The Proceedings of

DLIT 2013/6/30

The Proceedings of 2013 DLIT Conference on English Teaching and Learning,

1-185

The Proceedings of

2013 DLIT Conference on English Teaching and Learning

2013

Compiled by

Department of Applied English

De Lin Institute of Technology

Department of Applied English

Chief Editor

Lai, Shu-Fen

Editorial Committee:

Huang, Shu-Fen

Huang, Ya-Fen

Lu, Wei-Yuan

Executive Editor

Ke, Hsin-Yu

Published by CRANE Publishing Co., LTD.

June 30th, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cheng, Pei-Chuan

Exploring the Negotiations and the Interactions in Teacher-Student Writing Conference1

Yang, Hsiao-Hui & Fan, Li-Ling

10A Comparison of Verb Lists between Two EFL Learner Corpora

Chen, Hui-Chu & Hsu, Yi-Tsen

19Strategies and Difficulty Perception in Vocabulary Learning of De Lin English Majors

Lo, Jih-Wang

41Self Awareness of Language Competence: Analysis of English Majors at De Lin in 2012 (100th Academic Year)

Li, Chen-Ching

54A Study on the Implementation of an ESL Placement Test Using Moodle at De Lin Institute of Technology

Ting, I-Jiuan

63An Investigation into College Students English Reading Attitudes

Lu, Wei-Yuan

68Teacher Leadership A Novice Teachers Belief

Kuo, Hui-Pin

75Wandering as a Searching for Self-identity: A Tragedy of A Black Father in Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland

Huang, Wen-Chung

82Sunyata in Aldo Leopolds Land Ethic and Modern Environmental Education

Ya-Fen Huang

89A Review of William Farinas De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon

Shantikumar Meetei, Ngangbam

95Can a Preschool Child Have a Normal Phonological Acquisition of Two Very Different Languages, Simultaneously?

Prudnikova, Olga

105Using Microsoft Excel as an Efficient Grading Aid

Magdassian, Paul

111Teaching and Testing Fluency Using Unorthodox and Novel Interaction Methods

Timothy R. Erb

116Utilizing Pre-coded Texts to Foster Accuracy in L2 Writing

Chang, Fang-Yu

125How Learners Perceive Recasts of Various Characteristics in an English Speaking Training Course

Chen, Shu-Chen

147Significant Competence Development of De-Lin Students from Attending Summer Program at University of Montana

Shih, Hsiu-Ching

160Investigate E-pen into the Effect of Japanese Learning- A Case Study of College Students

Li, Chen-Hong & Huang, Meng-Hsi

172The Effects of Question Preview and Text Type on the Listening Comprehension of a Culturally-Embedded Text for EFL Young Learners

Exploring the Negotiations and the Interactions in Teacher-Student Writing Conference

Pei-Chuan Cheng

pcheng191@gmail.com

For many decades, teacher-student conference is widely recommended composition pedagogy and it is regarded as the most effective teaching method in writing classes. However, few studies examine what actually happens in teacher-student conference and the types of interaction patterns in teacher-student conference. Therefore, this study aims to explore writing teachers perceptions of the interactions and negotiations in writing conference. Also, it explores the actual discourse and the types of interactions or negotiation strategies in teacher-student conference. The participants include a writing teacher and 12 students in Academic Writing class. Discourse analysis is utilized to analyze the teacher-student discourse and interaction patterns in writing conference. The results show that the interactions and negotiations play a very important role in teacher-student writing conferences. Also, the clarification strategies are the most frequently utilized in writing conference. Some recommendations and pedagogical implications for conducting teacher-student conferences in EFL writing classes are provided in this study.

Keywords: teacher-student conference, discourse analysis, interactions

Introduction

For many decades, teacher-student conference is widely recommended composition pedagogy and it is regarded as the most effective teaching method in writing classes. Although lots of studies mentioned about the advantages of teacher-student conference (Anderson& Benson& Lyncho, 2001; Hussein&Ismail, 2013; Mclver& Wolf, 1998) or the strategies for writing conference (Boynton, 2003), few studies examine the writing teachers perceptions of integrating writing conference into writing classes and what actually happens in teacher-student conference and the types of interaction or negotiation strategies in teacher-student conference. Therefore, this study explores writing teachers perception of utilizing writing conference into the writing class. Also, it explores the actual interactions in teacher-student conference.

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction between teacher and students and also it explores the interactions or negotiation strategies in teacher-student writing conference.

Literature Review

The Advantages of Writing Conference

The individual conference can help writing teacher know not only the writers intentions, but also the resource (Ried, 1993). Also, it helps writing teacher to know writers growth, and need (Ried, 1993). In addition, the writing conferences are regarded a more effective means of feedbacks than written comments because ESL students can take control of the interaction or discourse in the conferences. They can also take actively part in the discussions, learn to negotiate meaning and if they are not clear about the written comments, they can clarify the teachers response with the teacher immediately (Goldstein& Cornad, 1998). Furthermore, if students talk with the writing teacher face by face or reply teachers thoughtful questions in the conference, their thoughts might be expanded and clarified (Zamel, 1985). Thus, a students input and control of the discourse might be the reasons for the effectiveness of conference in improving student writing (Reid, 1993; Zamel, 1985).

In addition, it is believed that the one-to-one discourse will be very helpful for the students because it may be less pressure for students under the cognitive apprenticeship in the writing conference (Anderson& Benson &Lynch, 2001). Teachers could adjust their feedback to improve students Zone of Proximal Development in the writing process. Moreover, the writing conference can improve students writing and their self-efficacy ( Hussein&Ismail, 2013).

Input and Conversation Interaction

The conversational interaction is always regarded as the most important factor in the development of second language. Several researchers proposed their views on these issues (Ellis, 1993; Glass& Selinker, 2000)

It is stated that interaction can be helpful for the language development (Ellis, 1993). Also, learning often occurs when the learner can make inference what is said that might beyond his competence. Through the discourse learners can modify their linguistic knowledge (Ellis, 1993). In the development of language the conversational interaction is very helpful for learners because of the negotiation process in the conversation. Learners can be more aware of their problems and thus can raise their consciousness of the language (Grass& Selinker, 2000).

