The effectiveness of e-mail writing has been exhaustively studied and reported on, especially in Taiwan. However, there has not been any research carried out on the topics that mainland Chinese university students enjoy writing about when corresponding with their Western epals, nor does the literature report research on writing e-mails to two groups of epals simultaneously. This study explores what issues concerned the participants when they exchanged e-mails with their Western epals and how they viewed their cross-cultural learning experience. The participants were 28 mainland Chinese second-year English majors who voluntarily corresponded with 28 American high school pupils and 28 Western adult epals for about two months in Autumn 2006. The data of this exploratory interpretative research was mainly collected from their e-mails, ‘final reports’, the mid-project questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The study found that the topics the participants enjoyed writing about actually depended on with whom they were corresponding. With the younger school pupils, they tended to look for friendship by talking about pastimes, their own high school experience, etc. To the more sophisticated adult epals though, they wrote largely about personal matters, on which they seemed to be covertly seeking advice. However, some topics were common to both groups and were equally popular – for example, school and daily life. The data also reveals that the majority of the participants enjoyed the experience and overall had positive views about it. These fall into three broad categories of learning: language, cultural, and communication. However, some experienced minor difficulties and problems in these areas, particularly regarding the communication aspect. Meanwhile, in the process of the participants multiediting their ‘final reports’, learning seems to have occurred between their first and final drafts – perhaps as a result of responding to the researcher’s written feedback, which seemed to make a significant difference. The implications arising from the study suggest that the students’ interest in it stimulated their engagement with learning - though the findings are tentative. Some recommendations for further research are also given.

The purpose of this study is to examine pupils’ and teachers’ perspectives and use of language strategies when speaking English. Questions that will try to be answered are: What are the teachers’ thoughts about language strategies? In the subject English, which strategies do the pupils in 6th grade use? Which strategies to communicate are used most frequently by 6th graders when speaking English unprepared? To answer these questions, interviews with teachers were held. The pupils answered a survey and were observed while talking English. Earlier studies have showed that language learning strategies are an efficient tool for people learning a second language while overcoming their language skills shortcomings that might arise while communicating in a second language. This study concludes that language learning strategies have a significant part to play in the development of a communicative competence. The teachers emphasized the importance of a good learning environment, interaction and pupils’ awareness about the language learning process. The pupils reported that they used strategies such as paraphrasing and body language, which the observation later confirmed.

No description available.

The purpose of this research project was to examine theories of learning, theories of teaching, and theories of listening comprehension with a view to developing and testing a computer-enhanced listening comprehension system for English as a Foreign Language within the Thai university system. In addition to carrying out an in-depth literature review, factors contributing to difficulties in the listening process were also carefully examined in order to build a sound foundation for dealing with listening comprehension. A brief history and analysis of Computer Assisted Language Learning were presented together with a review of some computer programs with the aim of determining their characteristics. An Individualized CELL Listening Comprehension Program was then developed on the basis of four theoretical frameworks: the Constructivist approach, the need to use authentic spoken passages, reduction of cognitive load and response to learner differences. The system was then used by twenty students of Suranaree University of Technology (SUT), Thailand for a period of fifteen weeks. Students were volunteers from different proficiency levels. SUT midterm and final examinations were employed, in part, to observe the effect of the program on proficiency levels. The SUT examinations, which were usually in a multiple-choice format, tested students on minor details through short, simple conversations. These tests might not fit entirely within best practice for listening but they seem to be a common way of measuring listening development in several educational contexts. Pretests and posttests examining global ideas and specific details in written and multiple-choice formats were then developed so as to provide a more accurate gauge of improvement in listening skills. Log files were kept in order to scrutinize in detail students� interactions with the system. Questionnaire and interview techniques were applied to seek out students� attitudes towards the program. The results revealed that the participants performed better than their peers in the same proficiency levels in SUT midterm and final examinations although the difference was not at a statistically significant level. However, posttest scores were better than those of pretest at a statistically significant level in most aspects except in case of the global ideas. The log files revealed that all students tended to focus on the word level by attempting to understand and decode every word in the transcriptions. This fixation is likely to explain the low global ideas scores. Analysis was complicated by the fact that some students were not able to use the program frequently enough, usually because of unexpectedly heavy schedules. However, the data extracted through questionnaires and interviews showed that most students demonstrated a positive attitude towards the various features of the program and felt that use of the program had improved their listening skills. In addition to findings relating to the development of listening comprehension, the study revealed that the majority of students felt that they did not think listening comprehension and, more generally the study of English, was sufficiently important to spend time on. This interesting but shocking discovery needs to be attended to immediately as it may have a strong effect on how Thai students prioritize their learning of English, and how this may impact on the levels of proficiency which they might subsequently attain.

