{"title":"Nearpod Slides to Enhance Students’ Self-Study","authors":"K. Anggoro, U. Khasanah, Nicola Milnes","doi":"10.37237/130405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130405","url":null,"abstract":"Nearpod encourages students’ self-learning outside the class. As online learning becomes inevitable due to the development of technology and rare but possible emergencies such as environmental disasters or even what was experienced during the pandemic. Nearpod is a likely candidate in assisting students in their independent learning. This article gives insights into all the features this platform provides along with some perspectives from the authors as the teachers who are using it in their practice. A number of strengths and limitations are explored, along with guidelines from the teachers on how to use the app, concluding that the platform can benefit students greatly in regard to their independent learning.","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41817536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"EAL Student Capability: Taking a Leap Through the Dragon’s Gate","authors":"Kerstin Dofs","doi":"10.37237/130403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130403","url":null,"abstract":"This ethnographic study, set at a higher educational institution (HEI) in New Zealand, was inspired by the many English as an additional language (EAL)/international students at HEIs prior to the current pandemic situation in the world. The motivation was to understand the students better from a beyond the Language Self-Access Centre (LSAC) perspective and to see if their needs were met competently. Whereas students were using English in a new educational system and in an unfamiliar society, HEIs aim to internationalise in order to provide excellent education for them. The suggestion here is that a transformation through mutual adjustments would benefit both students and institutions. Reflection on measures for both sides to adopt in adjusting to each other is included.","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47273034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"J. Mynard","doi":"10.37237/130401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130401","url":null,"abstract":"In the current issue, we feature papers from Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand and Thailand. The papers explore the themes of private tutoring, international students studying abroad, conceptions of autonomous learning models, and a review of an online learning tool.","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46337270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Critical History of Autonomous Language Learning: Exposing the Institutional and Structural Resistance Against Methodological Innovation in Language Education","authors":"Santiago Betancor-Falcon","doi":"10.37237/130303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130303","url":null,"abstract":"In our current information societies, opportunities for innovative language teaching methodologies are plenty, yet we continue to teach languages as we did centuries ago. In this paper, I will conduct a critical review of the history of language learning, the institutionalization of language education, and the information revolution in order to unveil the structural and material factors that limit methodological innovation and hinder the development of learner autonomy, critical thinking, and life-long learning. Based on this review I further argue that scarcity and the system’s rational functionality are the root problem as well as the foundation of traditional language teaching. The conclusions of this paper offer a critical assessment of the possibilities as well as necessary conditions for the development of truly innovative methodologies and education reform.\u0000\u0000Keywords: learner autonomy, self-access, language learning, self-directed learning, life-long learning","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47989016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Investigating the Significance of Coxhead’s Academic Word List for Self-Access Learners","authors":"T. Wangdi, Ringphami Shimray","doi":"10.37237/130305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130305","url":null,"abstract":"The present study explored Thai EFL university students’ perceived benefits of self-learning Coxhead’s Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) on their academic communicative skills and whether or not it should be incorporated into academic textbooks. The study employed a mixed-method design. A survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The result revealed that the majority of the participants held positive attitudes toward learning Coxhead’s AWL on their own. They agreed that Coxhead’s AWL helped them to enhance their receptive and productive academic communicative skills. Participants also acknowledged that incorporating Coxhead’s AWL into the academic textbook might help EFL university learners in various ways, particularly to improve their academic reading, listening, writing, and speaking abilities. In conclusion, although this study provides no empirical evidence of how knowledge of AWL helps improve students’ academic communicative skills, the study provides some practical guidelines for self-access contexts, a theoretical basis on how AWL is viewed by EFL university students along with a new direction to future research. \u0000Keywords: Coxhead’s (2000) AWL, self-access learners, academic words, receptive and productive skills, Thai EFL","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48617202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What do Chinese Learners of English Want from a University Writing Centre? A Chinese Tertiary Student’s Views on Writing Centre Peer Tutoring","authors":"Y. Kwan","doi":"10.37237/130306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130306","url":null,"abstract":"Tutees are important people in university writing centres, yet their voices, especially what Chinese tutees think about peer writing tutoring, have tended to be largely overlooked in the writing centre scholarship. Adding to this under-researched area, this article reports on an interview with a Chinese tertiary learner of English who shared her views on writing centre peer tutoring. Through thematic content analysis, three core themes were identified: writing centre peer tutoring as an activity for the give-and-take of formative feedback on writing, the tutee’s desire for professional directive guidance, and her perceived role of agenda-setting in ensuring tutoring quality. The implication for writing centre peer tutoring is that tutees may have their idiosyncratic preferences for tutoring strategies which may or may not align with the recommendations in writing centre handbooks and the general literature on teaching and learning. It is hoped that this article will stimulate future scholarly work on tutees’ expectations and perspectives on peer writing tutoring, which can inform writing centre training and tutoring.