This paper reports on an exploratory study that explores the instructional patterns within English as a Foreign Language (EFL) secondary school classrooms in Syria. Recently, the Syrian Ministry of Education (MoE) has introduced a new national curriculum which recommends a shift in EFL teachers’ instructional practices. Despite this costly innovation, there has been no attempt to check whether ...

This article focuses on an aspect of traditional instruction — the form-only activities commonly called "drills," "mechanical practice," or "pattern practice." The authors first distinguish language as an internalized system from language as a productive skill and review the nature of mechanical pratice. They contend that despite claims made about communicative language teaching and its goals, ...

Recent communicative approaches have suggested that one goal of English language teaching should be to replicate 'genuine' or 'natural' rather than 'typical' or 'traditional' classroom communication. This article argues that such a goal is both paradoxical and unattainable, and that there are serious flaws in the assumptions underlying the communicative orthodoxy concerning ELT classroom intera...

As language learning theories shifted fi'om belief in rote practice to communicative approaches, CALL--initially in consonance with the on-going practice--found itself increasingly at odds with teaching goals, and, consequently, was placed outside of the classroom. In order to increase the quality of human-computer interaction, CALL specialists turned to CL and AI. This resulted in the creation...

English as a lingua franca (ELF) research highlights the complexity and fluidity of culture in intercultural communication through English. ELF users draw on, construct, and move between global, national, and local orientations towards cultural characterisations. Thus, the relationship between language and culture is best approached as situated and emergent. However, this has chal­ lenged previ...

arabic language instruction in iran has always relied on cognitive factors, and has been based on grammar-translation method. consequently, issues such as arabic learner's and teacher's mental processes during learning and teaching, metacognitive factors, interlocutors' characteristics and the conversation setting, learner's information processing procedure, etc. have never ...

With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies over the last five years, it has been argued that immersive 3D virtual worlds provide opportunities for language learners to engage in authentic language use and collaborative communicative tasks [4]. While in Japan a task-based (TBLT) approach is starting to win favour among government policy makers [18], where its functional and situated approach to lea...