Taiwanese Learners Research Articles

The Teaching of Nonverbal Communication to EFL Learners: in Taiwan

Nonverbal cues play a significant role in effective communication, particularly in cross-cultural contexts. Understanding and utilizing nonverbal communication in English can enhance Taiwanese learners' communicative competence and facilitate successful interactions with English speakers from diverse cultural backgrounds. This paper discusses practical strategies and pedagogical approaches to teach nonverbal communication, emphasizing the development of awareness, cultural sensitivity, body language, paralinguistic features, proxemics, and context-specific cues. Additionally, it addresses the relevance of nonverbal communication in digital media and the significance of authentic materials, cultural immersion, assessment, and provides a practical example of teaching nonverbal communication to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. By incorporating these strategies, educators can empower Taiwanese EFL learners to navigate the globalized world and build meaningful connections across cultures.

An exploratory study on the accuracy of three speech recognition software programs for young Taiwanese EFL learners

ABSTRACT Automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology affords language learners the ability to evaluate their pronunciation accuracy by comparing their intended spoken output with the transcribed text produced by ASR-based dictation applications. However, earlier dictation tools were criticized for producing low level recognition rates for non-native speech. Further investigation on the transcription accuracy of new ASR dictation tools for non-native speech is therefore necessary. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of three modern ASR dictation software programs with young Taiwanese learners of English. Capabilities of these ASR applications were also explored by assessing whether the transcription accuracy of high and low proficiency learners’ can be differentiated. Thirty junior high school students dictated the same 60 sentences used in Derwing et al.’s (2000) original dictation study, and their outputs were further analyzed. The results indicated that the transcription accuracy rates of high proficiency learners were comparable to the accuracy rates of native English speakers in previous studies, suggesting that current dictation programs have become more accurate in transcribing non-native speech. Results also show that low proficiency learners’ accuracy rates were significantly lower compared to high proficiency learners, indicating that the programs were able to differentiate proficient and less proficient learners.

Fostering Pre-service English Teachers’ Intercultural Awareness through Lesson Designs

This study explored Taiwanese pre-service teachers’ intercultural awareness through lesson designs. Based on the data analysis of textbook evaluation; lesson plans; self, peer, and expert evaluations on lesson plans; videos; and reflection notes, this study had the following major findings. First, the textbook evaluation helped the participants to identify the visual culture and linguistic elements in the textbooks and their relevance to young Taiwanese learners’ home or target culture. However, these participants lacked competence in identifying the appropriateness and authenticity of the cultural concepts in the textbooks, introducing relevant cultural issues, and designing activities on practice and production procedure.

A Study on Korean Pronunciation Education for Taiwanese Learners - focused on phonological phenomena in prosodic units -

A Study on Korean Pronunciation Education for Taiwanese Learners - focused on phonological phenomena in prosodic units -

Learning English in the shadows: Taiwanese students’ reflections on their English private tutoring learning experiences

Private tutoring has received increasing research attention as a global phenomenon, but awareness of its impact on students’ language learning and pedagogical discussions is lacking. This study investigated 35 Taiwanese learners’ English private tutoring (EPT) experiences based on their reflections on language learning after finishing their secondary education. A background questionnaire and one-on-one semi-structured interviews were administered to collect participants’ data. The present study found that the participants had complex, inconsistent, and contradictory attitudes toward EPT. Although the interviews revealed the students’ needs that could be met by private tutoring institutions, the students’ reflections on EPT indicated that students were negatively affected in terms of language learning, educational experience, pressure, and values. Moreover, EPT was not considered an effective way to learn to use authentic English to communicate because of its overemphasis on examination skills. The effects of the contextual realities of learning for the purposes of assessment and achievement in language proficiency scores were explored to determine whether these realities undermined the aim of education. This study sheds light on the impact of private tutoring as it has become more than a form of shadow education and has emerged into the mainstream.

