Issue 1 Vol 1 (2014)

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Voices in Asia Journal Issue 1 Volume 1, 2014 is available here to download.

ABSTRACT:

Recommendation letters are perceived to be a convincing evaluation instrument, as they provide assurance about the applicant from a third party. It is an occluded genre, and plays an important role during the admission process in the academic discourse. A poorly written recommendation letter can place a worthy applicant in the rejection pile. Few studies (Bouton, 1995; Precht, 1998) have compared recommendation letters in different countries. Previous studies have indicated that recommendation letters from different countries are as individual as the local academic cultures from which they arise. The purpose of this study was to compare the recommendation letters written by Indian and British authors. Rhetorical move analysis was used to analyze the structure of the letters. Appraisal theory was used to analyze the attitudinal resources in both countries’ recommendation letters. Appreciable differences in rhetorical organization, and in the use of attitudinal resources were found. The findings will help educational institutions to understand the writing cultures of Indian and British authors, and encourage authors to consider the writing culture of the countries where recommendation letters will be assessed. Similarly, evaluators would gain insight when assessing recommendation letters by considering the culture from which the letters originated.

Reena Maskara, Ken Lau and Chia-Yen Lin

A Comparative Study of Recommendation Letters Issued by Indian and British Authors

ABSTRACT: The importance of teacher feedback on compositions has been recognized by those working in the field of L2 student writing. This paper aims to explore how one-on-one oral conferencing can help postgraduate students write English papers in an academic community in Taiwan. Data of this study were mainly from questionnaires and interviews, examining the students’ problems and the ways they adopted to cope with the problems, as well as the extent to which oral conferencing could assist them in completing their academic papers in English. Consequently, the results reveal that, through the processes of oral conferencing, these students could become more critically aware of language use in terms of syntax and lexis, as well as organizational structure of academic papers. Based on the research findings, some recommendations on EFL oral conferencing are discussed. It is hoped that this study will help English language teachers provide an efficient EFL writing pedagogy.

Su-Jen Lai

Can Oral Conferencing Facilitate EFL Postgraduate Student Writing?

ABSTRACT: The present study was conducted to investigate major difficulties in teaching vocabulary to elementary adult learners at the foreign language center of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities Ho Chi Minh City. 20 hypothetical difficulties reviewed in the literature were used as a theoretical guide for the study. The subjects included 18 teachers and 298 learners who were teaching and learning in the elementary classes of English at this center. The data obtained were analyzed in terms of frequency, percentage, mean score and standard deviation. The analysis of data indicated six major difficulties in teaching English vocabulary to elementary adult learners at this center. The most common difficulties were learners’ inability to recall new words, popularity of rote learning of Vietnamese equivalents and ill-equipped classrooms. In the light of the main findings identified, some suggestions were offered to help improve the teaching of English vocabulary to elementary adult learners at this center.

Lau Mong Thu

Difficulty in teaching vocabulary to elementary adult learners of English

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the ways in which visual and verbal elements are integrated to shape EFL student’s online writing as a social and multimodal practice. Via purposeful sampling, one particular Taiwanese EFL university student was recruited as the research participant. The specific genre studied is one particular promotional genre, a film proposal. Adopting the notion of genre as a staged and goal-oriented social process (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990), the research participant’s multimodal writing practice is examined along three dimensions: (a) the move-step structure of written proposals, (b) the generic structure of proposal posters, and (c) the interplay between the verbal and visual elements in writing practices of a promotional genre. Data analysis reveals the EFL student participant applied the visual and verbal resources in her multimodal writing practices to fulfill the institutional expectations of meaning making and social interaction. Relevant pedagogical implications of integrating multimodality in EFL writing pedagogy are also discussed.

Ming-i Lydia Tseng

EFL Student Writing as a Social and Multimodal Practice: A Case Study

ABSTRACT:

This study aims to identify the essential components needed in argumentative essays written by collegiate Thai student writers in an English program and use this information to provide suggestions for development and enhancement of future curriculum and pedagogy in relation to argumentative essay organizational structure. The framework of the study involves the analysis of move structure. The objective of this study is to explore move structures, which students make via cohesive devices within their essays. The data utilized were 100 argumentative essays in response to the essay topic “Ecotourism should be promoted,” written by students enrolled in the English for Tourism course in a Thai private international university in Semesters 1/2011 and 2/2011. The essays chosen were those consisting of at least three paragraphs: an introduction, an argumentative essay body, and a conclusion; those not selected, lacking the aforementioned essential components, were not used in the study.

The findings reveal that most students could effectively write their General Statements in the essay introduction (82 percent), followed by a Generalization (79 percent), and a Hook (60 percent). In the essay body, students produced a Topic Sentence (94 percent), followed by Supports (90 percent), and Concluding Statements (62 percent). In the essay conclusion, the majority of students produced their Restatement (91 percent), Clinchers and Final Closing (69 percent, 39 percent respectively).

Nuttaporn Kongpolphrom

Move Analysis on Argumentative Essay of English for Tourism

ABSTRACT: Although abstracts and introductions, which form a genre set in research articles, are reported to be related, few studies have explored their relationship in master’s theses or doctoral dissertations, especially those written in English by non-native English writers. Employing Chen and Kuo’s (2012) framework for analyzing master’s theses, this study showed the relationship between abstracts and introductions of 24 TESOL master’s theses written by Vietnamese students. Move 1 of these abstracts contained some identical information to that included in three moves of the introductions. A closer look at the overlapping points and the interview information from thesis writers and thesis supervisors revealed that these writers were inexperienced and tended to follow the way to write the introductions in composing the abstracts. These findings suggest that an appropriate amount of explicit, genre-based instruction is necessary to make these Vietnamese writers aware of the relationship between these two genres.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Loan and Issra Pramoolsook

TESOL Master’s Theses in Vietnam: Relationship between abstracts and introductions

ABSTRACT: The exponential growth of the Internet has had a considerable impact on language teaching and learning. Language teachers have increasingly harnessed its power for language pedagogy. This study aimed to investigate the use of online resources and applications by language teachers and the purposes for which they used them for language teaching. The data were gathered from 70 Thai EFL language teachers in northeastern Thailand by means of a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data, whereas the qualitative data obtained from open-ended items and semi-structured interviews were inductively analyzed to create categories and to develop themes. Results showed that Google, YouTube, and Facebook were the top three resources and applications used by language teachers. These systems were used to support teaching, encourage autonomous learning, and enhance communication. Based upon the findings, professional development on the applications of technology to language education should be continuously provided.

Atikhom Thienthong and Andrew Lian

The Use of Internet Resources and Applications for Language Instruction

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to examine young adults’ identity construction in Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (ACMC) in Taiwan. Aligned with New Literacy Studies, this study views digital texts as a social practice and explores how linguistic features influence young adults’ identity construction as one online community of practice. The analysis is based on a semi-structured interview, composed of five participants from southern Taiwan, aged 21-23, with the focus on participants’ motives that influence their text-making practices in a digital environment. The findings reported show that these screen-based texts are multimodal with a mixture of visual images and a variety of modes of communication employed. Young adults make use of these affordances to foreground their friendship, rapport and cultural bond with peers, constituting a community of practice to share common knowledge and conventions.

Chen, S. Y. Ruby

Young Adults’ Identity Construction in Digital Literacy

Suthathip Thirakunkovit

Book Review: Practical Language Testing by Glenn Fulcher

Zahra Awad

Conference Report

Power to Connect in a Changing World: International Conference on Language, Literature and Translation, April 22- 25, 2014