High Proficiency Students Research Articles

The The Realization of Communication Strategies in Teacher – Student Interactions in Tunas Harum Bangsa Trilingual National School

Recently, the need to communicate has been a major concern by many experts. Learners tend to do better in written test than spoken one. It raises the awareness that students deem speaking as the most difficult task to do in learning a language. It may lead to the vast assumption that communicating in L2 is impossible to do. However, experts find that Communication Strategies (CSs) may become the solution. To fill in the gaps in using a language, learners may use CSs. This study aimed to see the most frequently used CSs by young learners. There were 16 Primary School Students who were divided into two categories based on their proficiency levels: High Proficient (HP) and Low Proficient (LP) Students. The data were gathered from the observation of the usage of CSs in real classroom settings and the result of the interview. The result revealed that HP Students tended to use more CSs than LP Students. Then, the students tended to use more Direct Strategies rather than Indirect and Interactional Strategies. Thus, it can be stated that certain kinds of CSs were more familiar for the students to use and may help them to overcome language problem in communicating using L2.

The influence of proficiency level on the use and choice of L1/L2 communication strategies used by Iraqi EFL students

<span>This study aimed at investigating the influence of language proficiency level on the frequency of the use and choice of L1/L2 communication strategies used by Iraqi EFL students. This study was qualitative in nature. The interactive task and speaking task were used to gather data regarding communication strategy use and choice from<em> </em>52 second and third year English major students. Those participants were divided into two groups; low and high proficient students (n=27 low proficient students and n=25 high proficient students). A taxonomy of communication strategies was adopted to code the communication strategies used by low and high proficient Iraqi EFL students. The results revealed that low proficient students use communication strategies more frequently than high proficient students. Both low and high proficient students used communication strategies other than those included in selected taxonomy. This study showed that low proficient students use L1-based strategies more frequently, while high proficient students use L2-based strategies more frequently.</span>

Sociocultural-Interactive Learning Strategies Employed by Students of Social Science and Engineering Studies

This study aims to find how frequently employed are Sociocultural-Interactive (SCI) learning strategies by high-proficiency students of English for Academic Purpose at Petra Christian University in Surabaya, Indonesia. The study’s theoretical framework is from Oxford’s (2011) S2R Model. To know the employment frequency of the strategies, questionnaire was distributed to 33 students classified as high-proficiency students. These students were divided into two groups based on the fields of study: social science and engineering. Descriptive statistics was used to see which strategy is more frequently used. Furthermore, to see if there is a significant statistical difference between the two groups, Independent T Test was conducted. The findings suggested that although, in general, social science students used SCI strategies more frequently, there was no significant statistical difference between the two groups regarding their employment of the strategies. Additionally, the findings revealed the SCI strategies have not been maximally used in learning English. Keywords: learning strategies, sociocultural-interactive, high-proficiency, fields of study

Exploring Task-Based Class Using a Textbook for the High Proficiency Students in the Third Graders of Junior High School Students Through a Practitioner Research

Exploring Task-Based Class Using a Textbook for the High Proficiency Students in the Third Graders of Junior High School Students Through a Practitioner Research

STUDENTS’ READING STRATEGIES IN COMPREHENDING ACADEMIC READING: A CASE STUDY IN AN INDONESIAN PRIVATE COLLAGE

This study was intended to find out the certain strategies which were used by low level and high level English proficiency students in comprehending academic reading and the aspects which influence students’ reading comprehension. The methods of the research used a qualitative approach based on the theory of case study. The data were collected by using interviews, documentary studies and questionnaire. The data were analyzed using data reduction, data display and conclusion drawing. The results of this study showed different strategies using between low and high proficiency students. Moreover, the result also showed that there are five aspects which influence students’ reading comprehension such as, motivation, linguistics competence, interest, characteristic of the text and the last is environment role. 
 Key words: Reading strategies, comprehension and academic reading

Willingness to Communicate among Thai EFL Students : Does English Proficiency Matter?

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is a key concept in English language learning and communication. The literature has shown that WTC in a non-native English speaking environment is influenced by a multiplicity of factors, one of which is English proficiency. However, findings on its effect on WTC have been inconclusive. Therefore, this study investigated whether there was a statistically significant difference in WTC levels among students with different English proficiency levels and the ability of proficiency to predict WTC. The participants were 375 twelfth-grade Thai EFL students from two Southern Thailand government secondary schools. They responded to an adapted WTC scale which had been translated into the Thai language. The one-way ANOVA followed by a Tukey HSD test were used to analyse significant differences, while a simple linear regression assessed the ability of proficiency to predict WTC inside and outside the classroom. The results revealed that there were statistically significant differences in WTC between low, moderate and high proficiency students. It was also found that English proficiency could predict students’ WTC inside and outside the English classroom, but it only accounted for a small percentage of the variance. Findings of the study have implications for English language teaching and WTC research.