The Spanish Collocation Tool and Its Application in Corpus-Based Study of Spanish for Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a developed software program called the “Spanish Collocation Tool (SCT)” and its application in related corpus-based studies. The Spanish Collocation Tool (SCT) was designed to assist with the research and analysis of Spanish collocation. The SCT allows searches of collocated elements not limited to words, but also parts of speech and lemmas. Furthermore, it can compare two collocation lists to detect any significant differences between them. In this study, this collocation tool, SCT, and a constructed L3 Taiwanese learners’ written corpus of Spanish called CEATE were combined to create efficient access to results in a systematic approach. Furthermore, by using the SCT, the pedagogical implications of the search results for the development of on-line multimedia material for learning Spanish collocations are discussed in the end.

Employing blended learning to enhance learners’ English conversation: A preliminary study of teaching with Hitutor

Taiwanese learners find it hard to communicate with others in English in their daily lives because of living in an EFL environment. However, ICT and blended learning have recently been recognised as being beneficial to English learners who live in a non-English-speaking country due to the formation of a virtual native-like setting based on online learning. The purpose of this research is to assess whether teaching English conversation in both online and offline settings can improve learners’ communicative performance as well as feedback from both instructors and learners. A pre-experimental method was used to investigate the effect of blended learning on the English speaking and listening performance of 136 participants, who were divided into 3 groups and invited to join an 18-week English conversation course based on both face-to-face teaching and online learning. The data was collected and analysed from the students’ pre-test and post-test scores, a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. As expected, the results indicated that blended learning had an overall positive effect on the students’ English conversation performance. The students themselves had a positive attitude toward the blended course arrangement and agreed that blended learning supported their learning of English conversation, while the instructors also indicated that the online course had helped the students’ learning of English conversation to some extent. However, more supportive policies are required for a more comprehensive implementation of blended learning. All in all, Hitutor was employed in this study to design a blended English conversation course and demonstrate its positive effect. Non-English native speakers can overcome the restriction of an EFL learning environment with both traditional lectures and ICT.

Teaching Indonesian as a foreign language through Small Private Online Course (SPOC): investigating learners' multidimensional anxiety in online learning

One of the foreign language learners challenges is the anxious level they mostly face while learning a new language. Even though Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) has been analyzed for decades to foresee language learners' challenges in the learning process, the previous results only focus on single language skills and the offline learning environment. In consideration, learning a foreign language is supposed to be a multidimensional analysis and forced to be online due to the current pandemic. Thus, this study investigates how Taiwanese learners face FLA when learning Indonesian as A Foreign Language (IFL) through Small Private Online Course (SPOC). Participants were assessed by Multimedimensional Language Anxiety Scale (MLAS) at the end of their six-months course. The results showed that writing was the highest anxiety while reading was the lowest anxiety. The psychology domain that showed the learners tension during learning IFL through SPOC revealed the most highly anxious. Surprisingly, nearly two-thirds of learners were considered overall moderate-level anxiety by using SPOC as a learning platform. In further investigation, male learners dominated each foreign language skills and domains' anxiety level compared to female learners. The correlations among language skills and domains are presented and critically discussed. Finally, it opens more opportunities to explore SPOC and another online learning platform to reduce learners' FLAs

Direct (dis)agreement verbs

Abstract “*I am not agree with you” is an incorrect use of agree frequently seen in the writing of Taiwanese learners. Yet, not many studies have discussed the use of agree and disagree in the literature. Many studies are concerned more about the politeness of (dis)agreement, especially in detailing the relationship between speaker and hearer. We took a lexical semantic approach to compare the use of agree and disagree in essays written by native English speakers and Taiwanese learners in the ICNALE (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English). The essays were based on two topics concerning societal issues collected in the corpus – (a) whether smoking should be completely banned in restaurants and (b) whether college students should take a part-time job or not – the writers were asked to respond to each issue by agreeing or disagreeing. Our results showed that when given clear instructions to agree or disagree, both native and learners tended to state (dis)agreement in the very first sentence in their essays, but Taiwanese learners relied more on the uses of agree and disagree more often than the native speakers did. The errors committed by learners on the use of agree (not for disagree) were between 25–35% in our data. The results will bring significant comparisons of the lexical semantics of related verbs (verbs of social interaction) in future studies.

