Comparing the Effects of L1 and L2 Definition on Incidental Vocabulary Learning through Listening to Stories

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 604
Author(s):  
Seyed Mohammad Reza Amirian ◽  
Gholamreza Zareian ◽  
Sima Nour

Vocabulary is an essential component of language proficiency which provides the basis for learners’ performance in other skills. This study investigated the effect of three kinds of definition conditions, that is L1, L2, and L1+L2 on incidental vocabulary knowledge of EFL learners. To this aim, three experimental and one control groups took part in the current study so as to examine the effectiveness of definitions with 96 target words through listening. The participants were 74 fourth-grade high school students. Eight stories with each with 12 target words (total 96 words) were given to the learners. Participants in each group listened to eight short stories under one of the three mentioned conditions for experimental groups, with no definition offered for control group. They all answered vocabulary list, eight immediate post-tests and eight delayed posttests of vocabulary. The data were analyzed using t-tests and one-way ANOVA for both immediate and delayed post-tests. The results indicated that definition groups significantly outperformed the other group in terms of vocabulary acquisition on both immediate and delayed retention of target words. However, the findings showed a significant loss from the immediate to the delayed post-tests. These findings are discussed and implications are offered for foreign language syllabus designers and instructors.

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zargham Ghabanchi ◽  
Fateme Haji Mirza

This study examined the effect of summarization as a generative learning strategy of the readers' performance on reading comprehension, in general, and reading comprehension display, referential and inferential questions in particular. The subjects in this study were 61 high school students. They were assigned to two groups - control and experimental – each given the same texts taught by one of the researchers during ten sessions. In the control group, learners automatically used their own self-preferred strategies; but the experimental group was taught how to summarize the paragraphs. Then all were post-tested on their achievement of the instructed texts. The results revealed that the use of summarization did not have a significant effect on the readers' performance on display and inferential questions. As for the referential questions, however, the results demonstrated a significant effect for the use of summarization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-155
Author(s):  
Yassine BENHADJ

The study aimed at examining the effect of adopting blended learning on Moroccan high school students’ English language proficiency. This has been essentially achieved through relying both on face-to-face classroom interactions and using “Google classroom”, which is a free online learning platform.  The researcher opted for a quasi-experimental design to gauge the impact of implementing a blended learning model on the research sample. This study enlisted the participation of 79 Moroccan first-year Baccalaureate students who were divided into two separate but homogenous groups. The experimental group was taught using the blended learning model, and the control group was tutored in a traditional learning environment. The mean scores’ differences of the pre-test and the post-test asserted that, in comparison to the face-to-face learning, the blended learning model adopted was significantly impactful in improving the language proficiency level of the treatment group. However, no significant gender differences were observed in this regard. In essence, this piece of research has placed much emphasis on the idea that the efficient incorporation of ICT, particularly blended learning, into the learning/teaching process can help satisfy students’ needs, increase their motivation, and eventually enhance their language mastery.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. 1827
Author(s):  
Nahid Majidi ◽  
Nader Assadi Aydinlu

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of contextual visual aids on Iranian high school students’ reading comprehension. To do so, a thorough review of the related literature was done and a quasi-experimental study was designed in which the participants were 96 female EFL learners at the intermediate level. These participants were chosen out of 140 learners through a homogeneity test. The selected participants were assigned to four groups; three experimental groups (pre-thematic, thematic and post-thematic) and one control group. The participants went through the procedure of pretest, treatment, and posttest. The data was collected by means of three tests: a PET test, a pretest and a posttest of reading comprehension. A one-way ANOVA was run to probe the research questions posed in this study. The findings revealed that contextual visual aids had a statistically significant effect on Iranian high school students' reading comprehension. The study findings also revealed that among the Contextual Visual Aids, pre-thematic aids had the highest effect on high school students’ reading comprehension. This was followed by thematic visual aids which had a moderate effect on this process. However, the post-thematic visual aids had slightly significant effect on high school students' reading comprehension.


