.The teaching practicum in Chile

According to Ávalos (2002, p. 109), the objective of the teaching practicum is not only to allow pre-service teachers to get closer to the professional world of teaching but also to facilitate the construction and the internalization of the role of the teacher. This is why the teaching practicum enables preservice teachers to link their theoretical knowledge with the reality encountered in the practicum centers. However, one of the most significant challenges that Chilean higher education is encountering nowadays is the ability to offer “a more rigorous and effective” teaching practicum (Centro Microdatos, 2017, p. 7). Consequently, following Contreras et al. (2010, p. 86), it is necessary to carry out research regarding the practicum in order to systematically understand what the pre-service teachers actually do, what they think about what they learn, and what the conditions under which the practicum is carried out in order to be able to rethink the development of the practicum in the teaching programs across Chile.

There is a considerable amount of research that has been carried out over the years regarding the practicum, referring to issues such as: the efficiency of the professional practicum (see Báez et al., 2015; Cornejo, 2014); the efficiency W

1This is a shortened and translated version of an article published by the authors in 2019 entitled “Transitando de estudiante a profesor: rearti culaciones en el tercer espacio de una práctica comunitaria temprana”. The original version of this article was published in Spanish and can be found here: http://revistas.uach.cl/index.php/estped/article/view/4237

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de Idiomas

de Educación

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de Educación

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Mirona

Mirona Moraru J

Lucas Ríos J J J

of the supervisor or mentor teachers (see Cornejo, 2014; Díaz & Bastías, 2012; Jofré & Gairín, 2009; Labra, 2011; Latorre, 2009; Montecinos, Barrios & Tapia, 2011); the tensions and challenges that emerge during the professional practicum (see Gorichon, Ruffinelli, Pardo & Cisternas, 2015; Hirmas & Cortés, 2015; Montecinos & Walker, 2010); or the relationship between theory and practice (Montecinos et al., 2011). Nevertheless, there is a need to further understand the pre-service teachers’ perceptions and reflections during the teaching practicum. Some authors, such as Bobadilla, Cárdenas, Dobbs y Soto (2009) and Nocetti (2016a) think that it is necessary to explore the pre-service teachers’ experiences by taking into consideration their voice as main agents in the practicum. Therefore, there are some studies which refer to this aspect (Bobadilla et al., 2009; Cornejo & Fuentealba, 2008; Díaz & Bastías, 2012; Díaz, Sanhueza, Martínez & Roa, 2010)

or which explore more in depth certain pre-service teachers’ reflections (see Barahona, 2014, 2015a, 2015b; Nocetti, 2016a, 2016b; Rittershaussen et al., 2004; Tagle et al., 2012; Williamson et al., 2015).

One of the most relevant recent studies which has focused on the EFL pre-service teachers’ voices is the one conducted by Barahona (2014; 2015a), who explores whether her participants’ reflections are in line with the objectives set out by the university and the teacher trainers. Barahona (2014, p. 119) highlights that the practicum does not only help the pre-service teachers get experience working in a school, but it also allows them to compare and contrast the knowledge acquired at university and the reality of the school. Consequently, pre-service teachers develop a more critical attitude regarding what they learn in their teacher training program and a more effective ability to deploy their knowledge in different contexts.

Nevertheless, Barahona (2015a, pp. 79-92) explains that the EFL preservice teachers interviewed highlight a series of contradictions between their

university teacher training program and their practicum performance with regards to three aspects. First, university-based EFL teacher trainers expect pre-service teachers to employ specific methodologies and teaching strategies that are not always contextappropriate. Second, the EFL preservice teachers face difficulties trying to balance their work load, between planning their practicum classes and carrying out the rest of the universitybased tasks. Third, the teacher training program expects pre-service teachers to behave as teachers inside their practicum classrooms while the school perceives them as students who cannot be granted full autonomy. These three contradictions are fundamental when trying to understand the role that the teaching practicum plays in the process of becoming a teacher.

The concept of “third space” was suggested by Homi Bhabha in his search for a new conceptualization of cultural transformation and change (Rutherford, 1990). It is a concept whose roots can be found in postcolonial theory, given that one of Bhabha’s main focus was on analyzing the social and cultural phenomena that emerged as a result of the end of the British Empire during the second half of the 20th century. On the one hand, these phenomena referred to the composition of the British society, its new characteristics and the emerging identities of the immigrant population which started arriving in the “mother country” especially after the Second World

War (see Bhabha, 2002). On the other hand, this concept has been employed to analyse other different phenomena, such as postcolonial literature (see Bhabha, 2002; Rutherford, 1990). Furthermore, the concept has been extended by Bhabha himself to understand the relationship between theory and practice (Bhabha, 1988), cultural difference (Bhabha, 2002), or political change (Bhabha, 1988), among others.

Therefore, with the concept of “third space” Bhabha (2002) tries to bypass the “politics of polarity” (p. 59) and “cultural binarism” (Rutherford, 1990, p. 211), suggesting the possibility of an articulation between the two entities. Starting from the idea that the two entities (e.g. two different cultures, two languages, two power positions) never represent fixed positions (Rutherford, 1990, pp. 210-211), the encounter between these two manifestations generates a third space (Bhabha, 1988, 2002; Rutherford, 1990). Consequently, the third space, also referred to as a “hybrid” space refers to the development of positions, cultural forms, identities, or other entities that emerge as innovative articulations between two supposed binaries. In Bhabha’s words,

hybridity [or the third space] bears the traces of those feelings and practices which inform it, just like a translation so that hybridity puts together the traces of certain other meanings of discourses. It does not give them the authority of being prior in the sense of being original: they are prior only in the sense of being anterior. The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation (Rutherford, 1990, p. 211).

Therefore, the third space refers to something essentially new, tangible or intangible. Following Moje et al. (2004) hibridity represents that possibility to challenge and remodel the two “binaries” towards new alternatives, practices, discourses, or knowledge forms. It refers to a transformation understood by Bhabha (2002, pp. 39-60, p. 273; Rutherford,

1990, p. 211) as a form of translation and negotiation of tensions and disjunctions which allows for the generation of new positions which are “neither One not the Other but, something else besides, inbetween” (Bhabha, 2002, p. 219).

Given its affordances for examining complex phenomena, the concept of third space has also been employed in order to explore the teaching practicum from the perspective of two interlinked issues: the relationship between the school and the university and the relationship between theory and practice (see Cuenca, Schmeichel, Butler, Dinkelman & Nichols, 2011; Elsden-Clifton & Jordan, 2015; Forgasz, Heck, Williams, Ambrosetti & Willis 2018; Grenfell, 1998; Jordan & Elsden-Clifton, 2014; Martin, Snow & Torres, 2011; McDonough, 2014; Trent, Gao & Gu 2013; Zeichner, 2010). This emphasis emerged as an extensive critique towards the disconnection between the university-based theoretical training and the practical school reality. Consequently, the specialized literature employs the concept of third space to explore different interaction strategies between the two spheres. One of the most recurrent strategies is the construction of a third space in the shape of an innovative collaboration between the university and the practicum centers with the aim

of balancing both the power relations between university-based teacher trainers and the school-based teacher trainers, and the type of knowledge acquired by the pre-service teachers (see Cuenca et al., 2011; Grudnoff, Haigh & Mackisack, 2017; Martin et al., 2011; Zeichner 2010).

Most studies which employ the concept of third space focus on the universityschool and theory-practice dichotomies; nevertheless, in line with Gannon (2010) and Sinner (2010), the objective of the present study is to explore the EFL pre-service teachers’ partial transition from student to teacher through an early community practicum. The article employs the third space as a concept which, as Jordan and Elsden-Clifton (2014) argue, offers “a framework to acknowledge the tensions and dilemmas of pre-service teachers on placement as they [struggle] to negotiate unfamiliar terrain”. Understanding the early community practicum that the participants of the present study carried out as a “professional rite of passage” (Gannon, 2010, p. 21), the present article explores the perspectives of the pre-service teachers regarding this transition, with a focus on the negotiations of different value systems, their identity reconfiguration and the reinterpretation of what it means to be a teacher.

