Thesis Topic: Bridging the Cultural Gap in the young EFL classroom by teaching Multicultural Children’s Literature

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EFL teachers often neglect intangible subjects like culture. But, as long as I teach English using storybooks, teachers cannot avoid teaching cultures in order that students understand the meaning of words properly in context because languages represent their culture all the time.

I would like to research into teaching cultures using the multicultural literature. Teachers use children’s literature such as storybooks in their English class, because those texts are familiar to young students and have rich vocabularies. They are not too much difficult and just right level. Some storybooks contain various cultures. Because of this, they are called ‘multicultural literature’. Students will learn various cultures together when they learn English with it. That is the reason why I choose the multicultural literature.
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I will dig out various multicultural literature and research how to apply those materials concretely in the real English class. Problem-posing method is good to teach multicultural literature, some books of which are very unfamiliar and I need to localize them for young EFL learners, like changing contents or adding some supporting materials.
My rough sub topics are followed;

• Culture in Foreign English Language Teaching and Learning
• Teaching English in Korea
• Understanding Multicultural Children’s Literature
• Problem-posing with Multicultural Literature in the young EFL class room
• Integrated Lesson Plans to localize Multicultural Stories

My thoughts on APA Style

When I started academic writing in the first semester, I applied the 5th edition of APA Style but now I am using the 6th. Someday it will change again. Some APA rules for citing and referencing are still complicated therefore I always check those rules whenever I write assignments. The more I write TESOL-MALL assignments in APA Style, the better I get used to APA Style.

Response to the Reading of Swales & Feak's unit 1: An Approach to Academic Writing

Writing tasks have become a part of my life since I became a graduate student. When I tried to write my first assignment in TESOL mall, I recognized that I did not know how to write and, of course I could not understand texts either. Then I just summarized and copied some of original articles. However, after understanding the term of plagiarism, I tried to avoid plagiarism by paraphrasing. Since then, I always try to think how to paraphrase the original text into my writing. Because as a writer I would like to express my own voice, I focus on understanding of the text.

After reading Swales& Feak (1994)’s article, I realized that “writers need to understand their audiences’ expectations and prior knowledge to be successful in their writing” (p.7). As a writer, I have never thought my audiences at all because I have concentrated on me and the author of the reading only. On the contrary, when I talk to somebody, I pay attention to my audiences because they are just in front of my face. But writing is different! I cannot see the audiences face to face and so they are easily neglected. What is a good writer? I thought so far that good writers can express their own voice, but now, I can say that good writers can reflect their voices differently according to their audiences. And I will try to think my audience while writing.

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In addition, I realized that academic writers should be familiar with internal organization such as Hoey (1983)’s problem-solution (as cited in Swales& Feak, 1994, p.12), and also, our writing should follow academic style using formal nouns, single verbs and useful linking words to have flow(Swales& Feak, 1994). These practical tips are understandable but not easy to apply in writing, especially for me as an EFL learner. However, I will try to keep thinking these writing rules to become a better writer, and hope these practical tips will be applied in my further academic writing step by step!

Swales, J. & Feak, C. B. (1994). An Approach to Academic Writing. Academic writing for graduate students: A course for non-native speakers of English (pp.7-32). Ann Arbor, MI: the University of Michigan Press.

Interesting Topic

What is reading?

Teachers often meet students’ mothers when they come to schools to ask about their children’s progress of leaning English. They like hearing their children are reading books aloud, and therefore they normally ask their teachers to improve children’s reading skills. But there is a typical mistake that teachers find. Most parents misunderstand that reading means a word decoding which is a developing skill coming from phonics learning (Time for learning, 2009). To read, students must be able to sound out each letter which is decoding process and understand what they decode. The fact that learners know how to pronounce written words correctly does not mean that they can read because reading always combine decoding and comprehending the text (Linse & Nunan,2005).
I have seen many Korean teachers teach phonics skills to young learners but not comprehension skills much. How can I teach comprehension skills to young EFL learners in Korea? It is not easy that's why I would like to research into it!

Linse, C., & Nunan, D. (2005). Practical English Language Teaching Young Learners. New York: McGraw-Hill College.
Time for learning. (2009). Reading Comprehension Skills. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://www.time4learning.com/homeschool/seo/reading_comprehension_2.htm

How do EFL writers avoid Plagiarism?(2)

As a student, the most difficult thing about paraphrasing is that sometimes I do not understand sources and so I cannot find my own words to replace the originals. Whenever I feel difficult to paraphrase I try to read over and over again until some clues come up in mind, and then I write sentences, because I have never been educated how to read effectively using context clues.

I am an English teacher for kindergarteners and use various stories which came from abroad. Storybooks are very good for children. Children learn a lot including social, linguistic, creative things through books and English as well. Whenever I read storybooks to them, I introduce authors and illustrators and explain how much they are important people before reading. During reading, I try to ask many questions to encourage students to think deeply. After reading, young students are asked to retell or rewrite or redraw the story, as an author or an illustrator. Those after-reading activities are very helpful to understand stories especially for young EFL learners.

After reading Yamada’s paper, I think those story activities can be the background knowledge for their future paraphrasing and inference skills to avoid plagiarism. So I will keep doing this in class. Nowadays we can see a lot of multimedia sources, and people read books or texts less than the past, but reading is a pleasurable activity and gives lots of information. My students still like my story reading more than watching DVD!

Yamada, K. (2003). What prevents ESL/EFL students from avoiding plagiarism? : Analyses of 10 North American websites. System, 31, 247-258.

How do EFL writers avoid Plagiarism?

I have been heard the term, plagiarism since I studied in TESOL-Mall because many students commit plagiarism without awareness. When I heard of plagiarism in my work, I was so surprised and curious about it. I had never thought of ‘textual ownership’ (Yamada, 2003, p.248) and the fact that writers have to borrow their texts and ideas using quotation marks for direct citation or paraphrasing them. According to Yamada (2003)’s research, when writers paraphrase source texts they must understand sources’ information first, and need inferential skills to develop and create the meaning of the sources. However it is not easy for anyone, especially for unskilled readers who cannot inference authors’ thoughts.

Since reading Yamada (2003)’s paper, I have been thinking what reading is and how I teach proper reading skills to young EFL students. Good readers, who can understand writers’ intentions, will be good writers who can create their own meaning. I hope my students will not struggle to paraphrase writers’ voices but expand and strengthen the knowledge of the language (Scott & Ytreberg, 1990).


Scott, W.A.,& Ytreberg, L.H.(1990). Teaching English to Children. London: Longman Keys to Language Teaching.
Yamada, K. (2003). What prevents ESL/EFL students from avoiding plagiarism? : Analyses of 10 North American websites. System, 31, 247-258.

Hello, everyone!

Nice to meet you, all ^^
Unfortunately, I can’t attend to the writing class, so that I can only meet you online.
I am looking forward to hearing from you on my blog and I hope to visit yours to share my thoughts.

Have a great day!

You are Special!

One you, one me
No one else could ever be just
Like you, you see
Everyone is someone
No one else can be
If you could see
What everybody else sees in you
Then you would be
Happy you were made
Just the way you're meant to be

And when you think
What difference do I make
Would anybody's heart break
I wonder do I matter
Remember there's just one you
Completely uniquely you
Original through and through
There's no one else like you
Nobody could take your place
Nobody can fill your space
Nobody else has your face
There's just, just one you

One me, one you
No matter where you go
Or what you do
You'll find it's true
Search the whole world over
There's only just one you
And you and me
And everybody every where
It grew it all unique
With extra-ordinary
As special as it can be

Just One You -Janna Petter Long