Preparing Students for Education, Work, and Community: Activity Theory in Task-Based Curriculum Design

Developing a Badge System for a Community ESL Class Based on the Canadian Language Benchmarks

“…Boyer also points out that a badge system can motivate students because it gives them the choice to set individualized educational goals that are relevant to their personal aims. This ability to determine individualized learning goals is important for adult learners (Mudzingwa, 2017) and is consistent with a study by Campbell et al (2015) in which a task-based approach to an ESL curriculum for immigrants in British Columbia, Canada was used to allow for more learned-determined objectives as opposed to teacher-determined ones. That said, learners who have a less developed self-directed mindset could feel overwhelmed by these choices (Kamenetz et al, 2018), so teachers should offer guidance and direction as needed.…”

Intercultural Communicative Competence and English for Academic Purposes: A Synthesis Review of the Scholarly Literature

“…Although careful attention was paid to only include works that referred to concepts related to both intercultural communicative competence and EAP, the majority of the scholarly works found did not have intercultural communicative competence as the main focus of investigation. Rather, intercultural communicative competence might be an outcome of the investigation (Clennel, 1999;Spiliotopoulos & Carey, 2005); an implication based on scholarly inquiry (Basturkmen, 2000;Cheng & Fox, 2008;Ellwood & Nakane, 2009;Singh & Doherty, 2004;Thatcher, 2004); or a part of an EAP course curriculum (Campbell, MacPherson, & Sawkins, 2014;Liu, 2007;Stoller, 1999). There were just four peer reviewed articles (Galante, 2014;Garcia-Perez et al, 2014;Jund, 2010;Ruhe, 1998) and one MA thesis (Martin, 2016) in which concepts related to intercultural communicative competence and EAP were the main focus of the scholarly inquiry.…”

“…In addition to projects designed to foster greater intercultural awareness as an outcome of an EAP experience, endeavours such as Campbell et al's (2014) pilot curriculum project explicitly set out to teach intercultural skills and raise intercultural awareness based on authentic and practical real-life activities. Similarly, in the program description presented by Stoller (1999), intercultural understanding was a pedagogical goal.…”

“…Learning objectives associated with an EAP course included exploring and expanding cultural understandings related to behaviours, values, and beliefs; increasing intercultural sensitivity; and providing useful intercultural skills for social, academic, and work contexts (Galante, 2014). Likewise, teachers in a pilot pathways project were looking at providing students with behavioural, emotional, and thinking skills that facilitate intercultural interactions in a wide range of contexts (Campbell et al, 2014). Achieving these learning objectives appeared to be related to the amount of time students were able to spend in an EAP setting.…”

“…With regard to academic success, growing intercultural communicative competence appeared to be associated with higher levels of student satisfaction in EAP-type settings. In the pilot project developed by Campbell et al (2014), teacher and student feedback indicated that a direct focus on intercultural skills was beneficial. Students in Galante's (2014) digital literacy project also reported satisfaction in connection to the relevance of exploring intercultural issues and their own identities as international students and newcomers to Canada.…”