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Good day and welcome to episode 37 of Read and Rendered. There isn’t a core article for this episode, but I will include a couple of links on the website of some of the topics. At any rate, I have the privilege today to have a conversation with Dr. Sami Boudelaa from the Linguistics Department of UAE University. He takes us through some of the research he has done and is currently doing. It is truly fascinating stuff. So rather than listen to me, here’s the podcast. Oh yeah, this is another coffee shop episode brought to you from Caribou Coffee in Al Ain Mall, so the background noise is occasionally a bit loud, and the staff there was a little too helpful at the beginning of the recording. Sorry.   http://www.neurolex.psychol.cam.ac.uk/directory/s.boudelaa@uaeu.ac.ae   http://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/directory/wdm10@cam.ac.uk  

Hey folks, Today for episode 36 I sit down with Chris Morrow and we talk mostly about educational formats at primary and secondary schools in the UAE and some Paul Nation talk.To my American listeners, happy Thanksgiving or in the words of the great Norm MacDonald, Happy Thanksgiving or as the turkeys call it, Murder Day. http://www.academia.edu/3609651/Caught_or_Taught_Combining_Indirect_and_Direct_Language_Instruction

Hey everyone, Welcome to episode 35. Today I sit down with Juan Seanz and talk about an article entitled: Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers by Sanaa, Weston and Cepedab Here’s the abstract: Laptops are commonplace in university classrooms. In light of cognitive psychology theory on costs associated with multitasking, we examined the effects of in-class laptop use on student learning in a simulated classroom. We found that participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test compared to those who did not multitask, and participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer scored lower on a test compared to those who were not. The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content. Here’s the weblink http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/695%20Sana%20et%20al.%202013-laptops.pdf   Thanks,

Good day and welcome to season three of Read and Rendered. Hopefully, I will be able to maintain a more successful biweekly podcasts, but I wouldn’t count on it. To begin season III, I sat down with my last guest during the spring, David Litz. We drank coffee and talked over some of the merits and faults in textbooks, which of course let into a discussion of iBooks. Although I had initially planned to talk more about David’s article, we ended up elsewhere. Near the halfway mark, a second voice joins the fray, that of Juan Saenz. While he only shows up occasionally here, soon I will post the podcast that we only just recorded. The topic of which is stated quite bluntly a short ways in. You may in fact also notice that this podcast has been split into two equal parts. I figured two 30 odd minutes chunks was more bearable. I couldn't pull just the abstract, so here’s the link To David’s paper. http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/umerazim/Documents/Litz_thesis.pdf

            Good day and welcome to podcast #29 of Read and Rendered with me, Stu. Today I sit down with Dr. Tariq Elyas from King Abdulaziz University, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Not only is he an assistant professor of Applied Linguistics, but he is also the vice-dean for graduate studies.             Today we are discussing a conference called Educational Challenges in the GCC in the 21st Century. We talk about the use of English as a medium for education in the GCC and the rationale and even some of the consequences, educational models and short and long term goals amongst other things. Naturally, since we are in the 21st century, our online conversation was rife with problems and as such we lost a few minutes in the middle. So forgive the choppiness. I’ll put the link to the conference up on my website.             Remember, you can find the podcast on iTunes (please give it a rating), on Stitcher if you don’t feel like waiting, or at my website:  www.readandrendered.libsyn.com At any rate, here’s the abstract: This workshop brings together different elements of policy and curriculum, teachers and teacher identity, students and student identity, and social conditions that affect learning and teaching in the 21st century in GCC states in an effort to explore the resulting learning outcomes operating on a macro and micro-level in education in the GCC. In order to fully explore these elements, and in order to explore the possible ‘clashes’ (Huntington 1996; Gee 1999) and challenges within these elements at school and university levels in the Gulf, it is imperative

