UCLan Open Journals (University of Central Lancashire)
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Using Pre/Post-Testing to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Online Language Programs
Get PDFLearners are often frustrated by their perceived lack of progress in second language courses, language teachers are frequently tasked with the responsibility of providing evidence that learning is really happening, and institutions of higher education in the United States are under increasing pressure to justify the continuation of "foreign" language programs. In answering the call for more increased transparency, this paper presents assessment data for students enrolled in the first four semesters of language study in Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, and American Sign Language in a postsecondary institution in the United States. This comprehensive approach to program assessment incorporates online pre- and post-testing as a direct measure for learning that supports accountability at the student, course, program, and college level
Innovation: Can it be an on-the-spot idea or must it be pre-planned?
Get PDFThis research investigates the value of innovation; why we do it and, most significantly, how we do it. Research and teaching practice would inevitably suggest that a lesson must be planned – and this is not something with which we disagree. However, what this research aims to discover is, whether we can be innovative within a session without it having been fully pre-planned. Can an ‘on the spot’ idea be as successful as something which is planned days or weeks before the session? Our research was carried out within UCLan. The pre-planned innovation was utilised in the Lancashire Law School (LLS) where students were required to ‘peer mark’ for a mock assignment at foundation level. This innovation asked students to engage with the marking criteria and apply it effectively to their colleague’s presentations. The reaction by students from this ‘experiment’ was encouraging. Feedback suggested that the students had a better understanding of the assessment criteria and, perhaps more importantly, although unintentional, an increased level of trust between student and tutor. We used what we shall term an ‘on the spot’ innovation in the Lancashire Business School (LBS). This asked students of systems’ development to engage with the diagramming techniques often used by systems’ analysts. The innovation took place on the whiteboard at the front of the room and students were invited to add one relationship (connection) at a time. The tutor photographed each step and a PowerPoint presentation was made using each relationship to build the finished diagram. This was annotated and circulated to all students. Both innovative teaching techniques were effective in terms of the outcomes experienced by all participants. This research will identify that innovative teaching techniques do not need to be a wholly and succinctly pre-planned activity. Innovation within teaching strategies can be both a thought out process, and a more ad-hoc idea
The effectiveness of collaborative reading in tertiary level EFL teaching in Iran
Get PDFThis research addressed four questions: 1. Does collaborative reading lead to greater comprehension of a text than private reading? If so: 2. Does this effect vary according to students’ competence in reading comprehension? 3. What strategies are used by the students during collaborative reading, and 4. In what ways might these strategies contribute to the higher level of comprehension? The study sample comprised two groups of students in two different universities. The major intervention consisted of four texts of equal length. Each class read two of the texts collaboratively in small groups and the other two privately. After reading the text the participants took a comprehension test. Collaborative reading resulted in consistently higher scores than private reading for all four texts. Group interactions during collaborative reading were tape recorded and transcribed. Analysis of the transcriptions revealed that collaborative readers were involved in five major processes of collaborative reading, namely: brainstorming, clarifying the language, paraphrasing, summarizing, and interaction management
Holy Ground: The Klezmatics Channel Woody Guthrie
Get PDFWoody Guthrie’s personal connections to Judaism and Jewish culture began with his courtship and marriage to Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia, daughther of Yiddish writer Aliza Greenblatt, and blossomed when he and his family settled in Brooklyn’s Coney Island. Out of this Jewish connection came a rich body of songs eventually recorded by the New York-based Klezmer band, the Klezmatics. With concert performances and two albums of Guthrie songs — Woody Guthrie’s Happy Joyous Hanukkah and Wonder Wheel — the Klezmatics were instrumental in furthering Nora Guthrie’s project (begun with Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue releases) to expand the parameters within which Guthrie has been received. Concerned that biographers and folk music critics had placed too much emphasis on her father’s early Dust Bowl Ballads while downplaying his later songs, Nora Guthrie argued: “He was a poet and a lyricist that wrote about everything. I don’t want to see him turned into a freeze-dried, Dust Bowl icon representing a narrow version of what somebody thinks he was. These songs are just one more facet of his work that will add to a fuller picture of him as a songwriter.
