Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

Transfer of learning and the cultural matrix: the interrelationship of culture, beliefs, and learning

This study, conducted in an international college in Thailand, aimed to understand the transfer of learning from an undergraduate academic literacy programme to the disciplines. In so doing, it adopted a cultural matrix to investigate the interrelationship among students’ perceptions of transfer of learning, their personal beliefs about knowledge, knowing and learning, and their secondary school backgrounds. A three-part questionnaire, supplemented by purposive semistructured interviews, was used to collect data from all consenting students from the final course in a four-trimester programme. The first part of the questionnaire employed the Epistemic Beliefs Inventory (EBI) in gauging students’ beliefs about knowing and learning, the second part comprised the Measure of Academic Literacy (MALT) , which measure students’ perceptions of transfer of learning from the academic literacy programme to the disciplines, and the third part of the questionnaire surveyed students’ demographic details, specifically with regard to their secondary school context. Data were then analysed to establish the interrelationship between these data sets. Open-ended questions to the MALT section of the questionnaire were analysed, and, in order to illustrate and further understand the data analysis from the questionnaire, trained interviewers conducted semi-structured interviews. Initial, factorial analysis of the EBI indicated a factor structure that differed from that of the US origins of the instrument, suggesting a relationship between culture and beliefs. While analysis indicated a significant low-moderate relationship between students’ beliefs about knowledge and learning and the transfer of learning, no such association was detected between the beliefs and students’ secondary school background. The students’ multicultural backgrounds, coupled with ambivalent beliefs, may provide an explanation for this. The findings, thus,give partial support for the application of the cultural matrix to transfer of learning. The study makes an original contribution by applying the cultural matrix to learning in a previously unexplored way. In so doing, it aims to generate a general theory of transfer of learning while fostering a culturally pluralistic understanding of learners’ beliefs about knowledge and learning and the implications for such transfer. It also advocates an approach that supplements existing classroom-specific pedagogical methods with school-wide cultural management initiatives in order to better effect transfer of learning

The Effect of Speech-to-Text Software on Learning a New Writing Strategy

Handwriting and spelling present elementary students with significant sources of load on working memory as the various writing processes compete for cognitive resources (Kellogg, Whiteford, Turner, Cahill & Mertens, 2013). Several studies have shown that speech-to-text (STT) software can improve students\u27 writing on a specific text (Higgins & Raskind, 1997; MacArthur & Cavalier, 2004; Quinlan, 2004); however, the question of whether STT can be used to teach writing strategies has been neglected. This pretest-post-test between groups study experimentally tested the effects of composition modality on learning a persuasive writing strategy. First, all students (N=45) completed a pretest of persuasive writing. They then, received instruction in Dragon NaturallySpeaking (version 11). Next, students were randomly assigned to participate in four lessons that emphasized dialectical elements of persuasive writing, in one of two modalities: STT or handwriting. Finally, all students completed post-tests of persuasive writing in both modalities (STT and handwriting). Writing samples were evaluated for word count, number of types of rhetorical moves, surface errors, and word errors. Students also completed measures of cognitive load for the pretest, each writing activity, and post-test. Both training conditions resulted in large, statistically significant, pre-to-post-test gains on word count, holistic quality and rhetorical moves. Students in the STT condition reported more effort compared to students in the handwriting condition for both post-tests. Students in both instructional conditions showed a high level of transfer from the trained modality to the untrained modality. Students who learned through handwriting, compared to students who learned through STT, showed more surface errors on the STT post-test. The results suggest that STT could be an equally effective alternative for teaching composition strategies

Chapter Bibliography

authored support system; contextual machine translation; controlled document authoring; controlled language; document structure; terminology management; translation technology; usability evaluatio

Screening TED: A rhetorical analysis of the intersections of rhetoric, digital media, and pedagogy

The presence of expertise resonates across our daily lives. Experts are called upon to consult us about which candidate is ideal for office, which type of wood is the best choice for a carpentry project, which scientist has optimal data on the effects of air pollution, which speech teacher is the best one to take for proper credit hours, and more. An expert is typically conceived as an individual who knows more about a given topic and can create stronger identification than an average person. The struggle to achieve expert status is one that is fundamentally tied to power and is reliant on the establishment of authenticity and legitimacy from audiences. It is, at its core, a struggle that utilizes rhetoric. Begun in 1984, the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference has become a critical player in an architectonic movement to manufacture expertise. Modeled on the Lyceum and Chautauqua movements of the early American 20th century, the TED conferences have spread rapidly into public culture, but most notably in field of education via social media and online video. TED “talks” are classroom artifacts. They are teaching tools and aid in increasing learning for a more digital native student population. Likewise, the TED conferences have become models of community engagement that work rhetorically to demonstrate the attribution and manufacturing of expertise amidst a 21st century digital world. In short, we have acknowledged TED’s growth and expansion as credible and sanctioned their identity as the harbinger of expert and inspirational ideas. The democratization of digital media, particularly video, has made it possible to increase the sharing and collaboration of ideas faster than ever before, and as our world becomes more reliant on digital devices for the receiving and sending of information, the consumption and production of information, and the attribution of expertise, the precise role of technology within pedagogy becomes increasingly complex. My dissertation posits that TED employs current uses of digital media technologies in order to manufacture its ethos of expertise within public culture