Research Method

The Context

The present study was conducted in the Intensive English program (IEP) at a mid-western university in America. The intensive English program comprises a sequence of seven- week sessions. The data collected for this study were from an academic writing classroom at level six, which met one hour per day and aimed at enhancing students academic writing. The writing conferences were conducted 3 times in a seven-week sessions. In addition, the students in this class were involved in multi-draft essay writing. The teacher responded to their students writing in more than one way, but each engaged in at least one teacher-student writing conference between the first and second draft of their writing. The assignments given in this session are four TOEFL essays, one book review, one critical synthesis and one research paper.

The Teacher Participants

The teacher participant in the study is one Intensive English Program (IEP) writing teacher at Mid-western University in the United States. For the purpose of this study, the pseudonym of Peter is used for the writing teacher. Peter is a native English speaker and he has ten years of teaching experience in academic writing at IEP program. At the time of study, he is writing the dissertation for his Ph.D. in the Department of Applied Linguistic with 20 hours of teaching at IEP each week.

The Student Participants

The student participants in the study are 12 IEP students at Level six at a Mid-western University in the U.S. According to their writing score in TOEFL, they are considered to be low-advanced English learners. Their TOEFL scores ranged from 500- 560.

Research Questions

1. What is writing teachers perceptions of negotiations and interactions in teacher-student conferences?

2. What happens in the teacher-student conference and what are the types of interaction patterns occurs in the teacher-student writing conference?

Data Collection

The data collected for the study includes (a) class observation, (b) students writing drafts, (c)interview with students and the writing teachers, and (d) the conversations between teacher and students in writing conferences.

At the first day of the writing class, the researcher was introduced in class and with their permission the researcher was able to audio-tape the discourse in class and in the conference. In class, the research acted as an observer and sometimes she was the participant researcher by sharing the experience of doing research paper with them. Because they were familiar with the research, they were not disturbed by her presence. Besides, students research paper was collected so that the researcher and triangulate her interpretations of her observation. The interview with the teacher and each student was conducted right after the writing conferences. The interview questions were semi-structure and open-ended question. The interview with the teacher was conducted twice and lasted for 30 to 45 minutes each time. The interview with each participant lasted for 30-45 minutes each time.

Data Analysis

The data is analyzed based on discourse analysis. Also, the four negotiation features (Goldstein& Conrad, 1990) are utilized to analyze teacher talk in these writing conferences; that is, comprehension check(CP), confirm check(CF), clarification request (CR) and revision clarification(RE). However, the revision clarification also includes the revision suggestions in this study. The following chart is the coding system utilized in the transcripts of this study.

Table 1.

Coding system in the study

Feature

Code Symbol

Negotiation

Comprehension check

CP

Confirm Check

CF

Clarification requests

CL

Revision clarification/suggestions

RE

Note:This table is adapted from Student input and negotiations of meaning in writing conference, by Goldstein and Conrad, 1994, TESOL Quarterly.

The Findings

Research Question 1:

Whats writing teachers perceptions of negotiations and interactions in the writing conference?

Negations and interactions between readers and writers in writing conferences

The negations and interactions play a very important role in the writing conference. According to the interview, the teaching Philosophy of writing conference for the writing teacher, Peter, is to negotiate the written comments. During the interview, he says I think that the written comment on the paper by itself is almost useless. It is not until he goes over the comments with the student writer and explain what these comment are about that his student writer will get it. During the interview, he also said:

My philosophy is I should lead the student into finding what they need. I should ask them what are you looking for? What do you want to say? I should draw them out. I will do my best to help my students and expand their thoughts about their writing. ( Peter, the interview)

Besides, he explains that most of students could not take the lead and describe their paper. During the interview, Peter said:

I should show them the investment, explain their investment and see for them where the investment is. I try to ask them what you think about my comments. If they cant, just go back to negotiate what do I want them to do. I try to ask them what my comments means and try to clarify that. You know- what do you your audience expects out of your sentence? What I am asking you? What do you suppose to change? Where is my problem as a reader? The idea is theoretically to negotiate my comments, the meaning of my comments and how they will respond to that by changing their writing.

From the interview, it shows that how the face-to-face interaction and negotiations in writing conference are really helpful for student writing. It is only through the negotiation of the meaning with student writers and the clarifications of the written comments will students writing be improved.

Research Question 2:

What happens in the teacher-student conference and what are the types of interaction patterns occurs in the teacher-student writing conference?

The following two excerpts are the two typical conversations in Peters writing conferences.

Interaction Patterns in Writing Conference

Mia is from Saudi Arabia. She always actively participates in the discussions in the class. The topic of this essay is on children Education.

[Excerpt 1]

1Teacher: Yeah. A lot of these things written here are just format. [RE]

2 Mia: Just format?

3 Teacher: Well, a lot of thing I read here is just format. Like Sayers is not in your reference.

No Reference.[RE]

4 Mia : Oh, yeah!

5 Teacher: Actually, they are not alphabetically typed. ( ) There is still no Sayers Academic premier is not a source. It's a machine. It's a machine that pulls out the sources for you. They still come out from other place. Some of them have the title of ... .It's a search engine.

6 Mia: Last session Cathy taught us. She taught us.

7 Teacher: She got wrong if she taught you that. I don't think she taught you that.

8 Mia: =No, we did that.

9 Teacher: Use Academic premier as your source?[CP]

10Mia : =Yeah. We did that.

11 Teacher: Yeah, Academic premier is a search engine. It's. She seriously told you guys that?[CF]

No. I have to talk to her.

12 Mia: Mm. (smile)

13Teacher: No, it's a search engine. It's isn't the SOURCE. Somewhere of the references you got. It gave a source. If you can't find them, we can look it up tomorrow in Friday in computer lab if you can't find them.

14 Mia: You mean the name of the journal?

15 Teacher: Yeh, the journal or whatever. You can't use Academic Premier as a reference. Cause that doesnt really tell me anything. But as far as the content, which is more important for me. It's good that you did a lot better like over here on this paragraph when you talk about. You took a lot of source from Sayers but I don't what Sayers was. And it isn't in your reference.