The effects of task complexity on the complexity of the second language written production
Get PDFThis paper investigates the effects of manipulating task complexity on the complexity of learner language production during asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) writing tasks. This study draws the construct of cognitive complexity indicated in Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2001a, 2003a, 2003b, 2005, 2007a, 2007b) which predicts that complex tasks made along resource-directing dimension will lead to greater complexity of language production while complex tasks made along resource-dispersing dimension will result in less complex language production. However, research on the effects of manipulating task complexity along both resource-directing and resource-dispersing dimensions is so far inconclusive. By means of an experimental design, 88 undergraduate English as a Second Language (ESL) students in a public Malaysian university were asked to perform different tasks manipulated along resource-directing (+/- causal reasoning demand) and resource-dispersing (+/- task structure) dimensions. The complexity of the writing was analyzed syntactically and lexically. For syntactic complexity, the general and dependent clauses measures were used whereas Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer & Nation, 1995) and Guiraud’s Index (Guiraud, 1960) were used to measure lexical complexity. This study employs Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to measure the effects of task complexity and the complexity of language production. Results showed that the manipulation of task complexity has a significant effect on certain measures of syntactic and lexical complexity of the language production
The impact of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) on reading by nonnative speakers
Get PDFWith the proliferation of cell phones and other small handheld electronic devices, more and more people are using software that presents texts one word at a time. This trend can be attributed to the small screen sizes afforded by these modern electronics. Importantly, software companies often claim that such products, which present texts word-by-word, make reading more efficient, as reading speed is increased without sacrificing comprehension. Alongside this, nonnative speakers are often told to read more in their second language to improve their language skills. This leads to important questions about whether the manner in which reading is done is important. To address this, the current study explores the impact of word-by-word presentation of a text on nonnative reading comprehension, as well as on native speakers who provide a baseline of performance. Nonnative and native speakers were presented with a full text on a piece of paper to read naturally, as well as texts presented one word at a time at rates of 500-wpm and 1000-wpm. For native speakers, reading comprehension was impaired when single words were presented at rates of 500-wpm and 1000-wpm compared to natural reading. When compared to the native speakers, the nonnative speakers show the same pattern of impaired reading comprehension for words presented one at a time at rates of 500-wpm and 1000-wpm compared to natural reading
Retention in Mathematics students: problems and possible approaches
Get PDFThis article describes and analyses the approach adopted by the Mathematics course team in UCLan to improve retention in the first year mathematics students. After introducing the key aspects of the skills required by a mathematics student and the teaching methods considered in the past to improve such skills, the UCLan method is outlined. Such method is based on a mixture of formative and summative assignments, spread throughout the year. A case study allows to statistically confirm the effectiveness of such method. We conclude the article outlining possible improvements and drawbacks
Woody Guthrie, America\u27s Merry Prankster
Get PDFA “merry prankster” is a colorful person, real or legendary, who pokes fun at authority and the rich, powerful, and arrogant. The merry prankster appears small and powerless, but manages to outwit his opponents, often summing up the situation with witty one-liners — signal examples from medieval history and folklore are Mullah Nasreddin and Till Eugenspiel. In many ways, Woody Guthrie is an American merry prankster. Small in stature but large of intelligence, he used his wits, musical creativity, and people skills to defend the poor against the rich and powerful. He consistently made enemies of the privileged and those in authority, quitting and losing jobs, and he had to find clever ways to wriggle his way out of his problems, while always standing up for his beliefs and singing out boldly about them. This article situates Guthrie in the larger folkloric tradition of the “merry prankster,” using examples from history and folklore to make the case that Woody Guthrie’s life follows this tradition
Book Review: Woody Guthrie, House of Earth
Get PDFWoody Guthrie, House of Earth: A Novel, edited and introduced by Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp. New York: Infinitum Nihil/HarperCollins, 2013. xliv + 234pp., ISBN 978-0-06-224839-8. Cloth, £25.99 / £14.99