Is it possible for technological �spaces� to be created that can provide a community atmosphere � one in which learners are not restrained by pre-determined syllabi and have the ability to direct their learning according to their own interests, pace and goals? If so, it would be notable to discover which kinds of interactions might be possible, or might eventuate, and how the participants in such a learning �space� would organize themselves. Also of interest would be the kinds of power structures that emerged through participant interaction, the direction/interactions undertaken by the participants and the improvements that could be made in order to respect and accommodate the differences between learners in a social online learning space. In order to further study this hypothesised need to investigate these questions, this researcher developed an online, English as a Second/Foreign Language learning environment for advanced adult learners of English. She reviewed the appropriate literature in order to theorise how to commence this research direction and investigated various learning platforms and software tools. The result was the development of a multiplatform environment which consisted of a content management system and a 3D microworld. Tools, exercises and content were developed and/or gathered as starting points for learners and the various software had to be learnt in order to orient others on their use. Finally, the environment was trialed over a four week duration with a group of advanced to native speakers of English (volunteers) and the results have been presented in this thesis for discussion. The trial, entitled the ILE Project, attempted to study the problems involved in the technical development of such spaces, to observe the interactions between the learners in a 3D microworld and uncover issues relating to its implementation. Some issues raised by the project concerned techno-literacy, personality-driven interaction differences and organizational power shifts within the 3D community. This thesis closes with an argument that redefines the notion of the learner autonomy, proposes certain modifications to both the pedagogic and technical structure of the online environment and discusses the issues raised in this research. The latter discussion would require further re-conceptualization of the spaces, stakes and support structures that educators can create/provide in an attempt to improve online language learning.

Being one of the most epoch making invention of the 21st century, computers have fundamentally altered every aspect of people&rsquo / s lives, including the education domain. Thus, for decades, computer-assisted language learning has received considerable amount of attention among researchers and language teachers by serving interactive, multi-sensory, and autonomous learning opportunities. In this respect, innumerable large or small-scale projects blazed a trail for other teachers to follow. The present study, therefore, is primarily concerned with the students&rsquo / attitudes towards computer-assisted language learning. Its main purpose is to investigate what the students&rsquo / attitudes are towards computer- assisted language learning (CALL) by also taking their attitude towards computer assisted learning (CAL) and foreign language learning (FLL) into consideration. Finally, factors affecting students&rsquo / attitudes and the relationships among computer assisted learning, computer assisted language learning and foreign language learning are also explored within the scope of the study. The findings demonstrate that most of the students have positive attitudes towards computer assisted learning, computer assisted language learning and foreign language learning. Age, grade, gender, years of studying English and prior CALL experience affect students&rsquo / attitudes. Moreover, students attitudes towards computer assisted language learning, computer- assisted language learning, and foreign language learning are, indeed, interrelated.

The maze task is a psycholinguistic tool that is used in experimentally measuring online sentence processing time (Forster et al., 2009). It asks subjects to "weave" their way through sentences, choosing the correct grammatical alternative from two choices. This task can also offer insight into the processing strategies of L2 learners. Thus, whether or not this task can be used as an effective training program for beginning L2 learners is the topic of this current investigation. The maze task is therefore transformed into the "story maze", which contextualizes sentences for learners. Because the task provides immediate feedback regarding the precise location of an error, learners can efficiently tune their L2 processing strategies, which echoes VanPatten (2004) and his objective with processing instruction. In effect, connections made in the classroom through explicit instruction can be reinforced and strengthened through implicit maze task training. Using L2 Spanish learners, the efficacy of training types is tested in order to investigate whether the maze task can assist learners in altering their processing strategies of complex, L2 structures that are not found in the L1. Furthermore, the task's generalizing capability with respect to building the implicit and explicit knowledge bases is examined. Lastly, because the task speaks to students' identity as learners in a technologically advanced world, the likability of this task is evaluated through qualitative data, and pedagogical implications are discussed.

This thesis presents a framework for computer assisted language learning using a virtual language teacher. It is an attempt at creating, not only a new type of language learning software, but also a server-based application that collects large amounts of speech material for future research purposes.The motivation for the framework is to create a research platform for computer assisted language learning, and computer assisted pronunciation training.Within the thesis, different feedback strategies and pronunciation error detectors are exploredThis is a broad, interdisciplinary approach, combining research from a number of scientific disciplines, such as speech-technology, game studies, cognitive science, phonetics, phonology, and second-language acquisition and teaching methodologies.The thesis discusses the paradigm both from a top-down point of view, where a number of functionally separate but interacting units are presented as part of a proposed architecture, and bottom-up by demonstrating and testing an implementation of the framework. / QC 20110511

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 81-84).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-84). Also available in print.