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3.Homi Bhabha’s “third space”, education, and the practicum

4.An early community practicum

During the first semester of 2017, thirdyear English pre-service teachers from a Santiago-based university participated in a pilot project that offered extracurricular English language workshops. The project was developed in a subsidized school and was directed towards primary school pupils (1st-4th grades). Although in Chile English is compulsory starting from the fifth grade (Ministerio de Educación, 2012), the school offers English classes to all its pupils starting from the prekindergarten level. Located in the second commune with the highest poverty rate in Santiago (Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, 2014), the school serves socioeconomic vulnerable pupils; in this context, the teaching of English at an early age is understood as a tool that can potentially lead to social and economic mobility. However, the school receives pupils from other establishments who have not had the opportunity to learn English. Additionally, pupils with a low proficiency in English need additional support to keep up with the required pace. It is towards these two types of pupils that the workshops were directed, in order to level their English proficiency and increase their level of motivation.

The project consisted of several stages. First, the project was presented to the pre-service teachers in charge of carrying it out. Second, the pre-service teachers attended an induction session conducted by the coordinator of the school’s English department, where they became familiar with the school’s disciplinary and pedagogical environment. Third, the students observed the classes in two instances. Fourth, the group participated in a guided reflexive session around their observations, on the basis of which they did the exercise of planning a simulation class after which they received feedback from the project coordinators. Finally, the English workshops were developed. The pupils were divided into two groups:

first and second grade (17 pupils) and third and fourth grade (19 pupils). The total number of pre-service teachers involved in the project was 22. Given certain time restrictions imposed by the school, during the workshops the preservice teachers played different roles. Three pre-service teachers fulfilled the role of teachers. The rest of the students fulfilled the role of monitors, following a voluntary rotation model. The monitors offered both classroom management and personalized support in order to help the teacher meet their objectives. In addition, the entire group of pre-service teachers was divided into smaller groups in charge of planning the classes offered by the teachers and monitors.

The project could be considered an early community practicum because of four key aspects. First, it is an early practicum from a temporal perspective: it was carried out one semester before the group of pre-service teachers were supposed to officially undergo their first practicum. Second, the project can also be considered an early practicum based on the incipient pedagogical knowledge that the pre-service teachers had before this project. This is a consequence of the fact that during the first two years, the English teacher training program was mainly focused on disciplinary aspects, rather than pedagogical. Third, we consider the project to be an early practicum in light of its distinction with an initial practicum in which the focus is on observation and reflection rather than on participation. On the contrary, during the project the pre-service teachers had the opportunity to actively participate in the classroom, having a leading role. In addition, they had complete autonomy in the workshops, but they had the necessary support from the university and the coordinating teachers in the planning and design stages of the classes. Fourth, the workshops were carried out with the aim of offering a set of tools to pupils who needed extra help in their language acquisition process. Given that these pupils tended to find themselves in situations of socio-economic vulnerability, it can be argued that the project functioned as an early community practicum.

In this context, the main objective of the article is to explore the experiences of the pre-service teachers involved in this project and, through the patterns found, analyze the potential impact of this type of early community practicum on their training as English teachers.

5.Methodology

Given the focus on pre-service teacher experiences, a qualitative approach was employed. In order to gain a comprehensive perspective on this process, we collected data through three types of instruments: field diaries, reflective essays, and semistructured interviews.

First, participant observation was carried out during all the workshops. The aim was to generate a field journal of the workshops, which served as an initial exploration of this early community practice. Second, the 22 pre-service teachers were asked to write a reflexive essay about the influence the project had on their initial training as teachers. Third, based on information collected through the first two instruments, semi-structured interviews were conducted with key project participants: the three students who fulfilled the role of teachers. It should be noted that, given the focus of the study, this article is based mainly on the information provided in the interviews with the three pre-service teachers. The rest of the information was used as a complement that allowed juxtaposing and verifying the emerging themes, especially in the initial stages of the analysis.

6.Results and discussion

The proposed analysis is divided into two main parts. First, we introduce the main aspects that allow the development of a hybrid space between being a student and a teacher. Second, since “the hybridization process is accompanied by critique, rupture, and challenge towards established orthodoxies” (Grenfell, 1998, p. 20), we focus on the negotiation of transitions, reconfigurations and (self-) translations experienced by the students during this process.

6.1.Going through a role change: recognition and self-recognition as teachers

It can be argued that the main aspects that lead to the reconfigurations experienced by the pre-service teachers have a common denominator: the change of their role from students to teachers. This section details the consequences of this change in the construction of a third space. For Isabel, Andrea, and Diego, assuming the role of a teacher represents a fundamental change of position; leading the English workshops does not only involve teaching, but also a

symbolic recognition of their position from the perspective of the pupils and the establishment, as well as from their own perspective. It is interesting to note that the process of recognition of our pre-service teachers as teachers by the pupils was not always straightforward, but it rather went through a series of negotiations:

At the beginning [the children] did not take us seriously ... one day their teacher had to talk to them and tell them that we are teachers and that we do the classes for them and then little by little they began to pay more attention but at the beginning it was difficult for us (Andrea)

Given that initially the pupils did not recognize Andrea in her role as teacher, refusing to obey her, the course teacher intervened as a negotiating agent between the group and the new teacher, giving her power. At the same time, Andrea began to negotiate her recognition by the students, not trying to change the context, but trying to adapt to the reality of the classroom.

On the other hand, Isabel’s experience demonstrates the alternative where the new teacher is recognized without the need for the same level of negotiation:

The fact of being a teacher gives you certain authority because in the end children see you as the teacher ... they do not measure the difference between being a student and an English teacher, if you are the teacher, you are the teacher and it’s over, so being a teacher gives you that authority that you use in your favor to silence the children, to set rules, and to teach (Isabel)

It can be argued that this type of recognition works as a bridge for the position that the preservice teachers occupy both in front of their pupils, and in relation to their professional career. This is so because of the power they acquire in front of the pupils.

Apart from the pupils, the pre-service teachers were also recognized as teachers by the establishment:

At school they make us feel part of the educational community ... they treat us as teachers, we are teachers there ... they don’t look at you as a student carrying out the practicum, they look at you as a teacher (Andrea)

We were like any other teachers there, everyone greeted us as if we were part of the school ... the school authorities gave us absolute freedom ... we made and unmade there, that is, we were the teachers (Isabel)

It is important to underline that the institution makes pre-service teachers feel part of the educational community in a position of relative power, that is, as peers of other teachers. This is carried out through two strategies: on the one hand, the treatment that pre-service teachers receive from the establishment outside the classroom is that received by the teachers themselves; on the other hand, inside the classrooms, pre-service teachers have a very high level of autonomy, similar to that of school teachers. Consequently, they are not seen as pupils or even as students during their practicum, where the establishment is responsible for their performance. On the contrary, power relations are balanced thanks to the fact that the workshops support the school and the community. This is remarkable

as it empowers pre-service teachers in their new role and helps them reach a certain level of self-recognition as teachers:

What I liked the most [was] having the opportunity to feel like a teacher… [the project gives us the] freedom to believe we are teachers, to be teachers, for me to go and do my class with my pupils (Andrea)

The recognition and self-recognition as teachers is the key element that generates a third space in the trajectory of future teachers, allowing them to go through a series of fundamental reconfigurations in their professional identity.

