Why Would I Share?

Blogs are known for their information and knowledge sharing capabilities. Several theoretical frameworks have been proposed to study the factors that influence an individual's intention to use blogs for knowledge sharing. However, factors like content familiarity and design familiarity are lacking in the literature. Hence, this paper aims to extend past studies and investigate the influence of familiarity with blogs in knowledge sharing. Particularly, the purpose of this paper is twofold. The first objective is to explore the effect of familiarity in terms of content familiarity and design familiarity on individual intention to use a blog as a knowledge sharing tool. The second objective is to determine whether familiarity factors change with gender, blog experience, and cultural differences. The results show that content familiarity and design familiarity positively influence an individual's knowledge sharing behavior in blogs. In addition, content familiarity and design familiarity differ according to gender, blog experience, and cultural differences.

Role of Task Repetition and Content Familiarity in EFL Students’ Fluency and Accuracy in Narrative Tasks: A Case Study

Developing writing skills has become a priority for many students in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. To this end, classroom practices should be facilitative of opportunities to communicate accurately and fluently in written and oral forms. Drawing on evidence which suggests that task repetition allows students to perform subsequent tasks more efficiently and accurately, the study examines the likely effect of procedural repetition with four narrative tasks (i.e. narrating stories in written form after watching short animated videos) on five EFL students’ fluency and accuracy (AF). To do this, the levels of the students’ AF were measured during the performance of each task. Moreover, qualitative data from questionnaires administered to the students after each task were also included to better understand the behavior of the AF levels in relation to their perceptions of the task performance and the familiarity with the content of the tasks. The evidence shows that the students’ AF tended to progressively increase as weeks went by. The highest AF levels were found in the tasks where the content was familiar to the students. The opposite was observed when the students claimed not to be familiar with the content. The argument that we put forward in this article is that task (procedural) repetition may be beneficial for enhancing students’ AF in writing task performance; however, if this practice combines with the students’ lack of content familiarity, AF may engage in a dynamic interaction in which trade-off effects can be observed.

Functions of oral monologic tasks: Effects of topic familiarity on L2 speaking performance

Tasks with different design factors may dissimilarly affect oral production, and thus can be adopted for different pedagogical purposes. However, the functions of task types are not fully explored. To address this gap, this study investigates the influence of content familiarity and task repetition on sixty English as a foreign language learners’ speaking performance, in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Participants twice performed four monologic tasks, and received stimulated recall interviews. The findings indicate that participants produced structurally more complex speech under familiar conditions, and increased their CAF in task repetition. Furthermore, content familiarity and task repetition may facilitate conceptualization. Task repetition may also direct participants’ attention towards lexical choices and grammatical encoding. Moreover, repeating unfamiliar topics effectively increased CAF. The findings suggest content familiarity and task repetition are two dimensions of topic familiarity, and that teachers might consider implementing task repetition when presenting unfamiliar topics to learners.

Working memory capacity, content familiarity, and university EFL students’ reading comprehension

This study explores the effect of working memory capacity (WMC) and content familiarity (CF) on EFL reading comprehension. Seventy senior students from a private university in Malang, Indonesia, were involved in the study, having been selected based on their English proficiency of at least pre-advanced level. These students were required to complete a reading span test for the WMC and a multiple-choice reading test based on CF. The findings of this study show that there is no interaction effect between WMC as the main independent variable and CF as the moderator variable; this implies that the students with higher WMC comprehend texts better than those with lower WMC, regardless of whether they are familiar or not with the texts.

The Influence of Content Familiarity, Gender Difference and Proficiency Level on Reading Comprehension Performance: A Study on Malaysian Undergraduate Students in UPM

Much research has been done on the influence of several variables individually on Reading comprehension, but the influence of these variables as a whole was not given much attention. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between reading comprehension as a dependent variable and three independent variables namely: gender differences, English language proficiency level and content familiarity. An additional goal was to examine the interrelation between the three independent variables. The participants were 127 male and female Malaysian students attending English language proficiency classes at the English language department in University Putra Malaysia (UPM). The study employed a quantitative approach and the data was collected through a questionnaire which was of three main parts: two reading passages (one is content-familiar and the other one is content- unfamiliar texts) and a written interview. All participants were asked to answer the whole survey and then they were classified on the basis of their proficiency level and gender. The major findings revealed that there was a direct relation between content familiarity and reading comprehension while there was an indirect relation between each of gender differences and English language proficiency level on one side and reading comprehension on the other side.

Content familiarity, task repetition and Chinese EFL learners’ engagement in second language use

Previous research has considered the effects of content familiarity and task repetition on second language (L2) performance, but few studies have looked at the effect of these factors on learners’ engagement in task performance. This study explores the influence of content familiarity and task repetition on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ engagement in oral performance. Sixty EFL learners performed four narrative tasks with two familiar and two unfamiliar topics. They also repeated the same tasks to the same audience. Their oral production was analysed with various measures of behavioural and cognitive engagement. Stimulated recalls were collected from twenty-one participants to capture their emotional engagement. The participants were behaviourally and cognitively more engaged in tasks with familiar topics as well as having a more positive affective response to them. Repeating the tasks, however, negatively influenced behavioural and cognitive engagement, although the participants felt more relaxed and confident. In addition, the participants were more motivated to repeat unfamiliar topics, although they demonstrated more noticeable declines in their frequency of self-repair (an indicator of cognitive engagement) for these topics. These results provided empirical evidence for the relationship between task design and implementation factors and L2 task engagement. Teachers might base repetition decisions partially on learners’ familiarity with the topic.

L2 fluency as influenced by content familiarity and planning: Performance, measurement, and pedagogy

This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 × 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting eight categories, were used. Both planning and content familiarity were found to enhance fluency, but the positive effects of planning were stronger and noticeable on a wider range of measures. The availability of planning time also helped to compensate for lack of content familiarity. Implications for pedagogy and L2 fluency measurement are discussed.