Receptive Skills Research Articles

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in English language acquisition: a critical literature review

The objective of this study is ‘how effective mobile apps in learning English?’ by exploring the use of mobile apps in English as a Second Language (ESL)/English as a Foreign Language (EFL) acquisition. It examines how employing MALL in learning English can improve students’ receptive skills, productive skills, and other skills by conducting critical literature review to answer the research question. The results showed that employing mobile applications in learning English is effective to develop L2 learners’ English skills and also Mobile apps help L2 learners in learning English both as the second and foreign language. Interestingly, in the situation of the global pandemic which many schools are closed, mobile technology has helped students in learning English skills. It can be suggested that by employing Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in learning English skills plays a crucial role in the situation of the global pandemic of COVID 19 where teachers and students can use mobile apps both in and outside the classroom because it is convenient and user friendly.

The Evaluation of the Secondary-School English Curricula According to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

This study aims to evaluate the extent of the objectives in the Secondary-School English curriculum concerning cognitive levels in Bloom’s taxonomy. This aim underlies the first question of the study. The second and third questions inquire about the comparison among the grades and the homogeneity. Along with the adoption of the qualitative method, document and content analysis were implemented to categorize the objectives. The number of the curriculum objectives was 245 from 5th to 8th graders. Three notable outcomes were reached. First, each grade substantially suggests lower-order thinking skills. Besides, understanding is the surpassing level regardless of the grades. Lastly, receptive skills were dominantly consulted in lower-order thinking levels, while higher-order thinking skills were mainly applied in productive skills. Consequently, the research concludes that the objectives in the curriculum are not sufficient enough in developing higher-order thinking skills of secondary-school students.

Method of introducing difficult professional situations for the development of foreign language communicative competence

The paper considers an important pedagogical problem in the sphere of foreign language teaching, i.e. increasing the level of students communicative competence. Case study is a tool for solving this task. The research aim is to develop a set of communicative cases in English for solving difficult professional situations, the implementation of which will contribute to the development of students communicative competence. The following methods are used in the research: analysis of modern scientific and methodological literature on the problem of research; testing; monitoring the effectiveness of students work when using the developed set of communicative cases; statistical data processing. There were elaborated and tested four cases. The unifying topic of them is Difficult professional situations. The choice of the topic can be explained by a stimulating effect of difficult situations in a persons life. The content of each case embraces both productive and receptive skills. The approbation took place at Chelyabinsk State University within the framework of the discipline Foreign language (Applied Mathematics and Informatics group of specialties, the profile of Information and Management Technologies). The testees are the first-year students. One of the cases is presented here as a sample. A particular attention is paid to the study of the influence of difficult situations on human behavior. The paper contains a description of the stages of work on a case, criteria for the materials of cases, an analysis of the skills and abilities being formed, as well as recommendations for working with them. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the results of the research can make foreign language teaching more effective.

Space tourism: for or against?


 
 
 
 This work presents a group of activities based on the didactic materials dealing with issues related to space exploration in general and space tourism in particular. These activities aimed at developing receptive and productive skills allow students studying French at B2 level to consider a variety of topics (current and emerging environmental problems; the international community’s response to environmental challenges; negative consequences of space conquest), organize active use and efficient acquisition of thematic vocabulary, improve students’ ability to present and argue their own position.
 
 
 

Acquisition Sequences by Students in Essay Writing Classes

English language skills are divided into two big categories, receptive skills, (i.e., listening and reading) and productive skills, i.e., (speaking and writing). Every language skills is connected. This study explore the acquisition of obligatory grammatical elements, those are verb-ing, plural, articles, and subject-verb agreement. It is an exploratory study, it aims at finding to find whether natural acquisition orders in students writing exist or not. According to data from academic affairs In Essay writing class there are 163 students. This research has sixty-three subjects. The technique that is used is obligatory occasion analysis. The result shows that 97% are able to use Verb-ing. Plural form mastery level is 98%, of accuracy. Article is 96, 2 % for accuracy levels. The last, subject verb agreement 94,1%. It may caused by avoiding or errors. The errors caused by overextension of analogy and or developmental. Those errors caused by language gab. It is supported by Nemser (1971) as quoted in Ellis (1986) there is a gap in language knowledge between L1 and L2, the differences in L1 and L2 in language system, and the differences between learners are too wide.

