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The purpose of this article is to propose a possible way to integrate cultural knowledge into English teaching by using children literature. It also presents an alternative method for researchers to investigate personal identity by using a character from literature as a case study. The article also offers an example of an exploration of the main characters' identity in Jasmin Warga's Other Words for Home. The story represented a life of a twelve-year-old girl from Syria who left behind the war torn city order to live in United States. Her identity formation process was analyzed through the theory of Symbolic Interactionism. Themes found from her journey of moving into new culture included "self as an English language learner" prior to moving to the United States and "self as an immigrant" was presented when she entered American society. her This teaching method might be useful in promoting English learners to become integratively motivated which can be achieved by understanding the cultural and ideological aspects and by developing a cross-cultural awareness of the how to become part of community that speak the target language.

This study examined Thai pre-service teachers' perceptions towards a nation-wide teacher education reform that was delayed by a year. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, by using a survey, narrative frames, and visual narratives. The survey items (n = 55) were constructed based on a review of literature on reforms of teacher education programs and education policies. The survey contained four categories, which are reasons for reform, people shaping the reform, outcomes of the reform, and attitudes towards the reform. To provide further insights into the survey data , narrative frames and visual narratives were utilised. There were 44 participants in this study. Survey findings indicated that in general, the reform was perceived as good. The perception that the reform was good revolved around the notion of change, and that teachers would be prepared to teach in the 21st century and in a contextually appropriate manner. From the narrative data, there were no further insights offered by the participants in terms of what constitutes the reform or why it may be perceived as good. This may reflect the lack of understanding of the reform, and also the ambiguity that surrounds it.

The discourse of deficiency in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has been perpetuated through the neoliberalisation of higher education. To explore the possibilities of disrupting this discourse, an EAP instructor, Daron, engaged with his critical friend, Jariya, in dialogic reflection. This was done on Daron's teaching journal entries through the restorying of his reflections, which were then critically responded to, and finally reconstructed to highlight tensions and hegemonic discourses affecting EAP. This dialogic exercise showed disruption through the reimagination of the EAP marketplace and through the centring of self and anxiety in a neoliberalised parameter. The former demonstrated a critique towards the value of standardised assessments while the latter illustrated the seemingly isolating endeavour when contesting the notion of students' language deficiency. While tensions were not expected to be resolved, this study showed how EAP practitioners could still enact autonomy within their work parameters.

Interpretive frameworks may be helpful to understand narratives, yet they also risk displacing unique information of the research context. In this paper, we argue that such is the case in narrative inquiry studies of English language teaching set in the Asian context, perhaps due to the pressure to use familiar interpretive frameworks that are sanctioned by scholars. Through meta-ethnography, we examined recent narrative inquiry studies set in Asia. It was observed that the research findings do not offer any critical insights about the context of the study; instead, they add to the prevalence of broad constructs of English language education, such as the components of identity. For future narrative inquiry research, we recommend researchers to consider utilizing local meanings pertinent to the study context as an analytical lens, as a means to Asianize the field.

Due to globalization, intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become important. To integrate ICC into the classroom, appropriate perceptions towards this construct are needed. To know and understand what these perceptions might be, this study examined pre-service English teachers' views collected through an online open-ended survey; a total of 53 respondents completed the survey. Analysis of the data was done through a corpus approach; specifically, keywords were derived from comparison with a benchmark corpus. Subsequently, the contexts of occurrence of these keywords were analysed. This study the analysed the first five keywords, which were "we," "language," "different," "culture," and "students." Based on the contexts of occurrence, this study found that the pre-service teachers perceived ICC as a notion that can be taught through specific pedagogical practices; that ICC is driven by differences in language and culture; and that students have the role of enhancing their ICC knowledge and skills. The findings present a contextual understanding of ICC, which may not necessarily be aligned with other cultural settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teacher education program in Thailand has undergone various reforms, with the latest being the shortening of the teacher education curriculum from five years to four. To date, very few studies have accounted for this reform. To address this gap, our study sought to analyse pre-service English teachers’ perceptions towards the reform. This was done through a semiotic analysis of visuals contributed by the pre-service teachers. There were a total of 43 visual contributions, which were analysed through Labbo’s typology of symbolisms and attributes discerned from the visuals and their corresponding captions. We were able to categorize the visuals to three types of symbolisms, which were transformative, typographic, and the third type being a combination of the first and second. The most common attribute was positive affect (emotion), with a few visuals rationalizing or questioning the reform. The analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers did not really understand the nature of the reform, despite their positive perception towards change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have indicated that language plays a central role in international students' academic integration. With an interest in Thailand, this study aimed to explore factors that affected international students' academic integration. Initial data were collected from a discussion group attended by Thai and international students. Preliminary analysis of data using Antconc, a concordancing program, revealed the top words used were Thai, students, language, English, international, good, benefit, help, and study. Thereafter, insights from the concordance lines were used to develop guided questions for individual semi-structured interviews. Three international graduate students volunteered for the interview. Thematic analysis revealed that three topics, consisting of internal, external and institutional factors, had a bearing on academic integration. The findings indicated that while language, or other pertinent sociocultural factors, were pivotal for international students' academic integration, there are also other factors worth considering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]