16 Mia: It's a textbook.

17 Teacher: Mm. Sayers is not there.

Instead of initiating students question first, Peter pointed out students problems in her paper. Peter states A lot of these things written here are just format Peters input invites the student to be aware her problems in writing academic paper. The student seems not to be clear about what Peter infers so she keeps negotiating with Peter to clarify the information she knows. Through the modification of the input and the information confirmation, the student acquires the difference between source and reference. This shows that the the interactional modification can make the input between teacher and students more comprehensible. Also, the adjustment between teacher and student conversation can make the input more comprehensible (Long, 1996). That is the comprehensible input in writing conference can promote the acquisition and improve students writing. Besides, Peter understands students needs and attempts to provide students with more assistance so he states that if you dont find them, we can look it up in Friday in computer lab. However, during the conference the student initiates either the topic or questions to discuss instead of passively receiving the messages Peter gives. Besides, her initiations in the writing conference clarify Peters response and promote her thinking. Besides, through the interaction and negotiation she can be aware of her problems in writing the format of reference. This excerpt shows if ESL students can take control of the interaction or discourse in writing class and actively participate in the discussion. They can really learn to negotiate meaning and clarify the teachers response (Goldstein& Cornad, 1998)

[Excerpt 2]

Sunny is from Hong Kong and she always participates in the classroom discussion or activities actively. The purpose of her research paper is writing to persuade readers to believe that even though computer technology develop rapidly, the childrens books will still stay for a long time.

1T: What's" that "here? [CL] (pointed at the paper)

2 S: =It means the approach to spend so much money on the computer, technology, education and I just wonder if this is really the most appropriate way for children to learn.

3 T: What does that refer to? [CL]Spend the money? [CP]

4 S: Mm... Yes. Spending and investment on technology.

5T: (Read the sentence again) thats what I guess here. Another guess is computer technology is the best way for children to learn.

6 S: Mm.

7 T: Yes, all of these pronouns very get tricky. You need to figure out.

8 S: Yes.

9 T:(read aloud the sentences)So what's your thesis?[CL] Here you go first. Second, so, you. obvious you are coming to your support here. [CF]

10 S: Yes.

11 T: What's your thesis?[CL] Do children need books? [CP]

12 S: Yes.

13T: Children need books? [CF]

14S: Yes. I didn't say. The main idea..

15 T: So? (Read the sentence again) [CL]

16S: Yes, that's my point.

17 T: (Read the sentences aloud) so your thesis is Even as computer grow up, children's book

will..[stay] around. [CP]

18 S: [stay]

Instead of pointing out what students problem is, Peter tries to negotiate his comment in the paper by asking Whats that here?( line 1 and 3) Besides, he also modified his input by asking students What does that refer to? Spend the money? (line 3) so that the student could get comprehensible input and acquire the information through the interaction. Besides, Peter also attempts to probe students intentions and clarify her argument by asking Whats your thesis? (L9 and 11). As a result, he keeps confirming the thesis the student writes in her paper (line 11 and l5) and restates her statement to make her be aware of her statement. In addition, Peter also attempts to elicit the students to speak out what her thesis is. This interaction contributes to her development because if learners can infer what is said, the learning will take place. Besides, this writing conference enables students to expend and clarify his thinking through talking with a teacher about his or her work. Also, by relying to teacher thoughtful question face to face, the writing can be improved (Reid, 1993).

Discussions

The opportunities for writing teacher and students to interact and negotiate the written comment are very important and the good interactions and negotiations between them is very beneficial for students to improve their writing. Also, the types of interactions for the two excerpts are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2.

Type of negotiation in except 1 and 2

Negotiation types

Except 1

Except 2

Comprehension check (CP)

3

1

Confirm Check (CF)

2

1

Clarification requests (CL)

0

5

Revision clarification/suggestions( RE )

0

2

Based on this chart, it seems that Peter utilizes different negotiation strategies to engage students in active participation in the discussion. In excerpt 1, the teacher uses three of the negotiation strategies, that is, comprehension check, confirm check and revision clarification. At beginning of the excerpt, Peter gives the student some revision suggestions which elicit Mias negotiation with him. Although Peter didnt use the negotiating strategies frequently, Mia actively initiated the discussion and questions in the conference, which results in the successfulness of the good interaction and negotiation. In excerpt 2, Peter uses lots of clarification check to initiate more information from Sunny. However, the clarification check doesnt work very well at the beginning because Sunny just passively answers Peters question. Therefore, Peter uses lots of confirmation check and comprehension check to confirm the information and figure out the exact thesis Sunny wants to express. To Sunny, compared with the confirmation check strategy, the clarification strategies will invite more discussion and more participation.

Conclusions and Suggestions

The interaction and negotiations between writing teacher and students are the most important factors for the effectiveness of writing conference. Thus, based on the findings of this study, it is suggested that writing teacher should engage students in controlling the interactions or discourse and also writing teacher should provide students with less pressure when conducting the conference with students. In addition, writing teacher should attempt to utilize different kinds of negotiate strategies to motivate students actively participate in the individual discussion. Also, students should be allowed to learn to how to negotiate the meaning of the comments with writing teacher. Furthermore, students should make efforts to clarify the teachers written feedback in the writing conference. In this way, the effect of utilizing the writing conference on students writing will be maximized.

Reference

Boynton, L (2003). See Me: Conference Strategies for Developmental writers. Teaching English in the Two Year College, 30(4), 391-402.

Ellis, R.(2003).The Study of Second Language Acquisition. N.Y: Oxford University Press.

Ferris, D. R.&Hedgcock, J.S.(2004). Teaching ESL composition: Purpose, process and practice. Nahwah. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Freeman, D.L.& Long, M. H(1991). An introduction to second language acquisition research. Applied Linguistics and Language Study

Foster, P. & Ohta, A.S. (2005).Negotiation for meaning and Peer assistance in second Language Classrooms. Applied Linguistic, 402-430.

Gass, S.M.& Selinker (2000). Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course.

Goldstein, L.M& Conrad S.M. (1990 ). Student input and negotiation of meaning in ESL writing conference TESOL Quarterly, 24(3), 443-460.

Hall, J. K.& Verplaetse, L.S.(2000). Second and foreign language learning through classroom Interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum associates: Mahwah, New Jersey.

Hussen, M. A. H& Ismail, I. E. (2013). The effect of writing conference and peer response group strategies on the EFL secondary students writing performance and their self-efficacy, online submission,89,(ED 540769)

Mclver, M. C.&Wolf, S.A. (1998). Writing Conference: Powerful tools for writing instruction National Conference on Large scale assessment.

