Effect of Alignment on Text Cohesion in the Continuation Task

<p>A continuation task provides learners with a text with its ending removed and requires them to complete it through writing in a most coherent and logical way. The current study investigated (a) whether the continuation task had a positive effect on text cohesion and (b) whether texts produced by pairs exhibited higher cohesion than those produced by individual learners. A total of 80 college students were randomly assigned to one of three task conditions: 1) 40 students working in pairs in a continuation task; 2) 20 working individually in a continuation task; and 3) 20 working individually in a picture writing task. Text cohesion was analyzed by using three indices from Coh-metrix: Argument Overlap, Latent Semantic Analysis, and Causal Cohesion. Moreover, the collaborative dialogue and think-aloud protocols were collected and transcribed for identifying language-related episodes (LREs). The results showed that learners in Condition 1 produced the highest text cohesion while those in Conditions 3 the lowest. Furthermore, learners in Condition 1 produced more cohesion-related LREs, especially proportionally more correctly resolved LREs than those in Conditions 2 and 3. The implications of these findings from the perspective of alignment are discussed.</p>

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L1 Thinking in L2 Reading Process of Chinese College Students by Using Think-aloud Protocols

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT ◽

10.47297/wspiedwsp2516-250014.20200407 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (7) ◽

pp. 91-95

Author(s):

Tian TIAN ◽

Jingjing HAN

Keyword(s):

College Students ◽

Reading Process ◽

Think Aloud ◽

L2 Reading ◽

Chinese College Students ◽

Think Aloud Protocols

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A THINK-ALOUD PROTOCOLS AS A COGNITIVE STRATEGY TO INCREASE STUDENTS’ WRITING NARRATIVE SKILL AT EFL CLASSROOM

Premise Journal of English Education ◽

10.24127/pj.v5i2.817 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 81

Author(s):

Purwo Trapsilo

Keyword(s):

Group Treatment ◽

Control Group ◽

Think Aloud ◽

Thinking Aloud ◽

Think Aloud Protocols ◽

Post Test ◽

Narrative Skill ◽

Narrative Performance ◽

Experimental Group ◽

Writing Task

The purpose of this study was twofold: its first aim was to know whether any differences of think-aloud potocols to develop writing narrative skill; second, to know whether which one is more effective to develop students’ writing narrative skill by using think-aloud protocols and traditional method.Students randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. Treatment had three stages. In Stage 1, students were asked to write about a topic. InStage 2, students in the experimental group studied a model essay about that writing task and they hadthink-aloud protocol about those aspects of language that they noticed in the model essays. However inthe control group, students studied model essays for themselves and they did not have think-aloud part. InStage 3, students were asked to rewrite the writing task. The students in the experimental group showed that they got higher score in writing narrative by using think-aloud protocols than the control group. Furthermore, in the post test, experimental groupoutperformed the control group. The findings of the study suggest that thinking-aloud could be a goodstrategy for improving writing narrative performance.

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Assessing Reading Skill With a Think-Aloud Procedure and Latent Semantic Analysis

Cognition and Instruction ◽

10.1207/s1532690xci2103_02 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 251-283 ◽

Cited By ~ 85

Author(s):

Joseph P. Magliano ◽

Keith K. Millis

Keyword(s):

Latent Semantic Analysis ◽

Semantic Analysis ◽

Reading Skill ◽

Think Aloud

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Construct Under-representation and Construct Irrelevant Variances on IELTS Academic Writing Task 1: Is There Any Threat to Validity?

