Doughty, C. (1991). Second language instruction does make a difference: Evience from an empirical study of SL relativization. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, 431-469.
** Catherine J. Doughty is Associate Research Director for SLA at the Center for the Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland and affiliate faculty in the Department of Second Language Acquisition and Application at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Week 8 Summary & Reflection:
This week, we discussed a study conducted by Catherine Doughty (1991) and implications for L2 teaching and learning.
Quasi-experimental Studies
The concept of "quasi-experiment" was first brought up since it iscrucial in understanding Doughty's study. As discussed in class onTuesday, a quasi-experiment is one of the quantitative research designs which often convert what the learners perform (e.g., via tests)into numbers. This is to compare how much the learners knew beforereceiving any treatment (or instruction) and how much they improved after receiving the treatment.
From my own further research on "quasi-experimental studies", I learned that the word "quasi" means "as if" or "almost" in Latin, which means a quasi-experiment has some but not all of the characteristics of a true experiments. It is similar to true experiments to some degree, such as having subjects, treatments, pre-& post-tests, etc. However, the missing element is random assignmentof subjects from a wider population to the control and experimental conditions. "The sampling is always non-random because intact classes or volunteers are called to participate in the study, not truly random members of whatever the "population" is thought to be. That is, we use convenience samples, rather than random samples. But then we assignment randomly to each treatment" (from Dr. Ortega's email, October 16, 07).
Dougthy's Research Design
Having said that, we discussed important processes of Dougthy's quasi-experimental study, including participants, tests, treatments,results, and interpretation.
Participants:
Doughty examined whether particular aspects of relative clauses would benefit from instruction. Twenty adult university students of ESL were divided into three groups: two experimental and one control. All groups received exposure to relative clauses over a period of ten days through computer-delivered reading lessons. During these lessons, all learners were asked to read a series of passages from "Sophie's Dilemma" and answer comprehension questions which focused on reading skills.
Treatments:
While the control group simply read the passages containing relative clauses and answered comprehension questions, for the experimental groups, two instructions were added. One experimental group received instruction which focused on rules for constructing relative clauses. Another experimental group received instruction which clarified the meaning of the relative clauses, such as vocabulary assistance. All learners were pre-tested before receiving the instructional treatment and post-tested after ten days of the instruction in relative clauses.
Results:
The results clearly illustrated that both experimental groups, who received either implicit or explicit explanations on relative clause formation, had an advantage compared to the control group. The experimental groups outperformed the control group on post-test. As the study title indicates, Doughty concluded that instruction on relative clauses made a difference. Yet, we have to understand that the instruction worked because it was given at a time when the learners were developmentally ready to acquire relative clauses. Please note that Doughty made sure her learners were ready to learn relative clauses based on their performance on placement tests.
Teachability of Particular Forms
There are more research findings in relation to teachability of particular forms in L2. Researchers who are associated with "teach what is teachable" perspective believe that certain features of a language (e.g., negation, word order) are acquired in a particular sequence, and some grammatical features develop according to the learners' natural developmental process. From his research findings on L2 German learners, Pienemann (1988) claims that learners cannot acquire what they are not developmentally ready to learn. Two groups of Australian university students who were at stage 2 in their acquisition of German word order were taught the rules at stage 3 and stage 4, respectively. The results showed that the learners who received instruction on stage 3 rules moved successfully into stage 3 from stage 2. However, those learners who received instruction on stage 4 rules did not move into stage 3. Any instruction to teach "stage 4 word order patterns" to learners at "stage 2" did not work because they have to go through "stage 3" to get to "stage 4" before they are ready to acquire what is at "stage 4". Please read Pienemann, M (1988). Determining the influence of instruction on L2 speech processing. AILA Review 5(1), 40-72.
How do we know our students are ready to move on? Finding out whether our students are developmentally ready to learn a certain rule will be a challenge for all teachers. However, I personally believe that teachers' constant observations, dialogues with students, and ongoing evaluations will offer some insights.
Acquisition and Comprehension
Another interesting observation from Doughty's findings is the gap between how much the learners acquired and how much they comprehended. Although both experimental groups were equally successful in acquiring relative clauses, they performed differently on comprehension test. For example, the experimental group who received rule-based instruction comprehended less than the experimental group with meaning-oriented instruction. One possible reason would be that the former became distracted by dealing with the story and learning grammar at the same time.