Receptive Vocabulary Acquisition in Pre-Primary Education through Soft-Content and Language Integrated Learning

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become the focus of Foreign Language (FL) research within the last decades. CLIL provides a more complete, naturalistic, and meaningful context to FL learning, which has proven to brings many benefits to learners, such as a higher motivation and promotion of creativity, and better results in receptive skills, vocabulary, morphology and fluency. Nevertheless, most CLIL research has focused on primary and secondary level students and, thus, more research is needed with younger learners, namely, pre-primary students. The present study examines the learning of FL vocabulary in pre-primary learners following a soft-CLIL program, as compared to their same age peers following Formal Instruction (FI) of English. Over the course of six months, pre-primary students of two grades, namely 4- and 5-year-old students (N=155), took part in such program, aiming at teaching two curricular preschool units, traditionally taught in the mother tongue (L1), in English in the FL sessions. A longitudinal study was conducted, and students were administered a general vocabulary level pre-test, as well as a target words receptive vocabulary post-test after the two units had been worked on. The focus of the research was on receptive vocabulary acquisition, but age and word frequency effects were also analyzed. Results showed positive tendencies in receptive vocabulary development through soft-CLIL, although not statistically significant. A significant frequency effect was found, indicating that high-frequency words are recalled more easily than lower-frequency ones, but no significant differences were found when comparing learners from the two grades.

Measuring Receptive ASL Skills in Novice Signers and Nonsigners.

We tested the utility of two standardized measures of receptive skills in American Sign Language (ASL) in hearing adults who are novice signers: the ASL Comprehension Test (ASL-CT; Hauser, P. C., Paludneviciene, R., Riddle, W., Kurz, K. B., Emmorey, K., & Contreras, J. (2016). American Sign Language Comprehension Test: A tool for sign language researchers. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 21(1), 64-69. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/env051) and the ASL Receptive Skills Test (ASL-RST; Allen, T. E., & Enns, C. (2013). A psychometric study of the ASL Receptive Skills Test when administered to deaf 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. Sign Language Studies, 14(1), 58-79. https://doi.org/10.1353/sls.2015.0006; Enns, C. J., & Herman, R. C. (2011). Adapting the Assessing British Sign Language Development: Receptive Skills Test into American Sign Language. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(3), 362-374. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enr004). We also administered these tests to hearing nonsigners, with the goal of identifying items where the correct answer can be readily deduced through iconicity and/or test-taking skills, even by people with no prior ASL knowledge. We predicted that removing such items would strengthen the correlation between test score and ASL experience (as measured by semesters of instruction). We found that this relationship was stronger for the ASL-CT than the ASL-RST in this population, but still weaker than previously reported, and not substantially improved by any item selection strategy that we employed.

Correlation between Pre- and Post-Surgical Findings for Long-Term Neurocognitive and Behaviour Development Due to Posterior Fossa Pilocytic Astrocytomas: The Trend after 10 Years.

Objective: The objective of the present study was to selectively evaluate the long-term impact of posterior fossa pilocytic astrocytomas, which are known to be among the most benign forms of paediatric brain tumours on neurocognitive and behavioural functions. Methods: Children that were operated on for a posterior fossa pilocytic astrocytoma in the Pediatric Neurosurgery Department of the Catholic University Medical School were selected according to the following criteria: (a) age > 5 years (in order to have a complete set of neurocognitive evaluations data), (b) ability to perform a complete set of tests before and after surgery, and (c) children that had a regular follow-up up to 10 years from the surgical treatment. Results: Forty-three percent of the children selected for the present study showed a borderline IQ before surgery, which is a result corresponding to those previously reported in the literature for children affected by posterior fossa pilocytic astrocytomas; praxis and visual perception were the selective functions that were more frequently affected. Language performance tests scores were below average in 40% of the cases but tended to improve in terms of expressive and receptive skills even at the 1-year follow-up; the improvements became significant at the 5-year and 10-year follow-ups. Conclusions: Recognising and measuring the short- and long-term effects of cerebellar tumours in children and their treatment are the first step towards improving their clinical course and quality of life. Early interventions should be offered to all of them, with specific attention bestowed on visual-spatial stimulation, speech and occupational therapies in order to act on praxic and visuo-perceptive skills, as well as on emotion and behaviour tracts of the neurocognitive profile, which more commonly tend to persist in the long term.