In this podcast, Ben White and I talk about his recently published article on Phrasal Verbs. We start with a bit of his background and how he got interested in this particular aspect of English. From there, he presents the background, methodology and results from his research. For anyone interested in finding out more about this, next month he is giving a presentation on this subject at the TESOL conference in Dallas, Texas. So it may be possible to watch a video presentation. A Conceptual Approach to the Instruction of Phrasal Verbs BENJAMIN J. WHITE The Modern Language Journal Volume 96, Issue 3, pages 419–438, Fall 2012 Phrasal verbs present numerous challenges to second language learners of English, who often view verb + particle combinations as random (Side, 1990). This article proposes a pedagogical approach that focuses on particles as a means of spotlighting systematicity within this traditionally problematic area of English vocabulary. Informed by cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory, the approach encourages students to tap their own creativity in order to conceptually motivate (Kövecses & Szabó, 1996) student-collected examples of phrasal verbs. The article (a) presents the theoretical rationale for the approach, (b) reports an experiment in which the approach was implemented in two sections of an English as a Second Language course at the university level, and (c) discusses results of the experiment as well as potential pedagogical adaptations. As always, you can find this podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or at my website,

Hey folks,             Sorry for the extended delay, but it was due to some almost guests becoming sick, others needing to reschedule and other such issues. However, we should be almost back on the regularly unscheduled schedule.             In fact, today, I’ll be releasing a double podcast with Sam McCoy guesting in both of them. In the first podcast we talk about an article called: The Zone of Proximal Development and the Genesis of Self-Assessment by Matthew E. Poehner. You can find the article in The Modern Language Journal, Volume 96, Issue 4, on pages 610-622, Winter 2012. Here’s the abstract: Self-assessment practices have become widespread in second language (L2) education, and while its proponents have long argued that such reflection enhances learner awareness of their abilities and promotes independent learning (Alderson, 2005; Chen, 2008; Little, 2007), others have questioned its value vis-à-vis other indicators of performance (Gipps, 1994; Ross, 1998). This article approaches learner self-assessment from a Vygotskian perspective, and specifically the proposal of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). According to this view, development is understood as transitioning from other-regulated to self-regulated functioning. Following Zuckerman (2003), engaging in reflective evaluation of performance is argued to be a critical feature of this process. Data from a study involving L2 learners of French participating in a Dynamic Assessment (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004) program are presented to explore how this development may occur and to examine challenges learners may experience as they endeavor to regulate not only their use of the L2 during completion of tasks but also while evaluating their performance. In keeping with the no

Hey folks,             Today I’m sitting down with Keith Yoder again and we talk music in the classroom. Keith brings in a lot of personal experiences from when he was learning Arabic lo those years ago in Egypt. We cover a few ideas and some limitations, some about music and some about the paper. However, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, we did like the paper. I am glad to finally point out that the paper is a freebie, so if you want to download it and take a read.             As I’ve mentioned before Read and Rendered is now available on Stitcher, which, unlike iTunes, allows you to listen to programs on the go. It’s all just floating around on the Internet, so why download? Get news, sports, and podcasts on the go at Stitcher.com. (http://stitcher.com/s?fid=29289&refid=stpr) Get the app for free for your iPhone or android device. Older episodes of Read and Rendered are being sporadically uploaded on Soundcloud as well.             As a parting request, please leave a comment and rate the podcast on iTunes because, to quote Wilfred Brimley, “It’s the right thing to do.” Moving on. The paper was written by Xiangming li from Tsinghua University and Manny Brand from Hong Kong Baptist University for Contributions to Music Education (Vol.36, No. 1, pp. 73–84.) Here’s the link: http://krpb.pbworks.com/f/music-esl.pdf Here’s the abstract:

Hey folks,             Thanks for listening to another edition of Read and Rendered. Just to keep you all in the loop, the podcast is now available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. The folks at Stitcher would like me to let you know that they are an award-winning provider of news and talk radio for your mobile phone, its the smart way to listen to radio. Check them out.             Anyway, for todays podcast I sat down again with Sam McCoy and we talked about game theory and language learning. To be sure, we were all over the map today, but hopefully you are used to that by now.  We talk about how competition in the class can be used, issues surrounding group projects, scaffolding, and so much more.             I think one of the more interesting points from the podcast might be the addition of Independent studies for new students. We’ve all had a student in a class who doesn’t belong there. Perhaps there should be a new system created to move them along.             Remember, from the steps of Athens to the class of today, learning is nasty, brutish and short. This last comment will make sense once you’ve listened. Here is today’s article: Using game theory and Competition-based Learning to stimulate student motivation and performance by Juan C. Burguillo And now for the abstract:

Hey folks,             Well, I’m back with the second podcast of the new season. Episode #18 breaks form in that there is no governing article around which the discussion is centered, but it does focus on a topic to which many university instructors in the UAE are now intimately aware… technology in the classroom, specifically, iPads.             In this episode, I sit down with Ed Hogshire, Sundi Richard and Pam Johnson. These three are all on the e-learning committee here at UAE University and are directly involved with the transition from paper to iBooks amongst other things. We touched on many topics, including student and teacher perceptions and attitudes, benefits in and out of the classroom, a little on administration, appropriate or inappropriate uses for the iPad, and, of course, Hawkins Cheezies. Here’s the “link” to that paper… it’s FREE!!! (editlib.org/d/24421) Here’s the link to the best Cheezies in the world: http://www.cheezies.com/index3.htm Here are the links to the apps that Sundi, Pam and Ed suggested: Creative book builder: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/creative-book-builder/id451041428?mt=8 Socrative: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/teacher-clicker-socrative/id477620120?mt=8# Nearod: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nearpod-student/id480295574?mt=8# Skitch: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skitch-for-ipad/id490505997?mt=8# Soundnote:

Hi folks,             Bet you a dollar that you can’t guess the new theme song I’m using. Anyway, I hope you’ve been enjoying your summer and the series of sporting events occurring in England. Sorry, I don’t want to be sued for mentioning any specific “O” words by the aforementioned “O” police. Moving on.             The article David and I discuss initially appeared to be on glossing, but the focus is actually on incidental learning. Both of us agree that the study itself was very well done and does overcome many of the challenges inherent in this kind of study.             To be sure, there were a few points of disagreement. One of the most obvious for us was in the words chosen for the incidental word testing. I’m sure some of the difficulty was in finding words that students had a low probability of having seen or used in the past. Consequently, there were some rather obscure words. A second difficulty would be in the motivation of the students to learn words that are not normally included in their vocabulary lists. Another point would be the testing of the students. Are you testing for recognition or usage?  Further, while a student does need to notice a word prior to their internalizing it, there is no necessity in that function. How much does a student notice if they aren’t primed or informed that glossed words are important past their usage to understand the meaning of a reading? Who knows? Regardless, David and I both enjoyed the article and the efforts of the author.   Glossing and Second Language Vocabulary Learning Myong Hee Ko

 Good summer everyone,             Today’s podcast is a fun one. I sit down with Hayet Amdouni from UAE University, Women’s Campus. We talk about an article she wrote on grammar. For those of you who know me, you are probably aware that unlike my primary podcasting guest and quasi-host David Rumptz, I am not a grammarian. I mention this because Hayet’s article goes a long way to explaining why. As it turns out, my grammatical ignorance is the fault of common usage and the failing of textbooks. Bullet dodged.             I don’t want to spoil the fun of our discussion, so I won’t give any spoilers here. However, I’ve decided that a bit of a format change is in order. While I’m sure some listeners would prefer to take a look at the article itself, there are many who simply don’t have the time. So, as a solution, I will be reading you the abstract for the articles henceforth. Hopefully, this will provide enough insight into the article, or at least give enough flavour to allow you to form an opinion and compare it with mine or those of my guest, should they have the audacity to differ.             For those of you wanting to read the article, which I highly recommend, it’s a freebie and the link can be found on my website, www.readandrendered.libsyn.com. Here’s the article: http://indepe