Given this interesting result, we learn that acquisition and comprehension are two different learning processes. Even if the learner comprehended a lot, she or he may not have acquired the grammatical form being taught. One example would be Wes who had no problem understanding native speakers' conversations, but has not developed a good command of English grammar. Teachers and researchers should not hastily conclude that the learners acquired a certain aspect of L2 on the basis of their comprehension ability. They should measure both whether they comprehended and acquired. In addition to that, I believe we should also make sure whether the learners can produce the learned grammatical forms in the natural speech, moving beyond the simple oral excercises. Although the learners could produce more advanced forms on tests or in very restricted excercises immediately after instruction, their ability to integrate what they learned into simultaneous conversations will be limited.
Finally, in order to facilitate the learners' SLA process, it would be helpful to utilize visual aid so that they can pay attention to how grammatical rules are operated and constructed in sentence levels. It would be also helpful to encourage the learners to "notice" the grammatical element being taught by asking what they think happened in the text.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Summary and Reflection on Week 6
Reminder:
DO NOT FORGET TO POST REFLECTIONS
For the blog posting assignment, we need to post a message to both summarize and reflect on our class meetings for the week. In addition to summarize, we need to post our insights. Well, I will try to include my reflections as well to this postingJ.
NEXT WEEK
Dr. Ortega kindly extended the due date of our research proposal from Tuesday, October 2 to Thursday, October 11 (WOW, 9 more days to work on, thank you Dr. Ortega!!). We will be learning Cognition from Chapter 5 next week (week 7). In the following week (week 8), we will not have any readings, but need to work hard to complete our research proposal.
Summary:
This week, we read chapter 4 on the environment and Schmidt’s (1983) article on Wes’s language learning experience. On Tuesday, September 25, we were divided into 5 groups in order to summarize and report the theories discussed in the chapter 4.
Five groups were:
1. Acculturation Hypothesis and Input Hypothesis
2. Interaction Hypothesis
3. Output Hypothesis
4. Negative Feedback
5. Limitations on the Theories
Acculturation Hypothesis was introduced by Schumann. The more acculturated is the more successful to learn the target language.
Input Hypothesis was introduced by Krashen. More comprehensible input (i+1, linguistic data slightly above learners’ current level) can help learners acquire the target language.
Interaction Hypothesis was introduced by Long. Long agrees with Krashen’s comprehension, but Long believes that language learning happens through the interactionally modified comprehensible input.
Output Hypothesis was introduced by Swain. In that theory, production is also a key to acquire the target language. Learners many need to challenge themselves in order to produce output (kind of o+1).
We are run out of time on Tuesday, so the group who discussed Negative Feedback reported on Thursday.
Negative Feedback includes clarification request, explicit corrections, recasts, and elicitations.
Lyster and Mori proposed their Counterbalance Hypothesis. In their theory, if the context is meaning oriented, the explicit feedback (focus on form) will work better. On the other hand, if the context is form oriented, the implicit feedback (focus on meaning) will do better.
On Thursday, September 27, Anne and Jung Min facilitated our discussion on Schmidt (1983).
We were divided into four groups in order to discuss Wes’s improvement among Grammatical Competence, Sociolinguistic Competence, Discourse Competence, and Strategic Competence.
Without explicit explanation or formal classroom, Wes had difficulty improving his Grammatical Competence. Since he lacked the Grammatical Competence, he had hard time to improve Sociolinguistic Competence, which requires high level of language competence.
Megumi brought up with an interesting question that whether Wes learn the Discourse Competence or know the Discourse Competence from his L1.
Strategic Competence group agreed that Wes improved his strategic competence ability for carrying out his meaning, but he could not improve accurate part of the competence.
Lastly, most of us believed that Wes was a successful language learner because he was able to communicate and was liked (and respected) by people surrounded to him. In addition to interaction and acculturation, Schmidt argues the importance of attention to learn the target language.
Reflection:
I personally liked the counterbalance hypothesis proposed by Lyster and Mori. It really makes sense to me from my experience of working at the Japanese immersion camp.
As you may know, I work at the Japanese immersion camp every summer. This summer, we made greater shift in our curriculum that we introduced a project-based instruction for our 4-week program. In theory, a project completed by the learners is the way they show what they learn, rather than tests. During the four-week session, learners completed three weekly projects and a final project. Based on this curriculum, we used projects as instruction tools; teachers actually did not give any instructions on grammar and vocabularies, but they gave guidance for students to gather information from the environment. The role of the teachers in this curriculum was one of facilitator rather than lecturer.
The Japanese immersion camp previously used a “project-based curriculum” in which the projects were used to assess learners’ progress in understanding both the Japanese language and the content of cultural material covered in the classroom. However, in this previous curriculum, teachers introduced new vocabulary items and structures in each project unit, which learners practiced in class activities. Teachers also assisted learners with their work by giving them suggestions and providing resources as needed. Teachers usually spent two hours of the instruction every morning and one hour of project time in the afternoon. However, in this new curriculum, teachers were not supposed to give any instructions on grammar and vocabularies in a classroom mode, but gives guidance through mini-lessons that they explained some grammar and vocabulary in the process of completing the projects.