Theory and Practice in Language Studies ◽

10.17507/tpls.0711.19 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 7 (11) ◽

pp. 1097

Author(s):

Seyyed Mohammad Alavi ◽

Ali Panahi Masjedlou

Keyword(s):

Academic Writing ◽

Think Aloud ◽

Marked Contrast ◽

Lexical Resource ◽

Think Aloud Protocols ◽

Scoring Rubrics ◽

Cognitive Validity ◽

Cognitive Difficulty ◽

Diagram Analysis ◽

Writing Task

The study reports on the validity of IELTS Academic Writing Task One (IAWTO) and compares and assesses the performance descriptors, i.e., coherence and cohesion, lexical resource and grammatical range, employed on IAWTO and IELTS Academic Writing Task Two (IAWTT). To these objectives, the data used were 53 participants' responses to graphic prompts driven by IELTS scoring rubrics, descriptive prompt, and retrospective, rather than concurrent, think-aloud protocols for detecting the cognitive validity of responses. The results showed that IAWTO input was degenerate and insufficient, rendering the construct under-represented, i.e., narrowing the construct. It was also found that IAWTO displayed to be in tune with cognitive difficulty of diagram analysis and the intelligence-based design of the process chart, rather than bar chart, being thus symmetrical with variances irrelevant to construct; this is argued to be biased to one group: Leading to under-performance of one group in marked contrast to over-performance of another group. Added to that, qualitative results established on instructors' protocols were suggestive of the dominance of performance descriptors on IAWTT rather than on IAWTO. The pedagogical implications of this study are further argued.

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A THINK-ALOUD PROTOCOLS AS A COGNITIVE STRATEGY TO INCREASE STUDENTS’ WRITING NARRATIVE SKILL AT EFL CLASSROOM

Premise Journal of English Education ◽

10.24127/pj.v5i1.423 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Purwo Trapsilo

Keyword(s):

Group Treatment ◽

Control Group ◽

Think Aloud ◽

Thinking Aloud ◽

Think Aloud Protocols ◽

Post Test ◽

Narrative Skill ◽

Stage 1 ◽

Experimental Group ◽

Writing Task

The purpose of this study was twofold: its first aim was to know whether any differences of think-aloud potocols to develop writing narrative skill; second, to know whether which one is more effective to develop students’ writing narrative skill by using think-aloud protocols and traditional method. Students randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. Treatment had three stages. In Stage 1, students were asked to write about a topic. In Stage 2, students in the experimental group studied a model essay about that writing task and they had think-aloud protocol about those aspects of language that they noticed in the model essays. However in the control group, students studied model essays for themselves and they did not have think-aloud part. In Stage 3, students were asked to rewrite the writing task. The students in the experimental group showed that they got higher score in writing narrative by using think-aloud protocols than the control group. Furthermore, in the post test, experimental group outperformed the control group. The findings of the study suggest that thinking-aloud could be a good strategy for improving writing narrative performance.Keywords: Think-aloud protocols, Writing Narrative skill, EFL

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The relationship between reading literary novels and predictive inference generation

Scientific Study of Literature ◽

10.1075/ssol.4.1.03ino ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 46-67

Author(s):

Keisuke Inohara ◽

Ryoko Honma ◽

Takayuki Goto ◽

Takashi Kusumi ◽

Akira Utsumi

Keyword(s):

College Students ◽

Latent Semantic Analysis ◽

Average Method ◽

Semantic Analysis ◽

Predictive Inference ◽

Statistical Structure ◽

Inference Generation ◽

Vector Operation ◽

Predictive Inferences ◽

The Relationship

This study examined the relationship between reading literary novels and generating predictive inferences by analyzing a corpus of Japanese novels. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) was used to capture the statistical structure of the corpus. Then, the authors asked 74 Japanese college students to generate predictive inferences (e.g., “The newspaper burned”) in response to Japanese event sentences (e.g., “A newspaper fell into a bonfire”) and obtained more than 5,000 predicted events. The analysis showed a significant relationship between LSA similarity between the event sentences and the predicted events and frequency of the predicted events. This result suggests that exposure to literary works may help develop readers’ inference generation skills. In addition, two vector operation methods for sentence vector constructions from word vectors were compared: the “Average” method and the “Predication Algorithm” method (Kintsch, 2001). The results support the superiority of the Predication Algorithm method over the Average method.

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