Assessing the task based language needs for students of marine engineering

ABSTRACT Assessing language learners’ needs has been abundantly studied by a large number of researchers interested in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Needs Analysis (NA). However, task-based language needs of the students of marine (maritime) engineering have not been well-investigated, to the date. A qualitative research method was used. We collected the data through structured interviews with 20 participants selected through purposive sampling. The findings revealed that 17 tasks are needed by the students of marine engineering at the present situation. Moreover, 24 task-based language needs are mostly done by marine engineering students in the target situation. To conclude, maritime engineering students need to be proficient in receptive and productive language skills to accomplish required tasks in present academic and target situations. ESP educators, university administrators, and the other stakeholders, policymakers and administrators of marine engineering can employ the findings to improve the maritime students and stakeholders’ English proficiency.

Examining the Effectiveness of Folktale in Enhancing Students' Listening Comprehension on Narrative Story

Listening does not receive special attention in teaching and learning processes of English at the Eleventh Grade of MAN 8 Jakarta. This is caused by English teacher's misconception that speaking and writing should be put in the first priority because they are considered as productive skills. Meanwhile, listening is classified into respective skill. In teacher's view, productive skills is often valued batter than receptive skill. Consequently, some students do not have good listening comprehension. In principal, this study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of folktale in enhancing students' listening comprehension on narrative story. Moreover, due to this study utilized experimental method, so two classes were involved. They were XI IPA 1 acted as experimental group and XI IPA II acted as control group. In addition, to obtain valid data, sixty students from both groups were selected randomly to join pre-test and post-test with similar listening test items. The findings of this study showed that the mean score of post-test for experimental group was 80.8 and 68.53 for control group with the degree of freedom (df) was 58. However, the value of t0 (t-count) was 5.96 and the value of tt (t-table) on degree of significance of 5% was 1.67. Having obtained the data, the researcher compared t0 to tt and the result showed that t0 > tt =5.96 > 1.67. It indicates that that H1 or alternative hypothesis was accepted. In other words, This study pointed out that there was significant effect of folktale in enhancing students' listening comprehension on narrative story.

Investigating the Relationship between Iranian EFL Learners’ Self-Esteem and their Receptive Skills across Genders

Investigating the Relationship between Iranian EFL Learners’ Self-Esteem and their Receptive Skills across Genders

The Role of Facebook in Enhancement of Undergraduates’ Receptive Skills at a Saudi University

Observing receptive skills development in Saudi Arabia’s undergraduates at Summer University (pseudonym), this paper immaculately investigates students’ perceptions regarding the uses of Facebook as a well-liked forum of social media pertinent to enhancement of Receptive Skill of English, as a foreign language. At greater extent, their approaches have been scrutinized while using Facebook and the nature of influence of Facebook have been examined as well. Data have been collected from seventy-five undergraduate’s students via questionnaire. In addition, findings put forward that Facebook use is exceedingly effectual in mounting students’ listening and reading skills meticulously of English language. Relevantly, some of the probable threats to students’ proficiency have been pointed out. In fewest possible words, the study lucidly concludes that undergraduates, generally speaking, are positive in relation to the role of Facebook in the development of receptive skills while using Facebook, which not only influencing undergraduates to visualize innovative ideas in visual or video formats but also it inspires to communicate in English language. 

The what – how – why of English in the workplace: perspectives from Turkish engineers

ABSTRACT This research focuses on the role of English for engineers in the workplace in Turkey, with the aim of informing engineering programs to better equip prospective engineers with relevant workplace communication skills. To this end, it identifies how engineers perceive the importance of English, how frequently they use it for different tasks, and whether the perceived role and importance of English varies according to the type of company where engineers work. Findings show that English is perceived as relatively unimportant for daily tasks but more important for recruitment and promotion. Additionally, they highlight the importance of receptive skills in comparison to productive skills. Finally, they suggest that the type of company is significantly related to the status of English and how it is used in the workplace. Findings will contribute to engineering course designers in Turkey through detailed profiling of the role of English as perceived by Turkish engineers.