A dialectical approach to critical thinking in EAP writing

Few would disagree that high quality thinking is a necessary condition for high quality writing. Yet, writing courses in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) often focus only marginally on principled and rigorous development of dialogical thinking and idea generation in preparation for written work. This study examines the effect of a model of critical thinking instruction (CTI) in a university level EAP writing course. Recent studies on CTI in EAP (Alnofaie, 2013; Hashemi & Ghanizadeh, 2012; Liaw, 2007; Shirkhani & Fahim, 2011; Yang & Gamble, 2013) have utilized models of CTI that, while reflecting varying degrees of attention to social context, inevitably center on the more traditional concepts of logicality and rational thinking skills. In contrast, this study’s distinct model of CTI is based on Paul’s (1995) concept of dialogical and dialectical thinking and guides students to consider and understand social issues and controversy through the analysis and evaluation of the differing belief systems behind opposing viewpoints. After the course, student interviews were conducted and analyzed through grounded theory and narrative analysis. Interview data revealed that CTI was found to be a practice that was typically unavailable in the students’ home countries and previous L2 English education, and was perceived as a challenging yet valuable addition to this EAP course curriculum. To varying degrees, students found the activity of critical thinking to align with their personal values and expressed a perceived need for critical thinking in order to succeed in future studies at the university level. The data contained frequent reports of students using critical thinking in their personal lives as a result of CTI. In addition, findings revealed a need to carefully position critical thinking as a tool with specific domains of use and limitations. These findings raise important questions about the inclusion of CTI in EAP and what forms are appropriate

