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The adption of the Common European Framework Reference (CEFR) as a guideline in Malaysian English language education has led the Ministry of Education to replace locally-developed English textbooks with a selection of imported titles. While considering the significance of intercultural skills in the English curriculum, there is a need to look into the aspect of relevance in using imported texts to suit local cultural demands. This study is dual focal in nature; it investigated not only the impacts of cultural elements embedded in imported textbooks on Malaysian students' attitude but also gathered their perception on the aspect through survey research. For the purpose of this study, it specifies on the use of English Plus 1 -- an imported textbook, published by Oxford University Press. A questionnaire which was adopted from Xiao (2010), was then distributed to 39 Malaysian pupils of suburban Chinese-type primary schools in Perak who were selected using a convenience sampling technique. The findings indicated that the use of English Plus 1 has impacted pupils' attitude where it was observed that their perception towards learning English became more negative due to the focus of the textbooks inclines towards a culture that was not familiar to Malaysians. The implications derived from this study suggest teachers' flexibility at adopting a range of teaching approaches that might also need to be creative in its nature in order to impart cultural information to the young learners. Simultaneously, a more pro-active solution could be taken at the administrative level by carefully scrutinizing the cultural elements embedded in imported texts to adopt cultural suitability for young learners. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

Teaching a foreign language to young learners have some differences from teaching adults. Young children have concentration problems and they tend to change their mood every ten minutes and need more creative activities than adults. Therefore, foreign language teachers have to choose interesting activities for them and foreign language teacher candidates should learn the correct methods and techniques during their training period. Although some teacher candidates think the solution for training is simply to get all theoretical knowledge, some of them think that solution lies in encouraging the teacher candidates to create their own activities. This descriptive action research paper arises of a quantitative study the purpose of which is to seek the process of ELT students' development and reflection on teaching English to children. In order to find out language teacher candidates' ideas about how they improve themselves, five point Likert scale was prepared. Data collection was achieved by giving the same questionnaires at the beginning and the end of the term at One State University, ELT students in the academic year 2015-2016. 16 male and 32 female students answered the questionnaire. The data were analysed using factor analyses and Levene Test. Findings were examined and some suggestions that focused on language teacher training candidates were put forward.

Language teaching can be enhanced by effective uses of technology; nonetheless, there are teachers who are reluctant to integrate technology in their practice. The debated issue has resulted in a number of Ministries of Education worldwide, including the Greek Ministry, to support a transition through the introduction of Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs). This initiative was not well-received in either the public or private sector, due to the fact that teachers were not provided with any training in how to use IWBs and include them in their teaching. IWBs became intimidating to the language teacher and did not serve their intended purpose in most cases. Nonetheless, there were teachers who were intrigued by IWBs and made an effort to apply them. The present paper focuses on the development of interactive language learning and the effect the teachers' risk-taking has on pedagogy from the teachers' and students' perspectives. The outcomes of the study were that language teachers have taken charge of their own professional growth and take risks in order to help learners benefit from IWBs. However, due to lack of training, teachers and students have not reached the zenith of using IWBs. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED572005.]

The book opens with the names of twelve objects, which the teacher must have before him. These names have been selected with a view to embracing the whole alphabet, so that when the pupil has learned to write them, he has also learned to form all the letters in use. The teacher then directs the pupil, in writing, to touch one of these objects, and, in reply to the written question, "What did you do?" to write such a sentence as this, "I touched the box." In a similar way are taught, by gradual advancement, all the personal pronouns, nominative, possessive and objective, singular and plural, the interrogatives "who," "which," "what," "how many" and "where," the inflections of case and number in nouns, the distinction to be observed between the definite and the indefinite article, the proper use of prepositions, the conjunction "and," the words and characters expressing numerals up to one hundred, adjectives denoting color and other properties equally perceptible, and a considerable number of verbs. The sentence-forms are confined to the illustration of the government of the objective case by the transitive verb or its equivalent, and time is exemplified by the present imperative and the past indicative. The exercises which are to be performed by the mutual action of the teacher and pupil, are printed in script type, so that the latter, in learning to write, may have a clear and correct model constantly before him, for educating the eye and training the hand. This first book provides an introduction to a course and has been designed particularly for class-instruction, but it is equally well adapted to the education of a single pupil.

