Ng, Chiew Hong

Besides enhancing Persian academic reading, in an English only research world, Persian academic stakeholders have to master English and/or Persian academic writing to disseminate findings globally to members of different disciplinary communities through Persian and English language as a lingua franca. This chapter uses the method of qualitative meta-synthesis of 40 empirical studies specifically on academic writing in Persian in refereed journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings published during the period of 2005–2020. An inductive approach to thematic analysis synthesizes (a) the theoretical models for researching Academic Persian in academic writing and (b) the similarities and differences between academic writers from Persian and English for different disciplines. Theoretically and pedagogically, the findings from the comparisons and the systematic content analysis following Sandelowski et al. (Res Nurs Health 20:365–371. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-240X(199708)20:4<365

This paper explores the use of process writing approach as an instructional method for teachers to help dyslexic students write. The author examines the writing difficulties faced by dyslexic students and discusses how both mainstream teachers and teachers specializing in teaching dyslexic students can help dyslexic students with their writing through the use of the process writing approach.

The current study was a translational study on creating educational effectiveness in secondary schools with students from the Normal (Technical) (NT) stream studying the Elements of Business Skills (EBS) subject. This expanded on an earlier study at NIE with EBS students (Koh, 2012) that investigated whether students learnt better when they were able to make meaningful connections between the school curriculum and their learning experiences outside of school at workplace environments. The findings revealed that experiential learning gained from the authentic environment of students’ work attachment contributed to their conceptual understanding of the EBS subject. The study also noted a cross transfer of knowledge and skills from the classroom to the workplace and vice-versa. The aim of this TALE study was to investigate how technology, in the form of a mobile learning application, can enable redesign of the formal curriculum to be expanded to seamlessly accommodate learning that occurs outside of classrooms to align with the goals of the ICT mp4. Mobile learning can be defined as “any kind of learning that takes place inside or outside traditional learning environment via mobile devices [that] are able to move with the learner to allow learning anytime, anywhere” (Alavi, Nematbakhsh, & Zeraati, 2018, p. 113).

This research investigates how elementary teachers mediate the learning of writing through a socio-cognitive approach. The study reveals how in effective instructions for writing development, teachers can build narrative knowledge in a socio-cognitive approach through these types of instructional scaffolding: explicit outcomes and expectations, modelling, bridging, contextualizing, schema building, re-presenting text and developing metacognition. The study also illustrates through examples, the use of the instructional scaffolding functions by two teachers mediating between students’ current knowledge levels in writing in English and the requisite expert understandings of the narrative genre in actual classroom practice. The adapted instructional scaffolding functions proposed in this article enrich the field of learning and teaching of writing by providing a means for teachers to mediate the learning of writing. The study also highlights the value of qualitative interpretive approaches in contributing to the domain of pedagogical approaches in writing for elementary students.

Through a qualitative meta-synthesis literature review, this chapter examines how non-native language teacher identity across different theoretical conceptions and developmental stages, both novice and experienced, and at elementary, secondary, and university levels, are negotiated through a qualitative meta-synthesis of 35 refereed book chapters and research papers published in international refereed journals between 2004 and 2019. The first half of the chapter examines theories and conceptual foundations that have guided existing research on non-native language teacher identity across different developmental stages to link to issues related to intersections of non-native English language teacher (NNEST) identity and language teaching. The second half of the chapter looks at the application of findings in terms of advocacy issues and pedagogical practices for non-native English teachers and future research to inform English language teachers, teacher-educators, and researchers across elementary, secondary, and university settings.

This study is an investigation into pupil's comprehension abilities, specifically the issue of whether students can improve their question answering and inferential skills after explicit teaching of two inferential comprehension strategies.

The present study assumes that secondary pupils are in need of explicit teaching of reading strategies. This is especially true of students who are second language learners in the Singapore context.

The Study involved 46 students in secondary five ( 17 years old ) from the Normal (Academic) course attending a co-educational government secondary in Singapore.

There are five phases to the study. The first phase consists of a pre-test to assess students' general comprehension abilities prior to explicit teaching of the two inferential strategies. A questionnaire is also administered at this stage to analyse students' attitudes towards comprehension. The second phase of the study involves the explicit teaching of the two selected inferential strategies, namely Johnson's Ten Major Inference Types and Raphael's Question Answer Relationship (QAR) for a period of five weeks over 7 lessons. The third phase of the administration of the post-test to assess if students' comprehension skills, including inferential abilities, have improved. In the fourth phase of the study, the students' answers are analysed in terms of Raphael's Question Answering Relationship categories of Right There(RT) [literal], Put it Together(PIT) ]Inferential] and Author and You (AY) [Inferential] to see how the high and low groups in comprehension abilities differ or are similar in their use of the strategies taught as well as to assess if one group shows more improvement than the other in their inferential abilities. In the fifth phase of the study, a further questionnaire is given to elicit students' comprehension strategies and attitude towards comprehension. The responses to this questionnaire are contrasted with the responses to the first questionnaire to assess to what extent students' perceptions of their comprehension abilities have undergone changes. ' Students' views regarding the benefits of the explicit teaching of the comprehension strategies are elicited by another set of questionnaires form the last phase of the study.

The results show that the students improved in their inferential comprehension abilities to some extent as 100% of the students scored higher on the post-test.

Analysis of the students' performance in the he various categories of Raphael's Question-Answering Relationship revealed that the training enhanced the inferential comprehension abilities of the low group more than the high group though both groups had shown strong improvement in the PIT categories.

Findings from the questionnaires revealed unanimous agreement among the subjects that the two strategies taught were beneficial as they perceived themselves to have improved in their general comprehension abilities. Besides, 98% felt strongly that the explicit teaching of the two comprehension strategies should be carried out for other students as it was beneficial.

The paper draws on two drama series in Asia and demonstrates that stu-dying issues related to gender roles and equality through popular historical Asian drama series is both challenging and fruitful. The present study not only illustrates the complexity involved in studying gender roles and gender equality, but also su-ggests several teaching pedagogies. Looking at gender roles and equality from a his-torical perspective and employing a comparative analysis of the past and present can help students assess whether gender roles and equality have remained the same or evolved in the Asian context. Critical literacy enables the broadening of perspectives when taking into consideration the gender roles adopted by the various characters to survive in the complex world. Critical literacy, pedagogies of affect as well as pe-dagogies of invitation and transformation can be utilized to examine how performing assigned gender roles can result in favouritism, which may in turn lead to atrocities. The implications of the study may be applicable to contexts outside Asia.