Digital flashcards for English grammar: A pilot study in rural Cambodia

Màster de Lingüística Aplicada i Adquisició de Llengües en Contextos Multilingües, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2019, Tutor: Raquel SerranoDigital flashcards are widely used and studied for vocabulary memorisation, but there has been no previous research into using this tool for grammar learning. This study aims to address this gap by examining whether full-sentence flashcard training could cause learners to notice grammatical patterns in their output and apply these inferred rules to novel sentences. The participants were school-aged students in rural Cambodia, where English proficiency is highly valued but difficult to obtain. In a pre-test / post-test design, students spent eight days typing translations from their L1 Khmer to English using the smartphone app Cram.com Flashcards, with each item repeating in a cycle until answered without errors. Post-tests of trained and untrained items took place one day, two weeks, and eighteen weeks after treatment. Results showed high relative gains for all students (M = 81%) and minimal losses at the final post-test. Equal results between trained and untrained items demonstrated that participants had indeed inferred grammar rules from the training, and a refresher session for one group fully mitigated losses. The findings are discussed in terms of the facilitating effect of output on form acquisition, and it is recommended that further research into digital flashcards for grammar is conducted under different conditions, to better understand which factors influence gains. It is further recommended that apps be used in environments where trained teachers and other resources are unavailable

The effects of various combinations of form-focused instruction techniques on the acquisition of English articles by second language learners of English

Although English articles (the/a(n)) are two of the most frequently occurring words in the language, second language (L2) learners of English tend to exhibit extraordinary difficulty acquiring them. Uniquely resistant to instruction and often overlooked due to a lack of inherent meaning, articles are a suitable linguistic target for form-focused instruction (FFI), an approach that has demonstrated its efficacy over decades of research, across multiple domains of instructed L2 acquisition. With the aim of integrating attention to form into communicative L2 instruction, FFI encompasses numerous instructional techniques that promote various types of linguistic processing that contribute to L2 learning. The current study in particular focuses on three proactive FFI techniques—input enhancement, metalinguistic explanations, and practice—that sequentially facilitate noticing, awareness, and practice, respectively (Lyster, 2007, 2017; Ranta & Lyster, 2018). Targeting English articles, an experimental study was conducted to measure the differential effects of various combinations of the three FFI techniques, in order to examine the benefits attributable to each technique and its corresponding linguistic processing. Forty-six L2 learners of English were randomly assigned to four conditions: input enhancement only (n = 12); input enhancement and metalinguistic explanations (n = 11); input enhancement, metalinguistic explanations, and practice (n = 11); and a control condition (n = 12). The L2 learners each completed six hours of online English lessons. The three treatment groups received instruction on English articles according to their respective condition, while the control group received general instruction with no focus on articles. The participants’ knowledge of English articles was measured by four tasks (i.e., grammaticality judgment task, metalinguistic knowledge task, elicited imitation task, and picture-description task) in a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. Results showed that the group that received input enhancement and metalinguistic explanations exhibited clear and durable gains in the metalinguistic knowledge task after the lessons. Furthermore, a subset of participants who benefitted the most from the instructional treatment revealed two factors in common, which were their article-less native languages and a high level of participation during the lessons. Based on these results, the present study contributes meaningfully to the current understanding of FFI and the L2 acquisition of English articles. In addition, it seeks to bring L2 research and L2 pedagogy one step closer together by offering evidence-based insights that further inform instructed L2 acquisition

Differentiation in the foreign language classroom : including students with disabilities in secondary foreign language classes

textForeign language teachers are not generally given information about how to work with students with disabilities. However, it is important for these students to have access to FL classes, both for the cognitive benefits that they offer and for path to higher education. This report offers my reflections on how to differentiate instruction in foreign language reading and writing to students with disabilities as well as typically developing students. I believe that both groups will benefit from the practices I describe here.Foreign Language Educatio

Addressing the grammar needs of Chinese EAP students: an account of a CALL materials development project

This study investigated the grammar needs of Chinese EAP Foundation students and developed electronic self-access grammar materials for them. The research process consisted of three phases. In the first phase, a corpus linguistics based error analysis was conducted, in which 50 student essays were compiled and scrutinized for formal errors. A tagging system was specially devised and employed in the analysis. The EA results, together with an examination of Foundation tutors’ perceptions of error frequency and gravity led me to prioritise article errors for treatment; in the second phase, remedial materials were drafted based on the EA results and insights drawn from my investigations into four research areas (article pedagogy, SLA theory, grammar teaching approaches and CALL methodologies) and existing grammar materials; in the third phase, the materials were refined and evaluated for their effectiveness as a means of improving the Chinese Foundation students’ use of the article. Findings confirm the claim that L2 learner errors are systematic in nature and lend support to the value of Error Analysis. L1 transfer appears to be one of the main contributing factors in L2 errors. The salient errors identified in the Chinese Foundation corpus show that mismanagement of the article system is the most frequent cause of grammatical errors; Foundation tutors, however, perceive article errors to be neither frequent nor serious. An examination of existing materials reveals that the article is given low priority in ELT textbooks and treatments provided in pedagogical grammar books are inappropriate in terms of presentation, language and exercise types. The devised remedial materials employ both consciousness-raising activities and production exercises, using EAP language and authentic learner errors. Preliminary evaluation results suggest that the EA-informed customised materials have the potential to help learners to perform better in proofreading article errors in academic texts