6.2.The transition from student to teacher

Being in front of their pupils, negotiating their recognition and selfrecognition as teachers has a profound effect on Isabel, Andrea, and Diego. They find themselves in a third space that allows them to rearticulate a series of established orthodoxies; in turn, this gives rise to their transition from student to teacher. Specifically, we focus on two key reconfigurations that the participants emphasize in the interviews: rethinking the role of the teacher and the learning environment.

6.2.1.Rethinking the role of the teacher

Contact with the school reality and with the pupils involved rethinking the role of the teacher for the participants:

I [realized] what the role of the teacher is in the classroom, that they are not only people who transmit information, but who go beyond that (Isabel)

[I learned that] being a teacher is not [only about] studying and knowing the contents, being a teacher is a lot of things… it is standing up to teach a class, worrying about your students’ progress, [motivating them], considering the parents (Andrea)

Despite their long trajectory as pupils and students interacting with teachers on a daily basis, it is mainly in the encounter with the educational community from this new posi tion that the interviewees begin to seriously reflect on the multidimensional role of the teacher. In particular, they emphasize the importance of pedagogical knowledge over disciplinary knowledge. In addition, they realize the complementary role that teachers have, delivering values, motivating, and su pporting the student emotionally. The inter viewees also highlight the role of the teacher as a link between the school and the family and the need to possess the necessary tools to negotiate this relationship.

6.2.2.Classroom management and methodology

Another two aspects that the three interviewees emphasized were classroom management and methodology. To begin with, all three point out their low expectations of both the pupils and themselves before starting the workshops:

I thought they were going to be troublesome children ... that we were going to have to begin by trying to impose discipline ... I also thought that I would not be able to cope with the situation in case it got out of hand ... the first time I went I was super nervous, I did not know how to teach, I had never been in front of children like that, in a real classroom, so my expectations of myself were also low because I said, I don’t know [the Necessary]

Methodology, I know the basics, how am I going to do it? (Isabel)

At first I was a little scared ... I was always afraid of how to manage the children’s behavior ... it was a challenge because we were all aware that the level is different, they get bored easier, so you have to keep them busy and that was a challenge for us, how do I do it?

(Andrea)

From their role as students, the interviewees had low expectations regarding their ability to effectively structure the learning environment, especially in terms of classroom management. This may be the consequence of not having had subjects related to this aspect. However, once in the role of the teacher, they reflect on the relationship between effective classroom management and the methodology used since they see a connection between the behavior of their pupils and the strategies they use.

The interviewees’ expectations were partially met since classroom management represented one of the most significant challenges that they highlighted in the first workshops:

[The biggest challenge] was classroom management [especially in] my first teacher session (Diego)

[The biggest challenge] at the beginning was classroom management, maintaining order, trying to make them pay attention and stay calm (Andrea)

However, given the duration of the project and the certain freedom to make decisions, the interviewees had the opportunity to find ways to negotiate their role as teachers, experiment with different strategies to obtain an effective learning environment, and thus exceed their low expectations:

During the first 3 weeks it was a bit messy and when I realized what I was doing wrong, [when I understood] how to treat the children, once I discovered the problem and found the solution, they also responded in the expected way (Andrea)

This represents a process of discovery and self-discovery, as the pre-service teachers began to reflect on their weaknesses and potential solutions.

On the one hand, the interviewees break an established classroom orthodoxy where the teacher only delivers information and must be strict to maintain order:

At the beginning [I was strict] and then I began to realize that it did not work and I began to try to see what happened if a girl was allowed to distribute the guides, the girl was motivated ... you begin to understand that they want to participate in one way or another in the classroom so if you allow them, with certain limits, they will participate and they will answer (Isabel)

[The pupils] prefer interacting rather than me explaining [all the time] (Andrea)

What I learned to notice [is] the proactivity of the pupil ... I learned to interact with the pupils ... I learned that the pupils themselves have to be the ones who manage their education, so I am going to be a guide rather than a know-it-all in the classroom (Diego)

From their new position, the interviewees realize that the teacherpupil dynamic does not necessarily have to be vertical and, once this relationship is rearticulated, they begin to experiment with different other ways of relating to pupils. In addition, they also discover that it is not only

the teacher who constructs meaning in the classroom, but that the teachinglearning process is rather a negotiation and a co-construction between the teacher and the pupils.

Along the same lines, pre-service teachers rearticulate the relationship between the knowledge they have to deliver and the ways to deliver it:

7.Conclusion

We have seen that the change of role from student to teacher during the English workshops has represented a key aspect which led to a radical reconfiguration of the interviewees around aspects that influence the construction of their professional identity. The following testimony serves to understand the dimensions of this reconfiguration:

As a future teacher [I understood] that what is more important is how we teach rather than what we teach because there are several ways, that is, I can teach the verb to be in a super boring way but if I relate it to something [the pupils] enjoy, I will probably capture 100% of their attention ... I was always thinking: What I can do now to make them like [what they have to learn]? What video can I show them so that they can entertain themselves, but at the same time learn?

(Isabel)

Before the project I used to see myself as a pedagogy student, I was learning English, learning how to be a teacher and that’s it, I thought: I graduate and dedicate myself to being a teacher, but with the project I see it much closer, I no longer see being a teacher as something far away, now it’s like I am a teacher (Andrea)

In other words, the early community practicum served as a third space where the interviewees were able to begin their transition from student to teacher through a series of reconfigurations and ruptures of the orthodoxies established in their role as students. As we have seen, in the case of our

participants, the rearticulated orthodoxies refer mainly to their expectations about themselves as teachers and to the way of creating an effective learning environment. The result of being located in this hybrid space that allowed them to negotiate tensions and disjunctions is the possibility of getting involved in a process of radical identity reconstruction. In turn, this experience brings them a little closer to being a teacher on the student-teacher continuum, or as Andrea says, it allows them to “be” teachers.

To conclude, it should be noted that the aspects explored in this article represent only part of the transition from student to teacher. Consequently, it is important to continue exploring this transition process with a focus on student experiences. This type of research is significant in that it allows understanding both the students’ negotiations with the practicum centers, as well as their co-construction of their professional training process at university. This represents a key aspect when teacher training programs negotiate curricular changes in order to bridge the distance between theory and practice, as well as between universities and practicum centers.

How to cite this article: Moraru, M. & Ríos, L. (2022). EFL pre-service teachers’ experiences in the third space of an early community practicum. ELT Connections, 1 (1), 18-28.

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REFERENCES

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Barahona, M. (2014). Pre-service teachers’ beliefs in the activity of learning to teach English in the Chilean context. Kul’turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya - Cultural-Historical Psychology, 10(2), 116-122.

Barahona, M. (2015a). Contradictions in the activity of learning to teach English in Chile. In B. Selau & R. Fonseca de Castro (Eds.), Cultural Historical Approach: Educational Research in different contexts (pp. 7399). Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS.

Barahona, M. (2015b). English language teacher education in Chile: A cultural historical activity theory pers pective. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bhabha, H. K. (1988). The commitment to theory. New Formations, 5, 5-23.

Bhabha, H. K. (2002). El lugar de la cultura. Buenos Aires: Manantial.

Bruna, K. (2009). Jesús and María in the jungle: an essay on possibility and constraint in the third-shift third space. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 4, 221-237. doi: 10.1007/s11422-008-9159-0

Bobadilla, M., Cárdenas, A., Dobbs, E. y Soto, A. M. (2009). “Los rodeos de la práctica”. Representaciones sobre el saber docente en el discurso de estudiantes de pedagogía. Estudios Pedagógicos, 35(1), 239-252.

