Learning Awareness Research Articles

Effectiveness of Semantics Feature Analysis on EFL Primary Learners’ Word Awareness

The correlation between the thematic and lexical units is a fundamental stage in language development. Understanding vocabulary from any text and category is essential in school subjects and daily life. Therefore, the current study aims at examining and analyzing the effect of semantic feature analysis (henceforth, SFA) strategy on the word awareness of EFL primary learners. The present study participants are twenty-three learners with language delay (LD), who are learning English as a second language at Da Vinci International School and Smart Kurd Private School, Duhok city, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Furthermore, to achieve the research aims, a qualitative methodology was used, whereby students were observed, and data was collected through two main tasks, a matrix chart with and without graphical representation. The results showed that students faced fewer difficulties when identifying the physical features of lexical items in both matrixes. By contrast, the participants tended to find location features as the most difficult category. The study has also revealed that SFA with graphic representation is greatly effective in terms of vocabulary learning and retention. Moreover, this study is valuable as it investigated the effectiveness of SFA on primary learners’ word awareness. It contributes largely to children's language development in terms of lexicon enrichment, comprehension, and content retention.

EFFECTS OF EFL STUDENTS’ USE OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES IN EXTENSIVE READING TASKS ON THEIR READING PERFORMANCE AND ATTITUDES

Reading plays important role in teaching and learning a second language as in reading, information is acquired and processed before learners can reach the final goal of English learning – communication. Extensive reading is a helpful way to develop students’ reading habits. A quasi-experimental study with one group pretest-posttest design was conducted in the Vietnamese educational context to investigate the effects of students’ use of metacognitive strategies on intermediate learners’ reading performance and attitudes. The results indicated positive changes in learners’ performance and attitudes, especially in higher-order thinking ability. Thirty-two participants from the convenient sampling method attended a 10-week reading course with metacognitive strategies embedded in extensive reading tasks. The scores from tests showed an improvement in reading comprehension ability and higher-order thinking application. The data from the questionnaire and semi-structured interview contributes to the positive attitudes toward students towards reading activities. This study has discovered the significant effects on the awareness of learners and afterwards cognition thinking. Learners have achieved a higher level of cognitive reading, critical reading and positive attitudes towards reading activity.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0552/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Critical Cultural Awareness in the Intercultural Reading Contents of the EFL Course Books

This study investigates how intercultural reading texts can foster critical cultural awareness in EFL course books and how critical cultural awareness of learners is reflected. The study is administered in a qualitative research method by analyzing triangulation data from four different EFL course books. The data are analyzed using the content analysis approach after examining the general distribution of Intercultural (IC) reading texts and activities based on Sobkowiak's framework. There are contrastive distributions among four EFL coursebooks. One of the noticeable points in this study is that the EFL coursebook focused on reading skills demonstrates the higher distribution of 'Interpreting visual and verbal cultural representations,' which were mainly focused on native English-speaking cultures. On the contrary, the other EFL coursebook for reading skills focuses on 'reflecting on values, beliefs, and behaviors 'with various cultural elements. Based on these different results from the study, critical implications are made concerning participants' Critical Cultural Awareness (CCA).

Thinking Preference Awareness, Leadership Skills and Learning Behaviour

Prior to Covid-19, studies identified a gap between the skills employers needed and the skills graduates had (IBM, 2012, 2016, WEF2016b). Still impacted by the pandemic, graduating classes of the future may not be any different. This paper shares findings from an Applied Research in Innovation and Education (ARIE) pilot project conducted between 2016-2017 at Mohawk College, Ontario Canada with 117 students enrolled in a 14week, mandatory Communications course. Specifically, the pilot project explored perceptions of leadership, employability skills and attributes in post-secondary students and how they perceived and assessed their leadership skills and developmental needs for future employment. The study also examined how learner awareness of their own and others thinking preferences when problem-solving impacted their academic behaviours and development goals. The aim was to determine the impact thinking preference awareness in learners might have on their communication, collaboration, and development of personal and professional learning targets. Using a mixed-methods, transformative-emancipatory critical approach, the research highlights the classroom as a living laboratory rich in emergent research questions and revealed additional areas of research regarding thinking preference theory and language, self-differentiated learning and inclusive, learner-focused curriculum design.

