Monthly Archives: September, 2021

Editorial

By NELTA ELT Forum on September 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Dear readers,

NELTA ELT Forum is a platform for ELT practitioners of any level to reflect their ELT activities throughout the world in general and from Nepal in particular. It has provided opportunities for ELT practitioners to grow professionally in their respective fields. Thank you very much for your overwhelming support and contribution to the NELTA ELT Forum. We are exhilarated by the articles that you have sent, and we are in the process of publishing them gradually. Even if the world is badly hit by the terror of COVID-19, the activities of ELT have been flourishing day by day, and the results are the quality articles that we have been receiving.

We wholeheartedly welcome our readers to the August-September issue, and it’s our pleasure to present a diverse collection of articles on ELT from different scholars. In this issue, we have incorporated different areas comprising genre-based pedagogy, translanguaging pedagogy, English language teachers’ rapport in distance learning, private schools’ preference on quality ELT teachers. This issue also presents the answers to the questions from the experts.

Mr. Lal Rana, in his short paper, “Genre-based Pedagogy as a Way of Giving a Gift of Confidence to Emergent EFL Writers,” first presents his own reflections that substantiate his perspective and then attempt to counter the deficit narrative in Nepalese school and higher education context by using the fundamental features of genre-based pedagogy.

Similarly, Mr. Rajesh Bhandari, in his paper, Effectiveness of Tanslanguaging Pedagogy in EFL Contexts, asserts that translanguaging helps better understanding of the subject matter, supports learners to develop literacy in less proficient language, facilitates home-school cooperation, and help the integration of more advanced learners with less experienced ones. He asserts that the English-only policy in some schools in Nepal discourages students from using their linguistic repertoire to enhance communication and build knowledge in their home languages. He, finally, concludes that judicious use of mother tongue should be allowed to use in schools.

In their research article, “Perceptions of Secondary Level Students Toward English Language Teachers’ Rapport Building in Distance Learning: A Quantitative Study,” Mr. Ekraj Aryal, Mr. Kapil Jung Pandey, Mr. Pramod Sigdel, Mr. Shiva Thapa, Ms. Uma Gorathoki, and Mr. Yuba Raj Parajuli, conclude that English teachers in a distance learning environment failed to maintain rapport with their students in terms of categories of approach and homophily. However, the teachers’ rapport with their students was strong based on personality category.

Likewise, Mr. Yudhisthir Aryal, in his article, Preferences of Private Schools Principals and Students on the Quality of English Language Teachers, reveals that the principals preferred to recruit English teachers who have in-depth content knowledge, English language proficiency, and they need to be innovative, trained, and experienced in teaching English. Similarly, the study indicated that the students like the English teachers who are friendly, flexible, humorous, and conscious of students’L1 and target language culture. Parallel to principals’ perceptions, the students also favor the English teachers who possess content knowledge.

Finally, the NELTA ELT Forum team has continued a question-answer section as done in the past issue to encourage our readers to actively participate in the contemporary issues in a question-answer form. In this section, we have presented experts’ ideas in the form of questions and answers. The answers to the questions are based on experts’ professional engagements, recent research works, and scholarships.

In this issue, we have tried to seek practical solutions from the relevant experts for four pertinent questions raised by NELTA members representing various branches across the nation. The answers include (a) use of technology to enhance ELT by Dr. Dawn Bikowski (b) ways and procedures of designing online classes for teaching English to young learners by Dr. Suman Laudari, (c) ways/strategies for engaging college students in online interaction by Mr. Sagun Shrestha, and (d) balancing teachers’ and students’ emotional wellbeing in remote/online learning during the pandemic by Ms. Sumnima Dewan.

We are under the strong conviction that the articles and question and answer section included in this issue provide prolific experiences and insights that readers may agree to situation their classroom setting for further investigations.

We believe this issue will generate a space with valuable comprehension into the local and global ELT community. While reaching this avenue, we extend our utmost gratitude to the valued contributors for their hard work in bringing this issue to this stage. We are hopeful to continue this trend of bringing productive and practical ideas to the upcoming issues. On behalf of the editorial board, we would like to thank the reviewers for their invaluable input on the present issue of the NELTA ELT Forum and expect similar support in the future. Thank you so much to all the writers, reviewers, and prospective readers!

Happy reading!

Editor-in-Chief