Earticle

This study, which is based on a 12-week classroom experiment, investigates the effects of intervention tasks designed for focused listening and awareness raising on the accuracy of Japanese EFL learners’ spoken outputs. The study used the pretest/posttest design with two experimental groups (N = 26 each) and two control groups (N = 36 in total). All participants watched short movie clips of 1 to 2 minutes. The participants of the experimental groups did intervention tasks consisting of dictation and oral repetition. One of the experimental groups was given tasks with the following awareness-raising interventions: cloze-dictation tasks with input enhancement and verbal instructions for English prosody. In order to measure the effects of these tasks, we used the learners’ elicited imitation accuracy, prosodic accuracy, and self-reported increased awareness of prosody and unstressed words. The findings reveal that only the participants in the experimental group that did awareness-raising intervention tasks demonstrated significant improvement in spoken outputs; the other experimental group participants, who did dictation and oral repetition tasks, did not show much improvement compared to the control groups’ participants. The educational implications of this study indicate that educators could help language learners improve their spoken outputs through awareness-raising interventions.

This study examines EFL learners’ perceptions of peer feedback in writing instruction in the context of a Japanese university. Peer feedback is primarily a variety of input given from one learner to another. In a writing classroom, however, it refers to a dynamic process of reviewing peer texts and discussing one another’s text. Peer feedback is defined here as a collaborative learning task in which learners learn to write through taking the role of both writer and reviewer. In a collaborative learning task, learners are expected to be aware of their roles for active and effective participation in the task. To investigate learners’ perceptions of peer feedback in terms of their roles, a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews were conducted with a total of 51 students enrolled in two writing classes taught by the author. The results indicates that the students perceived peer feedback to be useful, and that they did so more from the writer’s stance than the reviewer’s. Pedagogical implications include: (1) the roles of reviewer and writer should be explicitly taught and guided; (2) peer feedback task instruction should focus on meaning-level revision; and (3) the functions of peer feedback and teacher feedback should be clearly distinguished.

The study aimed to examine whether EFL extensive reading could lead to increased word knowledge of lower-level EFL Taiwanese learners. The participants were 45 lower-level proficiency English as a foreign language Taiwanese technological college freshmen. They read 30 English texts within a 15-week EFL extensive reading program. The data were collected through the vocabulary pre- and post-tests to measure learners’ incidental vocabulary learning gains in the 50 randomly selected target words achieved through the program. Results revealed that the significant vocabulary gains were achieved by the participants after the EFL extensive reading program, suggesting that the EFL extensive reading treatment had produced a beneficial effect on the incidental word learning gains of the participants with lower EFL competence. However, the improvement in word pick-up rate reached to a modest extent with at least 6% to at most 15% of the 50 measured words being moved from unknown to known and achieved mainly at the recognition level only. The possible factors which led the participants to achieve a significant advantage but at only a modest rate in the number of the target words recognized correctly were discussed. Also, some pedagogical implications for EFL vocabulary instruction in the Taiwanese educational context were provided.

This study particularly looked into students’ perceived listening problems over time as they develop their listening strategies in the context of a Taiwanese technological college. The participants were 31 Taiwanese college students who received listening strategy instruction two hours per week for fourteen weeks. The data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively to examine changes in EFL listening problems encountered by students and how they dealt with these listening problems as they develop their strategy use over time. The quantitative results showed that there were three major significant differences in students’ perceived listening problems after the strategy instruction: they are unfamiliar vocabulary, rapid speech rate and linking sounds between words. In addition, the qualitative data showed that the patterns of changes in students’ perceived listening problems seem to be more complicated. While students reported less listening problems at a superficial level, they encountered more listening problems at deeper processing level as they attempted to heighten their strategy use. Based on the results, pedagogical implications and suggestions were provided.

The author reports on an action research pilot study that attempts to introduce critical approaches to a high-stakes educational system through a workshop for in-service teachers centered on curriculum analysis. The workshop briefly introduces critical theories (e.g., gender criticism, materialist criticism, postcolonial criticism, critical multiculturalism, critical media literacy, and world Englishes) and then asks teachers to employ these theories to critically examine the contents of textbooks used in their schools. Having identified problem areas, teachers are asked to share their results with the entire group of 10 teachers. Then they are put back into pairs and asked to reflect on how their texts can be improved using Maley’s (1998) 12 concepts of adapting materials. Finally, teachers are broken up into groups and asked to discuss what kinds of critical approaches they are already employing in their classes. Results indicate that teachers are very adept at analysing and spotting inadequacies in the materials but weak at coming up with ways to address these inadequacies. More work at adaptation is thus required in teacher training programs. It is also found that teachers are already employing critical approaches in their classes. More work is needed to investigate the critical approaches teachers are already using.