Listening to Mom in the NICU: effects of increased maternal speech exposure on language outcomes and white matter development in infants born very preterm

BackgroundInfants born very preterm (< 32 weeks gestational age (GA)) are at risk for developmental language delays. Poor language outcomes in children born preterm have been linked to neurobiological factors, including impaired development of the brain’s structural connectivity (white matter), and environmental factors, including decreased exposure to maternal speech in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Interventions that enhance preterm infants’ exposure to maternal speech show promise as potential strategies for improving short-term health outcomes. Intervention studies have yet to establish whether increased exposure to maternal speech in the NICU offers benefits beyond the newborn period for brain and language outcomes.MethodsThis randomized controlled trial assesses the long-term effects of increased maternal speech exposure on structural connectivity at 12 months of age (age adjusted for prematurity (AA)) and language outcomes between 12 and 18 months of age AA. Study participants (N = 42) will include infants born very preterm (24–31 weeks 6/7 days GA). Newborns are randomly assigned to the treatment (n = 21) or standard medical care (n = 21) group. Treatment consists of increased maternal speech exposure, accomplished by playing audio recordings of each baby’s own mother reading a children’s book via an iPod placed in their crib/incubator. Infants in the control group have the identical iPod setup but are not played recordings. The primary outcome will be measures of expressive and receptive language skills, obtained from a parent questionnaire collected at 12–18 months AA. The secondary outcome will be measures of white matter development, including the mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy derived from diffusion magnetic resonance imaging scans performed at around 36 weeks postmenstrual age during the infants’ routine brain imaging session before hospital discharge and 12 months AA.DiscussionThe proposed study is expected to establish the potential impact of increased maternal speech exposure on long-term language outcomes and white matter development in infants born very preterm. If successful, the findings of this study may help to guide NICU clinical practice for promoting language and brain development. This clinical trial has the potential to advance theoretical understanding of how early language exposure directly changes brain structure for later language learning.Trial registrationNIH Clinical Trials (ClinicalTrials.gov) NCT04193579. Retrospectively registered on 10 December 2019.

IMPROVING LISTENER RESPONDING SKILL USING BEE-BOT® IN AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER: CASE STUDY

Children with autism spectrum disorder may have a variety of communication deficits. Their communication difficulties include language delay, limited vocabulary, inability to speak words, echolalia or repetitive use of phonemes, words, or phrases, absence of eye-contact during communication, and poor non-verbal communication skills. Moreover, some of them are nonverbal so they have to learn how to communicate by using alternative and augmentative communication techniques. Some children on the spectrum in order to improve their receptive and expressive communication skills need to work on a highly structured therapeutic environment and others need to work on a natural environment. Educational robotics can be a successful tool for children on the spectrum in order to improve communicational skills. The main goal of this study is to implement Bee-Bot® robotic toy as a supportive tool for a child with autism in order to improve his listener responding skill across actions. The results showed that during speech and Applied Behavior Analysis intervention, the child improved his receptive skill in a more funny and educational way. Researchers identified that by using Bee-Bot®, the participant communicated intensively and participated to the activity more enthusiastically than using the traditional method of teaching at the table. Nevertheless, researchers should implement generalization and maintenance procedures to ensure that the participant will be able to apply the learned behavior and skill outside of the learning environment and continue to practice the acquired skill over time.&#x0D; &#x0D; &lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt; Article visualizations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0781/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Use of Task-Based Activities in Improving Active Listening Comprehension Skills of Grade 8 ESL Students

Listening is a core receptive skill that facilitates language acquisition and proficiency, yet it is often neglected in the teaching and learning process. This research was conducted to investigate if there was any significant difference in the participants’ active listening comprehension skills before and after the implementation of the task-based activities anchored on the social learning theory. To achieve the research objectives, thirty 32 participants, 17 males, and 15 females were selected to participate and take the pre-and post-tests for Grades 9-10 adapted from the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). Surveys, focus group discussions, and interviews were also conducted to identify and monitor any improvement in the participants’ active listening comprehension competencies. The quantitative results and analysis showed no significant difference in the pre-and post-tests. However, other findings indicate an important improvement in the participant’s behaviour as manifested in the FGD and interviews. This further implies that effective implementation of the SLT through TBAs could help language learners improve their active listening comprehension skills. English teachers may consider integrating real-life contexts in their classroom tasks to intensify dynamic and collaborative interactions using language-based instructions.