음성언어 이해에서의 중의성 해소

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2022. 8. 김남수.언어의 중의성은 필연적이다. 그것은 언어가 의사 소통의 수단이지만, 모든 사람이 생각하는 어떤 개념이 완벽히 동일하게 전달될 수 없는 것에 기인한다. 이는 필연적인 요소이기도 하지만, 언어 이해에서 중의성은 종종 의사 소통의 단절이나 실패를 가져오기도 한다. 언어의 중의성에는 다양한 층위가 존재한다. 하지만, 모든 상황에서 중의성이 해소될 필요는 없다. 태스크마다, 도메인마다 다른 양상의 중의성이 존재하며, 이를 잘 정의하고 해소될 수 있는 중의성임을 파악한 후 중의적인 부분 간의 경계를 잘 정하는 것이 중요하다. 본고에서는 음성 언어 처리, 특히 의도 이해에 있어 어떤 양상의 중의성이 발생할 수 있는지 알아보고, 이를 해소하기 위한 연구를 진행한다. 이러한 현상은 다양한 언어에서 발생하지만, 그 정도 및 양상은 언어에 따라서 다르게 나타나는 경우가 많다. 우리의 연구에서 주목하는 부분은, 음성 언어에 담긴 정보량과 문자 언어의 정보량 차이로 인해 중의성이 발생하는 경우들이다. 본 연구는 운율(prosody)에 따라 문장 형식 및 의도가 다르게 표현되는 경우가 많은 한국어를 대상으로 진행된다. 한국어에서는 다양한 기능이 있는(multi-functional한) 종결어미(sentence ender), 빈번한 탈락 현상(pro-drop), 의문사 간섭(wh-intervention) 등으로 인해, 같은 텍스트가 여러 의도로 읽히는 현상이 발생하곤 한다. 이것이 의도 이해에 혼선을 가져올 수 있다는 데에 착안하여, 본 연구에서는 이러한 중의성을 먼저 정의하고, 중의적인 문장들을 감지할 수 있도록 말뭉치를 구축한다. 의도 이해를 위한 말뭉치를 구축하는 과정에서 문장의 지향성(directivity)과 수사성(rhetoricalness)이 고려된다. 이것은 음성 언어의 의도를 서술, 질문, 명령, 수사의문문, 그리고 수사명령문으로 구분하게 하는 기준이 된다. 본 연구에서는 기록된 음성 언어(spoken language)를 충분히 높은 일치도(kappa = 0.85)로 주석한 말뭉치를 이용해, 음성이 주어지지 않은 상황에서 중의적인 텍스트를 감지하는 데에 어떤 전략 혹은 언어 모델이 효과적인가를 보이고, 해당 태스크의 특징을 정성적으로 분석한다. 또한, 우리는 텍스트 층위에서만 중의성에 접근하지 않고, 실제로 음성이 주어진 상황에서 중의성 해소(disambiguation)가 가능한지를 알아보기 위해, 텍스트가 중의적인 발화들만으로 구성된 인공적인 음성 말뭉치를 설계하고 다양한 집중(attention) 기반 신경망(neural network) 모델들을 이용해 중의성을 해소한다. 이 과정에서 모델 기반 통사적/의미적 중의성 해소가 어떠한 경우에 가장 효과적인지 관찰하고, 인간의 언어 처리와 어떤 연관이 있는지에 대한 관점을 제시한다. 본 연구에서는 마지막으로, 위와 같은 절차로 의도 이해 과정에서의 중의성이 해소되었을 경우, 이를 어떻게 산업계 혹은 연구 단에서 활용할 수 있는가에 대한 간략한 로드맵을 제시한다. 텍스트에 기반한 중의성 파악과 음성 기반의 의도 이해 모듈을 통합한다면, 오류의 전파를 줄이면서도 효율적으로 중의성을 다룰 수 있는 시스템을 만들 수 있을 것이다. 이러한 시스템은 대화 매니저(dialogue manager)와 통합되어 간단한 대화(chit-chat)가 가능한 목적 지향 대화 시스템(task-oriented dialogue system)을 구축할 수도 있고, 단일 언어 조건(monolingual condition)을 넘어 음성 번역에서의 에러를 줄이는 데에 활용될 수도 있다. 우리는 본고를 통해, 운율에 민감한(prosody-sensitive) 언어에서 의도 이해를 위한 중의성 해소가 가능하며, 이를 산업 및 연구 단에서 활용할 수 있음을 보이고자 한다. 본 연구가 다른 언어 및 도메인에서도 고질적인 중의성 문제를 해소하는 데에 도움이 되길 바라며, 이를 위해 연구를 진행하는 데에 활용된 리소스, 결과물 및 코드들을 공유함으로써 학계의 발전에 이바지하고자 한다.Ambiguity in the language is inevitable. It is because, albeit language is a means of communication, a particular concept that everyone thinks of cannot be conveyed in a perfectly identical manner. As this is an inevitable factor, ambiguity in language understanding often leads to breakdown or failure of communication. There are various hierarchies of language ambiguity. However, not all ambiguity needs to be resolved. Different aspects of ambiguity exist for each domain and task, and it is crucial to define the boundary after recognizing the ambiguity that can be well-defined and resolved. In this dissertation, we investigate the types of ambiguity that appear in spoken language processing, especially in intention understanding, and conduct research to define and resolve it. Although this phenomenon occurs in various languages, its degree and aspect depend on the language investigated. The factor we focus on is cases where the ambiguity comes from the gap between the amount of information in the spoken language and the text. Here, we study the Korean language, which often shows different sentence structures and intentions depending on the prosody. In the Korean language, a text is often read with multiple intentions due to multi-functional sentence enders, frequent pro-drop, wh-intervention, etc. We first define this type of ambiguity and construct a corpus that helps detect ambiguous sentences, given that such utterances can be problematic for intention understanding. In constructing a corpus for intention understanding, we consider the directivity and rhetoricalness of a sentence. They make up a criterion for classifying the intention of spoken language into a statement, question, command, rhetorical question, and rhetorical command. Using the corpus annotated with sufficiently high agreement on a spoken language corpus, we show that colloquial corpus-based language models are effective in classifying ambiguous text given only textual data, and qualitatively analyze the characteristics of the task. We do not handle ambiguity only at the text level. To find out whether actual disambiguation is possible given a speech input, we design an artificial spoken language corpus composed only of ambiguous sentences, and resolve ambiguity with various attention-based neural network architectures. In this process, we observe that the ambiguity resolution is most effective when both textual and acoustic input co-attends each feature, especially when the audio processing module conveys attention information to the text module in a multi-hop manner. Finally, assuming the case that the ambiguity of intention understanding is resolved by proposed strategies, we present a brief roadmap of how the results can be utilized at the industry or research level. By integrating text-based ambiguity detection and speech-based intention understanding module, we can build a system that handles ambiguity efficiently while reducing error propagation. Such a system can be integrated with dialogue managers to make up a task-oriented dialogue system capable of chit-chat, or it can be used for error reduction in multilingual circumstances such as speech translation, beyond merely monolingual conditions. Throughout the dissertation, we want to show that ambiguity resolution for intention understanding in prosody-sensitive language can be achieved and can be utilized at the industry or research level. We hope that this study helps tackle chronic ambiguity issues in other languages ​​or other domains, linking linguistic science and engineering approaches.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation 2 1.2 Research Goal 4 1.3 Outline of the Dissertation 5 2 Related Work 6 2.1 Spoken Language Understanding 6 2.2 Speech Act and Intention 8 2.2.1 Performatives and statements 8 2.2.2 Illocutionary act and speech act 9 2.2.3 Formal semantic approaches 11 2.3 Ambiguity of Intention Understanding in Korean 14 2.3.1 Ambiguities in language 14 2.3.2 Speech act and intention understanding in Korean 16 3 Ambiguity in Intention Understanding of Spoken Language 20 3.1 Intention Understanding and Ambiguity 20 3.2 Annotation Protocol 23 3.2.1 Fragments 24 3.2.2 Clear-cut cases 26 3.2.3 Intonation-dependent utterances 28 3.3 Data Construction . 32 3.3.1 Source scripts 32 3.3.2 Agreement 32 3.3.3 Augmentation 33 3.3.4 Train split 33 3.4 Experiments and Results 34 3.4.1 Models 34 3.4.2 Implementation 36 3.4.3 Results 37 3.5 Findings and Summary 44 3.5.1 Findings 44 3.5.2 Summary 45 4 Disambiguation of Speech Intention 47 4.1 Ambiguity Resolution 47 4.1.1 Prosody and syntax 48 4.1.2 Disambiguation with prosody 50 4.1.3 Approaches in SLU 50 4.2 Dataset Construction 51 4.2.1 Script generation 52 4.2.2 Label tagging 54 4.2.3 Recording 56 4.3 Experiments and Results 57 4.3.1 Models 57 4.3.2 Results 60 4.4 Summary 63 5 System Integration and Application 65 5.1 System Integration for Intention Identification 65 5.1.1 Proof of concept 65 5.1.2 Preliminary study 69 5.2 Application to Spoken Dialogue System 75 5.2.1 What is 'Free-running' 76 5.2.2 Omakase chatbot 76 5.3 Beyond Monolingual Approaches 84 5.3.1 Spoken language translation 85 5.3.2 Dataset 87 5.3.3 Analysis 94 5.3.4 Discussion 95 5.4 Summary 100 6 Conclusion and Future Work 103 Bibliography 105 Abstract (In Korean) 124 Acknowledgment 126박