Centro Microdatos. (2017). Proyecto: “Percepción de los empleadores en cuanto a la calidad y pertinen cia de los graduados/titulados de las instituciones de educación superior que cuentan con el apoyo del MECESUP 3”. Informe Final. Facultad de Economía y Negocios Universidad de Chile. Recuperado el 18 de junio de 2018 desde http://www.mecesup.cl/usuarios/MECESUP/File/2017/publicaciones/nacionales/Estu dioEmpleadoresBIRFCMD.pdf

Contreras, I., Rittershaussen, S., Montecinos, C., Solís, M. C., Núñez, C. y Walker, H. (2010). La escuela como espacio para aprender a enseñar: Visiones desde los programas de formación de profesores de educación media. Estudios Pedagógicos, 36(1), 85-105.

Cornejo, J. (2014). Prácticas profesionales durante la formación inicial docente: Análisis y optimización de sus aportes a los que aprenden y a los que enseñan a aprender “a enseñar”. Estudios Pedagógicos, 40(1), 239-256.

Cornejo, J. y Fuentealba, R. (Eds.). (2008). Prácticas reflexivas para la formación profesional docente: ¿Qué las hace eficaces?. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones UCSH.

Cuenca, A., Schmeichel, M., Butler, B. M., Dinkelman, T. & Nichols Jr., J. R. (2011). Creating a “third space” in student teaching: Implications for the university supervisor’s status as outsider. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 1068-1077. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2011.05.003

Díaz, C. y Bastías, C. (2012). Una aproximación a los patrones de comunicación entre el profesor mentor y el profesor-estudiante en el contexto de la práctica pedagógica. Educación XX1, 15(1), 241-263.

Díaz, C., Sanhueza, M. G., Martínez, P. y Roa, I. (2010). Las concepciones pedagógicas de estudiantes en práctica profesional respecto de su rol en la enseñanza y aprendizaje del inglés en el nivel secundario de enseñanza. CONSENSUS, 15(1), 9-23.

Elsden-Clifton, J. & Jordan, K. (2015). What’s up DOCC? Creating third space courses in teacher education. Artículo presentado en la conferencia the Annual Conference of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), Darwin, Australia. Recuperado de https://atea.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/atea-2015-elsden-clifton-jordan.pdf

Forgasz, R., Heck, D., Williams, J., Ambrosetti, A. & Willis, LD. (2018) Theorising the third space of professional experience part nerships. In J. Kriewaldt, A. Ambrosetti, D. Rorrison & R. Capeness (Eds.), Educating Future Teachers: Innovative Perspectives in Professional Experience (pp. 33-47). Singapore: Springer Singapore.

Gannon, S. (2010). Service learning as a third space in pre-service teacher education. Issues in Educational Research, 20(1), 21-28.

Gorichon, S., Ruffinelli, A., Pardo, A. y Cisternas, T. (2015). Relaciones entre formación inicial e iniciación profesional de los do centes. Principios y desafíos para la formación práctica. Cuaderno de Educación, 66, 1-20.

Grenfell, M. (1998). Border-Crossing: Cultural hybridity and the rural and small schools practicum. Artículo presentado en la conferencia the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). Adelaide, Australia. Recu perado de https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED446881.pdf

Grudnoff, L., Haigh, M. & Mackisack, V. (2017). Re-envisaging and reinvigorating school-university practicum partnerships. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 45(2), 180-193. doi: 10.1080/1359866X.2016.1201043

Hirmas, C. y Cortés, I. (2015). Estado del arte. Investigación sobre formación práctica en Chile: tensiones y desafíos. Santiago de Chile: Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura – OEI.

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Martin, S., Snow, J. & Torrez, C. (2011). Navigating the terrain of third space: Tensions with/in relationships in school-university partnerships. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(3), 299-311. doi: 10.1177/0022487110396096

McDonough, S. (2014). Rewriting the script of mentoring pre-service teachers in third space: Exploring tensions of loyalty, obli gation and advocacy. Studying Teacher Education, 10(3), 210-221. doi: 10.1080/17425964.2014.949658

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Montecinos, C., Barrios, C. y Tapia, M. F. (2011). Relación entre estilos de supervisión durante la práctica profesional y las creencias de autoeficacia de los estudiantes de pedagogía en educación básica. Revista Perspectiva Educacional, 50(2), 96-122.

Montecinos, C. y Walker, H. (2010). La colaboración entre los centros de práctica y las carreras de pedagogía. Docencia, 42, 64-73.

Montecinos, C., Walker, H., Rittershaussen, S., Nuñez, C., Contreras, I. & Solís, M. C. (2011). Defining content for field-based coursework: Contrasting the perspectives of secondary preservice teachers and their teacher preparation curricula. Tea ching and Teacher Education, 27, 278-288. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2010.09.001

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REFERENCES

Nocetti, A. (2016a). Experiencia de reflexión en estudiantes de pedagogía en educación media en biología y ciencias naturales en las asignaturas de práctica pedagógica y profesional en una universidad de la región del Bío Bío, Chile. (Tesis inédita de doctorado). Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona. Recuperado el 18 de junio de 2018 desde http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/102037/1/ANdlB_TESIS.pdf

Nocetti, A. (2016b). Facilitadores de reflexión docente durante la práctica profesional en escuelas vulnera bles de Concepción, Chile. EDUCADI, 1(1), 41-54.

Rittershaussen, S., Contreras, I., Suzuki, E., Solís, M. C. y Valverde, P. (2004). Prácticas iniciales en la forma ción de educadores. Pensamiento Educativo, 35, 192-215.

Rutheford, J. (1990). The third space. Interview with Homi Bhabha. In J. Rutheford (Ed.) Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 207-221). London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Sinner, A. (2010). Negotiating spaces: The in-betweeness of becoming a teacher. Asia-Pacific Journal of Tea cher Education, 38(1), 23-37. doi: 10.1080/13598660903474171

Tagle, T., del Valle, R., Flores, L. y Ackley, B. (2012). Las creencias de autoeficacia percibida de estudiantes de pregrado de pedagogía en inglés. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 58(4), 1-12.

Trent, J., Gao, X. & Gu, M. (2014). Language teacher education in a multilingual context: Experiences from Hong Kong. The Netherlands: Springer Netherlands.

Williamson, G., Abello, E., Ferreira, S. y Espinoza, F. (2015). Formación inicial docente: Prácticas tempranas con servicio voluntario. Revista Electrónica Diálogos Educativos, 29(15), 90-105.

Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college-and-university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 89-99. doi: 10.1177/0022487109347671

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Carola is an English-Spanish Interpreter, with over 13 years of EFL teaching experience. Currently, she is teaching English at Universidad de Chile, and doing an MA in TEFL at UNAB in Santiago, Chile.

Email: villegas.carola@gmail.com

Carola

Villegas

Coursebook Evaluation Using A ApproachCluster

Kathy currently works in the elementary and preschool levels in a school in Chile and is currently doing an MA in TEFL. She periodically teaches EFL for the British Council Chile.

Email: Kath.montoyar@gmail.com

Paddy

hails from Nigeria, and he is currently an Ambassador to English Opens Doors Program Chile. He has 6 years international teaching experience and is currently doing an MA in TEFL at UNAB.

Email: paddysworldsix@gmail.com

Thomas

has worked with EFL students from elementary to university level. He is the Past-President of TESOL Chile (2010 – 2011). Currently, he is doing an MA in TEFL at Universidad Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile.

Email: thomasbaker1999@gmail.com

Odu Kathy Montoya Thomas Baker

Abstract

This article describes a coursebook evaluation instrument using a cluster approach. We propose this instrument for a pre-use evaluation. It makes good use of the limited time teachers have available. It aims to develop a group consensus about the merits of a coursebook. This is important because the perfect coursebook does not exist. Thus, the support of the group is vital to the successful implementation and use of the coursebook.

