British University Students Research Articles

Learning through WhatsApp: students’ beliefs, L2 pragmatic development and interpersonal relationships

By using small focus group discussions, the present study aims to gain insight into students’ perceptions about the impact of WhatsApp use in their learning process. More specifically, this study presents a cross-cultural analysis of British and Spanish university students’ personal beliefs about the effectiveness of using WhatsApp to complete group tasks outside the classroom. In so doing, this research represents a step forward in technology-enhanced instruction insofar as it not only incorporates the voices of learners themselves, but also contrasts students’ beliefs with their group interactions on WhatsApp. The exploration of these WhatsApp interactions makes it possible to argue that the use of WhatsApp does not seem to create a natural context for non-native language users to produce contextualise relevant utterances while interacting with native English speakers. Furthermore, the results show that the lack of pragmatic competence on the part of the participants prevents them from communicating effectively. These pragmatic failures, in turn, have a negative impact on their interpersonal relationships and make them develop negative opinions towards the use of WhatsApp as a learning tool.

Designing Effective Warnings about Addiction on the Patient Information Leaflet of Over-the-Counter Codeine Sold in England to University Students.

(1) Background: The harm of misusing over-the-counter (OTC) codeine-containing medicines among university students in England is being increasingly recognized. Based on English university students, this paper aims to study the importance of information design on information communication, explore methods for effective warning design, and investigate university students’ perception of OTC codeine. (2) Methods: The effective warning design is addressed through case studies, answering correctness by the heat map generated from the eye-tracking experiment (ETE), and the total time spent on the tasks. User perceptions are made though online surveys. (3) Results: Information design significantly affects the way user processes information. Therefore, two emphasized warnings displayed in the headline, and the “possible side effect (PSE)” sections and warning signs of addiction presented under the PSE are suggested as effective ways to display warnings. For students’ perception of OTC codeine, 80% of university students are unfamiliar with the substance. After reading the patient information leaflets (PILs), 47% recommended tight regulation on codeine. (4) Conclusions: The misuse of OTC codeine could be a potential problem among English university students. The design of the PIL significantly influences the chance of unintentional medicine misuse. The display of warnings on the PILs of OTC codeine should be redesigned for better understanding.

Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

Abstract This study examined longitudinal changes in second language (L2) interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility ratings (perceived ease of understanding speech), targeting comprehensibility as a dynamic, time-varying, interaction-centered construct. In a repeated-measures, within-participants design, 20 pairs of L2 English university students from different language backgrounds engaged in three collaborative and interactive tasks over 17 minutes, rating their partner’s comprehensibility at 2–3 minute intervals using 100-millimeter scales (seven ratings per interlocutor). Mutual comprehensibility ratings followed a U-shaped function over time, with comprehensibility (initially perceived to be high) being affected by task complexity but then reaching high levels by the end of the interaction. The interlocutors’ ratings also became more similar to each other early on and remained aligned throughout the interaction. These findings demonstrate the dynamic nature of comprehensibility between L2 interlocutors and suggest the need for L2 comprehensibility research to account for the effects of interaction, task, and time on comprehensibility measurements.

The morphology-vocabulary- reading mechanism and its effect on students’ academic achievement in an English L2 context

The high lexical density and complex morphology of written standard English in academic and administrative contexts have raised concerns about their effect on reading proficiency across educational levels. This study provides empirical evidence of a serial multiple mediator model supporting the relationship between English L2 students’ morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, reading proficiency and academic achievement. Comparisons were made at two levels: general English and academic English. Data were acquired from 454 second- and third-year English L2 university students in Ghana, West Africa. Using two different mediation analyses, the study produced significant evidence for a two-mediator model at both levels. Morphological awareness is modelled as affecting academic achievement through four different pathways: indirectly through vocabulary, indirectly through reading comprehension, indirectly through vocabulary and reading comprehension sequentially, and directly. This shows that knowledge of morphology both directly and indirectly influences academic achievement at tertiary level in English L2 contexts.