Reading Metacognitive Strategies Employed by ESL Learners

This study aims to investigate the relationship between the metacognitive reading strategies employed by the ESL learners in a secondary school in Malaysia and their English proficiency. The objective of this study is to identify the types of metacognitive strategies employed by students while reading academic text. In addition, this study also aims to investigate the differences (if any) in metacognitive strategies employed by the high and low English proficiency students while reading academic text. The respondents of this research are forty students with high and low English proficiency and were selected randomly. This study is using the quantitative research method where questionnaire is used to obtain the data. Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) was used as the measuring tools to identify the metacognitive reading strategies employed by the students. The result of this study shows that the students employed the three metacognitive strategies which are Global Reading Strategies (GLOB), Supporting Reading Strategies (SUP) and Problem-Solving Reading Strategies (PROB). In addition, the mostly employed metacognitive reading strategy was Global Reading Strategies (GLOB), followed by Supporting Reading Strategies (SUP) and Problem-Solving Reading Strategies (PROB). As a conclusion, metacognitive reading strategies can be implemented by secondary school English language teachers in their teaching as it beneficial in helping learners’ comprehension.

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN ESP STUDENTS’ PRESENTATION ACROSS PROFICIENCY LEVELS

This study analyzes the grammatical errors across proficiency levels. The samples were collected from the second semester of Agriculture students’ oral presentation in ESP class. They were grouped into high and low proficient students by using TOEFL test. The errors in their speech were classified by using surface structure taxonomy namely misformation, misorder, addition, omission, blends, and miscellaneous. Findings indicate that misformation is the dominant error produced by both levels of proficiency. It is followed by omission, addition, miscellaneous, misorder, and blends.

Willingness to Communicate from Indonesian Learners’ Perspective

The present study is aimed at investigating dynamic complex systems and sub-systems underlying students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in the classroom context. The fact that students’ reticence still arises during the classroom discussion until to date. It is insufficient to see students’ willingness to communicate from a single perspective. Seen from dynamic complex theory, the present study postulates the systems and sub-systems underlying students’ willingness to communicate in L2 that are dynamic and interconnected one to another. I conducted a naturalistic inquiry by investigating eight Indonesian university students (4 low English proficiency students and 4 high English proficiency students). A number of research instruments (face to face interview, online interview, and students’ log) were used to collect the data with regard to the students’ participation in the classroom. The finding reveals that classroom systems such as social and classroom context, linguistic competence, individual differences, and cultural context affect participants’ WTC in L2. Those systems encompass some sub-systems interacting and interconnecting one to another that affect classroom communication in second language.

An Investigation into Senior High School Students’ Psychological Quality and Its Relationship with Their English Performance

The psychological quality is a stable, basic and derivative psychological character, and is a dynamic organization composed of four subs - systems of cognition, personality psychology, mental health and social adaptation. Foreign and domestic scholars have done plenty of researches on the relationship between the academic performance and several main sub-dimensions of psychological quality such as responsibility, methods, initiative and confidence. Based on the previous studies, the study aims to investigate the general situation of senior high school students’ psychological quality; How does English performance correlate with psychological quality and its eleven dimensions; What is the difference between high-proficient English learners and the low-proficient English learners in terms of the psychological quality and its eleven dimensions? The results show that the middle high school students have a relatively positive psychological quality; there is a positive and strong correlation between psychological quality and English performance. As for its eleven dimensions, the results show that there is a positively and strongly correlation between English performance and initiative, self-confidence, responsibility, self-control, methods, independence and persistence. There is a correlation between English performance and monitoring, frustration endurance and independence, which is not as strong as the above dimensions. And there is no correlation between English performance and thinking ability and innovation; there exist significantly difference between high-proficient and low-proficient English students in psychological quality, initiative, self-confidence, responsibility, self-control, methods, persistence, monitoring and frustration endurance. However，no difference has been found between high-proficient and low-proficient English students in independence, thinking ability and innovation.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES OF HIGH PROFICIENCY STUDENTS IN THEIR ORAL PRESENTATION AT ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION OF PGRI RONGGOLAWE UNIVERSITY TUBAN

This study is intended to describe 1) the language learning strategies used by male and female students with high speaking performance in their oral presentation and 2) their reasons of using certain language learning strategies. This study used descriptive qualitative method. The subject of the study were ten high proficiency students consisting of four male students and six female students . Q uestionnaire and interview were used to collect the data. The data from the questionnaire and the interview were analyzed descriptively. The result indicated that all of the students from high proficiency level used all learning strategies, including memory strategy, cognitive strategy, compensation strategy, metacognitive strategy, affective strategy, and social strategy . The students were categorized as medium user s of language learning strategy. High proficiency male students used compensation strategy (3.85) the most frequent ly, followed by meta-cognitive strategy (3.63) and social strategy (3.37). Meanwhile, high proficiency female students used c ognitive strategy (4.02) the most frequent ly, followed by compensation strategy (3.77) and metacognitive strategy (3.72). Both male and female students had some different and similar reasons of using certain language learning strategies for their oral presentation task.