Morrow, D. S. (1991). Tutoring writing: Healing or What? College Composition and Communication, 42(2), 218-228

Reid, J. M. (1993). Teaching ESL writing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice Hall Regents.

Richard, Y. F.& Miller, E. R. (2004). Learning as changing participation: Discourse role in ESL Writing conference. The Modern Language Journal, 88, 519-535

A Comparison of Verb Lists between Two EFL Learner Corpora

Hsiao-Hui Yang

Li-Ling Fan

hhyang1118@gmail.com

fanlinda@ms75.hinet.net

Many studies have confirmed the benefits of using computer learner corpora in promote foreign language learning (Biber, Conrad., & Reppen, 1998; Granger, 1998). Yet, most studies were focused on a small scale of corpus size due to a lack of availability of large computer learner corpora. The present study applied two large learner corpora (a total of 2.6 million-word) from Taiwan and China and aimed to compare EFL learner use of verbs in the two learner corpora. A free concordance program, AntConc helped to generate the top 200 verbs from the EFL learner corpora. The corpus search result showed that despite different learning backgrounds, students age and language proficiency, students in Taiwan and China depended on similar high frequency verbs in their writing (94% of similarity in the top 200 verb list). The present study provided empirical evidence on learners preference of some high frequency verbs. Language teachers can thus design teaching materials based on the most frequent verbs and provide students with an authentic corpus to improve their writing.

Introduction

Many studies have confirmed the benefits of using computer learner corpora in SLA (Biber, Conrad., & Reppen, 1998; Granger, 1998). Yet, most studies were focused on a small scale of corpus size due to a lack of availability of large computer learner corpora. The present study applied two large learner corpora from Taiwan and China. The former is Taiwanese Learner English Corpus (TLEC), 1.5 million-word created by Professor Howard Chen at National Taiwan Normal University. The latter was Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), 1.1 million-word produced by Professors Gui and Yang (2003) in China. The study aims to explore EFL learner use of verbs in the two learner corpora.

Literature Review

Studies of language can be divided into two main areas: studies of language structure and of language use (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen, 1998). Traditionally, linguistic analyses have focused on the former by identifying the structural units of a language, such as words or phrases. The latter, which is the focus of the present study, is to emphasize how language is used. Researchers pursuing this approach are interested in investigating how speakers and writers exploit the resources of their language. Instead of looking at what is theoretically possible in a language, they turn to study the actual language used in naturally occurring

contexts. Their research work is based on corpora, i.e. a database of naturally occurring instances of language that is stored and accessed on a computer (Sinclair, 1991).

Of particular interest is the learner corpus, which has assisted in foreign/second language research (Granger, 2002). A learner corpus consists of authentic textual data gathered according to explicitly designated criteria for a particular second-language-acquisition (SLA) or English-language-teaching (ELT) purpose. On the use of computer learner corpora, Granger (2002) further commented:

Using the main principles, tools and methods from corpus linguistics, it aims to provide improved descriptions of learner language which can be used for a wide range of purposes in foreign/second language acquisition research and also to improve foreign language teaching (p.4).

Research on learner corpora is often inherently contrastive and to some extent it follows some of the general concepts and aims associated with contrastive analysis. There has been a wide range of topics, but some fields have received a great deal of attention, particularly verbs (Altenberg & Granger, 2001; De Cock & Granger, 2004). The present study, by joining the current trend of learner corpus, attempted to provide descriptions of EFL learners language in using verbs.

For almost any language, the acquisition of the verb is the most difficult (Huddleston, 1984). Learning a language is to a large degree a task of learning how to use verbs correctly. This is compounded by the fact that the patterns and the structures of the verb phrase in each language seem to differ considerably from those in every other language. It makes learning a new language a great hurdle.

English verbs have been found to pose a major challenge for ESL/EFL learners. In a study on error and contrastive study between English and Chinese among ESL learners, four syntactic areas in English are found to have major contrasts with Chinese in the four syntactic areas contrasted: English verbs, articles, prepositions and word order, the above four presented a descending order of difficulty. A number of problems have been discovered concerning the difficulty in learning English verbs. For example, EFL learners are often faced with the difficult task of identifying the correct verb forms and mapping them to their appropriate meanings and functions, a task which is greatly complicated by the lack of structural congruity in the linguistic system (Housen, 2002). Another difficulty is that some verbs are reported to be difficult to decode, for their restricted collocations pose major encoding difficulties for EFL learners (De Cock & Granger, 2004). Furthermore, several recent studies, based on the analysis of computer learner corpora, have revealed a high error rate of verb usage, even among advanced learners (Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005).

Method

The Tool

The two EFL learner corpora and COCA are computer-readable texts which allow the data to be submitted to text handling software tools. For this study, a freeware concordance program AntConc facilitates the process of linguistic analyses. AntConc, created by Laurence Anthony at Waseda University, contains seven useful tools, and four of them will be applied in this study: Concordance, Collocates, File View and Wordlist.

To produce a set of concordance lines of text, the first step is to select one or more files for processing (TLEC and CLEC for the present study). Concordance shows search results in a KWIC Key Word in Context format and allows researchers to observe how words and phrases are commonly used in a corpus of texts. A search of Happen is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A screenshot of the concordances of Happen by AntConc.

Some pairs of lines in Figure 1 are identical, and would be removed from the data analyses on the grounds that they are probably repeats of the same example. Collocates (see Figure 2) displays the collocates of a search word and helps researchers identify non-sequential patterns in the language. The last tool File View (see Figure 3) is able to present the text of individual files for researchers to investigate in more detail the results generated.

Figure 2. A screenshot of the collocates of Happen by AntConc.

Figure 3. A screenshot of the File View of Happen by AntConc.

Corpora Used in the Study

The corpus data in this study are drawn from two major corpora: EFL Learner Corpora and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

The EFL Learner Corpora

The learners in the two learner corpora are learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) rather than as a Second Language (ESL). ESL is broadly defined as language use that takes place with considerable access to speakers of the language being learned, whereas learning in a foreign language environment does not (Gass & Selinker, 2001, p.5). It is reported that the current computer learner corpus (CLC) field centers on an EFL context (Granger, 2004).

