Self-access Materials Research Articles

The Need for Optionality and Learning Guidance in Self-Access Audiovisual Language Learning Material

This research set out to evaluate video material contained within the English learning coursebook English M1 which was designed for self-access use. English M1 is a Brazilian government-sponsored piece of material available for free. It is the first stage of a course that learners would complete independently, unmediated by a teacher. The audiovisual material included a short narrative and two aspects of this were chosen for evaluation: the learners’ perception of the language learning affordances of the episodes and how the story appealed to their interest. There is little research carried out on the post use of materials which draws on learners’ reports about how they engaged with self-access material. Retrospective evaluations, however, can generate relevant and learner-based criteria for future materials design. This research used semi-structured interviews to gather data about how the learners engaged with the videos, their reasons for doing things in the way they did and their opinion about the plot. Key findings included that self-access materials must provide learners with guidance concerning the affordances of the material and how it could be used as well as optionality in what is delivered for increased chances of relevance and engagement. The article ends with recommendations for the design of video material in self-access materials.

The Impact of Student-Paced Pragmatics Instruction through Nearpod on EFL Learners’ Request Performance

Although the use of technology for pragmatics instruction has attracted significant attention from scholars, the number of studies regarding the impact of self-access materials to this end is limited. Nearpod is a useful cloud-based application to support self-paced learning. This paper aims to probe the effect of learning through Nearpod on EFL learners’ request performance. Researchers designed seven self-access courses to teach requests. The data was collected from 11 EFL learners through Online Oral Discourse Completion Tasks before and after the treatment. The post-test results revealed that the participants significantly improved their request performance after the treatment. The learners’ responses in the pre-test and the post-test were also qualitatively analyzed for an in-depth investigation of the changes in their requesting behavior. The findings revealed that the learners stopped modality generalization and started using a variety of modal verbs according to the context of situation after the treatment. Additionally, it was indicated that self-paced pragmatics instruction helped learners overcome the pragmatic failures regarding the main verb use in request head acts. Furthermore, the differences regarding the learners’ use of internal and external modifiers were also documented. After the treatment, they performed various internal modifiers that were either absent or uncommon in the pre-test data. Alerters and grounders were found to be the most frequent external modifiers in both the pre-test and the post-test data set. In summary, the results indicated that self-paced learning helped learners improve strategies for performing appropriate requests.

EFL Teachers’ Perceptions on Learner Autonomy in Online Instruction during the Lockdown Period

Teaching English has been one of the subjects deeply affected by the lockdown and physical isolation period caused by COVID-19, and schools around the world had to switch to online instruction at short notice. Students engaged in this distance learning process with different autonomy levels; some adapted to the new learning system easily, while others felt lost and depended solely on what the teachers said. This descriptive study aims to discover the perception of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers on learner autonomy levels of Turkish EFL learners during online instruction throughout the lockdown period; what the biggest barriers that blocked their students’ autonomous study habits were; and what strategies teachers/ instructors followed to enhance the students’ autonomy levels. In order to analyse the data collected through an online questionnaire from 66 teacher participants, a descriptive study design with a mixed method approach was adopted. Correlational analysis was performed on the quantitative data, and qualitative data was open coded with content analysis. Findings showed that Turkish EFL learners were perceived to be autonomous at a rate of 55% by their teachers during the online instruction period, and self-access materials, technology, motivation, and the affective factors played a significant role in the development, degree, and perception of autonomy in online learning.

Arriving at a Model for Self-access Materials Incorporating Features of Learner Autonomy, Selfdirected Learning and Individualized Instruction

Self-access, autonomous learning, self-direction and individualised instruction are some of the closely related terms that are found in abundance in the literature of learner autonomy and self access. As an extension of our earlier work on selfdirected learning and autonomous learning which attempted to establish the differences between these terms, this article aims at extracting the essence of self-access as a model of instruction, which can be used a framework for instructional materials.

Augmented Reality and Crowdsourced Feedback to Help Learners Navigate Self-Access Materials

Learning is a life-long activity which neither begins nor ends with a learner’s time in formal educational environments. Many learners, however, have difficulty efficiently managing their own learning processes, and this includes knowledgeably selecting effective learning materials, particularly in skill-focused areas such as within language learning. Increasingly, self-access centers and other non-traditional learning environments act as a bridge between formal education and opportunities for life-long learning. This paper details a mobile app called Peer Scan, including what it is, these needs it was developed to address, decisions in the development process, and how it can be used by learners in self-access learning environments to help them select appropriate learning materials. The design and development of the app is meant to alleviate some of the difficulties faced by students in self-access centers in Japan in selecting effective materials. The ongoing design seeks to eliminate friction and barriers to use to support uptake, harnessing augmented reality object recognition technology to do so. Peer Scan is designed to allow learners to both see peer assessments of materials as an immediate means of support, and also to implicitly develop useful inner criteria for material selection that can aid them later as life-long learners.