When testing stakes are no longer high: impact on the Chinese College English learners and their learning

It is now a consensus that high-stakes testing exerts powerful impact in controlling curriculum and pedagogy, and shaping students’ learning. The power of testing is especially strong in contexts where testing culture prevails. The Chinese educational context is such a context which is dominated by competitive tests. The language testing results from large-scale tests, such as CET-4 (College English Test—Band 4), used to be included as a compulsory prerequisite for undergraduates to get their bachelor’s degree. Such a requirement has been removed recently to reduce testing stakes for leverage purposes. Thus, it is worthwhile to investigate whether the change will possibly help to impact students and their learning in a positive way.Our study aimed to explore the impact of changes in the stakes of a language test in the Chinese university context. Data were collected through questionnaires from 544 College English students at a university in north-western China. Our analysis via SPSS 2.3 showed that test-taking was still well accepted and practiced; while reducing the stakes helped to redirect the students towards English learning, it had less impact on their English learning motivation and approaches. The findings also show that the test-dominated environment that is deep-rooted in the macro- and micro-contexts decided the students’ responses to this policy change.

Theme choices in Czech University students’ English-medium Master's theses

Drawing on Halliday's approach to information structure in discourse, this paper explores the discursive function of the initial part of the sentence, i.e. the Theme zone, in a learner corpus of Master's theses by Czech university students of English. The aims of the study are to identify the major patterns of Themes, to analyse the realisations of textual and interpersonal Themes and to compare the Theme choices in Czech students’ theses with the academic discourse of Anglophone student writers as illustrated by BAWE, and to consider how the findings of the study can contribute to the teaching of academic writing at university level. The results of the investigation show that Czech students tend to use primarily simple and two-component Theme patterns; textual Themes tend to be overused, whereas interpersonal Themes are strongly underused. Since the underuse or overuse of some thematic patterns and their realisations may be addressed by explicit instruction aiming at expanding the range of rhetorical resources that the students have at their disposal to build a coherent discourse, the findings of this study are intended to inform the design of courses and study materials for the teaching of academic writing at university level.

The Efficacy of Gesture on Second Language Pronunciation: An Exploratory Study of Handclapping as a Classroom Instructional Tool

AbstractIn this study, we examined the efficacy of gestures for the acquisition of L2 segmental phonology. Despite teachers’ frequent use of gestures in the classroom to teach pronunciation, the field lacks empirical support for this practice. We attempted to fill this gap by investigating the effects of handclapping on the development of L2 Japanese segmentals (long vowels, geminates, and moraic nasals). We assigned L1 English university students in beginning Japanese courses to one of two groups where they practiced pronouncing the targets with or without handclapping in the classroom. They also completed picture elicitation (production) and dictation (perception) tasks as pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests. The results show that, on the delayed perception posttest, only those who saw and performed handclapping maintained the instructional effect, indicating that the memory‐enhancing effect of gestures, at least in the form of handclapping, might reach the level of segmental phonology in L2 acquisition.

How is Chinese English Learners’ L2 Metaphoric Competence Related to That of L1? An E-Prime-Based Multi-Dimensional Study

Even though transfer from L1 to L2 has been repeatedly tested and confirmed, there is little literature and consensus on how and to what extent the L1 metaphoric competence could be related to that of L2. Based on the metaphor acceptability and response time of E-Prime experiments and two written tests of comprehension and production of metaphors on 94 intermediate Chinese-speaking university students of English, this study compares Chinese English learners’ similarities and differences in four dimensions (metaphor acceptability, identification speed, metaphor comprehension, and metaphor production) of metaphoric competence between L1 and L2 (here is Chinese and English). The results demonstrate that: Chinese English learners’ L1 metaphoric competence is significantly better than that of L2; their L2 metaphoric competence is significantly correlated to that of L1, and the regression analysis shows that L1 metaphoric competence has a significant prediction of that of L2. These findings enlighten us to greatly cultivate metaphoric competence in foreign language teaching and help students create connection between L1 and L2 metaphoric competence. This study also provides statistical support for the claim that metaphoric competence is a general trans-language cognitive ability for Chinese English learners.