A Case Study Inquiry into the Efficacy of Four East Asian EAP Writing Programmes: Presenting the Emergent Themes

Within English for Academic Purposes (EAP), writing instruction has often been of primary interest with a focus on curricula design and implementation. This especially holds true in East Asia where many universities operate EAP writing programmes. This study is located within this region, taking an inquiry stance in a small-scale case study of four EAP writing programmes. Through practitioner-as-researcher reflections and triangulating interviews from fellow colleagues within this professional context, we add to this discussion by uncovering three interrelated and hierarchical themes that have emerged from our data. At the university and inter-department organizational level, our data points to the need for universities housing these programmes to create a culture of collaboration where relevant academic expertise can directly inform the classroom (EAP writing) instruction. At the departmental level, our data suggests that standardization, especially in relation to intra-department testing, assignments, etc. is beneficial. Finally, at the classroom level, we posit, through the observations in the inquiry, that certain teaching methods are associated with different levels of proficiency. Teacher-led frameworks are more observed and suitable among lower proficiency language learners. Conversely, higher proficiency students expect and are better served by task-based or student-led approaches.

A dynamic systems approach to wait time in the second language classroom

This study discusses how wait time—the silent pause after a teacher elicits a student response—alters classroom discourse. Previous wait time research suggests overall positive changes in both teacher and student discourse where wait time is over 1 s. However, such studies are primarily structuralist in nature and tend to reduce the intricacy of classroom behavior to distinct variables, which can be easily altered to achieve a desired result. The data presented here comes from a series of structured observations of a UK university postgraduate L2 classroom. The findings were as follows: 1) Wait time played an intricate role in determining classroom discourse patterns and heavily favored an IRF turn-taking sequence; 2) student-initiated discourse was low in all observations and favored higher proficiency students; 3) the length of individual student-initiated turns appears to have been more important than the overall number of student-initiated turns in determining the quality of classroom discourse and was not directly related to changes in wait time length; 4) extended wait time (over 2 s in length) temporarily shifted discourse out of an IRF pattern and into a new, more student-driven phase. While previously thought of as only a pedagogical tool to increase student speech, wait time is shown to be a phenomenon which develops and changes with the composite forces that affect other aspects of classroom discourse.

He Effect of Gender and Proficiency Level on Writing Strategy Use among Iraqi High School Students

This study aims to: 1) explore the extent Iraqi high school students’ use of writing strategies; 2) identify the contribution of proficiency level to writing strategy use; and 3) compare male and female students’ writing strategy use. This study employed a quantitative approach, whereby a total of 132 high school students were randomly selected from the Karkh’s district of Baghdad to constitute the sample of the study. A 30-item 3-point Likert scale questionnaire on writing strategy use that was adapted from Petric&Czarl’s (2003) writing strategy questionnaire served as the instrument of the study. The results of the study reveal that the frequency of strategy use was low among the participants. In addition, no significant difference was found between high and low proficiency students’ strategy use. Finally, it was found that there is significant difference between female and male students’ strategy use. Female students were found to use writing strategies more than males. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings.

Can Topic Familiarity Override Language Proficiency in Reading Comprehension?

The present study investigated the impact of topical knowledge and language proficiency on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. The Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used at the beginning of the study to divide the students into two groups of low and high proficiency. Both the high and low proficiency students later read two texts of almost the same level of difficulty but different in terms of their familiarity to the students. The obtained results indicated that topic familiarity cannot override language proficiency in reading comprehension; that is, low-proficiency students could not catch up with high-proficiency students even in familiar topics.