Paddy

The purpose of this article is to describe a pre-use, coursebook evaluation instrument using a cluster approach. A group of four MA TEFL students followed the same procedure outlined by Tomlinson (2003, p. 23), to evaluate the Chilean 6th grade English coursebook, “Get ready with English 6!” (Mineduc, 2021). The evaluation instrument contained one hundred and one (101) questions. We used an innovative cluster approach, in five categories, to facilitate both a pragmatic and pedagogic appraisal of the coursebook. Our evaluation is important because recent studies in Chile (Guernica Consultores, 2016; Estudios y Consultoría Focus, 2017; EDECSA, 2017) have found that many teachers have an unfavorable opinion of the English textbooks provided by the Ministry of Education (hereafter Mineduc). Therefore, there is a need for this kind of teacher-designed, coursebook evaluation.

Firstly, the development of our evaluation instrument was a collaborative process. To begin, each member of our team independently designed an assessment instrument. This included the pragmatic and pedagogic concerns we believe the coursebook should address. Next, we met to consolidate our efforts into one final instrument. At this meeting, rather than select the best model of the four presented, we decided to respect the knowledge and

experience of each group member by clustering all of our questions into five categories. Consequently, a potentially time-consuming task (answering 101 questions), now requires only 15 – 20 minutes. This makes the best possible use of the limited time teachers have available.

Secondly, this instrument is intended for use as a collective evaluation tool by any group of teachers working in the same English department. It aims to help develop a group consensus about the merits of a textbook. Using a 5-point Likert scale provides a quantitative reference while still allowing a subjective, individual judgement. This helps build a consensus within the group.

Consensus building is a Chilean cultural characteristic. This is leveraged to have the support of the group for the final decision. It is important because the perfect textbook does not exist. According to Tomlinson (2003), modifying, adapting and supplementing this coursebook is to be expected. The support of the group, therefore, is crucial to the successful implementation and use of this coursebook.

Thirdly, with our instrument now in place, we could proceed to the next stage, the actual evaluation of the coursebook.

In order to avoid biased impressions, we decided to evaluate the coursebook in isolation, with no input, knowledge, or

guidance from any of the other members. That said, collectively our group has accumulated over 50 years of EFL teaching experience.

This is an asset for us, because we bring a wide range of teaching and learning experiences to this task. For example, one member of the group currently works in the private sector, with a binational organization. Previously, this member was part of the English Opens Doors Program, a joint effort by the United Nations and Mineduc to promote the teaching and learning of English in Chile. Another works in the tertiary system, teaching English to future lawyers at one of the leading universities in the country. Another teacher is employed in the private sector, working with elementary students at the target level for this evaluation, sixth grade. Finally, one member of the group has over twenty years of experience, working in both the public and private system, from tertiary level to elementary level, even serving one term as the President of TESOL Chile in 2010.

As might be expected, given the wide range of experience within the group, our individual results were not convergent. One member tallied 70 points out of a possible total of 85. Another teacher tallied 60 points and a third teacher tallied only 42 points. We had the foresight, however, to hold one teacher’s evaluation in reserve

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to facilitate an odd number of evaluators. The evaluation of the teacher-centered who teaches future lawyers at the university level was not among the evaluations mentioned already. The average score we arrived at was 57 points. We believe another group of evaluators will likely have a different average score than we did.

Nonetheless, we had a significant difference (28 points) between the highest and lowest scores. We therefore asked our classmate who had not originally evaluated the textbook to do so now, without being told any of the original scores. The result was 70 points. The reason given by both teachers (who scored 70 points) was the fact that the book covered all of the learning objectives stated in the curriculum. This was very important to them in their scoring.

The teacher scoring the coursebook at the lowest level stated that the teacher’s guidebook used the PPP paradigm throughout the book. This behavioristic approach, based on the belief that learning happens in a linear fashion, has been widely discredited in ELT over the past 20 years. Moreover, it is teacher centered in the presentation and practice phase. In

the production phase, it prescribes that the grammar presented and practiced now be produced. This is not how realworld communication works. Overall, it is inconsistent with the communicative methodology the curriculum calls for. The more moderate teacher (who tallied 60 points) mentioned neither of these points. They felt that the book had much to recommend itself to teachers. The major observation against the book, however, was that it often failed to account for students’ prior knowledge. This teacher identified many instances where activities began by pre-teaching vocabulary, but totally disregarded what students already knew about the topic.

We highlight our differences here for a reason. Our aim with this instrument is not to condemn the book. On the contrary, our goal is to facilitate a group consensus. The team’s ultimate decision, to accept or reject, will have a solid pragmatic and pedagogic foundation underpinning it. If the team feels like the book, despite its known shortcomings, will benefit their students’ learning, they will accept it for implementation. If on the other hand, the book will not benefit their

students’ learning, the team will reject it, even if it has known strengths. This group consensus, we believe, is critical to the successful implementation and use of the coursebook.

In conclusion, we recommend this evaluation instrument without reservation for teachers working in contexts similar to our Chilean context. Obviously, that includes all of Latin America. Further, we believe it holds value even for teachers who do not have the possibility to choose their own coursebooks, as we do in Chile. As a final reflection, we would like to share four reasons for our recommendation. One, evaluating coursebooks is a good professional practice in order to continue growing and developing as an educator (Tomlinson, 2003). Two, it acquaints you with the strengths and weaknesses of your coursebook. Three, it puts you in a position to recommend a coursebook to your school leadership team that will better serve your students’ needs. Four, and most importantly, it ultimately makes you aware of your own strengths, weaknesses and preferences as a teacher. These potential benefits are well worth the time you invest in evaluating your coursebook.

APPENDIX 1

*SCALE:

REFERENCES

TOTALLY DISAGREE

Category & Subcategory

Category 1. Curriculum – Objectives aligned w/curriculum? Integrated skills?

A. Methodology: Does the methodology match the curriculum?

B. Speaking – Contextualised? Challenging? Interesting? Right Level? Motivating? Promotes meaningful communication?

C. Listening – Pre-, While- Post Activities?  Challenging? Contextualized? Right Level? Progression in complexity?

D. Reading - Pre-, While- Post Activities?  Challenging? Right Level? Diversity of topics? Adequate quantity of text?

E. Writing - Purpose? Audience? Genre? Interesting? Right Level? Challenging? Motivating?

F. Vocabulary – Contextualised? Cognates? Lexical sets? Right Level? Progression? Concrete and abstract vocabulary? Recycling?

G. Grammar - Accuracy? Fluency? Collocations? Functional? Socio-culturally situated? Progression from simple to complex? Recycling?

H. Pronunciation – Phonology practice adequate, contextualized and recycled? Connected speech? Appropriate?

I. Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) – Analysis? Synthesis? Inference? Evaluation? Creativity? Critical thinking? Problem solving? Debate?

J. Metacognition – The processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and performance.

K. Learning Strategies – Helps students learn how to learn? A person’s way of organizing and using a particular set of skills in order to learn content or accomplish other tasks.

Category 2. Topics – Current? Unbiased? Culturally relevant? Motivating?

A. Authentic: Real world? Interesting? Local and  target culture inclusion? Motivating? Disability? Progression of knowledge?

B. Sensitivity: Gender? Social class? Cultural? Economic? Political? Environmental?

Category 3. Activities - Fun? Challenging? Right level? Cater for different learning styles? Pairwork? Groupwork? Teamwork? Gamification?

EDECSA, (2017). Proyecto de usabilidad de textos escolares en enseñanza básica:

final. [Usability project for elementary school books: Final report.] Encargado por [Commissioned by] MINEDUC y PNUD, Chile.

Estudios y Consultorías Focus, (2017). Recursos digitales y su impacto en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje: Informe final [Digital resources and their impact in the teaching and learning process: Final report.] Encargado por [Commissioned by] MINEDUC y PNUD, Chile.

Guernica Consultores S.A. (2016). Estudio de Uso y Valoración de Textos Escolares: Informe final. [Study of the use and valuation of textbooks: Final report.] Encargado por [Commissioned by] MINEDUC y Oficina Regional de Educación para América Latina y el Caribe (UNESCO). Santiago, Chile: María Pía Olivera Vidal.

