No abstract

Humor has often been seen as an important element in the learning process, facilitating both teaching and learning. Nevertheless, the utilization of humor in the educational setting has had its opponents. In recent years, many attempts have been made to conceptualize the various forms of humor implemented in the practice of education. Despite a myriad of studies aimed at linking humor with personality traits, there seem a dearth number of research studies addressing the multifaceted humor styles of EFL instructors while interacting with the students in the classroom. There have been a number of scales thought-up in order to best assess the humor styles of the individual. However, the one identified by Martin et al. (2003) attempts to deal with the functions of humor, rather than particular personalities it may or may not represent. The four specific humor styles identified in this scale encompass two benign (affiliative and self-enhancing), and two injurious (aggressive and self-defeating) humor styles. The present study seeks to examine the humor styles adopted by English language instructors in Turkey by investigating (1) whether there is a difference between male and female instructors with regard to employing humor, (2) whether the educational level of the participants influences their tendency to use humor while interacting with the students in the classroom, and (3) whether the age of the instructors is an influential factor in adopting various styles of humor. A total of 64 English language instructors working at private and state universities in Turkey completed a standardized form of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) online. Results indicated no significant difference between male and female instructors with regard to adopting humor styles in the classroom. Nor were there any differences between instructors of varying educational level in terms of the use of humor styles. In addition, no differences were seen according to age.

This study sought to investigate changes in pre-service EFL teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs before and after the practicum experience at school. The data were collected using the same 24-item teacher sense of efficacy (TSE) scale. Three null hypotheses were formulated based on the subcategories of self-efficacy in the study (i.e., self-efficacy in student engagement, self-efficacy in applying instructional strategies, and self-efficacy in classroom management). The Wilcoxonsigned rank test runs on the pre-practicum and post-practicum results suggested that the null hypothesis that practicum would not bring about any change in student engagement should be rejected. According to the second null hypothesis, there would be no significant difference between pre-service EFL teachers’ pre-practicum and post-practicum self-efficacy in applying instructional strategies. Results indicated that we should reject the second null hypothesis, too, implying that pre-service teachers’ scores in this construct have also been significantly different from each other in the pretest and the posttest. The last hypothesis of interest was if pre-service EFL teachers’ selfefficacy in classroom management changes due to practicum experience. The data gathered implies that we should reject this hypothesis, possibly in favor of the premise that our practicing pre-service EFL teachers have made positive gains in their classroom management ability. If we compare the obtained results based on the effect sizes that we have calculated for them, although all of them are strong effect sizes, we can say that the pre-service EFL teachers’ self-efficacy has improved first in classroom management (r = 0.77), second in applying instructional strategies (r = 0.71), and third in student engagement (r = 0.622). The findings of the study are discussed in the light of implications to the language teacher education programs and the development of practicum experience.

This study sought to evaluate the English language coursebooks used at the Turkish public elementary schools. In so doing, a series of coursebooks used in English courses of the curriculum prepared by the Turkish Ministry of National Education were evaluated, using Tomlinson and Masuhara's (2013) set of coursebook evaluation universal criteria. Results indicated that the layout, listening skill, illustrations in use, and affective engagement are the positive traits of the coursebooks, while the negative features outnumber the positive traits. The evaluation indicated that the Turkish public elementary English coursebooks are void of a number of important aspects of language acquisition, including communication-based activities, continuation of using English outside of the classroom, discovery enhancing input and most importantly extensive exposure to English. The central focus of the coursebooks is on the accuracy and repetition rather than effective outcomes, meaningful communication and long term language acquisition. Most activities in all coursebooks contain practice activities, with no place for productivity and autonomy on the part of the students. Additionally, there is no sufficient personalization and the coursebooks fail to make use of what students bring to classroom. Nor are the learners required to think critically, creatively or analytically in most of the activities. The coursebooks do not encourage learners to continue learning English by themselves, thus lacks encouragement for autonomy as well. The activities are designed to practice language items within the classroom environments. Hence, learning does not go beyond the classroom environment with the help of the coursebooks. Nor do the coursebooks guide or encourage learners to make discoveries by themselves. The bombardment of repetitive practice activities that only assess accuracy does not seem to be able to lead to long-term acquisition of English.

The difficulty in learning vocabulary is a problem that lies in not anchoring the new items to relevant established entities in cognitive structure. Different categories of associations have been reported to aid facilitating vocabulary acquisition. Collocating vocabulary items is a type of association that is considered to be more efficient in retrieval. The present study sought to investigate whether collocating the lexical items on Quizlet can facilitate acquisition of the vocabulary items, and whether it is likely to be more effective than learning decontextualized individual words. In so doing, 70 upper-intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with homogenous knowledge of vocabulary were conveniently assigned into two groups: the learners in the first group were assigned a list of vocabulary items with their synonyms in English, while the learners in the other group were assigned the identical vocabulary items with their frequent collocations written in complete sentences. The targeted collocations were verb-nouns, propositional verbs, and noun-nouns. The assignment continued for two months. At the end, an independent sample t-test applied on the scores achieved from a posttest indicated a significant difference in scores of the control group and that of the experimental group. This study sheds light to the significance of contextualizing a lexical item with collocations through which acquisition of vocabulary item is enhanced.