CultNet 2015 plan

Tentative title: “Teaching (inter?)cultural aspects in English classrooms: some insights from my fieldwork at a Thai university”
Recently encouraged (or indirectly forced) by Richard to come up with a presentation title for the CultNet meeting which will be held in Durham in April as Min has posted earlier. At this stage when my mind is concentrating on (how to start) analyzing my data and drafting my thesis, I think that forcing/pushing/propelling myself to work in mini projects which will later contribute as parts of my thesis is a good idea because it will help me find the topics I want to write in my thesis. However, I have asked myself the same question for both thesis drafting and a possible mini project to start with and the question is ‘What can I say/write about it now?’ Fortunately, I’m reading a book called ‘How to write a Thesis’ (Murray, 2011, p.31) and have found that these following questions open the door to what I can say/write now:
1. What I’m most interested in is…
2. What I want to do with this is…, and
3. The main question that interests me is…
After returning from my fieldwork, Richard asked me what I would say now about the Thai ELT which is different from what I said/wrote before I left for my fieldwork. The first thing that came up to my mind was the topic of the exam-driven teaching. I have a feeling that the main purpose of English language teaching for my participants seem to be that they have to teach students to help them pass exams. This topic interests me the most because when the primary purpose is students passing exams, what the teachers taught were mainly grammar points and paragraph/essay writing because these were assessed in the exams. Hence, the idea that keeps coming back to me is regarding their views on teaching anything apart from what would be included in the exams. To be specific, I want to find out what the teachers think about the teaching of cultural elements in their English classes.
Focusing on this topic, I’ll look into the data I generated from the interviews I conducted with my main participants specifically the parts which I think are related to the topic. The purpose of this mini project is to explore the backwash of the exam-oriented ELT on the teaching and learning of (inter)cultural elements. I hope that this project will contribute to the intercultural development in Thai universities and the contexts similar to that of Thailand.

5 comments

  • Richard Fay

    At the last minute (and hoping Susan will join me/us), I have put in the following title:

    “Cultures of practitioner research: extending Exploratory Practice from language education to Researching Multilingually collaboration”

  • Richard Fay

    Forced? by little old me? ……

    • Sutraphorn Tantiniranat

      After discussing with Richard, my new title (v.2.0) is….

      “The goal is to teach English, not London is the city with diverse culture. No.”: Some Implications for Teacher Educator for ELF.

  • Sutraphorn Tantiniranat

    You’re welcome, Susan. When I asked the students why they were learning English, most of them said they wanted to be able to speak English.

  • Susan Dawson

    Interesting Khwan. My fieldwork was also overshadowed by exam-driven agendas, but in my case it was the learners driving that agenda rather than me! Thanks for sharing those questions though – useful ones to think about.