Tomlinson, B. (2003). Developing materials for language teaching. London, UK: Continuum.

A. Projects – Variety? Posters? Presentations? Roleplays?

B. Social skills – Holistic Development? Citizenship? Democratic?

Category 4. Layout - Attractive? Color? High-quality images? Print? Graphics? Contextualised? Informative?

Category 5. Cost – Good value? Teacher’s Guide present and matches the student book? Workbook? Multimedia? Published within the last 2 years?

Teacher’s guide is useful for lesson planning and yearly planning?

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Marking the English past tense: the interlanguage of a Portuguese native speaker

investigated in many studies, among which of particular interest is the analysis of the English past tense production by a group of adolescent native speakers of Spanish by Adamson et al. (1996).

1.Introduction English past tense in free speech.

Globalization today has created a world in which people are characterized by great mobility. Some people move just for the pleasure of discovering a new place and a new culture, others move to another country to improve their knowledge and level of education, and others leave their homeland seeking better job opportunities or a better lifestyle. Whatever the reason, this great mobility results in an increased necessity to know a second language. This study will exclusively focus on second language acquisition (SLA), a term that can be defined as “both the study of individuals and groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first one as young children, and [as] the process of learning that language” (Saville-Troike, 2012, p. 2).

The field of SLA, born in the 1960s, sheds light on the process through which people acquire a new language, and it has developed a wealth of new theories and hypotheses linked to this process. Among these, one of the basic concepts is interlanguage. Conceptualized by Selinker (1972), it is defined as the language developed by the learner during the processes of acquisition of the second language, which continuously evolves into the target language.

The present study focuses on the interlanguage of a Portuguese native speaker whose L2 is English. The analysis investigated, in particular, his use of the

Different scholars have investigated the acquisition and use of English past tense by L2 English speakers. Wolfram (1989) in his work about the speech productions and the narration of past events by different groups of Vietnamese speaking English as L2, noted that the use of the past tense is heavily influenced by different linguistic variables including the regular or irregular past tense form; the phonetic structure of the past tense form; the phonetic shape of the irregular past tense form; the phonological context in which the past tense is used; and, finally, the frequency of use of the irregular past tense (Wolfram, 1989, p. 193).

The analysis of the data showed that replacive forms of the verb (such as have/ had) are less used in the past tense forms than suppletive forms (such as go/went) for all the tested groups. These data led to the assumption that, although we have to take into consideration all the above mentioned linguistic variability, one of the possible reasons for the use or the non-use of past tense might be explained with the “principle of perceptual saliency” (Wolfram, 1985), according to which the more phonetically distant the past tense form is from the present tense, the more it will be marked (Wolfram, 1989,p. 191).

The variation of the past tense marking in English L2 speakers has been further

The data obtained in this study have been compared with the data obtained by Wolfram (1989), and it has been noted that the results were almost identical, since the irregular past tenses are more often marked than the regular ones. The Spanish adolescents, moreover, presented the same exception to this rule with replacive verbs, just like the Vietnamese speakers. Both groups, in fact, tended to mark less the replacive forms of the past tense. Since the replacive past tense verbs differ from the present tense just for the final consonant or vowel, this might confirm the principle of perceptual saliency (Adamson et al., 1996, pp. 128-129).

Giovanna

is a teacher of English language and literature at the secondary school Istituto Di Rudinì of Palermo (Italy).

After graduating in Languages and Literature at the University of Palermo (Italy), she obtained a MA at the University of Mississippi (USA) in 2017, where she also taught Italian and English.

Email: giovanna.brunetti@live.it

In addition, the analysis of the data showed that the Spanish adolescent speakers tended to avoid the use of the regular past tense morpheme -ed more frequently in pausal position or before a consonant than before a vowel. The scholars linked this phenomenon to the interference of Spanish phonotactic rules. Spanish, in fact, does not allow word final stops, and in the case of words that present these features (such as sed -thirst, or usted -you plural) the final stop is usually pronounced as a postdental or interdental fricatives, or it totally disappears (Adamson et al., 1996, p. 131).

In light of the studies presented, thus, we will try to analyze our subject’s production of the past tense, trying to understand if the abovementioned studies succeed in explaining his performance, or if our data presents different features.

J J J

Vanessa

is a lector of English Teaching Methods and Practicum at Universidade do Estado do Mato Grosso, Brazil. She has a B.A. in Portuguese and English Languages and Literature from the Catholic University of Santos (Brazil), a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) program at Yale University (USA), and an MA in Modern Languages from the University of Mississippi (USA), where she also taught Portuguese and English.

Email: vanessa.cunha@unemat.br

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Giovanna Brunetti Vanessa Revheim

JJJ

Giovanna Brunetti & Vanessa Revheim

2. Methodology

2.1 Participants

The subject of the study is a young Brazilian man, here called S, who moved to the United States to study English. He is 23 years old and arrived in Oxford, Mississippi almost four months ago to enroll in the Intensive English Program at the University of Mississippi.

The subject, a Portuguese native speaker, has some knowledge of English, since he had studied it in high school in Brazil. He had a fifty-minute English class once a week in a classroom of 40 students, and the grammar-translation method was used without any interaction in English among students.

Once in the United States, he has been studying English at the Intensive English Program for four months, studying five days per week from 8:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. The subject takes classes of Grammar, Listening, Speaking, Writing and Reading. Moreover, the subject uses English outside class on a daily basis, since he usually spends time with American students.

2.2 Tasks

The subject has been interviewed four times; each interview was recorded and transcribed. The first interview was meant to provide an insight into his interlanguage and his level of proficiency in English. For this reason, we conducted an interview based on his daily activities, his life in the USA, his opinion about the host country, his past experience and his future plans.

The data collected in the first interview showed that the subject made different mistakes, indicating that his English is not proficient yet. The main peculiarities found were pronunciation issues, the use of plural form with adjectives and the almost total absence of the past tense during his narration of past events. In order to better understand the nature of the above-mentioned errors, we conducted a second interview, during which we asked more questions and invited him to complete some tailor-made tasks. These tasks were designed to create opportunities to elicit responses concerning past tense verbs, pluralization of adjectives, and future tense usage. In particular, the tasks about past tense and future tense were two different exercises that can be called “watch and tell”. In the tasks about the past tense, the subject watched two videos and was asked to narrate what had happened in both of them (See Appendix A, task 1). For the task used to elicit future tense, on the other hand, we asked the subject to look at some pictures of a character doing typical daily actions, and we asked him to tell us what the character’s plans for the day were (See Appendix A, task 4). Another two tasks were used during the interview: One composed of pictures that would elicit plural forms of nouns and adjectives (See Appendix A, task 3), and a “fill in the black” task, used to elicit difficult and unusual verbs. This latter task was used to test if the subject overgeneralized the morpheme -ate to create

verbs from nouns (See Appendix A, task 2).

Thanks to the data obtained in the second interview, we gained a better picture of the subject’s interlanguage. Although he still made some mistakes with the plural form of nationality adjectives, he was able to correctly use the structure in other circumstances, and he correctly used the future tense. As far as the past tense is concerned, we noticed that the subject entirely avoided the use of past, although in some rare cases he used irregular past tenses. We thus decided to focus our study on his use / avoidance of this grammar structure.

In order to obtain data about this grammatical structure, we interviewed the subject a third time, asking him to complete four different tasks linked to the use of the past tense. The first task, called “the job interview”, was a mock job interview during which the subject was asked to answer questions about his personal background, previous job experiences, reasons why he had left the job, etc. The aim of the task was to create a conversational situation in which the subject could use the present and past tenses, (See Appendix B, task 1). The topic of the job interview was also used in order to stimulate more formal speech. In the previous interviews, in fact, the subject seemed to avoid the use of past tense during informal free conversation. As a consequence, we wanted to test whether in a formal situation, such as a job interview (although not real), he would have produced more “grammatically correct” language by using the past tense or if, as demonstrated by Prevost & White (2000, p. 129), the pressure involved in free speech conversation affects the L2 speaker’s ability to use inflected forms in real-time. Moreover, the subject had been informed that the interview was about his previous experiences and academic studies, which implied that the exercise clearly required the use of the past tense.