\u0000\u0000Keywords: EFL writers, peer-tutoring, student perceptions, tutorial success, writing centre","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48413437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Developing Learner Autonomy and Goal-Setting through Logbooks","authors":"Diane Raluy, Ramon Mislang","doi":"10.37237/130304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130304","url":null,"abstract":"From an earlier study undertaken by the researchers, data revealed that more than 90 percent of students thought making goals would help them achieve academic success in English. However, the lack of explicit instructions on goal setting in classrooms resulted in students making goals that were often too difficult to achieve. In addition, a system for helping students monitor and evaluate their goals through teacher and peer support appears to be absent in many educational contexts. To help students attain higher success with achieving goals, a system inspired by aspects of the GROW model (Whitmore, 2017) was created to support goal-setting activities. For 13 weeks, students drafted goals on Google docs and shared them with peers during classroom instruction. Classroom activities were implemented to help encourage peer support and exploration of goals inside the classroom. Outside of the classroom, Google docs provided a way for teachers to view students’ progress towards goals and a platform to offer advice and support where needed. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from a pre-semester and post-semester survey. Results are intended to help advance methods for turning goal-setting tasks into an interactive feedback system. This system could play a valuable role in autonomous learning environments. \u0000\u0000Keywords: Goal-setting, Interactive Feedback System, Autonomous Learning, Logbooks, Collaborative Dialogue","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41597481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mobile-Assisted Language Learning Applications: Features and Characteristics from Users’ Perspectives","authors":"Mohammad Alnufaie","doi":"10.37237/130302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130302","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the features of currently used mobile-based applications in language learning as perceived by 112 adult learners from different backgrounds in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A quantitative approach is used, with a cross-sectional survey and open-ended questions. The results show the top useful and useless features of the applications available in the market for language learning. In addition, they show the most and the least common features as well as the missing features that learners would most like to have in language learning applications. It finds that most mobile-based applications seem to be more focused on technical and technological features at the expense of social, cultural, and individual features. Pedagogical implications for promoting self-access language learning software are also discussed.\u0000\u0000Keywords: self-access language learning, mobile learning, mobile-assisted language learning, language learning applications, self-directed learning","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44751250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Concealing Identity Strategy: An Autonomous Chinese-Speaking Sojourner’s Linguistic and Social Involvements in a Religious Social Setting in the UK","authors":"Xinyang Lu, Vanessa Mar-Molinero, V. Wright","doi":"10.37237/1302042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/1302042","url":null,"abstract":"This article reports on a case study that investigates how a successful Chinese sojourner exhibits learner autonomy through mediating agency, identity, and language learning strategies (LLS) to seek out affordances within a religious social setting in the UK. This study employs an ecological perspective and ethnographic methods through participant observation and interviews to identify a set of LLS employed by this sojourner to deal with language and socio-cultural issues in a complex ecosystem comprised of interacting human and non-human components within this social setting. The results predominantly show this sojourner exercises agency by utilizing the newly observed concealing identity strategy to hide his ‘atheist identity’ which is a self-perceived barrier to the setting. Employing this strategy mitigates this sojourner’s affective barrier to open access to the linguistic and non-linguistic affordances within the dynamic second language (L2) changing circumstance in this specific social place. This case study broadens the LLS research area by taking a socially-oriented perspective to investigate LLS in relation to socio-cultural and interactional abilities in real communicative L2 settings. Therefore, this study gives insights into how learner autonomy is socially mediated in a complex transnational world through the constructs of LLS, agency, and identity based on ecology theory.","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49297307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"J. Mynard, H. Yamashita","doi":"10.37237/130101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37237/130101","url":null,"abstract":"The first issue of SiSAL journal for 2022 features 11 papers from 29 colleagues based in seven countries. There are five research-focussed regular papers based, two accounts of how self-access services and programs are being established, and three reviews.","PeriodicalId":43678,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43088232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}