University Jordanian Learners of English: Difficulties and Solutions

Referencing related literature and drawing upon our experience, observation and talks with specialists, we have realized that the problem of difficulty encountered by Arab learners of English in general and by Jordanian university English students in particular is sporadically addressed by researchers. They mention it along with their focus on errors committed by those EFL learners. At the university, English majors study English language, linguistics, and literature courses over a period of four years. While enrolling in the English program, they encounter difficulties or problems like teaching methods, cultural and language problems and teaching settings which negatively affect their language proficiency and, thus, graduate committing gross errors in various language skills, pointing to their weakness, low proficiency and unsatisfactory achievement which do not meet teachers’ and society’s expectations. The present paper is meant to diagnose the problems that confront university Jordanian English majors and to propose some solutions including strict requirements on transfer students, a TOEFL score of 500, and a small class size intended to play a role in reforming the present status quo of English departments, thus upgrading their outputs, and helping students improve their level linguistically and extra linguistically.

Using Meta-Analysis and Propensity Score Methods to Assess Treatment Effects Toward Evidence-Based Practice in Extensive Reading.

This study aimed to depict the assessment process of treatment effects of extensive reading in a second language (L2) toward the establishment of an evidence-based practice. Although standardized mean differences between treatment and control groups have been applied to interpret the magnitude of treatment effects in observational studies on L2 teaching, individual effect sizes vary according to differences in learners, measures, teaching approaches, and research quality. Prior research on extensive reading has suffered from methodological restrictions, especially due to a lack of appropriate comparison between treatment and control groups. For these reasons, a retrospective meta-analysis including only studies that ensured between-group equivalence was conducted in Study 1 to estimate the effect sizes of extensive reading expected in specific teaching environments. When the focused skill of the one-semester program was reading comprehension, its effect size was predicted as d = 0.55. However, the moderator analysis showed that this treatment effect was overestimated due to selection bias in the analyzed studies and adjusted the effect size from 0.55 to 0.37. In Study 2, propensity score analysis was applied to minimize selection bias attributed to observed confounding variables in the comparison between non-randomized treatment and control groups. Data were collected from 109 Japanese university students of English who received in-class extensive reading for one semester and 115 students who attended another English class as the control group. Various types of matching were attempted, and in consideration of balancing the five covariates that might affect treatment effect estimation, the best solutions were nearest neighborhood matching without replacement, nearest neighborhood matching with replacement, and full matching. The results showed that the average treatment effects of extensive reading on all the participants (d = 0.24–0.44) and on the treated individuals (d = 0.32–0.40) were both consistent with the benchmark established in Study 1. Pedagogical implications and methodological limitations are discussed for decision-making regarding the implementation of L2 teaching practices based on research evidence.

Which Defining Model Contributes to More Successful Extraction of Syntactic Class Information and Translation Accuracy?

Definitions in English monolingual learners' dictionaries are the central focus of the paper. Metalexicographers have had a consuming interest in the following three types of definitions: analytical definitions (or classical definitions), full-sentence definitions (also called contextual definitions) and single-clause when -definitions. The use of when -definitions, the role of which is to define abstract nouns, has raised questions and doubts as to their efficacy on correct part of speech recognition of the definiendum , or item being defined, in light of the problems related to the substitutability of headwords and parts of definitions (lack of general category words in this definition format). By and large, existing research has substantiated the superiority of the classical definition-type over single-clause when -definitions with respect to the accuracy of word class identification. The current experiment attempts to further delve into the subject of part of speech recognition with regard to the three aforementioned defining formats — in previous studies only data from analytical and single-clause when -definitions were collated, since contextual definitions were not included in the study design. The study was conducted on a group of 120 advanced-level Polish university students of English. The subjects were tested on their ability of correct extraction of syntactic class information and translation accuracy of abstract noun headwords as regards the three predominant definition-types in English lexicographic practice.

Visual cues during interaction: Are recasts different from noncorrective repetition?

Visual cues may help second language (L2) speakers perceive interactional feedback and reformulate their nontarget forms, particularly when paired with recasts, as recasts can be difficult to perceive as corrective. This study explores whether recasts have a visual signature and whether raters can perceive a recast’s corrective function. Transcripts of conversations between a bilingual French–English interlocutor and L2 English university students ( n = 24) were analysed for recasts and noncorrective repetitions with rising and declarative intonation. Videos of those excerpts ( k = 96) were then analysed for the interlocutor’s provision of visual cues during the recast and repetition turns, including eye gaze duration, nods, blinks, and other facial expressions (frowns, eyebrow raises). The videos were rated by 96 undergraduate university students who were randomly assigned to three viewing conditions: clear voice/clear face, clear voice/blurred face, or distorted voice/clear face. Using a 100-millimeter scale with two anchor points (0% = he’s making a comment, and 100% = he’s correcting an error), they rated the corrective function of the interlocutors’ responses while their eye gaze was tracked. Raters reliably distinguished recasts from repetitions through their ratings (although they were generally low), but not through their eye gaze behaviors.