English

This research examined how Thai undergraduates acquired English marked and unmarked fricatives in their interlanguage. It also determined what sounds the learners used to replace some fricatives and how variable they were. Based on the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH), unmarked fricatives are /s/ and /f/, and marked ones are /ʃ/, /v/, /z/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ʒ/. The former are considered unmarked because they are available in Thai, whereas the latter are not. The participants included three groups: high, intermediate, and low proficiency students who were studied through three types of tasks: word list, sentence list, and oral interview. The word and sentence lists required the learners to produce the target fricatives in a formal situation, while the oral interview in a natural context. The results demonstrated that marked fricatives /v/, /z/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ʒ/ were difficult for the participants. Only the advanced informants could acquire unmarked /s/ and /f/ as well as marked /ʃ/ both initially and finally. According to the MDH, the learners produced /s/, /f/, and /ʃ/ before marked /v/, /z/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ʒ/. They also appeared to produce various substitutions for the problematic sounds. Plausible explanations to account for the Thai learners’ difficulty of English fricatives involve the first language (L1) transfer, distribution of a particular sound, voicing, systematic variability, and design of a task. In pronunciation classes, teachers or educators may design tasks appropriate for their learners and employ strategies that suit their learning style preferences. Keywords: English fricatives; interlanguage; L2 phonology; markedness; variability DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2017-2301-02

Strategies and Difficulties of Understanding English Idioms: A Case Study of Saudi University EFL Students

This study aims to investigate difficulties face Saudi EFL students in learning and understanding English idioms, and examines the strategies they utilize to understand idioms. The subjects were 85 male and female Saudi English major university students at the Department of English in Aljouf University. Two data collection instruments, questionnaire, semi-structured interview were employed as well as the Nation’s Vocabulary Level Test to measure the students’ language proficiency level. The results showed that students have difficulty to understand idiomatic expressions. Moreover, the findings revealed that most frequently used strategies were guessing the meaning of idioms from context, predicting the meaning of idioms, and figuring out an idiom from an equivalent one in their mother language. Furthermore, the results illustrated that low-proficiency students face more difficulties than high-proficiency students, though the differences were not significant. The results also showed that, the greater the vocabulary knowledge, the greater the use of idiom-learning strategies, especially for idioms that require a wider knowledge in vocabulary. This study concludes with teaching implications and recommendation for further research in learning and understanding idiomatic expressions.

The Effect of Gender and Proficiency Level on Writing Strategy Use Among Iraqi High School Students

This study aims to: 1) explore the extent Iraqi high school students’ use of writing strategies; 2) identify the contribution of proficiency level to writing strategy use; and 3) compare male and female students’ writing strategy use. This study employed a quantitative approach, whereby a total of 132 high school students were randomly selected from the Karkh’s district of Baghdad to constitute the sample of the study. A 30-item 3-point Likert scale questionnaire on writing strategy use that was adapted from Petric&Czarl’s (2003) writing strategy questionnaire served as the instrument of the study. The results of the study reveal that the frequency of strategy use was low among the participants. In addition, no significant difference was found between high and low proficiency students’ strategy use. Finally, it was found that there is significant difference between female and male students’ strategy use. Female students were found to use writing strategies more than males. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings.

Relationship between learners' attention and perception training effects of a foreign language: Based on questionnaire study to young learners

Many previous practices studied learners' attitude in the field of the second language (L2) research. They observed the effectiveness of the improvement of learners' motivation or instruction for enhancing learners' self-efficacy. From the author's series of the preceding training research targeting at over one thousand young students who utilized self-study-typed computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system, the author has found that the continuous perceptual training be important in order to maintain the ability. This paper focused on the Japanese-speaking young learner's attitude and its progress towards L2 speech perception training mainly based on the questionnaire response after longitudinal training period using CALL materials. The result showed that the accuracy rates for phoneme and rhythm perception tasks improved; that tendency was observed slightly strong on the students who were interested in “phoneme discrimination” or “conversation” from the questionnaire response. It was also demonstrated that higher proficiency students showed interest in broader perspective like “conversation,” while lower students in rather narrower like “discrimination,” or “sound.” These results suggest that learners who got attention toward phoneme might improve their perception, however, to promote their proficiency, they need some instruction to have attention to wider perspective of speech. [Work supported by JSPS 26780498.]

Linguistic Discrimination in an English Language Teaching Program: Voices of the Invisible Others

This descriptive research provides insight into how linguistic discrimination in fluences students’ academic performance in the English teaching program at Fundacion Universitaria Luis Amigo in Medellin. Five groups were observed on four different occasions to accomplish the purpose of the study. Four professors and twelve students were interviewed to find out what attitudes and beliefs emerged inside the classroom. The analysis of data showed that standard language, native-speaker idealization, pressure from the professor, disesteem of one’s own language-level, and discriminatory attitudes affected students’ performance in aspects such as socio-affective factors, fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension, devaluation of students’ language variation, academic performance homogenization, mother-tongue restriction, extra visibility of high-proficiency students, discriminatory jokes, linguistic segregation, difficulty in interaction, and self-isolation. This study concluded that academic performance is affected by all types of discriminating attitudes, either in professors or classmates. Discriminato ry attitudes trigger responses such as fear, segregation, anxiety, and apprehension, among others, thereby restraining and limiting class participation, quality of interaction, new concept and knowledge appropriation, motivation towards language, and course contents.