Pendekatan Metakognitif Untuk Keterampilan Membaca Bahasa Arab

Metacognition is a mental activity in the cognitive structure that is carried out consciously by a person to regulate, control, and examine his own thinking process. The same thing is to provide awareness to students how the learning process is in accordance with each individual's abilities, the needs that must be met in order to achieve success in learning and learning strategies that are in accordance with the skills to be achieved. This research is a qualitative study that produces descriptive data. The type of this research is library research. The data analysis used is content analysis. The application of a metacognitive approach to Arabic reading skills can be implemented by combining the metacognitive approach proposed by Najmi Hayati, Titin Susilowati, North Central Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL) and the Curriculum Development Center of the Ministry of Education Malaysia which is divided into three stages, namely the stage of the conscious learning process, Stage planning learning, as well as the stage of monitoring and reflection on learning. At each stage the researcher used the help of metacognitive learning journals and question yourself strategies to maximize the use of the metacognitive approach.

ІНТЕРАКТИВНІ ЛЕКЦІЇ ЯК ЗАСІБ ПІДВИЩЕННЯ ЕФЕКТИВНОСТІ НАВЧАННЯ У ЗАКЛАДАХ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ

The article is devoted to an interactive lecture as one of the effective methods of teaching in High educational establishments, which helps to increase the effectiveness of learning and the level of motivation of students. The authors reveal the essence of interactive learning and emphasize that it consists in the organization of constant interaction of all participants of the educational process. Also they compare the traditional classical lecture with the interactive one and highlight the features of the latter, emphasizing its benefits. The fact of the need to revise traditional forms and methods of teaching becomes obvious, as the main task of a modern lecturer is to involve HE students to active conscious learning and to digitalize the educational process. That is why the article focuses on digital tools that can help teachers to organize interaction of the participants of the educational process, create educational video content and provide constant feedback to students during and after the interactive lecture. The authors also present a number of forms of interactive lectures and tips that turn a traditional lecture into an interactive one (using active individual or group work, using of interactive activities, using of various forms of feedback to control students understanding of the material). It has been proved that digital tools have created important didactic conditions for effective organization and effectiveness of interactive lectures, due to increasing the visualization of educational material through infographics, multimedia, comics, animation and video, facilitated the organization of productive group learning activities, simplified feedback and the use of digital tools increased the motivation, independence and awareness of students about learning outcomes, increased efficiency of control and self-control by automating current and final assessment, intensified reflection on educational activities based on online surveys, commenting on forums and chats. Key words: interactivity in teaching, interactive lecture, digital tools, group work, active learning.

Analisi corpus-based e didattica della lingua italiana. I risultati di una sperimentazione di linguistica educativa

Corpus linguistics has developed significantly as a branch of applied linguistics in recent times, in relation to the possibilities of employment in research both in linguistics and in related disciplines. This field of study, furthermore, aims at assaying and describing the salient characteristics of a language by questioning collected and stored data on computer support, in the most applicable way. Considering the proposed definition, it was decided to use the methodology of collection, archiving, and interrogation, specific of corpus-based analysis, within the language educational practices for teaching Italian as L1 and L2. For the purposes of experimentation, a working group of 30 Italian teachers was set up that was aimed at students from different educational orders, and specific training was proposed, within a course organised by Centro Interculturale della Città di Torino. At the end of the course, the teaching staff were able to use the operative modalities of the corpus linguistics with regard to the collection and analysis of the linguistic productions of the students, questioning the corpora with respect to the linguistic uses. In conclusion, the corpora were used as a tool for linguistic analysis and to suggest interventions on error analysis, proving effective both for teachers and for learners. Actually, all the linguistic productions have been used as a basis for the linguistic research proposed to the learners. Teachers were offered a questionnaire about experimentation and the results were positive, as these showed how corpus linguistics can contribute to a significant awareness of learners about the language and learning goals.

Teacher language awareness or language teacher awareness?

The paper outlines the development of the concept of awareness across various academic disciplines and examines terminological problems involved in analysing human cognition. Approaches to awareness in philosophy, developmental psychology, neuroscience and linguistics are discussed, as well as the career of the concept in Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching (SLA / FLT). Learners’ and teachers’ language awareness is presented as a basis for the enrichment of the awareness concept by a number of psychological, sociological and pedagogical factors. Special attention is given to neglected aspects of teacher awareness, such as awareness of learners’ thinking processes and teachers’ awareness of classroom decision-making. Implications are sought for pre-service teacher education.

Conscience collective et autoconscience dans l’enseignement / apprentissage du français langue seconde et de scolarisation : quand l’interculturel et le plurilinguisme sont en jeu

This article explores the issue of the collective consciousness and self-consciousness in teaching and learning foreign languages. A review of the literature on the current issues of interculturality and plurilingualism in relation to the notions of consciousness and self-consciousness is first detailed. The issue raised allows us to question the impact of this consideration in terms of the consequences of this work on class dynamics. In fact, can the awareness and self-awareness of learners regarding intercultural and plurilingual practices exist outside of a co-construction with other learners, with the teacher? The research methodology is based on an analysis of interactions in the language class which brings into play these intercultural and plurilingual approaches (resulting from the LISTIAC and FLSCAN projects). It reports significant results on the co-construction of consciousness and emerging self-consciousness in the language class about the singular universals of languages and cultures. The discussion shows the value of a collective, and no longer purely personal understanding (for the learner) of consciousness and self-awareness of these plurilingual and cultural experiences.

