Volume 8, Number 1, June 2011
The purpose of the study reported on in this paper was to investigate the concurrent development of first- and second-language reading and spelling skills. The study’s participants were 47 grade one children enrolled in a Canadian French-Immersion program and their first language was English. The following skills were tested at the beginning and end of the children’s school year: word reading, phonological awareness, oral-language proficiency, spelling and pseudoword-decoding. Descriptive statistics and ANOVAs revealed that there was an improvement in French and English reading and spelling skills from the beginning to the end of the year with a tendency for French skill development to be faster than English. English reading and spelling skills continued to develop throughout the year despite a lack of formal instruction in English. All English and French skills improved over time. However, the rate of development of some of the English skills was slower than what was reported in the standard scores for English-only students. Results suggested that learning in a second language proved to be both a facilitator and an impediment, depending on the particular skills examined.
This paper presents a two-year longitudinal study of a collaboration between four researcher-and-teacher pairs. The ultimate goal is to raise the quality of English language teaching in Hong Kong by first improving teacher understanding of language knowledge and language use and, then second, guiding teachers on how to adjust their English lesson planning accordingly. Methods used to evaluate the four teachers’ growth in understanding included comprehensive interviews at the beginning and end of the study, and stimulated recall interviews immediately following the teaching of the lesson. Findings indicate that teaching behaviours improved as a result of the collaboration. Areas of change included a deeper understanding of the concepts of language knowledge and language use, a better balancing of language knowledge and use in lessons, a greater use of inductive teaching methodology, and a differentiated use of error correction according to the focus of the lesson – whether on language knowledge or language use. Factors contributing to change included the focus in discussions on pedagogical and content knowledge, as well as the collaborative, immediate and longterm reflective nature of intervention.
One of the most controversial topics in Applied Linguistics is the role of learners’ metalinguistic knowledge (MK) in foreign language acquisition. There seems to be no agreement between those who propose that MK is at least facilitative for learning (Schmidt, 1990; Ellis & Laporte, 1997; Lightbown, 1998; Herdina & Jessner, 2000) and those who believe that it can be detrimental (Felix, 1981; Krashen & Terrell, 1983; Stokes & Krashen, 1990). This paper investigates the relationship between MK (understood as a combination of terminology knowledge and explicit, verbalizable knowledge of grammatical rules) and subjunctive accuracy by learners of Spanish at three levels. MK was assessed through a set of four terminology and grammaticality judgment tasks both in English and Spanish, whereas mastery of the Spanish subjunctive was evaluated through a set of five receptive and productive tasks. Findings include 1) improvements in both subjunctive accuracy in Spanish and MK in Spanish and English across levels, 2) a positive correlation between English MK and Spanish MK, and 3) a positive correlation between MK and accuracy in the use of the subjunctive. These findings show that MK indeed is positively correlated with accuracy in the use of this challenging structure as hypothesized.
This article asks the question: What are the various important ways of teaching learners to read Chinese characters? It will attempt to answer this question by analyzing the most influential approaches proposed and practiced for teaching beginning reading of Chinese characters. The different approaches reveal the debate among educators over the underlying assumption of how Chinese characters should “best” be taught. One side of the debate holds that the recognition of a large number of the characters is a pre-requisite to reading, thus beginning reading instruction should focus centrally on the teaching of the characters (called character-centered approach). The other side is concerned that reading for meaning is the purpose of teaching learners to read, and learners naturally learn to recognize the characters while reading. Thus, right from the start, meaningful reading should be emphasized (called meaning-centered approach). This review and analysis of the various approaches of teaching Chinese characters should be useful to Chinese language teachers for reasoning about their own ways of teaching the characters. More particularly, the implications of these various approaches will be discussed in the context of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.
Language learning research in Japan has categorized students’ motivational orientations as multifaceted and leaning towards extrinsic orientations. Meanwhile, as self-determination theory correlates intrinsic motivation to academic success, we argue that enhancing intrinsic motivation is necessary to foster autonomous learners. Many studies categorize motivational orientations, but rarely, have any used interventions to measure changes in motivation. We used the guided-autonomy syllabus design as an intervention to enhance motivation through autonomy skills training. We also introduce our ‘Can-Do Booster’ journal based on our C.L.A.S.S. philosophy to guide students and teachers to promote learner autonomy skills. A shortened version of the Academic Motivation Scale was used to measure the change in academic motivation of first year university students during one semester of a required English course. The results suggest the guided-autonomy syllabus in Japanese university contexts enhances intrinsic motivation if importance is placed on student-teacher relatedness. Results of our Wilcoxon analysis are discussed from a self-determination theory perspective.
The objectives of this study were (a) to investigate the dimensional structure of the language learning beliefs of Thai learners of EFL, (b) to determine if the conceptually developed categories were empirically identifiable, and (c) to examine the cultural variations of language learning beliefs. Horwitz’s Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) was administered to Thai EFL university students (N = 542). Through factor analysis, a five-factor structure was identified. This structure was similar to the Horwitz model with five categorical dimensions. Yet, some items clustered under a different category from that proposed in the BALLI model. Similarities were identified between Thai students and Taiwanese students in terms of the beliefs’ structure at the dimensional level and the strength of the beliefs at each item level. Seventeen BALLI items were both conceptually and empirically identified as constituting subcategories of the beliefs, representing the commonality of the language learning beliefs.
Many studies have shown that vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge can help students read and comprehend better. The more vocabulary students know, the better they can decode and understand what they read. In contrast, background knowledge helps students make successful inferences. Therefore, this study looks at the effects of vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge in an EFL reading comprehension test. The participants consisted of 159 students from a college in Southern Taiwan. The result of the study showed that the participants who received a list of vocabulary to study performed significantly better on the reading comprehension test than the participants who relied on background knowledge. This led to a discussion in the conclusion about the need for vocabulary building for college EFL students in Taiwan.