<p>The aim of this study was to explore the possible benefits of using Google Translate (GT) at various tertiary English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course levels, i.e., to see if the use of GT affects the quantity and quality of student writing. The study comprised preliminary work and a case study. The former included an awareness task to assess student awareness of GT mistakes, and a correction task to assess their ability to correct the mistakes identified. The awareness and correction tasks showed that intermediate students identified 54% of the mistakes, while advanced students identified 73% and corrected 87% of the mistakes identified. The case study included two writing tasks, one with GT and one without. Results showed that when using GT students wrote significantly more words. They wrote longer sentences with longer words and the vocabulary profile of their writing improved. We believe that GT can be a useful tool for tertiary EAP students provided they are able to critically assess and correct the output.</p>
Virtual exchange, or telecollaboration, is a well‐known pedagogical approach in foreign language education that involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This article focuses on the role of the teacher as pedagogical mentor in virtual exchange and examines the impact of the strategies and techniques that teachers use in their classes to support students’ learning during their online intercultural projects. The article begins with a proposed categorization of pedagogical mentoring reported in the literature to date. It then reports on the outcomes of a virtual exchange project carried out by three classes of initial English teacher education in Israel, Spain, and Sweden that involved two types of pedagogical mentoring. Qualitative content analysis enabled the identification of the impact of mentoring that took place before the exchange and also revealed insights into what students learned when their own online interactions were integrated into class work. The article concludes by discussing the limitations and challenges of different types of pedagogical mentoring in virtual exchange and by outlining a list of recommendations for carrying out pedagogical mentoring in such projects.
We present preliminary criteria to consider in the writing of English for academic purposes (EAP) reading comprehension tests. Such criteria are necessary as a frame of reference for a large and diverse teaching staff. The criteria pertain to the test as a whole as well as to the form of individual questions. The choice of items derives from our classroom and test-writing experience and reflects the comprehension problems that students encounter with test questions. These problems may indeed be stumbling blocks for the student because they constitute processing constraints. Pragmatic theory can provide a theoretical framework to explain these processing constraints.
This chapter presents findings of case study action research examining the impact of technology-mediated collaboration between teacher-learners in two graduate-level Applied Linguistics Master's programs in Canada and Israel. To date, little research has been conducted on international telecollaborative exchanges in language teacher education programs. This chapter will discuss teacher-learners' perceived benefits and challenges of this international telecollaborative exchange, its impact on beliefs towards the use of technology-mediated tools, and the relevance of these types of collaborations in language teacher education. The authors will highlight individual teacher-learner voices in this study that illustrate how teacher assumptions about authority, experience, and teacher identity evolve on individual pathways and are situated in complex, historically embedded paradigms of teaching and learning experience. The chapter will conclude with insights gained regarding strategies for implementing effective international telecollaborative exchanges in language teacher education programs.
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