Michael C. W. Yip

Relationship of Study Strategies and Academic Performance in Different Learning Phases of Higher Education in Hong Kong

The present study aims (1) to investigate the specific study strategies that may lead to a success in Matriculation as well as at University; and (2) to investigate whether these study strategies that are effective in Matriculation also work efficiently at University. A revised version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI, Weinstein, Zimmermann, & Palmer, 1988) was used and we found that there were significant differences between study habits of students with high academic achievement and those with low academic achievement in Matriculation. However, this was not the case at University. More importantly, we also found that those effective study strategies used in Matriculation may not work at University. These results are discussed in terms of the focus and the academic demand of different learning phases of higher education in Hong Kong.

Context Effects and the Processing of Spoken Homophones.

This study examined the role of context effects in the processing of homophones in Chinese and Chinese-English bilingual speech. In Experiment 1, Chinese speakers were presented with successively gated portions of a homophone in a sentence context, and they identified the homophone on the basis of its increasing acoustic information. In Experiment 2, Chinese-English bilinguals were presented with a cross-language homophone in a sentence context, and they named a visual probe that had or did not have phonological overlaps with the homophone. Results indicate that prior sentence context has an early effect on the disambiguation of various homophone meanings, shortly after the acoustic onset of the word, in both monolingual and bilingual situations. The results are accounted for by interactive activation models of lexical processing, in which the recognition of a homophone is a result of the interactions among phonological, lexical, and contextual information at an early stage.

Differences between High and Low Academic Achieving University Students in Learning and Study Strategies: A Further Investigation.

Following up on the general framework of the research study of Yip (2007), this article sets out a similar research question, investigating the differences between high and low academic achieving Hong Kong university students based on their different learning and study strategies. In this study, we recruited 100 university students who pursued their degrees using the distance-learning mode to participate by completing a revised Chinese version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI; Weinstein, Zimmermann, & Palmer, 1988). Results further confirmed that there were important differences between the different study strategies of university students with high academic achievement and those with low academic achievement, even in a distance-learning context. Finally, we observed that two components within the model of strategic learning (Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000) – will and self-regulation components – were even more important in differentiating high academic achieving students from low academic achieving students than the other relevant studies.

RELATION OF STUDY STRATEGIES TO THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF HONG KONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

A revised version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory was used to examine the relation of study strategies with academic performance of 100 Hong Kong university students. Analysis indicated the high academic-achieving group differed significantly from the low academic-achieving group in terms of intrinsic disposition factors of motivation, scheduling, concentration, and selecting main ideas.

Using WebCT to teach courses online

Introduction With the significant changes to the economic situation around the world, there has been an increasing demand for continuing education. Among the different types of continuing education, web-based learning and other off-campus e-learning are the two major approaches people will usually prefer to take. It is because (1) they would like to improve themselves by adding personal value/asset through further education; (2) fulltime education is not possible for them since most are the main source of income in their families; (3) personal and family commitments will interfere with full time oncampus learning. As a result, the concept of online learning grows more popular everywhere. In the online learning mode, web-based teaching is becoming an important route to successful learning. The present study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of one of the online learning platforms—the WebCT, a widely-used web-based learning platform in colleges and universities.

Learning strategies and self-efficacy as predictors of academic performance: a preliminary study

Empirical research supports the idea that differences in academic performance among students are largely due to their different learning and study strategies. The strategies, in turn, affect the self-efficacy of the students. Two hundred university students were recruited to participate in this study by completing a revised Chinese version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory, on examining the extended relationship among the three components. Two major findings are observed. First, there were important differences among different study strategies used by university students with high academic achievement and those with low academic achievement. Second, the variable of self-efficacy was equally important to differentiate high academic-achieving students from low academic-achieving students at the university level.

Learning Strategies and Their Relationships to Academic Performance of High School Students in Hong Kong.

The present study examines the dynamic relationship between academic performance of high school students and their respective learning and study strategies. Two hundred thirty-six high school students were recruited to participate in this study by completing a Chinese version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory - LASSI, to probe into the relationship. Results found that (1) there were clear differences to the learning and study strategies used by high school students with high academic performance, and those with low academic performance; (2) all the three components (Will; Self-regulation and Skill) were equally important to differentiate high academic achieving high school students from low academic achieving high school students within the strategic model of learning; and (3) a numbers of learning and study strategies were effectively predicting the academic performance of the high school students. All of these result patterns confirm that learning and study strategies used by high academic achievers and low academic achievers as well as the components used to predict students’ academic performance in the high school setting are quite different from the patterns revealed in the tertiary education sector.

Spoken Word Recognition of Chinese Words in Continuous Speech

The present study examined the role of positional probability of syllables played in recognition of spoken word in continuous Cantonese speech. Because some sounds occur more frequently at the beginning position or ending position of Cantonese syllables than the others, so these kinds of probabilistic information of syllables may cue the locations of syllable boundaries in speech. Two word-spotting experiments were conducted to investigate the role of positional probability in the spoken word recognition process of Cantonese speech. It was found that listeners indeed made use of the positional probability of a syllable’s onset but not of a syllable’s ending sound in the spoken word recognition process. Together with other relevant studies in different languages, we propose that probabilistic phonotactics are one useful source of information in the spoken word recognition and speech segmentation process.

The Reliability and Validity of the Chinese Version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI-C)

The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) is widely used in assessing students’ learning and study strategies at both university and high school levels. The present study developed a Chinese version of LASSI (LASSI-C) and then further investigated the reliability, factor structure, and validity of LASSI-C scores, using a sample of 612 university students from Hong Kong. Results confirm that the scores measured from LASSI-C generally revealed the expected 10 subscales and a 3-factor structure that was originally postulated in LASSI.

Phonotactics Constraints and the Spoken Word Recognition of Chinese Words in Speech

Two word-spotting experiments were conducted to examine the question of whether native Cantonese listeners are constrained by phonotactics information in spoken word recognition of Chinese words in speech. Because no legal consonant clusters occurred within an individual Chinese word, this kind of categorical phonotactics information of Chinese word may be most likely to cue native Cantonese listeners the locations of possible word boundaries in speech. The observed results from the two word-spotting experiments confirmed this prediction. Together with other relevant studies, we suggest that phonotactics constraint is one of the useful sources of information in spoken word recognition processes of Chinese words in speech.