This study documents how a high school ESL teacher working with new immigrants ages 14–20 supported the development of their critical thinking and English language skills by using advertising analysis activities. The article examines the use of key critical questions for analyzing media messages and documents instructional activities designed to strengthen students' vocabulary, reading, and discussion skills to build inferential thinking and critical analysis skills. The researchers focus on four instructional practices used by the participating teacher, which rely on strategies for applying critical questions to analyze advertising: the cloze technique, the question generation approach, practice in analyzing ads using critical questions in class discussion, and a collaborative online writing activity resulting in the creation of a multiparagraph multimedia document. These activities provided a meaningful opportunity for students to practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in English while supporting the development of abstract thinking, balancing the learning of new academic language and cultural knowledge, and connecting with students' prior knowledge, home cultures, and everyday experience.
Media literacy has been explored from various perspectives in the past decades; however, few have integrated English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL). As a communication means, media technology provides an advantageous condition to create authentic environments for second language learners to acquire English. Activities inspired by media literacy can be designed to enhance students' critical thinking skills; they can also greatly facilitate their second language acquisition. This entry presents a case study examined by an ESL teacher who used key critical questions for analyzing ads in instructional activities designed to make students practice critical thinking while supporting their language learning. It also explores specific media literacy instructional practices for WeChat‐based activities in second language (L2) learning in China.
The flipped classroom approach is becoming increasingly popular in higher education as a substitute for more conventional teaching methods. This study examines pre-service teachers' task engagement in flipped Chinese language and culture learning by employing three engagement facilitators as a theoretical framework. In this study, 50 American undergraduate pre-service teachers who were enrolled in an ESL methods course learned Chinese language and culture online outside of class and then engaged in practice and collaborative learning under the guidance of an instructor. Surveys, follow-up interviews, focus groups, and student documents were analyzed to explore how pre-service teachers perceived their task engagement in their learning tasks and the reasons for their perceptions. The main findings reveal that students are positively engaged in flipped learning when tasks match their abilities, offer opportunities to set their learning goals, provide instant feedback, and have clear learning goals, instructions, and directions. The results also indicate that a fixed course format, clearly defined learning tasks with step-by-step instructions, and effective assessment were essential in engaging students in learning. Conclusion and implications are generated for flipped instructional design and practice for foreign languages. Finally, limitations and future studies are discussed.
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