Author(s):  
Nawal Gholami ◽  
Mohammad Taghi Farvardin

Few studies have investigated the effects of input-based and output-based instructions on collocational knowledge of EFL learners. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the effects of these instructional approaches on Iranian EFL learners’ productive knowledge of collocations. To this end, 80 senior high school students from three intact classes at Tali-e High School in Ahvaz, Iran, were selected. Each class was assigned to a control group (n = 28) and two experimental groups including the input group (n = 27) and the output group (n = 25). Twenty collocations were selected as the target collocations. Then, a pretest was administered to all groups. Two days after the last treatment session, an immediate posttest was given to the participants. A delayed posttest was also administered two weeks later. The results of Mixed-ANOVA, one-way ANOVA, and Tukey post hoc tests revealed that both input and output groups outperformed the control group on the immediate and delayed posttests. However, there were no significant differences between the input and output groups on the posttests. The implications and suggestions for future research are also presented. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Abdul Rahman ◽  
Haryanto Atmowardoyo ◽  
Kisman Salija

Undoubtedly the Internet sources are absolutely beneficial to the senior high school students since they carried the target language together in itself. The present study aimed to explore podcast effects on EFL learners’ listening comprehension. This study involved sixty students chosen from the eleventh grade students of the science department at SMU Negeri 1 luwu in 2017/2018 academic years. They divided into two groups, namely the experimental and control group. The listening comprehension test and the open-ended questions administered to fulfil the objectives of the study. The quantitative data were analysed by utilizing paired and independent samples t-test, and the qualitative data was analysed through an open coding technique by identifying, naming, and describing the phenomena of the gathered data. The quantitative results indicated that the use of podcast was more effective than the use of non-podcast. It was proven by the value of the mean score from both of the groups (53.73 ˃ 37,46). The different (df) of  those two mean scores was statistically significant based on the the t - test value at 0.05 significance level. The probability value was smaller than significant level (0.000 < 0.05). In other words, the result of hypothesis testing found that t-value = 4.791 was higher than t-table = 2.000 (p=0.05, df =58). Ha was accepted and Ho was rejected. In addition, the result of open-ended question analysis highlighted that podcast was attractive in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language listening comprehension.Podcast, Listening Comprehension, Learning Interest


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Marziyeh Abdollahi ◽  
Mohammad Taghi Farvardin

The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of narrow reading on English as foreign language (EFL) learners’ vocabulary recall and retention. To this end, 60 senior high school students studying at Tarbiyat High School in Mahshahr, Iran, were selected from four intact classes. The participants were then divided into two equal groups, experimental and control. Ten words which were unknown to the participants were selected as target words. The experimental group received thematically related passages while the control group was given reading passages of different topics. The immediate posttest was given to the participants two days after the treatment. Afterwards, two delayed posttests were administered with two week intervals. The scores were analyzed through two-way repeated measures ANOVA, Bonferroni pairwise comparisons, and independent samples t-tests. The results revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in all posttests. The implications arising from the findings and suggestions for future research were explained.


Author(s):  
Martin Samohyl ◽  
Jana Babjakova ◽  
Diana Vondrova ◽  
Jana Jurkovicova ◽  
Juraj Stofko ◽  
...  

This study aimed to determine the factors associated with the avoidance of dental preventive care in high school students and their parents in the framework of The Youth and Parents Risk Factor Behavior Survey in Slovakia, the ongoing cross-sectional school-based survey of students and their parents or legal representatives. The data were collected using two separate standardized questionnaires: (i) the questionnaire for students (n = 515) and (ii) the questionnaire for parents (n = 681). The study group included 57 high school students (54.4% males) who did not visit the dentist for preventive care in the previous year. The control group included 458 students (35.8% males) who visited a dentist for preventive care at least once in the previous year. A significantly higher number of males (54.4%), older adolescents, and young adults (21.8%; 20.0%) were not visiting dental preventive care regularly. Incomplete family (56.1%), stressful situations at home (17.5%), and feeling unwell were the factors contributing to the avoidance of dental preventive care. More than 34.5% of adolescents and young adults were not visiting either dental preventive care or pediatric preventive care (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 5.14; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.40, 10.99). Children of divorced mothers and mothers with household income lower than EUR 900 had significantly higher dental care avoidance in bivariate analysis. A significantly higher percentage of fathers from the exposed group were not visiting dental preventive care regularly (47.8%, p < 0.05). The results of the study can be used as an educational intervention step focusing on the parental influence on adolescent and young adults’ behavior and as a challenge for the improvement of dental preventive care in older adolescents and young adults.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1830
Author(s):  
Chih-Chao Chung ◽  
Shi-Jer Lou