The EFL learner corpora for the present study consisted of two corpora: Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and Taiwanese Learner English Corpus (TLEC). Table 1 summarizes the descriptions of two corpora.

Table 1.

The Profile of the EFL Learner Corpora

CLEC

TLEC

Students

Senior high school, College

College

Total number of word types

15,313

27, 670

Total number of word tokens

1,070,602

1,510,676

Text Type

examination essays compositions letter

examination essays compositions free writing

Topics

education

campus-related

My new School,

Getting to know the world outside the campus

An ideal teacher

Society

Social issues

Global shortage of fresh water

The harmfulness of fake commodities

Health gains in developing countries

Effects of technology,

Analysis of the causes of water pollution,

Great invention

Personal view/opinions

My view on job-hopping

What is success?

Practice makes perfect

Views about career women

juvenile delinquency

importance of good health

Personal experience

The most impressive thing in my life

A special festival

A person you most admire

As revealed by Table 8, CLEC (1,070,602 words and 15,313 word types) was produced by Professors Gui and Yang (2003) in China. It is divided into five sections, designated from ST2 to ST6, which represent proficiency levels from novice to advanced. TLEC, compiled and computerized by Professor Howard Chen at National Taiwan Normal University, contains approximately 1.5 million words (1,510,676 word tokens and 27,670 word types). It consists of a combination of Taiwanese undergraduates English compositions, examination essays, and composition assignments. Topics varied from politics, education, technology to school life. The topics of the compositions collected in CLEC involve social issues such as Global Shortage of Fresh Water, The Harmfulness of Fake Commodities, Health Gains in the Developing Countries; campus-related issues such as My View on Job-Hopping, or My Ideal Job.

Result and Discussion

Verb Lists for the EFL Learner Corpora

The first step is to generate verb lists from CLEC and TLEC by AntConc. Table 2 presents the most frequently used 20 verbs in each EFL learner corpus. There are 17 identical verbs shared by the two corpora. The three highlighted verbs are the different words between CLEC and TLEC. The verb list indicates that Chinese learners of English, who came from different teaching and learning backgrounds, relied on similar high frequency verbs in their L2 writing.

Table 2.

The Top 20 Verbs in CLEC and TLEC

CLEC

TLEC

Verb (Lemma)

Frequency

Verb (Lemma)

Frequency

1

get

3595

think

5861

2

go

3453

like

5415

3

think

3376

get

4357

4

know

3288

see

4292

5

work

2645

go

4230

6

say

2636

want

3956

7

take

2449

know

3640

8

learn

2371

take

3151

9

study

2325

learn

3028

10

find

2219

use

3026

11

want

2103

find

2630

12

live

2058

feel

2573

13

like

2056

live

2553

14

use

2038

study

2462

15

see

1979

say

2327

16

change

1886

come

2201

17

come

1728

become

2121

18

need

1624

play

2095

19

give

1375

work

2074

20

become

1317

love

1918

Note that 85% (17 out of 20) of the top 20 verbs are identical. If we compare the top 200 verb lists between CLEC and TLEC, it is further discovered that 81% of the verbs are identical in the top 50% of the verbs. The overall rate of similarity of the two verb lists reaches 94%. This demonstrates that EFL learners are inclined to use similar verbs in their writing assignments despite different language proficiency, age, topics and genres.

Based on the top 200 verb list, EFL learners choices of verbs directly reflected the topics of writing. Table 3 summarizes the different verbs between CLEC and TLEC. It should be pointed out that TLEC also contained an amount of non-argumentative writing or free writing, which at least partly accounted for the differences in the frequencies of certain words compared to CLEC. For example, there were more descriptive essay topics in TLEC, such as an forgettable experience, reflections of reading Romeo and Juliet, and students used the verb climb to describe their mountain climbing experience and Romeos climbing the wall to see Juliet. They also used words such as describe (499, 30), discuss (222, 31), and share (365, 70) more frequently than those words in CLEC. The first numbers in the parenthesis referred to verb frequency in TLEC the second number for CLEC. It seemed that students in TLEC tended to use verbs to express personal ideas and interpersonal relationship while students in CLEC. Students in CLEC had topics about reform and open policy, a murder case whether the boy is guilty or not and global shortage of freshwater, similarly as in TLEC, topic-related verbs were frequently used, such as Reform, Murder, Harm, and Pollute.

Table 3.

A Comparison of Verb List between CLEC and TLEC

CLEC

TLEC

Commit, Contribute, Depress, Fit, Force, Grasp, Harm, Murder, Order, Pollute, Reform, Shout

Blow, Climb, Concentrate, Describe, Discuss, Focus, Hide, Introduce, Memorize, Occur, Perform, Share

Conclusion

The study aims to explore EFL learner use of verbs in the two learner corpora. A corpus-retrieval software, AntConc was adopted to generate the top 200 verbs from the EFL learner corpora. The corpus search result showed that despite different learning backgrounds, students age and language proficiency, students in TLEC and CLEC depended on similar high frequency verbs in their writing. (94% of similarity in the top 200 verb list). With the help of corpus tools, we were able to process and analyze large amounts of corpora. The present study provided empirical evidence on learners interlanguage, learners errors in using verbs. Particularly collocation errors were identified in almost every search verb. We suggest that language teachers design teaching materials based on the errors and provide students with an authentic corpus to improve their writing.

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Strategies and Difficulty Perception in Vocabulary Learning of

De Lin English Majors

Hui-Chu Chen

Yi-Tsen Hsu

gloriachen1019@gmail.com

ashley7298@hotmail.com

Vocabulary competence is essential to the development of the overall English proficiency; nevertheless, which remains a difficult learning task to many technological college students, who have been reported to have a poor vocabulary size and inadequate word knowledge. In order to obtain a more thorough understanding to the vocabulary learning of technological college students, this study investigated the learning strategies and difficulty perception in vocabulary learning of De Lin English majors and examined the correlations among test performance, learning strategies, and difficulty perception.

