Volume 13, Number 2, December 2016
The integration of beneficial washback of tests within instruction is a major feature in arguments around test validity. Beneficial washback occurs when a test encourages instruction that leads to improvement in target abilities, not just instruction focused on passing the test. Issues arise in this regard in the context of English graduation benchmark remediation classes in Taiwan. In order to enhance students’ English proficiency, around 90% of Taiwanese tertiary education institutions use the General English Proficiency Test as a graduation requirement. To ensure that students achieve the graduation benchmark, 80% of technical universities and colleges offer remedial instruction to at-risk students. Against this background, the study reported here explored the impact of test preparation courses on learners’ test performance. It also investigated learners’ preferences and perceptions regarding the effectiveness of two approaches to test preparation, namely a traditional and a non-traditional approach. Pre- and post-test scores as well as questionnaire and interview data were gathered from 72 Taiwanese university students. Half of these attended non-traditional test preparation classes that included communicatively-oriented activities, whereas the other half attended traditional classes with test-oriented activities. The non-traditional group achieved significantly greater score gains in listening, while the traditional group did better in reading. Furthermore, test-oriented instruction was reported by the subjects to be more efficient than communicatively-oriented instruction in terms of enhancing their English proficiency.
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether C-Tests, which have been tested with international ESL cohorts in New Zealand, can be used as reliable English proficiency measures in Vietnam. C-Tests produce robust reliability and validity in most SLA studies. The three C-Tests that have been used at Massey University, New Zealand, were used as a basis of comparison for the Vietnamese sample, as they have been trialled and revised using classical item analysis, reliability studies and construct/concurrent/criterion validity checks against IELTS/TOEIC scores in New Zealand, thereby considered reliable and valid for various Asian and Middle Eastern ethnic groups. The findings of this study show that the three C-Tests have acceptable reliability and significant correlations among themselves, and can be used to evaluate overall English proficiency in Vietnam. The results administered to the Vietnamese cohort in this study are expected to be added to the growing number of other ethnic groups for which they evaluate overall English proficiency validly, reliably, and efficiently. There are implications discussed here for test developers working with C-Tests in making them reliable and valid measures of English proficiency.
Investigating Academic Plagiarism in a Thai Context (pp. 203–228)
In response to one of the research plans in Thailand’s 2012–2016 National Research Policy and Strategies report, this paper presents causal-comparative research utilizing mixed-method triangulation covering inves-tigations of academic plagiarism in a university in Thailand. In the four-phase project, valid data were collected from 277 participants – 226 interdisciplinary postgraduate students and 51 native-English and Thai instructors of English during the 2013 and 2014 academic years. Although there was no significant difference in the perception of plagiarism in both groups of science/social science students and high/limited achievers and no significant difference among disciplines in their actual practice of plagiarism, a significant difference in the actual practice of plagiarism was found in the group of high and limited achievers [t(57.94) = -13.74, p < .05, d = 0.80]. It was determined that affective-psychological and environmental-situational factors influenced plagiarism. Alternative measures for plagiarism prevention are suggested based on the study findings.
This article reports on findings of qualitative investigation into the use of online videos for extensive listening (EL) practice coupled with reflective practice and online discussion. Drawn on Day and Bamford’s extensive reading (ER) principles, it seeks to situate how this EL practice is pedagogically enacted in the Indonesian ITE context. Grounded in action learning (AL), the study examines how much intermediate-level English student teachers engaged in collaborative and reflective online video-assisted EL practice over a period of 12 weeks. Throughout the project, 24 student teachers participated in four main activities, including (1) self-selection of EL materials, (2) collaborative video viewing, (3) reflective practice, and (4) online discussion. Study findings suggest that even though the participants encountered language-related difficulties at the out-set, they were positive about collaborative and reflective online video-assisted EL. The participants felt that they moved listening beyond the teacher-fronted action zone in which the teacher played roles as their facilitator and collaborator. Not only did they learn to listen for meaning, but they also learned to become autonomous and reflective language learners.
The important role of listening strategy instruction has been increasingly recognised in developing listening comprehension. However, only a few studies on listening strategy instruction have explored this issue from the learners’ perspective whose voices are critically important in providing insights into how students learn and improve listening comprehension. The present study explores changes in listening comprehension proficiency of 27 English as a Foreign Language students in Vietnam after receiving an explicit listening strategy instruction. Using a mixed methods case study design, the current study collected data from listening tests, questionnaires and focus group interviews. Results from one-way repeated measures ANOVA indicate a significant difference of pre- and post-listening test scores. In addition, students’ explanation provides insight into how listening strategy use, listening practice, and affective factors contributed to their listening comprehension improvement. Implications for teachers and policy makers were made based on the findings.
It has been argued that learners have to notice the corrective intention of recasts by attending to the linguistic problems in their initial utterances, which means that when learners notice the gap between their erroneous utterance and the recast, learning can occur (Schmidt, 1990). This study examined the effectiveness of recasts on learners’ noticing according to recast features, by conducting stimulated recall interviews. The effects of recasts were investigated in terms of error types of learner utterances (i.e. grammatical, lexical or phonological), degree of change in the recast (i.e. one change vs. more than one change), and length of the recast (i.e. short recasts with less than six morphemes vs. long recasts with more than five morphemes). Three advanced Japanese university students engaged in a picture description and a semi-structured interview, during which they received recasts to their erroneous utterances. Following stimulated recall interviews, the participants’ noticing of recasts was measured and analyzed. Their verbal reports revealed that the rate of noticing was the highest with phonological recasts, followed by lexical recasts, and grammatical recasts showed the lowest noticing rate. No difference was discerned concerning the number of changes or recast length.
This present study investigated modeling online peer revision (PR) among English as foreign language (EFL) learners in an online learning community. Specifically, the study focused on how EFL learners were responsive to the instruction and training in modeling PR and how they reflected upon their learning experiences in online PR. The participants were 15 EFL learners who represented a heterogeneous group of learners coming from different Arab countries and different levels of English at university. Using a mixed-method approach, the researcher analyzed learners’ feedback exchanges, their written drafts and their written reflective responses. The results showed that the EFL learners engaged in a constant recursive process of evaluating or reflecting on each draft and revising it. Based on this, the learners made multiple full drafts (N=181) and fragmented drafts (N=197). Further identification of the levels of text revisions in these drafts revealed that there were (N=1296) text revisions at sentence, clause, phrase, word and below-word levels. In terms of the focus areas of these text revisions, 8.56 % of these text revisions focused on enhancing the content of written texts, and 15.90% of them focused on improving the unity and organization of texts. Moreover, 18.60% of the text revisions focused on meaning, while 44.29 % of them focused on grammar and sentence structure, and finally, 12.65% of them focused on mechanics. Based on the qualitative analysis of learners’ reflective responses to the post-PR questions, the learners showed collective understanding of their shared practice, a sense of autonomy over their learning, relationship-building, engaged diversity and a sense of connection. All these identified themes serve as indicators of a responsive community of learners. The findings have useful implications for pedagogy in EFL writing using technology and future research.