Audio Speed Changer Application: Advancing Students’ Listening Comprehension

As a receptive skill, listening is very influential for students' language development. Unfortunately, it often becomes the most challenging skill in learning a foreign language for students. One of the obstacles experienced by students of the English Study Program of STAIN Majene is the speed of spoken native language. This research aims to advance students' listening comprehension by using Audio Speed Changer (ASC). This research applied classroom action research of Kammis and Taggart model. It used four phases, namely planning, implementation, observation, and reflection. There were three instruments used in this research, namely listening test, observation sheet, and interview. The test was used to measure students' achievement. An observation sheet was used to identify speed development. An interview was used to gain information about students' responses to ASC application. There were two cycles in this research. The success of a cycle was determined by using two criteria as follow: (1) students' mean score had to be higher than 75 points in the last phase of a cycle; (2) there should be at least 80% of students who got at least 75 points for their final scores. This research found that students' scores dominated the poor category in the first cycle, but it reduced 35.32 points of its percentage in the second cycle. Students' scores in the second cycle dominated enough categories. ASC application was able to overcome one of the students' problems in listening comprehension.

Heritage languages and the ʻmultilingual boostʼ: intercomprehension skills of Russian and Polish heritage speakers in Germany

Abstract The article focuses on whether and to which extent heritage bilinguals make use of their heritage language while developing receptive skills in unknown languages which are either related to the majority language or the heritage language. Thirty four adolescent heritage speakers of Russian and Polish and a control group of thirty three German monolinguals were first exposed to a text in Swedish. The monolingual control group was matched with regard to age, educational background, foreign languages learned at school as well as proficiency in English. All participants had to determine the parts of speech of ten items from the text, translate them into German, and extract the main pieces of information from the text. In a second step, the heritage speakers completed a similar task with an unknown Slavic target language (Serbian). The results revealed no bilingual advantage of the heritage speakers over the monolinguals in the Swedish task. Furthermore, they scored lower in the Serbian trial. We treat this as evidence that access to the heritage language as a resource for solving these tasks is limited compared to the majority language and English which might be due to lesser metalinguistic knowledge about structures of the heritage language.

İNGİLİZCE ÖĞRENEN TÜRK ÜNİVERSİTE ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN DİNLEME BECERİSİ STRATEJİLERİ

Listening has been defined as a receptive skill so far, but seeing that English language learners in Turkey expend considerable effort to understand listening texts, it may be misleading to view listening as passive on part of learners. By means of using listening strategies, it may become an active skill in which learners orchestrate several cognitive processes. Therefore, this study was carried out to look into Turkish students’ use of listening strategies at the preparatory school of a public university in Turkey. With this purpose in mind, The Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (Goh, 2008; Vandergrift et al., 2006) and retrospective accounts were used to collect data from intermediate-level students. The results indicate that out of four subcategories of listening strategies, learners appeared to prefer two of them, namely directed attention and mental translation more than planning-evaluation and problem solving strategies. In addition, they were found to have more difficulty in answering implicit listening questions and verbalizing how they answered them than explicit listening questions. Possible reasons behind these findings might be lack of systematic strategy training for both teachers and learners and backwash effects of listening tests in Turkey. Therefore, familiarizing teachers and learners with listening strategies and improving listening tasks and tests are suggested.

Associations Between Social Skills, Inattention, and English Vocabulary Skills of Preschool Latinx Dual Language Learners

ABSTRACT It is well documented that early social skills and inattention are linked to the development of children’s emergent vocabulary skills; however, the existing literature primarily focuses on White, non-Latinx and/or African American children. Few studies have examined the relationships between these domains with Latinx dual language learners (DLLs) in preschool. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap by examining the association between social skills, inattention, and emergent English vocabulary skills in this understudied population. A secondary analysis of an existing data set investigating the effects of a shared book reading intervention on 274 preschool Latinx DLLs was used. Multilevel analyses indicated that children with higher English receptive vocabulary skills at the beginning of preschool had higher overall social skills and fewer inattention problems midway through preschool. Results also showed that children with higher overall mid-year social skills had higher expressive vocabulary skills at the end of preschool, and children with fewer mid-year inattention problems had higher receptive and expressive vocabulary skills at the end of preschool. These findings suggest that targeting emergent English vocabulary, social skills, and inattentive behaviors is important for academic and social development among preschool Latinx DLLs.