Page 5 - ELG1601 Jun Issue 437

June 2016 ELpeople Page 5 elgo

SHRSOH RQ WKH PRYH

English UK has appointed she said, ‘because English her predecessor Eddie
its first chief executive opens doors. I passionately Byers, who died suddenly
from within the ELT believe that the UK is the last year: ‘He emphasised
sector. Sarah Cooper premier place for people to the importance of English
(left) is currently dean of learn English and help UK being a trade Find the perfect language
management and them open those doors to association, and that it was course in the UK!
professional studies, their future.’ all about members doing
international English, at Before starting in the business – that’s very dear
South Thames College in ELT sector, Sarah’s career to my heart.’ Impartial rankings
London. was in business, and this She will take up her post
‘I came into this sector,’ is echoed in her tribute to in August 2016. based on British
Council inspections

Research: words Research: study Graded English,

and sensitivity on summarisation Italian, Spanish
and French

CLAUDIA CIVININI costa and I. arnon (2016). SARAH LALLY wrote summaries for ten eng- www.el-go.com
writes twenty-seven native speak- writes lish texts after reading in class.
ers and fifty-nine non-native the teacher returned each sum-
Do seconD language speakers speakers (between B2 and c1 Most classes test read- mary with feedback, assessed
process large language patterns, level) participated in the study. ing comprehension with for content and language skills. I am looking for:
such as multi-word phrases (for to control for education influ- multiple-choice or true-or-false the groups had no statistical dif-
example: ‘no need to worry’) as ence, non-native speakers were questions. But a new study sug- ference between them after the Quality
a whole, or do they process each split into those who were learn- gests that the most effective pre-test. However, the post-test
word separately? are they sensi- ing english in the classroom method for checking under- results showed that the summary
tive to their frequency, meaning and those in an immersion set- standing is not practice tests, group scored higher, implying
being able to process high-fre- ting. Both groups performed but summarisation. better understanding. Price
quency combinations faster – as two tasks: word recognition and according to ‘the Influ- the study suggests that, when
native speakers are? compositional (non-idiomatic) ence of summary writing on compared with more common
the answers to these questions four-word-phrase recognition. the development of reading comprehension techniques, sum-
can potentially give linguists a In both tasks they had to discern skills in a foreign language’ by marising teaches students to read Destination safety
‘unified theory’, a single-system between real and invented words Martgorzata Marzec-stawiarska more effectively. When summa-
view of language according to or phrases, both at high and low from the Pedagogical Uni- rising, students must recognise
which words and larger patterns frequency. versity of Krakow (2016), important information and delete
are processed by the same cog- In the word recognition task, summarising involves build- the insignificant, as well as Child protection
nitive mechanism. the opposite frequency effect was signifi- ing a text’s ‘macrostructure’ organise, generalise and con- go
theory, the words-and-rules cant, especially for l2 speakers: – essentially, forming its gist. struct the main idea. summaries
approach, prefers a dual system participants reacted much more the study aimed to see whether also require students to put effort
where words are stored in the swiftly to high-frequency words. summarisation helped read- into their work. While some stu-
lexicon and multi-word phrases In the phrase recognition task, ing comprehension in students dents in the control group might
are processed by combining sin- frequency sensitivity was still learning english as a second have come unprepared to class
gle words and grammar rules. high and did not differ between language (esl), and if it also on some occasions, members of
also, proving that second lan- the three groups. helped in learning the language the summary group had to do all
guage speakers are sensitive to the study suggests that non- itself. the students read english their homework or face the con-
multi-word phrase frequency in native speakers can acquire the at B1 and B2 levels. Researcher sequences.
the same way that native speak- same frequency sensitivity as Malgorazata Marec-stwiarska the study also suggests that
ers are could suggest that similar native speakers, even at interme- administered pre- and post- teacher feedback is helpful in
processes underpin both l1 and diate level. also, it would seem experiment tests on the control encouraging esl students’ read-
l2 learning. these are the issues that immersion may not neces- and experimental groups. ing comprehension. Detailed
investigated in the ‘More than sarily be better than a classroom the control group did practice feedback was very effective
words: multiword frequency setting for allowing learners to tests from the First certificate in in giving students the tools to
effects in non-native speak- progress to native speaker profi- english examination booklet. In improve their summary and lan-
ers’ study by M. Hernández, a. ciency. n contrast, the experimental group guage skills. n

Letter: PKK is a terrorist organisation

Dear EL Gazette, through a number of filters. Colombian government. We also cov-
Our world has been going through We believe that you will make any ered the inspiring story of Alan Jara – a Now available on mobile
very hard times over the past couple effort required to compensate for such former state governor held prisoner by
of years and terrorist attacks towards regrettable misinformation by under- Farc guerrillas in the Colombian jungle
innocent people are becoming one lining PKK as a terrorist group and for nine years who kept up the morale
of the most important concerns for apologising for the text printed. Looking of his fellow prisoners with daily Eng-
humankind. forward to your prompt response. lish lessons up until their release (April Download our
We believe our industry plays a criti- Eren Göker, President the UED (The 2009 Gazette).
cal role in developing a more peaceful Association of International Education For the record, Farc is classified as a
and tolerant world, and every share- Counselors Turkey), Istanbul, Turkey terrorist organisation in Colombia, the app for free
holder in our business contributes to US, Canada, Chile, New Zealand and
this priceless goal. The Gazette writes: the EU. We are an independent news-
The possibility of our families, chil- Our article on Iranian-born MA Tesol- paper and report on various groups and
dren, friends and colleagues becoming qualified former high school English organisations when their activities are
victims of a terrorist attack going to teacher and now PKK press spokes- connected to English language teach-
school, playing at a park, praying or man Zagros Hiwa stated that ‘The ing, but our coverage of them should
working horrifies all of us, and human- PKK is officially viewed as a terrorist not be taken as approval.
kind should unite against any terrorist organisation in Turkey and the UK.’ We We report on what we feel will be of
attack in any part of the world. Any ter- apologise for neglecting to mention that interest to English teachers around the
rorist organisation attacking innocent the PKK is also regarded as a terrorist world. We reported briefly on the surpris-
people in a certain part of the world organisation by the government of the ing policy of schools in territory seized
should be a worry for the rest of the United States, by the European Union by jihadi terrorist group Isis in Raqqa,
humankind as well. and by Nato – among other states and Syria, where an hour a day of English
The terrorist organisation PKK, international organisations. is part of the curriculum (February 2015
murderers of more than 20,000 inno- We have always featured stories Gazette). We also reported on compul-
cent people including three-month-old about English language teachers who sory English lessons for officers of the
babies, mothers, grandfathers and find themselves in extraordinary cir- Ministry of State Security – the secret
small children over the past decade, cumstances. To give just a couple of police force of North Korea (Novem-
is another serious enemy of humanity, examples, we covered (April 2013 ber 2014 Gazette). But we would like
just like Isis and Al Qaeda. Gazette) the story of Tanja Neijmeijer, to stress to all our readers that just
We were shocked when we saw the who went to teach English in Colombia because we report on these organisa-
news story ‘Learning a lesson in gue- as part of her languages degree and tions, it absolutely does not mean we in
rilla PR’ (April 2016 Gazette, page 3) ended up fighting with the Farc Marx- any way support them.
and we believe at heart that this was a ist guerrillas and was in the negotiating Matt Salusbury, EL Gazette news
very big and unfortunate fault sneaked team in Cuban-led peace talks with the and features editor

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