Intercultural and interpersonal communication failures: analyzing hostile interactions among British and Spanish university students on WhatsApp

AbstractAlthough the use of the mobile application communication technology for interpersonal communication seems to be less physically threatening, building successful relationships has become more complex. Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the way(s) British and Spanish university students manage a hostile situation when disputing among each other on WhatsApp, the present study aims to shed light on conflict management by investigating the differentiated topic management strategies the participants in the study deploy. This, in turn, will add new empirical evidence to the expanding field of intercultural pragmatics. Through a detailed analysis of the hostile interactions, the results show a differentiated linguistic process by means of which participants initiate, maintain and escalate conflict talk that also relates to the speaker’s failed attempts to understand and negotiate each other’s intended meaning in interaction.

PARAPHRASING TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

This research aims at examining three important things, i.e. students’ technique in paraphrasing, paraphrasing acceptability and obstacles in paraphrasing. A qualitative approach was used to carry out this study by purposively selecting 26 Indonesian college students of English as respondents. The data were collected by giving a paraphrasing task (consisted of 5 paragraphs) to the students and interviewed them to find out in-depth information on paraphrasing acceptably and obstacles. The research revealed that synonym technique was the most frequent technique sued by the respondents due to the easiness of using this technique. On the other hand, the technique of changing positive into negative (vice versa), changing structure of idea, combining two sentences, and changing clause into phrase (vice versa) were found to be the less frequent techniques used for paraphrasing. The research also found that all students are not able to produce good paraphrasing sentences due to their incompetence to satisfy the criteria of good paraphrasing such as not giving citation sources, the tendency for doing plagiarism (changing words with their synonyms and keep the sentence structures still the same as the original. Regarding the respondents’ obstacles in paraphrasing, this study found some obstacles: (1) difficult to find out the appropriate synonyms to change words on original text, (2) difficult to understand unfamiliar terms (3) unable to restructure sentences in new ones, and (4) no idea on how to paraphrase texts effectively. All the obstacles occur due to some causal factors, i.e. (1) lack of vocabulary, (2) lack of paraphrasing practice, (3) ineffective class when learning, (4) teaching technique of lecturers, and (5) limited knowledge of paraphrasing techniques. How to Cite this Article Pubmed Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF SRP. 2020; 11(11): 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 Web Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF http://www.sysrevpharm.org/?mno=9845 [Access: March 30, 2021]. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 AMA (American Medical Association) Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF SRP. 2020; 11(11): 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 Vancouver/ICMJE Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF SRP. (2020), [cited March 30, 2021]; 11(11): 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 Harvard Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin (2020) TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF SRP, 11 (11), 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 Turabian Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. 2020. TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy, 11 (11), 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 Chicago Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. PARAPHRASING TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH. Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy 11 (2020), 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 MLA (The Modern Language Association) Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin. PARAPHRASING TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH. Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy 11.11 (2020), 291-297. Print. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43 APA (American Psychological Association) Style Ismail, Abdul Haris Sunubi, Ali Halidin, Amzah, Nanning, Kaharuddin (2020) TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP SKILL FOR ENGLISH WRITING AMONG INDONESIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy, 11 (11), 291-297. doi:10.31838/srp.2020.11.43

Transfer in the use of intensifiers

This paper investigates transfer in the use of English intensifiers by Croatian students of English. Since transfer is an important factor in second language acquisition and is very common in different areas of language use, it has been the subject of various studies. In this paper, we focus on lexical transfer investigating its effects on the use of intensifiers among first-year undergraduate university students of English at Zadar University, Croatia. The aim of this cross-sectional study is to examine whether there is a connection between the use of intensifiers in L2 and L1, i.e. whether the knowledge of intensifiers in L1 Croatian influences learners' use or knowledge of intensifiers in L2 English. Intensity is a basic human cognitive category and has an important function in communication. Specifically, the speaker expresses emotions or an attitude towards a topic using intensifiers. Furthermore, intensifiers are used in different collocations modifying adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. However, this study focuses only on intensifiers that appear in adverb-adjective collocations, and their use is observed in a relatively large group of language learners at a single point in time. Relevant data are collected using questionnaires as well as cloze-tests and translation tasks which focus on semantics and collocation.