Tell you the truth, the curriculum was not well-received by learners (and teachers as well). Many learners expressed they had not learn anything out of the project-based instruction because they felt they were not receiving sufficient amount of grammar instruction to improve their Japanese. One student mentioned that “the project-based approach is not working very well as it is because the projects do not allow enough time to learn grammar.”
Interestingly, based on my observation and whole-group discussion, the advanced students tended to reject the project-based way of learning since they expressed the interest of learning more complicated grammar structure. The advanced learners are able to handle the complicated context using simple sentences while the lower-level villagers learn simple sentences as new. In that case, teachers do not give any explicit grammar feedback for advanced-level students since learners could handle the target language to complete the project. On the other hand, the learners in lower levels expressed their understanding toward the project-based approach since they were receiving sufficient amount of explicit grammar explanation while they were working on their project.
Maybe, next year, it would be an important idea to incorporate the explicit feedback for the project-based instruction. However, I am wondering how we can introduce the explicit feedback at the immersion camp where we are not allowed to use English and many learners have limited ability to understand high level of Japanese.
In addition to counterbalance hypothesis, one big challenge we had is the lack of output. In an immersion camp I work, we have a lot of input that learners engaged in, but there are limited opportunities for learners actually to produce. Furthermore, many advanced students ended up with completing their projects within their language competence level (without challenging). They are not paying attention for their language learning.
I am wondering how we can promote the output in the classroom using project-based instruction. Projects learners work were proposed by learners and teachers do not know the content and organization until they start working on their project. In other words, we only have opportunities to give negative feedback, but no opportunities for modifying output from the teachers’ side.
Based on Schmidt’s findings on Wes’s successful/unsuccessful acquisition, I think that the promoting positive group dynamics where people surrounded by the learner are willing to listen to each other is important. However, it could be possible that Wes was well-received by other people because he had charisma. I wonder how we as teachers could establish a positive rapport among language learners and let the learner willing to be acculturated toward the target language as Wes did.
Hmmm, there are many things that I can think of now, but it is better to stop now since it would be tired to read the entire thread. Anyway, please give me your feedback on the curriculum at the Japanese immersion camp, I did not make this curriculum, but I was assigned to revise this curriculum for the next year. I am hoping to get your helpful feedback.
See you next week in the classroom!
DO NOT FORGET TO POST REFLECTIONS
For the blog posting assignment, we need to post a message to both summarize and reflect on our class meetings for the week. In addition to summarize, we need to post our insights. Well, I will try to include my reflections as well to this postingJ.
NEXT WEEK
Dr. Ortega kindly extended the due date of our research proposal from Tuesday, October 2 to Thursday, October 11 (WOW, 9 more days to work on, thank you Dr. Ortega!!). We will be learning Cognition from Chapter 5 next week (week 7). In the following week (week 8), we will not have any readings, but need to work hard to complete our research proposal.
Summary:
This week, we read chapter 4 on the environment and Schmidt’s (1983) article on Wes’s language learning experience. On Tuesday, September 25, we were divided into 5 groups in order to summarize and report the theories discussed in the chapter 4.
Five groups were:
1. Acculturation Hypothesis and Input Hypothesis
2. Interaction Hypothesis
3. Output Hypothesis
4. Negative Feedback
5. Limitations on the Theories
Acculturation Hypothesis was introduced by Schumann. The more acculturated is the more successful to learn the target language.
Input Hypothesis was introduced by Krashen. More comprehensible input (i+1, linguistic data slightly above learners’ current level) can help learners acquire the target language.
Interaction Hypothesis was introduced by Long. Long agrees with Krashen’s comprehension, but Long believes that language learning happens through the interactionally modified comprehensible input.
Output Hypothesis was introduced by Swain. In that theory, production is also a key to acquire the target language. Learners many need to challenge themselves in order to produce output (kind of o+1).
We are run out of time on Tuesday, so the group who discussed Negative Feedback reported on Thursday.
Negative Feedback includes clarification request, explicit corrections, recasts, and elicitations.
Lyster and Mori proposed their Counterbalance Hypothesis. In their theory, if the context is meaning oriented, the explicit feedback (focus on form) will work better. On the other hand, if the context is form oriented, the implicit feedback (focus on meaning) will do better.
On Thursday, September 27, Anne and Jung Min facilitated our discussion on Schmidt (1983).