The impact of Cooperative Listening Materials Adaptation on Listening Comprehension Performance of Iranian EFL Learners

Listening comprehension has gained more prominence in EFL/ESL classes. Due to this prominence, scholars have tried to shed light on different ways of improving learners’ listening comprehension. One of these ways is using listening strategies. There is still a controversy over the effective role of these strategies in improving listening comprehension. Thus, the proposed strategies have always been reviewed and reformed. Adopting either strategy, the course shall be quite ineffective if it fails to increase learners’ participation in the course. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not peer-cooperative self-access materials adaptation has any effect on learners’ involvement and participation in listening classes. In addition, the present study tried to probe any possible changes in students’ attitude toward listening as a result of the treatment. In order to accomplish the purpose of the study, 90 Iranian students who were studying at Islamic Azad University, an independent university, were selected based on their obtained scores in a language proficiency test (TOEFL). They were randomly assigned to one control and two experimental groups. Then they undertook a 17-session treatment. With a quasi-experimental pretest posttest design, it became evident that having students adapt listening materials improved listening comprehension performance. And also a positive change occurred in students’ overall attitude toward listening.

Self-access Materials: Their Features and their Selection in Students’ Literacy Practices

Autonomous, self-directed language learning is the literacy practice that self-access centers aim to promote. Much of this activity occurs when students interact with the equipment and the materials available in the center. These resources, in many ways, become the core of the learning environment, and, therefore, it is critical to understand what learning is provided or afforded through them. In this study, we examine the literacy practices of students in a self-access center in Mexico, focusing on the materials. We combine description and analysis of materials, student observations, and interviews to identify the learning students perceive those resources afford and the criteria they employ to make decisions concerning their use of the materials. This investigation is accomplished through the theoretical perspective of New Literacy Studies, because it provides a unique and rich socio-cultural approach to language learning. As a result, we determined that affordances of the materials are constrained. We also identified five different criteria students use to choose materials, but despite their personal criterion, we found they often do not have a clear direction and purpose for their choices.

An evaluation of an automated approach to concept-based grammar instruction

Acquiring sufficient linguistic proficiency to perform competently in academic and professional contexts generally requires substantial study time beyond what most language programs can offer in the classroom. As such, teachers and students alike would benefit considerably from high quality self-access materials promoting independent learning out of class when possible and, thus, allowing greater social interaction in class when necessary. The present study is a follow-up to Lyddon (in press), in which a concept-based approach to grammar instruction was adapted into a series of computerized modules. As the number of participants in the previous study was insufficient for meaningful statistical analyses of the learning outcomes, the current investigation redressed this shortcoming as well as responded to survey suggestions for several key changes to the pedagogical materials, including provision of more numerous training sentences, more highly elaborated feedback on exercises, and an immediate remediation option. As before, the purpose of the present study was to determine the viability of a computer-based conceptual approach to teaching English grammar. In a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 31 Japanese university English learners of English for Science and Engineering completed a series of self-paced, interactive online tutorials aimed at teaching the concept of grammatical voice. Gains were then measured in terms of improvement in post-treatment grammaticality judgments. While the findings showed the modules to be generally effective, they also suggest important differences in learner understanding of the use of animate vs. inanimate subjects. Thus, additional study will be needed to focus on this particular issue.

Principles and Procedures for Self-Access Materials

Like all language learning materials, self-access materials need to be developed from principles driven by what is known about the needs and wants of the target users. In my view, there should be a specification of universal principles, delivery specific principles, and local principles before deciding what self-access materials to develop and how to develop them. Universal principles are principles of language acquisition and development (Tomlinson, 2007a) which are applicable to all learners everywhere regardless of their age, level, objectives, and context of learning. Delivery specific principles are those which are peculiar to the means of delivering the materials (i.e. through self-access). Local principles are those which are peculiar to the specified target learners.

Language learning

Language learning

An evaluative checklist for self-access materials

Self-access centres (SACs) are playing an increasingly pivotal role in supporting the (self-) study of languages. Selecting suitable resources thus becomes more and more important. At the selection stage, identifying problems with available resources is not an easy task, and is made more difficult by a lack of published guidelines. Linked with this difficulty is the wide range of skills, topics, and levels that self-access resources cater for, making it difficult to have a precisely defined list of criteria. Starting with the premise that evaluation criteria for self-access resources are different from those developed for classroom materials this study worked through two stages. First, existing evaluative criteria for self-instructional materials in general education and language learning were reviewed. Based on this review, a new evaluation tool was developed to guide self-access in the selection of materials.

Examining the ‘self’ in self-access materials

Self-access centres (SACs*) are an increasingly common form of support for language learners. Self-access learning, by its nature, is heavily dependent on the availability of sufficient and relevant materials of a high quality, since students often have little or no access to further support from a teacher. The materials thus have to be very clear, comprehensive, and easy to use. Although more and more publishers now include comments such as ‘suitable for self-access’ in their catalogues, it is not always clear on what basis such comments are made. The majority of purchasing decisions are made by SAC staff without even such basic comments. This article presents the results of an evaluation of a random selection of materials in the SAC at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, using an evaluative checklist developed by the authors. Results from a quantitative analysis show that many materials do not include the types of support needed in a self-access context. Results from a qualitative analysis of the evaluators’ comments show that the features most commented on by teachers (either for their absence or their presence) are ease of access and support for the wider development of students’ language learning strategies.

Guidelines for the production of in-house self-access materials

Guidelines for the production of in-house self-access materials