Hi everyone,             This week is kind of a special podcast. I sit down with Dr. Michael Vallance, who currently works at Future University in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan. We don’t discuss any particular article per se, but rather find out what an interesting person Michael is, how he got to where he is, where he’s taught and what he’s doing now. Towards the end of the podcast, Michael discusses his point of view of technology in the classroom and iPads in particular.             So, today it’s just a quick thanks to our sponsor in Cyprus, and lets get on with the show. Have a happy, Stu   VIRTUAL COLLABORATIVE SPACES RESEARCH BLOG  http://www.mvallance.net/   ABOUT DR. MICHAEL VALLANCE

Hey all,             Well, David and I are back, and to put it mildly, David is not a happy camper at least as it pertains to this article. I think David’s position becomes rather clear quite quickly. I would say the single biggest repeat annoyance for David is the word “orthographic”, but I am not going to spoil your fun and reveal why. For the sake of argument, I’ll provide a quick definition: it is a method of representing a language or the sounds of language by written symbols. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/orthography) I think you’ll find this is the definition to which David referred.             At any rate, there is another idea we ran across for the first time and that is of “language category”. Grainger refers to Japanese as category 4 according to the Foreign Service Institute. What is odd is that depending on where you search, you will find that Japanese is a category 3, 4 or 5. So, it is entirely possible that since 1994 (Grainger’s reference date), that the FSI has modified its categories. Further, David quite rightly brings up a point that if a category 4 native speaker had to learn English, wouldn’t English be the new category 4?

Hi all,             I do hope the summer is going well. In today’s podcast, I sit down with our very own Omar Boukella to discuss an article he wrote for the UGRU (Undergraduate General Requirements Unit) about the use of L1 in the L2 classroom. As would be expected, we begin our conversation with how to say hello in Berber. A much needed greeting should you find yourself wandering North Africa. Moving on.             Essentially, the main gist of the article is that it is not only incorrect to ban a student’s use of their first language in, say, an English class, but it is necessary and should be endorsed. Omar holds that it is especially useful for language learners not only at the beginner level, but in fact can be of assistance to learners all the way up to (and possibly including) high-intermediate levels.             Another aspect of language learning called into question is the notion of teaching the students “how to think”. One of the potentially damaging consequences of banning an L1 in the class is akin to claiming that the students’ L1 is not sufficient for their life. But, I won’t spoil how that conclusion is reached for you here. So take a listen to this latest podcast and if you go to the link for the article provided on my website, you can read along.             As always, please take the time to leave a rating or post a comment on iTunes. Apparently this does a lot for gaining notoriety. Don’t forget to tell a friend, another instructor who may not be your friend but you keep in contact with for some other obscure reason, or just some person wandering aimlessly about the world who clearly hasn’t listened to the podcast.

Hey folks, First, I would like to apologize for the jackhammer like noise in the background. Apparently, the city considers it necessary to make noise when it is building something. In this fine podcast I sit down with David Frey and we talk about a seemingly much shunned topic, contrastive rhetoric. In a nutshell, contrastive rhetoric is based on a notion first posited through the “Sapir-Whorf” hypothesis, which states that language either influences or controls thought. It depends whether you take the soft or hard interpretation. From there, we get into talking about English argument styles and some of the difficulties Arabic students may encounter due to their first language and culture. We then proceed to the idea of what we teach students. Since we are teaching students to write for a specific exam (in this case IELTS), it is necessary to teach the students what the ‘formula’ for the exam is. If there is something to contrastive rhetoric, and a non-English learner’s natural tendency is to present the information in an essay in a format which is at odds with the expected format, wouldn’t it stand to reason that they would not be as successful as someone that did follow the expected style? Failure to teach a student how to write for a particular audience may be just as bad as teaching them incorrect grammar or spelling. I suppose the question I will leave you with when you listen to the podcast, is as follows: When one learns a foreign language, does it follow that they will necessarily learn the rhetorical style of the new language?   Of course, the podcast is being partially sponsored by our friends in Cyprus at the Keg and Barrel. So make sure that when you visit Paphos this summer to swing by for a burger and a nice, cold, bubbly beverage.