We were divided into four groups in order to discuss Wes’s improvement among Grammatical Competence, Sociolinguistic Competence, Discourse Competence, and Strategic Competence.
Without explicit explanation or formal classroom, Wes had difficulty improving his Grammatical Competence. Since he lacked the Grammatical Competence, he had hard time to improve Sociolinguistic Competence, which requires high level of language competence.
Megumi brought up with an interesting question that whether Wes learn the Discourse Competence or know the Discourse Competence from his L1.
Strategic Competence group agreed that Wes improved his strategic competence ability for carrying out his meaning, but he could not improve accurate part of the competence.
Lastly, most of us believed that Wes was a successful language learner because he was able to communicate and was liked (and respected) by people surrounded to him. In addition to interaction and acculturation, Schmidt argues the importance of attention to learn the target language.
Reflection:
I personally liked the counterbalance hypothesis proposed by Lyster and Mori. It really makes sense to me from my experience of working at the Japanese immersion camp.
As you may know, I work at the Japanese immersion camp every summer. This summer, we made greater shift in our curriculum that we introduced a project-based instruction for our 4-week program. In theory, a project completed by the learners is the way they show what they learn, rather than tests. During the four-week session, learners completed three weekly projects and a final project. Based on this curriculum, we used projects as instruction tools; teachers actually did not give any instructions on grammar and vocabularies, but they gave guidance for students to gather information from the environment. The role of the teachers in this curriculum was one of facilitator rather than lecturer.
The Japanese immersion camp previously used a “project-based curriculum” in which the projects were used to assess learners’ progress in understanding both the Japanese language and the content of cultural material covered in the classroom. However, in this previous curriculum, teachers introduced new vocabulary items and structures in each project unit, which learners practiced in class activities. Teachers also assisted learners with their work by giving them suggestions and providing resources as needed. Teachers usually spent two hours of the instruction every morning and one hour of project time in the afternoon. However, in this new curriculum, teachers were not supposed to give any instructions on grammar and vocabularies in a classroom mode, but gives guidance through mini-lessons that they explained some grammar and vocabulary in the process of completing the projects.
Tell you the truth, the curriculum was not well-received by learners (and teachers as well). Many learners expressed they had not learn anything out of the project-based instruction because they felt they were not receiving sufficient amount of grammar instruction to improve their Japanese. One student mentioned that “the project-based approach is not working very well as it is because the projects do not allow enough time to learn grammar.”
Interestingly, based on my observation and whole-group discussion, the advanced students tended to reject the project-based way of learning since they expressed the interest of learning more complicated grammar structure. The advanced learners are able to handle the complicated context using simple sentences while the lower-level villagers learn simple sentences as new. In that case, teachers do not give any explicit grammar feedback for advanced-level students since learners could handle the target language to complete the project. On the other hand, the learners in lower levels expressed their understanding toward the project-based approach since they were receiving sufficient amount of explicit grammar explanation while they were working on their project.
Maybe, next year, it would be an important idea to incorporate the explicit feedback for the project-based instruction. However, I am wondering how we can introduce the explicit feedback at the immersion camp where we are not allowed to use English and many learners have limited ability to understand high level of Japanese.
In addition to counterbalance hypothesis, one big challenge we had is the lack of output. In an immersion camp I work, we have a lot of input that learners engaged in, but there are limited opportunities for learners actually to produce. Furthermore, many advanced students ended up with completing their projects within their language competence level (without challenging). They are not paying attention for their language learning.
I am wondering how we can promote the output in the classroom using project-based instruction. Projects learners work were proposed by learners and teachers do not know the content and organization until they start working on their project. In other words, we only have opportunities to give negative feedback, but no opportunities for modifying output from the teachers’ side.
Based on Schmidt’s findings on Wes’s successful/unsuccessful acquisition, I think that the promoting positive group dynamics where people surrounded by the learner are willing to listen to each other is important. However, it could be possible that Wes was well-received by other people because he had charisma. I wonder how we as teachers could establish a positive rapport among language learners and let the learner willing to be acculturated toward the target language as Wes did.
Hmmm, there are many things that I can think of now, but it is better to stop now since it would be tired to read the entire thread. Anyway, please give me your feedback on the curriculum at the Japanese immersion camp, I did not make this curriculum, but I was assigned to revise this curriculum for the next year. I am hoping to get your helpful feedback.
See you next week in the classroom!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Class Reflection: Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Reminder: both a hard copy and electronic copy of all assignments should be turned in. If you haven’t done so already, leave a printout of your bibliography in the box outside Lourdes’ office door.
