163,438 research outputs found
Improving advanced learners' communication skills through paragraph reading and writing
Japanese learners of English have suffered from an inability to become competent communicators despite their large vocabulary and good grammar. This is mainly because their messages are not presented logically. To help with the learners’ difficulty, the researcher utilized paragraph reading and writing. The objectives of this study are to introduce a major problem advanced Japanese learners of English have and the approach the author has done to help the students overcome the difficulty. The participants were thirty-two university students and the topic of the writing was about Japanese culture. Their writings were evaluated with the focus on global errors. Achievements were measured when the students became aware of the English logical
organization and increased their knowledge on the appropriate rhetorical form for composing messages effectively, which was important for them to communicate both in spoken and written English. Key challenges were that students had difficulty understanding the concept of “coherence” and writing coherent paragraphs
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A programme management approach for ensuring coherence in IS (higher) education
This paper examines IS higher education, concentrating on issues of ‘coherence’ in IS curricula. While curriculum coherence can be jeopardized by poor curriculum design, misalignment between module content and/or misalignment between module or course aims can cause serious coherence issues over time. Misalignment of this type is exacerbated by the traditional processes of curriculum (re)design, which rely heavily on the (singular) interpretation of highly abstract documents, such as module syllabi and course specifications – often produced by curriculum designers in isolation. To improve curriculum coherence, this paper examines the use of a programme management framework as a means of (a) ‘humanizing’ the abstract aims and goals of curricula schemes and (b) managing the delivery and evolution of curricula in relation to the stakeholders in the process of delivery. The practical use of the framework is examined in the context of a Masters-level course in ‘Information Systems Management’. An action research approach is used to demonstrate the practical utility of the framework in terms of (a) improving communication of curricula, (b) improving the coherence between modules and between modules and course and (c) removing content redundancy. Guidelines are presented that generalize the findings in order that key practices may be adopted by others
The Dimensions of Argumentative Texts and Their Assessment
The definition and the assessment of the quality of argumentative texts has become an increasingly crucial issue in education, classroom discourse, and argumentation theory. The different methods developed and used in the literature are all characterized by specific perspectives that fail to capture the complexity of the subject matter, which remains ill-defined and not systematically investigated. This paper addresses this problem by building on the four main dimensions of argument quality resulting from the definition of argument and the literature in classroom discourse: dialogicity, accountability, relevance, and textuality (DART). We use and develop the insights from the literature in education and argumentation by integrating the frameworks that capture both the textual and the argumentative nature of argumentative texts. This theoretical background will be used to propose a method for translating the DART dimensions into specific and clear proxies and evaluation criteria
The impact of an in-service professional development course on writing teacher attitudes and pedagogy
In education, it is commonly believed that the quality of teachers' learning experiences directly affects the quality of their students' learning experiences. Specifically, teachers' continuing learning may bring about positive effects on student learning. For the past ten years or so, research has emphasized the effects of professional development courses on teachers in hard science disciplines. Little attention has been paid to study the influences of those courses on teachers in the 'soft' sciences, such as English language, especially in the area of teaching of writing. Against this background, I undertook a study to investigate how an in-service professional development course influences the teaching attitudes of writing teachers who enrolled on the course and their teaching practice. I argue that the professional development course empowered the teachers with skills useful for the teaching of writing. I also argue that the course positively changed the attitudes of the teachers towards their practice in the teaching of writing. It is suggested that teachers need to engage in continuing professional development to improve the quality of their teaching
Planning Curricular Proposals on Sound and Music with Prospective Secondary-School Teachers
Sound is a preferred context to build foundations on wave phenomena, one of
the most important disciplinary referents in physics. It is also one of the
best-set frameworks to achieve transversality, overcoming scholastic level and
activating emotional aspects which are naturally connected with every day life,
as well as with music and perception. Looking at sound and music by a
transversal perspective - a border-line approach between science and art, is
the adopted statement for a teaching proposal using meta-cognition as a
strategy in scientific education. This work analyzes curricular proposals on
musical acoustics, planned by prospective secondary-school teachers in the
framework of a Formative Intervention Module answering the expectation of
making more effective teaching scientific subjects by improving creative
capabilities, as well as leading to build logical and scientific
categorizations able to consciously discipline artistic activity in music
students. With this aim, a particular emphasis is given to those concepts -
like sound parameters and structural elements of a musical piece, which are
best fitted to be addressed on a transversal perspective, involving
simultaneously physics, psychophysics and music.Comment: 12 pages with 5 figures. Submitted for publication in Physics
Curriculum Design, Development and Validation - GIREP 2008 book of selected
papers, 200
Big Data as a Technology-to-think-with for Scientific Literacy
This research aimed to identify indications of scientific literacy resulting
from a didactic and investigative interaction with Google Trends Big Data
software by first-year students from a high-school in Novo Hamburgo, Southern
Brazil. Both teaching strategies and research interpretations lie on four
theoretical backgrounds. Firstly, Bunge's epistemology, which provides a
thorough characterization of Science that was central to our study. Secondly,
the conceptual framework of scientific literacy of Fives et al. that makes our
teaching focus precise and concise, as well as supports one of our
methodological tool: the SLA (scientific literacy assessment). Thirdly, the
"crowdledge" construct from dos Santos, which gives meaning to our study when
as it makes the development of scientific literacy itself versatile for paying
attention on sociotechnological and epistemological contemporary phenomena.
Finally, the learning principles from Papert's Constructionism inspired our
educational activities. Our educational actions consisted of students, divided
into two classes, investigating phenomena chose by them. A triangulation
process to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods on the assessments
results was done. The experimental design consisted in post-tests only and the
experimental variable was the way of access to the world. The experimental
group interacted with the world using analyses of temporal and regional plots
of interest of terms or topics searched on Google. The control class did
'placebo' interactions with the world through on-site observations of
bryophytes, fungus or whatever in the schoolyard. As general results of our
research, a constructionist environment based on Big Data analysis showed
itself as a richer strategy to develop scientific literacy, compared to a free
schoolyard exploration.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figures, 8 table
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