Museums in support of preservice teacher learning: expanding understandings of multiliteracies and translanguaging in content area teaching

ABSTRACT This article investigates how a community-university partnership between an art-museum and a teacher education program supported university students in a disciplinary literacy course to move beyond the privileging of discrete language systems to extend awareness of learners’ multilingual and multimodal resources as a part of their integrated communicative repertoires. Specifically, the article highlights how engagement at the art museum and two course-based assignments allowed students to negotiate for meaning and make sense of art objects by drawing upon multiple ways to make meaning. Drawing on field notes, student created artifacts, and written reflections, findings show that as future teachers interact with the museum’s art objects, the museum supports emerging awareness of multiliteracies and translanguaging. This includes creating conditions where monolingual students can empathize with the challenges that multilingual students meet in responses to language demands in schools. Implications for using museums as sites of learning in language teacher education are offered.

EFL Listening, Metacognitive Awareness, and Motivation: The Magic of L1-Mediated Metacognitive Intervention.

This study strove to investigate the effect of L1-mediated metacognitive intervention (MI) on the listening comprehension performance, metacognitive awareness, and motivation of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 330 upper-intermediate EFL learners in three groups, ranging from 17 to 25years of age. The experimental groups (Ex1 = 110/Ex2 = 110) went through a guided lesson plan in metacognition in L2 (English) and L1 (Persian) for seventeen weeks, which focused on planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The control group (CG = 110), also instructed by the same teacher, listened to the same texts in L2 (English) without any guided attention to process. An actual IELTS TEST, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and a motivation questionnaire (LLOS-IEA) were used before and after the intervention to track changes in the listening performance, metacognitive awareness, and motivation. The overall results showed that MI caused a considerable variance in the listening performance, metacognitive awareness, and motivation in both experimental groups. The results also illustrated that the medium for the delivery of metacognitive intervention (L1) assisted the learners in experimental group two, who went through L1-mediated metacognitive intervention, to outperform their peers in experimental group one, who were taught in L2, and the control group, who were taught conventionally.

ПрофесійнО-ПЕДАГОГІЧНА КОМУНІКАЦІЯ викладачів закладів вищої освіти: ВИКЛИКИ війни

The article investigates the problem of professional and pedagogical communication of teachers of higher education institutions during the war. The purpose of the article is to reveal the phenomenon of «professional and pedagogical communication», the presentation of new accents of professional and pedagogical communication, which must be considered by the teacher in higher education in wartime. Professional and pedagogical communication is understood as a system of direct or indirect connections and interactions of the teacher, which are realized through both verbal and nonverbal means, as well as computer communication tools for information exchange, modeling and management of communication, regulation of professional pedagogical relations. It is noted that the established concept of professional and pedagogical communication in the war has gained renewed importance and needs new accents, namely: shifted attention to the subjects of communication, which are carriers of the active, transformative principle, which is a communicatively educated person, able to consciously plan and organize their own communicative activities, influence the partner, in some way perceive, analyze the informational, emotional and intellectual content of speech, psychophysiological and energy states and evaluate them; has a developed emotional intelligence, communication skills, abilities, experience. Emphasis is placed on establishing effective interaction of participants in the educational process through the organization of personality-oriented, emotional and supportive communication, based on impartiality, sincere interest, support, care for each other; shifting the emphasis in the educational process from teaching to learning, organizing the teaching process not as a transition of information, but as facilitation of the processes of meaningful and conscious learning. The essence of the concepts «personality-oriented communication of the teacher», «emotional-supportive communication of the teacher» is revealed; the principles of emotional and supportive communication of a teacher of a higher education institution are determined; the importance of reflexive (active) listening during the professional and pedagogical communication of the teacher in the conditions of war is substantiated; effective methods of reflexive listening (clarification, paraphrasing, reflection of feelings, summarizing) are revealed; the characteristics of pedagogical facilitation are distinguished (cooperation, own position, individuality and equality, self-disclosure, involvement of everyone in joint activities, organization of space). It is concluded that only a teacher who trusts students, recognizes their uniqueness, is interested in their life, problems, is always ready to help, can show students openness and accessibility, create for them the opportunities to express thoughts and feelings, a sense of involvement in the educational process, protection from environmental threats.

