Dissertation for MA in TEFL, U. of Birmingham (U.K.)

For anyone remotely interested, here is a link to my 99-page dissertation I wrote to complete my studies in the Master of Arts in Teahing English as a Foreign Language programme at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B7g4PkKvSN5lNTBjOWI2YjQtZTcxMy00YWEzLWJlNzktNWM3ZTI2ZDNjODk1&hl=en

Below is an abstract of the dissertation in 100 words:

Abstract of Dissertation

What effects do the prevalent sempai/kohai (master/apprentice or senior/junior) powerdistance relationships, especially between teachers, have on the introduction of genrestudies in Japanese EFL classrooms?

By JOHNNY MENDOZA GOVEA; A dissertation submitted on March 20, 2008 to the School of Humanities of the University of Birmingham in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).

The four challenges of (1) teaching English through communicativemeans, (2) encouraging the hone use of communication in English, (3) utilizing the ALT effectively in the classroom, and (4) sensitizing students to the cross-cultural relationalities between how Japanese culture and English-speaking cultures perceive language use were reformulated into the dissertation question. Exploration into what power distance relationships exist and why genre studies was the focus were expounded upon through a combination of research, including informal classroom research and an online survey of native English-speaking teachers/teacher assistants. Premises gathered were streamlined to ascertain how to meet some of the above-mentioned challenges.