Cognition and Rhetoric in English Language Learners' Writing: A Developmental Study

The present study examined the effectiveness of an instructional method in English language writing. The instruction concerned a cognitive process, i.e., Bereiter and Scardamalias (1987) knowledge-transforming, and a discourse genre, i.e., the Toulmin (1958/2003) model of argument. The instruction in the process is significant since generating discourse content was identified as a problem for novice writers. The instruction in the Toulmin model is significant since lack of attention to genre was identified as a problem in cognitive approaches to writing. To teach and research knowledge-transforming composing and the Toulmin model, the tenets of cognitive strategy instruction in writing and sociocultural theory of mind were adopted. Instruction was adopted after Scardamalia, Bereiter, and Steinbach (1984) and had three components: explicit strategy instruction in the Toulmin model, mediation of the writing process through artefacts, and two types of verbalization: (focused) freewriting and languaging. The study had a mixed-methods design with a quasi-experimental quantitative component and a qualitative component consisting of textual analysis, dynamic assessment (DA), semi-structured interviews, and surveys. The results indicated statistically significant gains for two of the categories of the Toulmin model, i.e., rebuttal and response to rebuttal, in the texts generated by the experimental group (EG) (n = 13) when compared with those of the comparison group (n = 13). Specifically, the gains suggested the rise above conflict criterion (Scardamalia et al., 1984) in knowledge-transforming, indicating the effectiveness of instruction. When four participants texts in EG group were analyzed developmentally, they also demonstrated knowledge-transforming and improved rhetorical structure. In particular, some discourse features which were absent in the posttest essays were indeed present in those texts. Also, the text analysis indicated the participants were able to use the mediational artefacts to generate discourse content. The DA results indicated that, with varying degrees of mediation, the participants were able to name, generate, and/or revise the discourse features, some of which were absent in the participants posttest essays. The interviews and surveys indicated the participants positive perceptions of instruction and its effect on cognitive change and rhetorical structure of argumentative texts. The study has implications for L2 academic writing instruction, assessment, and research