There were 66 De Lin English majors, who joined a vocabulary competition held in May, 2013, participating in this survey. In addition to a B1-level vocabulary test, a questionnaire survey with 20 items of strategy use and 18 items of difficulty perception was administered to gather necessary information for analysis. As indicated from the test and questionnaire results, these English major vocabulary contestants as a whole scored a mean of 41.97, employed learning strategies occasionally (mean= 3.21), and perceived low level of difficulty (mean = 2.84). These English majors were bothered when learning words with similar spelling or meaning, words with many entries of definitions, and newly learned words in short retention. The overall English majors favored shallow learning strategies, relying on classmates or teachers explanation or checking the dictionary, use of verbal or written repetition, or syllable separation to deal with new words. The use of vocabulary learning strategies of De Lin English majors had a negative correlation to the difficulty perception level. Further ANOVA comparisons showed test performance score varied significantly but negatively to the difficulty perception level; however, the strategy use frequency did not express any correlation with the test performance.

Based on the survey results, some pedagogical suggestions were provided to facilitate vocabulary instruction and learning: vocabulary knowledge awareness raising, explicit instruction on problematic vocabulary items (similar in spelling or meaning), regular vocabulary assessments, games or tasks for motivating learning and lowering anxiety, and multimedia animation or videos for demonstrating lexical use.

Keywords: Strategies, Difficulty Perception, Vocabulary Learning

Introduction

Vocabulary competence is essential to the development of the overall English proficiency; nevertheless, which remains a difficult learning task to many technological college students, who have been reported to have a poor vocabulary size and inadequate word knowledge. According to a nationwide English proficiency survey of Taiwanese technological college and university students (LTTC, 2004), less than 19% of the surveyed students passed the employed elementary GEPT, who scored above 60 both in listening and testing sections used in this survey. Many English instruction experts (Chou, 2005, Huang, Wu, & Chou, 2003; Tai, 2006) have attributed this problem to the inadequate vocabulary of these technological college students. As indicated from some other vocabulary surveys (Chou, 2003; Huang, Wu, & Chou, 2003; Tan, 2004; Huang & Yu, 2006), the vocabulary size of the technological college students only averaged to 1000 words, which amounted to that of common Taiwanese junior high school students. Subsequently, many instructional implications have been derived from these survey studies: raising the awareness of vocabulary learning, developing learning strategies, enhancing instructional techniques, using appropriate vocabulary lists, compiling suitable vocabulary tests, providing extensive reading programs, conducting explicit vocabulary instruction, offering narrow reading opportunities, considering factors affecting vocabulary learning difficulty, and providing remedial classes.

Nevertheless, how these instructional techniques can be well implemented to enhance vocabulary learning and tackle learning difficulty for the vocational college students has not been well-explored. Also, the effectiveness of various instructional techniques to promote reasonable motivation, lower learning anxiety, and enhance learning achievements should be empirically clarified. Thus, a better understanding to learning difficulties and learning strategies could serve the baseline knowledge for experimenting instructional techniques and elevating learners vocabulary competence.

In order to obtain a deeper understanding to the vocabulary learning of technological college students, this study investigated the learning strategies and difficulty perception in vocabulary learning of De Lin English majors, examined the effects of learning strategies and difficult perception on test performance, and provided implications for creating beneficial vocabulary learning conditions for technological college students. There are four main queries posed in this study:

1. What are the most perceived vocabulary learning difficulties by De Lin English majors?

2. What are the most frequently employed vocabulary learning strategies by De Lin English majors?

3. Does the test performance vary as a function of strategy use?

4. Does the test performance vary as a function of difficulty perception?

Literature review

Nature and Process of L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary acquisition is just as complex as the acquisition of other language skills. Schmitt (2000) stated that vocabulary learning was incremental. Vocabulary items were gradually learned over a period of time from numerous exposures and the knowledge for individual words grew over time, both in the ability to use them receptively and productively. He took Nations (1990) list to explain the different kinds of knowledge for mastering a word: the meanings, the written and spoken form, the grammatical behavior, the collocations, the register, the associations, and the frequency of the words.

Ellis (1996, cited in Schmitt, 2000) indicated that memory is important in vocabulary learning for retaining and retrieval of newly learned lexical items. Short-term memory capacity was one of the best predicators of both eventual vocabulary and grammar achievement. However, forgetting is also a natural fact of learning that partial vocabulary knowledge should be seen as in a state of flux, with both learning and forgetting occurring until the word is mastered and fixed in memory. Naturally, productive words are much less prone to forgetting. Ellis (1996) that teachers should better organize a recycling program which would be more effective in helping learners to fight for forgetting the newly learned words. He also proposed the principle of expanding rehearsal to help learners exert their memory power for learning word, which means learners could review new material soon after the initial encounter and then at gradually increasing intervals. The suggested techniques to make words into long-term memory include the imaging in the Keyword approach, grouping the new word with already-known words that are similar in some respect--similar meaning, similar sound structure, same beginning letter, and same word class.

The process of acquiring L2 vocabulary has been conceptualized as a five-component framework: receiving, recognizing, retaining, retrieving, and recycling in four language skills (Shen, 2003). L2 learners go through the phases of encountering new words, getting the word form, getting clear image, learning the meaning of the words, and using the words (Brown & Payne, 1994; in Hatch & Brown, 1995). In the learning process, L2 learners employ strategies to develop their vocabulary skills as they manage and plan their vocabulary learning task, monitor, and evaluate their learning behaviors in order to acquire the vocabulary of a second language (Gu, 2003). Abundant research on vocabulary learning strategies has informed about how L2 learners manage their vocabulary learning tasks. Schmitt (1997) concludes some statements for vocabulary learning strategies. First, it seems that many learners do use strategies for learning vocabulary as compared to more integrated tasks. The mechanical strategies such as memorizing the new words or taking notes for the vocabulary items, and repeating the words are often favored over more complex strategies such as imagery, inferencing, and Keyword Method. The shallower strategies have been proved to be effective for beginners. In addition, some factors are related to the effectiveness of vocabulary learning strategies; for instance, language proficiency is frequently reported to play an important role in labeling a vocabulary strategys effectiveness. As for using word lists, it has been proved better for beginning students, but more advanced students could benefit from contextualized words.

Approaches and Techniques of L2 Vocabulary Instruction

The approaches and techniques in L2 vocabulary instruction have been greatly discussed for successful L2 vocabulary skills development. There are two main approaches to L2 vocabulary instruction (Harley, 1996; Coady, 1997; Schmitt, 2000; DeCarrico, 2001). One approach is incidental instruction of L2 vocabulary through communicative exposure to the language by a variety of analytical activities which involve the learners interest and serve to deepen their vocabulary knowledge. The other approach stresses explicit instruction by focused classroom activities designed to enrich the learners vocabulary knowledge via word lists, semantic mapping, formal word analysis, mnemonic skills, etc.