The rhetorical structure of newspaper reports: A synergy between corpus, genre and discourse analysis

The pandemic has intensified issues faced by the journalism community in Malaysia. This study is an attempt to help the media industries upskill themselves in terms of the written discourse. This study describes the rhetorical structures in Malaysian newspaper reports, namely The Star, in terms of the rhetorical moves and steps by using the genre theory, corpus-based discourse analysis and corpus analysis. MyCORONAS (Malaysian Corpus of Online Newspaper Articles) corpus of 90 selected news reports consisting of crime news (TSC), environmental news (TSE) and political news (TSP) was compiled and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively to identify the frequency, functions, and patterns of rhetorical moves. The findings identified a nine-move structure for the newspaper reports. The nine-move structure consists of five optional moves and four obligatory moves. Variations in the use of the steps were observed within the sub-genres. Additionally, based on the functions of the moves, it was found that the newspaper report is a hybrid genre with various communicative functions. Based on the patterns of move distribution, the dispersion value shows that the moves are tightly clustered. To conclude, the findings of this study will heighten the awareness of ESP learners on the importance of using appropriate rhetorical moves to write a newspaper report which will help the journalism industries reform themselves during the pandemic.

A phraseological exploration of university lectures through phrase frames

While a recent trend in corpus-based analysis on phraseology has increasingly emphasized the role of phrase frames (p-frames) in developing learner awareness and literacy of academic genres, especially academic writing, p-frames in academic speech still remain understudied. To explore the phraseological profile of academic speech and extend the current efforts in creating lists of academic expressions for pedagogical use, this study aims to derive a list of cross-disciplinary p-frames for university lectures. A combination of corpus statistics along with manual filtering and instructor evaluation results in 117 five-word p-frames and 29 6-word p-frames, with a great majority of them (93.2%) being considered potentially pedagogically useful. Structural and functional analyses of the resulting p-frames further reveal genre-specific features, highlighting phraseological differences between academic speech and writing. The findings of this study can provide implications for research on academic formulaic language and the teaching and learning of English for academic purposes (EAP).

Multilingual Learners’ Grammatical and Pragmatic Awareness in Chinese EFL Context: From Three Layers of Language Awareness Perspective

The research was aimed to explore multilingual learners ‘grammatical and pragmatic awareness from perspective of three layers of language awareness: perception, noticing and understanding in Chinese EFL context.
 The findings reveal that firstly, there exists negative correlation between three layers of grammatical and pragmatic awareness of multilingual learners with low English proficiency; however, there exists positive correlation between three layers of grammatical and pragmatic awareness of multilingual learners with higher proficiency levels. Secondly, on grammatical awareness, there is not a significant difference between Mongolian multilingual learners; on pragmatic awareness, in perception and understanding layer, there exists a significant difference, but in noticing layer, there is not. There were not significant differences between Han Chinese bilinguals and Mongolian multilinguals on grammatical awareness in perception, noticing and understanding as well as perceptional aspect of pragmatic awareness; however, there are significant differences in noticing and understanding. Thirdly, there is a low positive correlation between pragmatic awareness and pragmatic competence of Mongolian learners with different proficiency level.
 The present research findings indicate the necessity of developing ethnic minority students’ multilingual awareness by training of multilingual teachers and of implementing multilingual pedagogical approaches, and highlight significance of increasing teachers’ language awareness by further development of language teacher education and cultivating learners’ multilingual competence in EFL contexts.

Phonological Awareness and Vocabulary Formation among Kindergarten Learners

This study aims to assess the Phonological awareness and Vocabulary formation among Kindergarten. Specifically, the study seeks to achieve the following objectives: level of Phonological awareness of Kindergarten learners in terms of: onset and rime, phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation; level of vocabulary formation of Kindergarten learners in terms of: word recognition, word invented meaning and word associated meaning; and significant relationship to the vocabulary formation of learners. The respondent of the study were thirty nine (39) kindergartens from Magdalena District who were 6 years of age. Learning activities given composed of onset and rime, phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation tasks and checklist. In addition, word recognition, word invented spelling and word associated meaning actual kindergarten word answer. The results are as follows in terms of objectives, significant relationship between the phonological awareness and vocabulary formation of the kindergarten learners. Specifically, it presents the relationship between the awareness on students on Onset and Rimes, Phoneme Blending, and Phoneme Segmentation with their abilities in Word Recognition, Word Invented Spelling, and Word Associated Meaning. Onset and Rimes is observed to have a significant strong relationship with Word Recognition (r=0.668, p=000) and a moderate relationship with the Word Invented Spelling (r=0.436) and Word Associated Meaning (r=0.561, p=000) with the respective p-values of 0.000, 0.006, and 0.000. Obtained p-values for the test were less than 0.05 hence the significance. Consecutively, Phoneme Blending is observed to have a strong significant relationship with Word Associate Meaning (r=0.619), a moderate relationship with Word Recognition (r=0.562), and a weak significant relationship with Word Invented Spelling (r=0.367) with the p-values of 0.000, 0.022, and 0.000 respectively. On the other hand, the Phoneme Segmentation is perceived to have no significant relationship with Word Recognition (r=0.073) and Word Associated Meaning (r=0.285) all the while having a significant moderate relationship with word invented spelling (r=0.525). Only the p-value for the latter was at 0.001 which was less than the significance alpha. Researchers tested the hypothesis rejected. This calls for the acceptance of the alternative which incites that there is a significant relationship.