The second task was inspired by the grammaticality judgment tests. The subject, in fact, was asked to read some sentences and to judge which sentences were correct or wrong. Whenever the participant judged a sentence as incorrect, we asked him the reason for his judgment (See Appendix B, task 2). This was the first of the three tasks created to test the participant’s metalinguistic awareness, i.e., his ability to reflect on and to use language structures (Nagy & Anderson, 1995, p. 2). In particular, the purpose of the exercise was to understand if the subject has a passive or an active knowledge of the past tense. Asking him to judge the grammaticality of sentences and requiring an explanation for his choice could show us if he had some knowledge about the use of the past tense or not. This task, along with the following two, might have demonstrated whether the subject had been formally instructed or not.

The third task’s aim was to test the subject’s active competence of the past tense. We therefore showed him a paper with six sentences in the simple present tense and asked him to turn them into past statements, using the simple past form (See Appendix B, task 3).

The fourth and final task follows the third in testing the active

competence of the participant on the past tense. This last exercise was composed of nine sentences containing a total of thirteen blanks, each of which was preceded by the infinitive form of the verb in brackets. We asked the subject to fill in the blanks using the past tense of the indicated verbs (See Appendix B, task 4). The task required the use of both regular and irregular verb forms, including the ones we had previously used in past interviews. (e.g., ate, found, was).

2.3 Procedure

All the interviews were run by one interviewer at the University of Mississippi and were digitally recorded. The tasks were organized in Power Point slides and were presented to the subject on a laptop. Before starting our data analysis, we transcribed each interview, in order to have easier access to the structures used by the subject.

To be sure that the interview transcripts were correct and that nothing had been lost during the transcription stage, each text was reviewed by a member of the research team different from the one who had done the transcription.

3. Results

During the first interview, the subject (S) despite talking about past experiences, almost never used the past tense, showing a preference for the present tense. For this reason, as already mentioned, we tested our informant on this grammatical aspect.

The results of the second interview show that the subject was able to understand and answer all the questions included in the exercise (Appendix A, task 1). After watching the first and second videos, the subject gave a few examples of actions that happened in both the stories; however, he continued using the base form of all verbs.

(1) the bird light on, the, the…I don’t know what...

(2) he change his mind, he just find a new friend

Even though S does not use the past tense when narrating past events from both movies, he did use the irregular past tense in two moments of the interview. The first, when explaining what happened to a character, and the second when he was asked by the interviewer whether he liked video games.

(3) he eat, he ate the (...) the turkey and after he feeling full, but he (?), he find other cake, this is amazing.

(4) yeah, when I was young.

Although the subject hesitated, he self-corrected and provided the correct past form of the verb ‘to eat’. The subject also hesitated and repeated the verb ‘to find’, but we were unable to confirm whether he had given the correct form of the verb,

since the first attempt was inaudible. We could also note that S tends to narrate the events as they were happening at that moment, thus using a reduced form. In some cases, S also uses direct speech.

(5) and...the dog show this...this stupid boy, how he can’t enjoy the life.

(6) he just “oh, get out…. Because I don’t like you...” (7) “whatever, I prefer my videogame”

The four tasks presented during the third interview aimed to elicit past tense constructions. In order to present the results more clearly, they will be sub-divided into the four tasks: the job interview, the grammaticality judgment test, turning present statements into past ones and filling in the gaps.

3.1 The job interview

During his performance as a job candidate, the subject easily understood and answered all the questions asked by the interviewer. He demonstrated that he has some knowledge of the past tense since he used the correct verb form on many occasions. However, we noticed that in almost all of his utterances he tended to use the past tense only for the first verb of the sentence and not for the following ones:

(8) I worked in this is one restaurant inside on hotel and I worked in 2013 and my job is making one ugly food make beautiful food (9) this job is...was important for me because learn a lot (10) I started in 2014 and I finish in 2015

3.2 Grammaticality judgment test

As mentioned above, this task contained sentences with past statements, some of which had verb errors (i.e., past sentences with verbs in the present tense). We tried to focus on verbs and kept sentences as clear as possible, with easy vocabulary and only few sentences using the present perfect tense as distractors. We noticed that the subject was unable to identify some errors even with written sentences. At times, he hesitated, providing the correct answer after the second attempt:

(11) My friends <long pause> comes. No, my friend, my friends came.

In this example we can see that S realizes that the verb form is incorrect, but first applies the plural form to the verb. Finally, he realizes that the sentence is a past statement and, therefore, the verb should be in the past tense as well.

Although he could not identify all the mistakes, the subject was able to identify some of the verbs immediately after the sentence was presented, even in the case of irregular ones:

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(12) Last week I celebrate my birthday. My friends come and we have a big pool party.

Celebrated, it’s not in the past.

(13) After seven years of studying, Lara get her PhD yest erday.

Got!

3.3 Turning present statements into past ones

In this exercise, the subject demonstrated that he is aware that some verbs are regular and some others have irregular forms. When the subject did not know or remember the past form, he either tried to think of a possible irregular form or applied the suffix -ed to the base form, as we noticed in the following example:

(14) S: Wait...okay, ah ... wet?

(15) I: You know if you are in the middle of a conversa tion and you have to say ‘we wait’ in the past, how would you say it?

S: Probably...we waited.

Although he seems to be fully aware that verbs take either -ed or feature irregular forms, he does not seem to have acquired the rule for negative sentences. Therefore, he maintains the auxiliary in the present tense, modifying the main verb. The same happens with interrogative sentences:

(16) Do you ate pizza on the weekend?

(17) He doesn’t slept in the bed. He slept in a sleeping bag.

(18) Do you ate pizza on the weekend?

3.4 Filling in the gaps

The aim of this task was to help us check hypotheses raised by the analysis of the previous interviews and tasks and provide us with more data. The subject’s answers, indeed, confirmed the fact that he does not know the negative past form:

(19) I.. in the past...had but I, I not had Although he decided to use such form, he realized that his choice might not be correct, which is another inte resting feature of his interlanguage:

(20) Because I don’t had...ugh, this is weird. Overall, he managed to provide the correct past tense of all verbs:

(21) We ate too much chocolate yesterday because it was Easter.

(22) My brother worked at Toyota for 25 years but now he is retired

4. Discussion / Conclusion

The data collected during our three interviews shows that the subject has some knowledge of the English past tense since the judgmental task demonstrated that he was able, even though with some uncertainty, to detect the wrong sentences and to correct them. However, he has not totally acquired the structure yet since he still presents some uncertainty and produces some errors.

Moreover, after the analysis of the mock job interview, we might assume that the subject is still at the stage defined by McLaughlin as “controlled processing” (as cited in SavilleTroike, 2012, p. 78). It appears, in fact, that he is monitoring his speech, and thus, he uses the correct forms at the beginning of the utterances but, as he goes on speaking, his level of attention decreases, resulting in mistakes as in examples (8) and (10).

In support of this claim, we also noticed that in examples (3) and (9) the subject corrects himself, changing his first choice of the present tense to the more correct simple past form. Self-repairs, in fact, involve a certain level of uncertainty that, as demonstrated by Kormos (1998, p. 218), is usually linked to the monitoring processing. The subject, thus, has not automatized this tense form and he is still controlling his performance.