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ RESEARCH PROPOSAL WRITING

The paper investigated common grammatical errors produced by Indonesian university students of English as a foreign language when writing their undergraduate research proposals. Accordingly, an urgent research question to resolve was what common grammatical errors are made by the seventh semester students of the English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University in writing Chapter One of their research proposals? To answer the research question, the researchers conducted a content analysis. The researchers analysed students’ research proposals, focusing on grammatical issues identified in the first chapter. Results showed that the errors were omission (content and grammatical morpheme), addition (double marking, regularization, and simple addition), misinformation (regularization errors, archi-forms, and alternating forms), misordering, parallelism and diction. The top three errors were successively omission (38.15 per cent), addition (21.97 per cent) and parallelism (18.5 per cent).

Interference of Phonological Aspects of Emphatic Consonant Sounds from Arabic into English Consonant Sounds for Sudanese University Students of English

This study investigates why SUSE substitue the English consonant sounds /t/, /d/, /s/, /z /and /ð/ by the emphatic Arabic sounds /s/, /t/, /d/, and /ð/ in English words. The sample of this study is a group of Sudanese university students majoring in English. The first data collection tool is a test. This test contains a sample of words that contain the problematic sounds; these words have been observed to contain /ʌ/, /ə/ and /ɒ/. The second CAH is used to compare the articulation of the problematic sounds in both languages in addition to the emphatic sounds in Arabic. The most important results are as follows. First, some distinctive features of the English vowel sounds are shared by distinctive features of the emphatic Arabic sounds. Second, because of their absence in Arabic, the English vowels /ʌ/, /ə/ and /ɒ/ regressively and progressively influence the English sounds /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/ and /ð/ and change their quality to the emphatic Arabic sounds) /s/, /t/, /d/, and /ð/).

The Use of Deductive and Inductive Approaches in Teaching Grammar for Afghan University Students of English and Literature Studies

Teaching English language started with using the traditional teaching methods in the educational system of Afghanistan. Teachers preferred such kinds of classical methods for teaching grammar as well. To the knowledge of the researchers, there is a lack of research conducted to indicate whether the two common methods for grammar teaching, i.e. inductive or deductive, are more effective within the Afghan teaching and learning context. The current study has been conducted to find out the effectiveness of using inductive and deductive teaching approaches to teaching English grammar in the Afghan context. Using a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) approach for data collection as well as analysis, the study conducted a questionnaire survey of 218 students and 13 instructors and semi-structured interviews with 4 language instructors from both English Departments of Education & Literature Faculties at a university in Afghanistan. The findings indicate that there is no significant difference of using one approach over another and Afghan students can learn through both deductive and inductive approaches in teaching grammar. However, from the perspective of the teachers, it was found that the teachers generally prefer the deductive method and rarely use the inductive method as they are trained in the classical method of teaching English. The findings of the study will help English grammar teachers to view the importance of using both of the teaching methods in Afghan context in order to make learning grammatical rules and its structures easy for the students to overcome.

Indonesian English University Students’ Perception on Plagiarism in an Online World

Indonesian English University Students’ Perception on Plagiarism in an Online World

Experiences of black and minority ethnic (BME) students in higher education: applying self-determination theory to understand the BME attainment gap

ABSTRACT British university students from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds are less likely to achieve a ‘good’ degree classification than white students, despite taking prior attainment into account. To examine this gap, the current study conducted focus groups with 17 BME students studying health and social care related subjects to understand their experiences of learning and teaching. This was theoretically informed by self-determination theory, which proposes that achieving one’s full potential for learning, alongside experience of wellbeing, is supported by environments that help individuals to meet their needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Thematic analysis revealed that BME students encountered many obstacles that inhibited their experience of fulfilment of these three needs, which often undermined their initial desire to achieve their full potential. The findings are discussed in light of how universities can support BME students to achieve their full potential, and in doing so, address the BME attainment gap.