Influence of EFL Teachers' Self-Assessment on Their Self-Regulation and Self-Efficacy.

This review aimed at investigating the related studies on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ self-assessment and its role in their self-efficacy and self-regulation. Earlier investigations have proved that teacher self-assessment was significantly correlated with self-regulation. Moreover, studies showed that self-assessment and self-regulation enabled teachers to consider their teaching effectiveness, and they were important components of formative assessment. Earlier studies showed that self-assessment raised learner awareness and increased self-efficacy significantly through the improvement of mastery experiences. Furthermore, the study presented the implications and future directions of this line of research for different people, such as EFL teachers, teacher educators, and foreign language scholars. The ideas can improve their awareness of teacher self-assessment, self-regulation, and self-efficacy in educational contexts.

Improving Phonological Awareness Skills of Young Learners of English in an EFL Context

This action research study aimed to improve the phonological awareness of young learners in the Turkish EFL context. In total, there were 56 students from the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades at a secondary state school. The students’ phonological awareness levels were measured via the Phonological Awareness Skills Test (P.A.S.T.) in the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test design. Their scores were analysed through statistical procedures. When the mean scores of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were compared, it was found that the scores in the immediate post-test and delayed post-test increased. A non-parametric Friedman test of differences among repeated measures was conducted and rendered a significant Chi-square value. Thus, it was revealed that there was a statistically significant difference among the P.A.S.T. scores of the participants measured before the in-class activities, after the in-class activities, and after a six-week follow-up. The findings displayed the importance of employing various activities to improve the phonological awareness of young learners. Educational implications are also discussed.

Development of the Cadets’ Regulative Skills at Practical English Classes by a Means of Formative Assessment Technology

The new paradigm of education requires teaching stuff to search for efficient ways of forming of the key competences integral to personal and professional development of future officers of the Russian Army. Due to this reason, the search for the brand new assessment methods and technologies used in measuring cadets’ personal achievements in a military college is a challenging problem of foreign language learning theory and practice. The implementation of the modern assessment techniques involves the development of students’ regulative skills at foreign language classes and meets the requirements of the new federal educational standard to the teaching process in a higher educational institution, provides the sustained personal growth conditions and encourages cadets to conscious learning activities. The present article is devoted to the analysis of the formative assessment didactic potential relating to the field of foreign language teaching. The author proves the effectiveness of its use at the English classes as a means of improving cadets’ monitoring, evaluation and reflexive skills. Formative assessment is considered as a learning technology necessary for cadets’ personal development and improving the quality of foreign language learning through providing the feedback from all the parties involved in the educational process organization. The advantages of formative assessment in comparison with traditional methods of assessment are given. The cadets’ regulative skills developed by means of this technology at the English classes are also listed. The author provides the examples of the main formative assessment techniques implementation (criteria-based assessment, self-report, survey, etc.) at the English practical classes. The article contains the figures and tables which demonstrate the implementation of formative assessment.

Toward Somatic Coherence: Five Teachers Engaged In Embodied Ways In Their Professional Development Path

According to Johnson (2007), learning and teaching arise from a human being’s bodily experience in relationship with others and the environment (embodiment). Many teachers perceive and mobilize their bodies in rather unconscious ways. Becoming conscious of their perceptions can help them teach. It can also influence their internal/external coherence (Korthagen, 2004), link between sensations, intentions, and actions. Five elementary teachers participated in a study meant to look at their bodily learning processes, based on a phenomenological methodology (van Manen, 2014) and using somatic approaches (Eddy, 2016). Data analysis shows that they underwent body consciousness learning processes with various effects on their teaching, many posited at a relational level (with students) and all accompanied by a changing perception of self.