Another interesting aspect of the subject’s interlanguage has also been shown in examples (15), (16), (17) and (18), in which we can see that, although S is fully aware of the regular past form rule and also knows many irregular forms (e.g., ate, slept, saw), he does not seem to have acquired the rule for negative sentences. Therefore, he maintains the auxiliary in the present tense, modifying the main verb. This feature, that also appears when dealing with interrogative forms in the past tense, could suggest that his acquisition of the past tense is still in progress. Overall, comparing the results of this study with the ones of Wolfram (1989) and Adamson et al. (1996) is not an easy task. The data, in fact, shows that the patterns of usage of the past tense are quite uniform. This demonstrates that the subject is still acquiring the structure and tends to use it only when totally focused on it, such as during explicit exercises, and to avoid it during free speech. His non-use of the past tense, moreover, cannot be explained with the principle of perceptual saliency nor with the phonotactic structure of his L1, since it is not linked just to a specific past tense form (i.e., replacive forms, final stops of the regular past tense), but it is generalized to all the past tense forms.

REFERENCES

Adamson, H. D., Fonseca-Greber, B. B., Kataoka, K., Scardino, V., & Takano, S. (1996). Tense Marking in the English of Spanish-speaking Adolescents. In R. Bayley, & D. R. Preston (Eds), Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Variation (pp. 121-134). Philadelphia: John Benjamins North America.

Kormos, J. (1998). The effect of speaker variables on the self-correction behaviour of L2 learners. System, 27 (2), 207-221

Nagy, W. E., Anderson, R. C. (1995). Metalinguistic awareness and literacy acquisition in different lan guages. Technical Report, 618. Center for the Study of Reading: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Prevost, P., & White, L. (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement”. Second Language Research, 16, 103-133.

Saville-Troike, M. (2012). Introducing second language acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Selinker, L. (1972), Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209–241.

Wolfram, W. (1985). Variability in tense marking: A case for the obvious. Language Learning, 35, 229-253.

Wolfram, W. (1989). Systematic Variability in Second-Language Tense Marking. In M.R. Eisenstein (Ed.), The Dynamic Interlanguage (pp. 187-197). New York: Springer US.

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First Task. Third Task. Adjectives – qualifying plural names. Second Task. Fourth Task.

First Task. Third Task.

Second Task.

Fourth Task.

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First and Second Language Learning: Child’s Protolanguage and Adult’s Interlanguage.

Juan Oyarzo

Juan

Is a teacher of English as a foreign language, currently working as an instructor at Departamento de Idiomas, Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins He holds an MA in Applied Linguistics to EFL and a TEFL Professional Certificate. His research interests are related to unveiling the teaching potential of the Conceptual Metaphor theory. Email: jjoyarzo@uc.cl

JWhat exactly is the relationship between age and language learning? It is said that infants, in comparison to adults, are more effective and thorough agents in learning a language. This assumption relies upon different theories that have been put forward to emphasize and address the processes involved in the acquisition of the first and second language. Consequently, similarities and differences can be clearly established. On the one hand, authors such as Ellis (1997) state that there are comparable developmental sequences in both the L1 and L2 learner (p. 20). For instance, the silent period, formulaic speech, and structural and semantic simplification are present in both cases. On the other hand, explicit divergences can be observed between first and second language learning, in studies that theorize on how infants acquire their mother tongue. Accordingly, one important phenomenon to highlight is how the features of a child’s protolanguage differ from adults’ interlanguage, resulting in a more proficient development of the target language by children.

Initially, when a child is learning his/her first language, children undergo a process which different authors have referred to as protolanguage. This is a feature of the infant’s emergence into meaning. These meanings develop around motifs. Halliday (1995) points out that such linguistic motivations can be labelled as: “I (don’t) want/(don’t) give me (instrumental); do this for/with me (regulatory); let’s be together, you & me (interactional); I am curious about/(don’t) like that (personal), and may extend to let’s pretend (imaginative) and what’s that? (heuristic)” (p. 398). Hence, it can be inferred that the most relevant feature of the protolanguage is that it is a system of social signs. This stable scaffolding is, therefore, construed around a constant tracking (evidently, self-unconscious) and interaction with the caregiver, which in a sense prevents the child from getting stuck in a particular phase of development. As a result, this intermediate state or transition process concludes in the mastery of a language.

Likewise, the transition from the adult’s

L1 to the target or second language has been given the name of interlanguage. The term interlanguage (IL) was introduced by the American linguist Larry Selinker to refer to the linguistic system evidenced when an adult second language learner attempts to express meanings in the language being learned (Tarone, 2006, p. 747). Therefore, as the learner already possesses a mother tongue, features of his/her L1 are preserved during the transitioning stage, producing inaccurate and incomplete linguistic constructions. Richards (1992) explains that in language learning, learner’s errors are the result of “several different processes” (p. 186). These processes include: (a) borrowing patterns from the mother tongue; (b) extending patterns from the target language: and (c)

expressing meanings using the words and grammar which are already known. Such processes are highly complex and are based upon the best attempt of learners to provide coherence and systematicity to the linguistic stimuli surrounding them. In this sense, Brown (1994) states that “by a gradual process of trial and error and hypothesis testing, learners slowly and tediously succeed in establishing closer approximations to the system used by native speakers of the language” (p. 203-204).

Concretely, it can be said that protolanguage and interlanguage share the characteristic of being the prior stages in both first language and second or foreign language development respectively. Nevertheless, the degree of achievement in the mastering of

a second language by an adult learner bears no resemblance when it is compared to a child’s proficiency and effectiveness in his mother tongue. This disparity is caused by a central aspect of any interlanguage: the fact that it ultimately fossilizes. That is to say, as Tarone (2006) suggests, “it ceases to develop at some point short of full identity with the target language… thus, the adult acquiring learner never achieves a level of facility in the target comparable to that achievable by any child the his/her L1” (p. 747).

Further explanations on the reasons behind the appearance of fossilization are presented by Ellis (2003) who believes that “the possible causes for fossilization are suggested to be age, lack of desire to articulate, communicative pressure, lack of learning opportunity, and the nature of the feedback on learners’ use of L2” (p. 353).

In conclusion, one fundamental distinction between first language and second language learning can be observed when analyzing both a child’s protolanguage and the adult’s interlanguage. These differences are reflected on the extent to which the target language (whether it be the mother tongue or the second or foreign language) is properly performed. Thus, it has been shown that a mature second language learner’s interlanguage tends to fossilize, blocking his/her progression toward a fully developed use of specific functions in the target language. Despite these claims, first language acquisition and second language learning theories and proposals can serve as a mirror to appropriately comprehend the complexity of each process. Indeed, Hulya (2009) argues that “none of the theories or factors is on its own explanatory enough to account for the complex process of language learning” (p. 161). Finally, the studies in the field can support language teachers (and professionals related to education) to understand language acquisition and to assist their learners during their language learning process in the best way possible.

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How to cite this article: Oyarzo, J. (2022). First and Second Language Learning: Child’s Protolanguage and Adult’s Interlanguage. ELT Connections, 1 (1), 44-46.

REFERENCES

Brown, Douglas B. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Third Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents. pp.203-204.

Ellis, Rod. (1997). Second Language Acquisition: The Nature of Learner Language. Oxford University Press.

Ellis, Rod. (2003). Second Language Acquisition: Cognitive accounts of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press.

Halliday, M. (1995). Language As a Social Semiotic: On Language Relation to the Evolution of Human Consciousness. University Park Press.

Hulya, I. (2009). English Language Teaching: Comparing and contrasting first and second language acquisition. Vol. 2, No. 2. June, 2009.

Richards, Jack C et al. (1992). Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics. Second Edition. Essex: Longman Group UK Limited. p.186.

Tarone, E., Swierzbin, B. & Tarone, E. (2006). The impact of literacy level on features of interlanguage in oral narratives. Rivista di Psicolinguistica Applicata VI, 3:65-77.

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