Class discussion on readings:
Ethics and the IRB: Mackey & Gass (2005)
A debriefing session should take place between researcher and participants to discuss research findings.
The research objectives should be discussed vaguely with participants before they consent. But don’t reveal too much information—it could affect participants’ behavior and skew the results. Never lie to participants about how the knowledge will be used.
Consider the language proficiency level of the participants when designing a consent form.
IRB approval is also required when carrying out research in other countries because the research is nevertheless affiliated with the university.
Recorded verbal consent in adequate, for example when conducting qualitative interview research.
If the IRB denies an application, they will explain what needs to be changed in order to obtain approval.
Always consider the anonymity of participants and be certain that the reader is not able to figure out the identity of the participants. If necessary, change inconsequential details to protect the participants. Consent is not enough, anonymity is essential too.
If you choose to obtain IRB approval, acknowledge it in your paper.
SLS research is usually exempted, but still must be granted by the IRB.
Sometimes proposals are denied due to lack of scientific merit—that is, to be ethical, research projects must be worth participants’ time.
TBLT: Skehan (2003)
Although difficult to define, TBLT can be thought of in terms of the “learning by doing” or “learning by using” principle of language learning.
There are many different versions of TBLT—from weak to radical forms.
The example of cooking in English was used to illustrate the idea that doing/using fuels learning.
Class discussion on readings:
Ethics and the IRB: Mackey & Gass (2005)
A debriefing session should take place between researcher and participants to discuss research findings.
The research objectives should be discussed vaguely with participants before they consent. But don’t reveal too much information—it could affect participants’ behavior and skew the results. Never lie to participants about how the knowledge will be used.
Consider the language proficiency level of the participants when designing a consent form.
IRB approval is also required when carrying out research in other countries because the research is nevertheless affiliated with the university.
Recorded verbal consent in adequate, for example when conducting qualitative interview research.
If the IRB denies an application, they will explain what needs to be changed in order to obtain approval.
Always consider the anonymity of participants and be certain that the reader is not able to figure out the identity of the participants. If necessary, change inconsequential details to protect the participants. Consent is not enough, anonymity is essential too.
If you choose to obtain IRB approval, acknowledge it in your paper.
SLS research is usually exempted, but still must be granted by the IRB.
Sometimes proposals are denied due to lack of scientific merit—that is, to be ethical, research projects must be worth participants’ time.
TBLT: Skehan (2003)
Although difficult to define, TBLT can be thought of in terms of the “learning by doing” or “learning by using” principle of language learning.
There are many different versions of TBLT—from weak to radical forms.
The example of cooking in English was used to illustrate the idea that doing/using fuels learning.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Today's class
Aloha everyone!
Here is a video from today's class:
If you still have any questions about the blog use, don't hesitate to ask us!
Dr. Ortega, as we knew you'd miss us so much since you're far far away, we thought you'd enjoy this picture from your awesome 650 class : )
-Nick
Here is a video from today's class:
If you still have any questions about the blog use, don't hesitate to ask us!
Dr. Ortega, as we knew you'd miss us so much since you're far far away, we thought you'd enjoy this picture from your awesome 650 class : )
-Nick
A day in the life of Boon in Laos
Sabaidee (greetings in Laotian),
Can you spot your three 650 classmates in this picture?
And can you guess which other classmate took the picture? I'll give you a clue: he's tall and funny.
As you probably know, this past summer a group of us were in Thailand teaching and doing 690. Many of us took a trip together to neighboring Laos over a long weekend. This picture is right after we got massages. My masseuse on that day could speak English really well. I really enjoyed talking to her and hearing about what her life was like. As I recall, she worked really long days and I think had 1 or maybe only half a day off per week. She seemed quite upbeat and had a positive attitude, but talking with her made me realize how much I take for granted and made me start to appreciate things more.
If you want to check out the town where we were, click here: Luang Prabang
Now I'm going to try to do some special tricks on this blog...
Can you spot your three 650 classmates in this picture?
And can you guess which other classmate took the picture? I'll give you a clue: he's tall and funny.
As you probably know, this past summer a group of us were in Thailand teaching and doing 690. Many of us took a trip together to neighboring Laos over a long weekend. This picture is right after we got massages. My masseuse on that day could speak English really well. I really enjoyed talking to her and hearing about what her life was like. As I recall, she worked really long days and I think had 1 or maybe only half a day off per week. She seemed quite upbeat and had a positive attitude, but talking with her made me realize how much I take for granted and made me start to appreciate things more.
If you want to check out the town where we were, click here: Luang Prabang
Now I'm going to try to do some special tricks on this blog...
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