Yu-Fen Yang

Preparing Language Teachers for Blended Teaching of Summary Writing.

Research on preparing language teachers for blended teaching of summary writing, a mix of on-site and online instruction for college students to grasp the gist of the texts, is scarce in higher education. This study examined the problems encountered and solutions proposed by six language teachers, who altogether instructed 214 college students on summary writing. The findings of this study are based on content analyses of the teachers’ interview transcripts, the teachers’ observation of college students’ progress in on-site and online instruction, and the interactions among the students recorded in the log files of the online system. The results show that the language teachers’ problems in blended teaching of summary writing fell into three categories: instructional processes, community concerns, and technical issues. The four main themes that emerged from the three categories include the following: (1) the changing roles of the teachers and students, (2) little sense of community building, (3) lack of training in blended teaching of summary writing, and (4) an unfamiliarity with the new systems or technologies. The language teachers’ perspectives on solving these problems were to (1) distinguish the significant differences between on-site and online language teaching contexts, (2) identify strategies and techniques to facilitate students’ blended learning in summary writing, and (3) develop community building skills to encourage teachers and students to actively participate in collaborative learning. These solutions shed light on the preparation of language teachers in blended teaching of summary writing.

Self-Directed Learning to Develop Autonomy in an Online ESP Community.

Low foreign language achievers in vocational education often have a lack of learning strategies, a tendency to feel frustrated, and unwillingness to be involved. In order to develop vocational college students’ autonomy, this study integrated on-site workshops with an online learning community by means of self-directed learning English for specific purposes (ESP). The results show that the online ESP community developed students into autonomous learners by (1) employing resource-based approach to download learning materials for preview and review, (2) utilizing curriculum-based approach to view online photos for monitoring their role-play and interactions in the learning processes and taking e-assessment for evaluating learning progress, and (3) using technology-based approach for interacting with their peers. The students developed learner autonomy to achieve significant better learning outcomes in the post-test. It was implied that self-directed learning with little teacher intervention of integrating on-site and online learning community could develop learner autonomy in ESP.

Investigating readers' mental maps of references in an online system

Referential identification and resolution are considered the keys to help readers grasp the main idea of a text and solve lexical ambiguities. The goal of this study is to design a computer system for helping college students who learn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) develop mental maps of referential identification and resolution in reading. Four modules, Natural Language Processing (NLP), User Interface, Recording, and Feedback Tool, are implemented in the system. Results of this study showed that the more-proficient EFL readers were able to identify and resolve most of the references to form a coherent mental map from different parts of a text. The less-proficient readers commonly resolved references by relying on grammatical rules instead of semantic contextual clues. They often referred references to incorrect objects. To overcome the difficulties in figuring out the relationship between two words, the less-proficient readers usually asked for more feedbacks. As students progressed in reading, they requested fewer feedbacks in the online system. Some recommendations for future studies are discussed.

New language knowledge construction through indirect feedback in web-based collaborative writing

ABSTRACT This study reports on how students construct new language knowledge by indirect feedback in web-based collaborative writing. Indirect feedback (text organization, reader-based perspectives, and clarity of purpose) encourages students to negotiate meaning instead of merely copying peers’ direct feedback on grammatical corrections. According to the pre-test, 54 students were divided into the more- and less-proficient groups with 27 students in each group. The pre- and post-tests, students’ log files recorded in the system, and an open-ended questionnaire were used in this study. The results indicate that the more-proficient students were able to provide indirect feedback to elaborate their thoughts. They further made decisions on accepting or rejecting their peers’ or the teachers suggestions while they integrated previous knowledge with new information they had learned from their peers and the teacher, which lead to new ideas generated in the final drafts. In contrast, the less-proficient students had predominantly copied their peers’ direct feedback and corrected grammatical errors as they were not capable of producing indirect feedback. After engaging in more learning with the help from the more-proficient peers, the less-proficient students made more writing progress with indirect feedback than the more-proficient students. Through indirect feedback to construct new language knowledge, web-based collaborative writing fostered the more- and less-proficient students to learn from each other by negotiating meaning for text improvement.