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of introduction of the physical computing strategy of Arduino Boards in a program design course on coding literacy and the effectiveness of the application in technical high school students. This study selected two classes of twelfth-grade students enrolled in a program design course at a technical high school in Southern Taiwan as the samples. One class was the control group (43 students), and the other was the experimental group (42 students). During the 18-week course, the control group carried out a DBL (design-based learning) programming project, and the experimental group carried out the DBL programming project using the physical computing strategy of Arduino boards. Pre- and posttests and a questionnaire survey were carried out, while ANCOVA (analysis of covariance) was used for evaluation purposes. In the course, students in the experimental group were randomly selected for semi-structured interviews to understand their learning status and to perform qualitative analysis and summarization. This study proposed the physical computing strategy of Arduino boards, featuring staged teaching content, practical teaching activities, and real themes and problem-solving tasks. The results show that the coding literacy of students in the different teaching strategy groups was significantly improved. However, in the Arduino course on DBL programming, the students in the experimental group had a significantly higher learning efficiency in coding literacy than those in the control group. Moreover, according to the qualitative analysis using student interviews, Arduino boards were found to improve students’ motivation to learn coding and to aid in systematically guiding students toward improving their coding literacy by combining their learning with DBL theory. Thus, Arduino technology can be effectively used to improve students’ programming abilities and their operational thinking in practically applying programming theories.


Author(s):  
Marisol Juarez Diaz ◽  
Diane Moreland ◽  
Wendy Wolfersteig

Abstract Purpose This study examined the Childhelp Speak Up Be Safe (CHSUBS) child abuse prevention curriculum for high school students and addressed a gap in evidence-based child maltreatment prevention programs. CHSUBS is grounded in theory and was developed to 1) provide students with the skills they need to prevent or interrupt child abuse, bullying, and neglect, and 2) increase student knowledge about safety related to abuse. Methods Utilizing a cluster-randomized controlled trial design, the three high schools were randomly assigned to participate in the CHSUBS curriculum or the control group. Survey items measured the efficacy of the curriculum in grades 9 through 12. Surveys were implemented at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and after 6 months for a follow-up. Analyses included exploratory factor analyses and a paired samples t–test to determine whether increases in child maltreatment knowledge and resistance skills were gained. Results Findings showed positive significant results that child maltreatment knowledge and resistance skills were significantly different from pre to post for the CHSUBS group and showed no significant control group changes. Conclusions High school students in the CHSUBS group appeared to gain both child maltreatment knowledge and resistance skills. Future studies on prevention programming for high school students might show results that lead to a reduction in child maltreatment and an increase in better health outcomes for adolescents.


Author(s):  
Daisuke Ito ◽  
Yuki Kubo ◽  
Ayako Takii ◽  
Asuka Watanabe ◽  
Tetsuhiro Ohtani ◽  
...  

Abstract The use of mindfulness as a tool to improve mental health has received increased attention. Schools provide ideal environments for short-term prevention and skill development for mental health. Further, teachers can promote and reinforce students’ daily use of mindfulness. This study explored the effects of a short-term group mindfulness-based intervention on the mental health of adolescents who have experienced trauma. A total of 49 high school students received a mindfulness-based intervention session followed by homework and teacher reinforcement. The results suggest that a short-term group intervention for mindfulness can potentially improve mindfulness attention awareness and reduce depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents. As there was no control group, additional research examining the effectiveness of the intervention is essential.


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