Under these two approaches, various instructional techniques have been generated to English instructors. Skmen (1997) reviews the current trends in teaching second language vocabulary and confirms the effects of explicit vocabulary instruction. She also proposes some principles of explicit vocabulary instruction: building a large sight vocabulary, integrating new words with old, providing a number of encounters with a word, promoting a deep level of processing, facilitating imaging, making new words real by connecting them to the students world in some way, using a variety of techniques, and encouraging independent learning strategies. As for the incidental approach to teaching vocabulary, Schmitt (2000) suggests a maximum exposure to language should be provided to learners and students should be encouraged to read more to increase their vocabulary. Ellis (1995) claims there are two distinct cognitive processing mechanisms involved in vocabulary acquisition: recognition and production aspects of vocabulary learning rely on implicit learning, while meaning and mediational aspects of vocabulary heavily involve explicit learning processes. Theoretically and empirically, both approaches have their significance in enhancing L2 vocabulary acquisition and development; therefore, the instructors should coordinate these two approaches properly to lead the learner to the best learning achievements.

The classroom techniques utilized by L2 teachers for vocabulary instruction can form a continuum from decontextualizing, semi-contextualizing, to fully contextualizing (Oxford & Crookall, 1990). The techniques identified by Oxford & Crookall (1990) include word lists, flashcards, dictionary use, word or concept association, visual imagery, word grouping, physical sensation, semantic mapping, aural imagery, keyword, physical response, reading and listening practice, speaking and writing practice, and structured review. When using these available techniques, the instructors should consider the learners learning style and preference modify the decontextualized techniques to supplement contextual practice, and provide strategy training for the learners to use these techniques.

Studies on Vocabulary Learning in Taiwan

Researchers in Taiwan have shown great interests in EFL vocabulary skills development and have investigated the effects of various teaching or learning techniques and vocabulary learning strategy use. The five research foci summarized from 24 conference articles about the teaching of vocabulary in Taiwan by Lin (2000) include vocabulary teaching techniques, vocabulary learning strategies, learners vocabulary size, theories of vocabulary learning and the pedagogical application, and discussion on vocabulary research. Empirical studies of the effects of specific instructional techniques (Chang, 2004; Chen, 2003; Lin, 1998; Lin, 2000; Lu, 2002; Tang, 2003; Yang, 2004) and surveys of vocabulary learning strategies have been the two favorite topics, which are definitely influenced by the advocate of explicit vocabulary approach and the trend of strategy research. These studies have provided some knowledge about how EFL students in Taiwan develop their vocabulary competence.

Chen (1998, 1999, cited in Lin, 2000) conducted a survey about the vocabulary size of the students in National Taiwan Ocean University. The students were found to possess the passive vocabulary between 2,000 and 3,000 words and more than 60 % of the students have the productive vocabulary level below 2,000 words. Huang, Wu, and Chou (2003, cited in Chou, 2004) surveyed the vocabulary size of Taiwanese polytechnic college students and found out that less than 11% of the subject students reached the level of 2,000 words. Huang (2004, cited in Chou, 2004) surveyed the vocabulary size of Taiwanese senior high school and college students and reported that 60.57% of the students in general colleges or universities got the level of 2,000 words and 33.745 of them reached the level of 3,000 words; 24.28% of the subjects in vocational colleges had the level of 2,000 words and only 12.74% of them reached the level of 3,000 words. These survey results show an inadequate vocabulary size of Taiwanese college students, especially those in vocational colleges, which may explain the low passing rate (19%) of the elementary GEPT in the proficiency survey done by Language Teaching and Testing Center.

Some researchers have been dedicated to understanding the way Taiwanese students learn vocabulary. Cortazzi & Jin (1994, cited in Lin, 2000) found out that most of the subject students learned vocabulary by reading English textbooks. Chang (2002) studied 90 students in Fortune Institute of Technology and stated that these students commonly consulted a bilingual dictionary when they did not understand the meaning of new words, and they studied the sound of a word, uttering the new word and repeating the spelling to retain the newly learned words. Liao (2004) also used Schmitts (1997) strategy use questionnaire to study 625 freshmen of a university in central Taiwan. Her results concluded the 5 mostly used strategies as looking for the words meaning in an electronic dictionary, writing the words several times, studying the sound of the word carefully, looking for the words meaning in a bilingual dictionary, using verbal repetition of the word. She also found out that female freshmen used more strategies than the male ones. Wang (2004) studied how senior high school students learned vocabulary and concluded that these students favored to employ rote repetition or the form of a word to remember newly learned words; their strategy use is significantly correlated with their vocabulary size; there was a significant difference in strategy use between good and poor learnersgood learners tended to learn words in context while poor learners tended to learn words in isolation.

Difficulty in vocabulary learning of Taiwanese students have been generally assumed but not empirically studied. Wang (1994) performed an error analysis on an English vocabulary test to identify common difficult words and errors to junior high school students. These students were found to have learning problems from incorrect word pronunciation, lack of understanding of the correspondence between spelling and phonetic symbols, dependence on visual memory, unfamiliarity of word structure, interference from similar English words, and lack of vocabulary learning practice. Chen & Yeh (2004) stated that the English majors they studied had difficulty learning vocabulary in all aspects and the most difficult factors were abstractness, metaphorical meaning, formality, derivational complexity, and register restrictions. Wang (2004) derived seven categories of difficulties in vocabulary learning from the students replies to one open-ended questionretention, multiple meaning, similar form, application, words family, pronunciation, and inference.

From the reviewed studies, Taiwanese students are found to depend mostly on limited and shallow processing strategies in their vocabulary learning and they seem to have problems in developing an adequate vocabulary power. In order to facilitate vocabulary development of De Lin English majors, this study also intended to inspect their vocabulary learning from the strategy use and difficult perception and examine the correlations among strategy use, difficult perception, and test performance.