Hey folks,             In this podcast David Rumptz and I sit down for our second recording, but this time we are looking into an area that is near and dear to many instructors, vocabulary acquisition. The article examines whether integrated or isolated vocabulary instruction is better. According to the numbers, there is no clear victor, but hopefully our discussion sheds some light on the issue. One aspect that I hope most people would appreciate is the cognitive load difference and the potential for the disruption of continuity that integrated vocabulary instruction alone might cause.             Amazingly, there were few digressions in our conversation, although I should probably clarify one point. About mid-podcast, we start talking about a “post-hoc Tukey analysis”. Apparently, it is a “single-step multiple comparison procedure and statistical test generally used in conjunction with an ANOVA to find which means are significantly different from one another.” Not surprisingly, it is named after John Tukey. (Thanks Wikipedia)

            Good day and welcome to episode seven. Today, I sat down with Sam McCoy (of the clan McCoy) and discussed an article comparing the learning styles and multiple intelligences of Kuwaiti and Taiwanese students. While the article does offer some interesting, albeit not overly surprising, information about Kuwaiti (and by extension, Gulf Arab students), it seems the both of us were either off-put or, at the very least, under-put by the authors conclusions.             There are definitely the question of gender that is not addressed, and Sam and I get into a great little debate of if the questions (survey) that the students were given answers whether the test tested the students or the students ideas. Regardless, it was a fairly interesting article that generated quite a few (occasionally topical) questions.   As usual, here is the abstract: A cross‐cultural study of Taiwanese and Kuwaiti EFL students’ learning styles and multiple intelligences Shu‐

Hey folks, Today is a special podcast for a couple of reasons. First, although the sound quality does leave something to be desired, it is the first of hopefully many Skype-based interviews. However, to make it extra special, this podcast is with my buddy Alan that I went to grad school with. To be sure, I guilt tripped him into it, but it was worth it.   At any rate, the article we examined was kind of a strange one. When you first start to look at it, it seems to be about “the significance of learning English” in Japan. Things take a turn for the Marxist about halfway through and it turns into a critique of the notion of English as the predominant “world language” and rather argues that local contexts determine the language of use. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not the authors’ claims are sufficient based on this rather particular scenario, but I can say with fair certainty that Alan didn’t buy it, and I’m not sold either.   So, here’s the abstract: Globalization and Language Learning in Rural Japan: The Role of English in the Local Linguistic Ecology RYUKO KUBOTA & SANDRA MCKAY   Drawing on a study of current language use in a rural community in Japan, we question to what extent English actually does serve today as a lingua franca in multilingual, internationally diverse communities. Specifically, we report on a critical ethnography of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non—English-speaking immigrants, largely from Brazil but also from China, Peru, Korea, and Thailand. We investigate how people in the community view and engage in local linguistic diversity and how this is related to their subjectivities and to their experiences in learning and using English. We analyzed the public rep

Keith Yoder & I sit down and talk about what it is that motivates students in the UAE to come to university. The article does provide a really interesting snapshot into this question. Of course, there were a few things that we felt were missing from the articles, specifically the motivation for males, but the authors of the article are hardly to blame for that. Another perk about this article was that it was written by instructors at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, so it was nice and close to home. But, I won’t spoil it for you, so please have a listen.  Here’s the abstract: CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON MOTIVATIONAL ISSUES IN STUDENTS AND THEIR GOALS FOR STUDYING AT UNIVERSITY Marion Engin, Kara McKeown  ABSTRACT The notion of motivation in language learning comprises a discourse including terms such as 'goals', 'expectations', 'achievement' and 'success'.  In most studies on motivation such concepts have been interpreted from a Western perspective. Similarly, underpinning motivation is the concept of values, which are also open to cultural interpretations. In an exploration into the motivation of female students at a federal university in the United Arab Emirates it was felt that such terms and notions needed to be explored and discussed before exami