Context-based Strategy Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF CONTEXT ON EFL LEARNERS’ VOCABULARY RETENTION

Vocabulary is believed to be stored in memory through phonological and semantic routes (Papagno, Valentine & Baddeley, 1991). As such, learners can encode words by repetition or by inferring their meaning in a context. However, the effectiveness of the two techniques for learning vocabulary, namely rote rehearsal and context-based strategy, in acquiring foreign language vocabulary has been controversial and hence has encouraged more empirical evidence. This study was conducted to investigate which of these two techniques had the greater impact on students’ vocabulary retention. The results revealed that the vocabulary retention of learners in the context-based strategy outperformed those in the rote group at both test intervals. Although the differences between the two groups in the delayed test failed to reach significance, their outstanding results in the immediate test were much more striking. The findings, therefore, suggested that context was more favorable for achieving word meanings than rote rehearsal in general.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0932/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Introducing Food Sustainability in Formal Education: A Teaching-Learning Sequence Contextualized in the Garden for Secondary School Students

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of a garden-based teaching unit about “Food and Nutrition” on students’ knowledge and habits of sustainable healthy diets, and to compare it with that of a more traditional unit from a textbook. This communication is framed in a research project (EDUCYL2020-01 “Sembrando interés, cosechando competencia”, financed by the Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León through the Dirección General de Innovación y Formación del Profesorado (ORDEN EDU/262/2020, de 9 de marzo, por la que se convoca la selección de proyectos de investigación educativa a desarrollar por equipos de profesores y equipos de inspectores que presten servicios educativos de la Comunidad de Castilla y León durante los cursos 2020/2021)) whose aim is to improve science education by approaching scientific topics of the official curriculum from a context-based strategy. The authors first designed a teaching-learning sequence, using an organic learning garden as a context, including real-life activities to promote reflection and debate among students. Such a sequence was implemented in a group of 40 students at the third course of Spanish compulsory secondary education, whose results were compared with those of a group of 15 students who followed the textbook. The impact was assessed by posing four open questions to students from the two groups, both at the beginning and the end of the instruction, whose answers were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that implementing the sequence constituted an educational improvement with respect to traditional teaching, since students’ answers on the topic were overall more comprehensive and evidenced better preparation for making real-life decisions. Students from the experimental group became more aware of the environmental impacts of human nutrition, and of sustainable healthy diets. It was also indicated that the health and nutrition-centered approach that still predominates in education needs to be overcome, and a sustainable approach needs to be taken. This is a novel study that leads a new line of research devoted to addressing education about sustainable food, which arises from the demands of raising awareness among citizens toward changing diets within the transition toward sustainable food systems.

Effectiveness of Context-Based Strategy for English Learning among Chinese Middle School Students

Currently, a growing number of educators are aware of the need to look for new approaches to replace the “spoon-feeding” method. Therefore, the context-based strategy began to emerge. This study aims to investigate how students derive information through contextual clues by examining the progress of Chinese middle school EFL students in terms of word recognition. The participants of this study included 20 eighth grade students from the same middle school. The participants sat for two different quizzes: a contextual vocabulary quiz (quiz A) and a direct instruction quiz (quiz B). In quiz A, the participants inferred the meaning of the target words from the example sentences, whereas in quiz B, the students utilized the accompanying English explanation to guess other new words. These students were in the experimental and control conditions, respectively. The two quizzes comprised of 15 multiple choice questions (MCQ) which differentiated the participants’ word recognition response to two different learning methods. There were two significant findings from this study. First, the results showed that the context-based strategy leads to a better vocabulary learning performance compared to the direct instruction strategy. Second, although it is not as effective as the context-based strategy, the direct instruction strategy may assist EFL learners in remembering words in short term.

Automatic patch generation with context-based change application

Automatic patch generation is often described as a search problem of patch candidate space, and it has two major issues: one is search space size, and the other is navigation. An effective patch generation technique should have a large search space with a high probability that patches for bugs are included, and it also needs to locate such patches effectively. We introduce ConFix, an automatic patch generation technique using context-based change application. ConFix collects abstract AST changes from human-written patches with their AST contexts to provide abundant resources for patch generation. These collected changes are only applied to possible fix locations with the same contexts for patch generation. By considering changes with a matching context only, ConFix selects a necessary change for a possible fix location more effectively than considering all the collected changes. Also, ConFix filters out fix locations with no collected changes in the same context, which means that such locations have not been modified in human-written patches, hence they are not desirable for modifications. We evaluated ConFix with 357 real bugs from Defects4j dataset. ConFix successfully fixed 22 bugs including six bugs which were not fixed by compared existing techniques. With context-based strategy, ConFix checked on average 48% less fix locations than a strategy using only a spectrum-based fault localization technique until patches were generated. Also, it ranked changes required for patches at the top for 63.6%, and within top-3 for 81.8% of the fixed bugs.

The effect of using context- based learning strategy REACT on developing secondary stage students’ achievement in grammar, motivation and the transfer of learning on their oral performance

The current study aimed to determine the effect of using context- based strategy REACT on developing secondary stage students’ achievement in grammar, motivation and the transfer of learning on their oral performance. The grammar lessons in the first secondary grade students’ textbook for the first term were used, the teacher’s guide and the student’s worksheet were prepared. A grammar achievement test, a motivation questionnaire and an oral performance test were prepared as well. The study had two groups: one experimental group and one control group (first secondary grade students). The tools of the study were pre administrated to both the experimental group and control group. The prepared grammar lessons were introduced according to the steps of the context-based strategy REACT. The tools were post administered to the experimental group and the control group. The obtained data from the pre and post administration of the tools were analyzed. The statistical analysis of the data showed a large effect of the context- based strategy (REACT) on developing secondary stage students’ achievement in grammar, motivation and a positive transfer of learning on the oral performance of the experimental group students

Context – Based Teaching Strategy (CBTS) for Effective Learning of Simple Alternating Current (A.C.) Circuits in Senior Secondary School Physics

The paper investigates the context-based strategy of teaching Senior Secondary School Alternating Currents (A.C) Circuits in Physics. A quasi-experimental design was adopted for the study of 450 SSS II Physics students (250 males and 190 females) drawn from 10 out of 85 secondary schools in Ikot Ekpene Education Zone. Three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 levels of significance. Simple Alternating Current Circuits in Physics Achievement Tests (SACPATs) was employed in the data collection. The instrument was validated (reliability coefficient=0.56) and administered both as pre- and post- tests. The data were statistically analyzed. Results were that context-based teaching strategy was significantly better than the expository method in enhancing students’ transfer of learning in simple alternating current (A.C) circuits in Physics with respect to gender and school location. Recommendation made, among others, was that context-based teaching strategy be adopted in teaching and learning of Physics concepts in Nigerian schools. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n8p55

A Context-Based Strategy for Teaching Vocabulary

Students in Deanna L. Nelson’s high school classroom study vocabulary gradually over a period of time. Students begin by collecting words from readings and listing them on a designated whiteboard. They prepare practice quizzes to exchange with peers and engage in frequent vocabulary discussions that emphasize recognition of context clues and other language decoding strategies.