The article reports the findings of a survey, conducted among primary school English language teachers in Slovenia, aimed at revealing their attitudes towards the use of narratives in teaching English as a foreign language to children aged from eight to nine years (3rd and 4th grades respectively). The research results show that most teachers use narratives when teaching English, generally once or twice per month, and that teachers who do not use a course book in the classroom employ storytelling or story reading techniques more frequently than teachers who follow a course book in their teaching. Despite the fact that the teachers participating in the study are aware of the importance of narratives in teaching English as a foreign language to young learners, there is still a lot to be done concerning the selection of the narratives, the narrating techniques and the post-narration activities. Proper teacher training for teaching a foreign language to young learners could address most of these issues.

The article reports the findings of a survey, conducted among primary school English language teachers in Slovenia, aimed at revealing their attitudes towards the use of narratives in teaching English as a foreign language to children aged from eight to nine years (3rd and 4th grades respectively). The research results show that most teachers use narratives when teaching English, generally once or twice per month, and that teachers who do not use a course book in the classroom employ storytelling or story reading techniques more frequently than teachers who follow a course book in their teaching. Despite the fact that the teachers participating in the study are aware of the importance of narratives in teaching English as a foreign language to young learners, there is still a lot to be done concerning the selection of the narratives, the narrating techniques and the post-narration activities. Proper teacher training for teaching a foreign language to young learners could address most of these issues.

This qualitative study aims to reveal pre-service English language teachers' perceptions concerning 'teaching English to young learners' through metaphors. It has been carried out with the participation of 83 4th grade undergraduate students attending the English Language Teaching Programme at Ondokuz Mayis University. The data have been collected via a metaphor form with an open-ended statement as "Teaching English to young learners is ……… because …………". The gathered data have been analysed through content analysis in stages coding and elimination, category development, validity and reliability, interpretation of the data. During the preliminary analysis of the gathered metaphors 11 of them were omitted due to the missing parts on the form. The remaining 72 metaphors were put into a similarity analysis revealing that 31 different metaphors in total were produced by the participants. The metaphors "fun" and "turning-point" have appeared to be the ones with the highest frequency. Among the other metaphors with high frequency are "joy," "challenge," "difficulty," and "hard-work." As for the categories yielded by the study, the frequency list is led by 'an enjoyable process', which is followed by 'a demanding process', 'an important process', 'a creative process', and 'an easy process' consecutively. Related discussions and recommendations are presented in the light of these findings.

This qualitative study aims to reveal pre-service English language teachers' perceptions concerning 'teaching English to young learners' through metaphors. It has been carried out with the participation of 83 4th grade undergraduate students attending the English Language Teaching Programme at Ondokuz Mayis University. The data have been collected via a metaphor form with an open-ended statement as "Teaching English to young learners is ……… because …………". The gathered data have been analysed through content analysis in stages coding and elimination, category development, validity and reliability, interpretation of the data. During the preliminary analysis of the gathered metaphors 11 of them were omitted due to the missing parts on the form. The remaining 72 metaphors were put into a similarity analysis revealing that 31 different metaphors in total were produced by the participants. The metaphors "fun" and "turning-point" have appeared to be the ones with the highest frequency. Among the other metaphors with high frequency are "joy," "challenge," "difficulty," and "hard-work." As for the categories yielded by the study, the frequency list is led by 'an enjoyable process', which is followed by 'a demanding process', 'an important process', 'a creative process', and 'an easy process' consecutively. Related discussions and recommendations are presented in the light of these findings.