The Error in Trial and Error: Exercises on Phrasal Verbs

An analysis of 44 commercially available EFL textbooks found that it is common for textbooks to present learners with exercises on phrasal verbs without first providing relevant input to help them. In these cases, the learners are likely to resort to trial-and-error and are then expected to learn from feedback. We report an experiment conducted with Japanese EFL students (N=140) in which we compare the effectiveness of such a trial-and-error method with a retrieval procedure in which students first study a set of phrasal verbs and then complete an exercise. Scores on both an immediate and a one-week delayed post-test suggest superiority of retrieval over the trial-and-error procedure, where, despite the provision of feedback, 25% of the wrong exercise responses were reproduced in the delayed post-test

Japanese EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Development in the Production of Speech Acts Drawing on ACT-R Model and Skill Acquisition Theory

This mixed-methods quasi-experimental study explored the development of pragmatic competence of lower-proficiency EFL learners in their university English classes in Japan. Although pragmatic competence has emerged as a key topic within the field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), almost all studies have examined L2 learners’ language use rather than pragmatic development focusing on learning outcomes than process. This study investigates both learners’ language use and development, in order to draw a more comprehensive picture of pragmatic development. It also attempts to identify the mechanisms that drive this development by employing a framework of Adaptive Control Thought-Rational (ACT-R) theory in tandem with skill acquisition theory, which is a promising but underexplored framework in the L2 pragmatic development context. As such, this study aims to fill a gap in the research literature and make a theoretical contribution by showing the potential of the framework to account for learners’ pragmatic development. For this study, I recruited 120 Japanese EFL learners making up four intact classes to examine the development over one term (14 weeks) of their skills for producing speech acts after receiving pragmatic instruction. The development was examined both in terms of knowledge and processing ability with more focus on the latter to produce speech acts. Four types of speech acts were chosen for this experiment: request and refusal speech acts, for which specific instruction was provided; and complaint and disagreement speech acts, for which no instruction was provided. Request and refusal were selected as they were most widely studied, and complaints and disagreements were selected as they are relatively similar in nature to request and refusal speech acts and a good candidate to examine learners’ ability of knowledge extension. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed to see how much learners improved their production of request and refusal speech acts - in light of the effectiveness of instruction they had received. A similar analysis was carried out on the uninstructed speech acts of complaint and disagreement to assess their capability to extend their learned knowledge from request and refusal making to the production of new speech acts, namely to assess their processing capability. The results showed that the participants in the treatment groups (TGs) improved in the production of both instructed and uninstructed speech acts by developing their knowledge and processing ability. The development of such knowledge was assessed by measuring the TGs’ improvement in the use of politeness strategies, which are associated with declarative knowledge. As for the development of their processing ability, this was assessed in two ways: in terms of their ability to select contextually appropriate strategies and to apply their learned knowledge sufficiently to produce uninstructed speech acts, these being associated with procedural knowledge. Since the application of the learned speech act schema enables learners to produce ostensibly ‘new’ speech acts with relative ease, not from scratches. This frees up most of the working memory to be available for other purposes, such as planning what to say next, and looking for more sophisticated expressions. This was reflected in the results of this experiment that showed, following instruction, the use of a wider range of strategies and more sophisticated lexical and syntactic expressions. However, the results did show that the participants were still in an early stage of proceduralisation and needed further practice to improve their processing ability to move toward automatisation. This study has pedagogical, theoretical, and methodological implications. Pedagogically, there are several implications afforded by a clearer understanding of learning processes that can be used to revise the EFL curriculum. Theoretically, by showing how pragmatic competence develops in an EFL classroom, this study shows the potential of the ACT-R model, partially revised to apply to this study, to elucidate the operational mechanism of pragmatic ability. Methodologically, this study shows how the application of the revised model I formulated through adaptation and clarification of a range of interpretations of the ACT-R model can better account for proceduralisation in pragmatic development, raising implications for allowing related research to move forward in an otherwise muddled ongoing discussion in the field