Methodology

There were 66 De Lin English majors participating in this study, who joined a B1-level vocabulary competition held in May, 2013. Thus, they were convenient participants. The B1 vocabulary test included 30 multiple choice items and 20 Chinese interpretation items. The scores were taken as the test performance indicator for computing the correlations between the strategy use and difficulty perception. In addition, they were requested to do the questionnaire after they had finished the vocabulary test items. This survey questionnaire consisted of 20 items for strategy use and 18 items for difficulty perception, which the contestants reported their strategy use frequency and difficulty perception intensity in a 5-point Likert-scale.

The collected test performance scores and questionnaire scales were computed by SPSS to discuss the strategy use, the difficulty perception, the test performance, and their correlations.

Results

Vocabulary Test Performance

The 66 participants as a whole scored in the vocabulary contest the mean of 41.97 as shown in Table 1. The score distribution is divided in three levels, low as ranging from 10 to 32, mid from 35 to 64, and high from 69 to 93, as listed in Table 2.

Table 1.

The Score Result of the Participants in the Vocabulary Contest

N

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

Std. Deviation

Vocabulary

Score

66

10

93

41.97

24.963

Table 2.

The Score Distribution of the Contestants Vocabulary Test Performance

Score Range

N

Percent

Cumulative Percent

10 - 32

30

45.5

45.5

35 - 64

21

31.8

77.3

69 - 93

15

22.7

100

66

100.0

100.0

According to Table 2, most of the participating English majors (77.3%) scored under 64, below the threshold accuracy rate 67% adopted in GEPT. Their vocabulary performance has not reached B1 yet.

Perceived Strategy Use

There were 20 items concerning the strategy use about vocabulary learning. The 66 English majors as a whole reported a mean frequency of vocabulary strategy use as 3.21 (Std. Deviation = .6575), which indicated that these English majors employed the listed strategies only moderately. The most frequently employed strategies (mean above 3.5) by the overall participants are listed below:

1. Item 1: Asking teachers and classmates for word meaning or looking up the unfamiliar words in the dictionary (mean = 4.05)

2. Item 13: Spelling out the words by uttering the pronunciation of the letters (mean =3.95)

3. Item 2: Using online dictionary for understanding unfamiliar words in order not to lose interests in learning new words (mean = 3.94)

4. Item 12: separating words with many syllables into smaller chunks for memorizing (mean = 3.94)

5. Item 3: memorizing English words through repeating the pronunciation of the new words (mean=3.80)

6. Item 4: memorizing English words through writing them again and again (mean =3.52)

These English majors expressed their preference to the shallower learning strategies for tackling and retaining new words.

Difficulty Perception

The whole participating English majors did not consider vocabulary learning as difficult, only with a mean difficulty perception of 2.84 (Std. Deviation = .8094). They slightly perceived difficulty in vocabulary learning in the following situations:

1. Item 10: Being confused or misunderstanding the Chinese interpretation because those words are so alike (mean = 3.61)

2. Item 9: Forgetting the meaning of those words which the students did not have a chance to see or review (mean = 3.52)

3. Item 6: Not knowing which meaning/explanation to memorize for new words (mean = 3.22)

4. Item 13: Feeling difficult to remember the meaning and usage of the words with abstract meaning (mean = 3.17)

5. Item 8: Being not able to expand vocabulary size because of limited memory capacity (mean = 3.13)

These English majors expressed a little anxiety about their confusion of similar words and short retention of new words.

Correlations among Test Performance, Strategy Use, and Difficulty Perception

The correlations among test performance, strategy use, and difficulty perception were further analyzed to investigate the effects of strategy use and difficulty perception on the vocabulary test performance.

Table 3.

Correlation of Vocabulary Test Performance to Strategy Use and Difficulty Perception

Strategy Use

Difficulty Perception

Vocabulary Test Performance

Pearson Correlation

.166

-.048**

Sig. (two-tailed)

.183

.001

N

66

66

Table 4.

Correlation between Strategy Use and Difficulty Perception

Difficulty Perception

Strategy Use

Pearson Correlation

-.335**

Sig. (two-tailed)

.006

N

66

As shown above in Table 3 and Table 4, the vocabulary test performance and the strategy use were both negatively correlated to the difficulty perception, which implied that as the participants perceived less difficulty, they scored higher in the vocabulary test and they made more use of vocabulary learning strategies.

ANOVA Comparisons among Test Performance,Strategy Use, and Difficulty Perception

The collected data further went through ANOVA comparisons in order to depict the relations among the three variables. Thus, the participants were divided into 3 different groups of high (mean above 3.17), mid (mean between 3.11 and 2.61), and low-(mean below 2.61) difficulty perception; three groups of high (score above 69), mid (score between 65 and 35), and low-(score below 32) achievers; three groups of high-(mean above 3.50), mid- (mean between 3.45 and 3), and low-(mean below3) frequency strategy users. The ANOVA comparison results are presented below for discussion.

Table 5.

ANOVA Result of Test Performance among Three Strategy Use Groups

Vocabulary Test Scores

Sum of Squares

df

F

Sig.

Between Groups

2161.130

2

1.775

.178

Within Groups

38344.810

63

Total

40505.939

65

Table 6.

ANOVA Result of Test Performance among Three Difficulty Perception Groups

Vocabulary Test Scores

Sum of Squares

df

F

Sig.

Between Groups

4894.992

2

4.330

.017

Within Groups

35610.947

63

Total

40505.939

65

The test scores among three different strategy use groups showed no significant variances (F= 1.775, p=.178). The strategy use frequency did not indicate effects on vocabulary test performance. On the other hand, there were significant variances among the three difficulty perception groups. The Post Hoc result revealed the variance in vocabulary test performance existed between the students with high and low difficulty perception level (p = .017, p < .05).

Table 7.

ANOVA Result of Strategy Use Frequency among Three Test Performance Achievers

Strategy Use Frequency

Sum of Squares

df

F

Sig.

Between Groups

2.683

2

3.325

.042

Within Groups

25.413

63

Total

28.096

65

For the three different groups of test achievers, there were significant variances in their strategy use (Sig. = .042, p < .05). The Post Hoc result showed that the significant difference was between the high and low groups of test achievers. Furthermore, high achievers showed more significantly frequent use of deeper strategies than the mid or low achievers:

1. Item 14: Making use of word family for learning new words

(than low achievers, Sig. = .046, p