Rhetorical Structure Theory and coherence break identification

AbstractThis article examines the claim of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) that violations of RST diagram formation principles indicate coherence breaks. In doing so, this article makes a significant contribution to the testing of RST. More broadly, it indicates that examining the coherence-break identification potential of coherence theories could help specify each theory’s purview and, in the long term, lead to the creation of hybrid models of coherence. Moreover, it paves the way for the development of training resources on discourse (in)coherence for language teachers, exam markers and language learners. 84 paragraphs written by Taiwanese learners of English were analysed according to RST and coherence measures were calculated on the basis of this analysis. The results suggest that the violation of any diagram-formation principle indicates coherence breaks, thus corroborating this RST claim. Inter- and intrajudge agreement in terms of both RST coding and coherence measures calculated on the basis of coherence breaks are reported and discussed. The kinds of coherence breaks which are and are not located by RST analysis are discussed and exemplified. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for pedagogy and future research.

台湾人日本語学習者によるアスペクトの習得について 「テイルの用法」と「動詞タイプ」の影響に関する縦断的考察

台湾人日本語学習者によるアスペクトの習得について 「テイルの用法」と「動詞タイプ」の影響に関する縦断的考察

Grammatical and Lexical Patterning of Make in Asian Learner Writing: A Corpus-Based Study of ICNALE

This study investigates lexical and grammatical features of the high-frequency verb “make” in English written essays among Asian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners based on the ICNALE, the largest corpora focusing on various Asian learner groups. Examining how lexical and grammatical patterning of “make” differ between English native speakers (ENSs) and Asian learners from different countries, this study investigates overuse and misuse patterns of “make” and how they correlate to proficiency. Results show that all Asian learner groups shared similar tendency to use “make” substantially more than ENSs, with producing and causative uses most common and delexical use least common. However, Asian learners tend to produce fewer varieties of delexical uses compared with ENSs. The adjective and verb complements in the causative category by Asian learners also differ from that of ENSs. Rates and types of misuses by Taiwanese learners were independent of proficiency . It is also evident that the high-frequency verb “make” expresses a variety of meanings and there are differences in lexical as well as grammatical patterning between Taiwanese learners and ENSs. Pedagogical implications regarding the use of high-frequency verbs are included in the discussion. Keywords: Learner Corpus; High-Frequency Verb; ICNALE; Asian Learner Writing; EFL Learners

Insights from replication on the factors affecting task engagement in mobile-based learning activities

Despite the large amount of research that has taken place with mobile devices for language learning over the years, there are still limited conclusions that can be reached as to what contributes to sustained task engagement. A common problem that has long been seen in the CALL literature is that many tasks and activities that are reported are small scale studies taking place in a single environment with a limited number of subjects, often as a result of teachers investigating the outcomes of their own teaching (see Warschauer, 1997; Hubbard, 2005). Given the nature of the environments in which many teachers find themselves, it is in some way inevitable that studies tend to be of a smaller scale and often undertaken within a single class. It is possible to gain deeper insights into the tasks used through replication studies (Porte, 2012). This paper discusses the potential insights gained from replicating approximately the same basic language learning tasks in varied contexts. Research on vocabulary and listening tasks was carried out in Japan over an 8-year period from 2010 through 2017 for Japanese learners of English. In addition, the same tasks were adapted for Australian learners of Japanese in 2012 and Taiwanese learners of English in 2013, with a total of 420 participants. Data were collected through post-treatment surveys, semi-structured interviews and server logs recording the times spent on the tasks, the scores achieved, and the devices used to engage in the tasks. The same methods of data collection were used in each of the studies, using primarily the same tasks apart from adaptations made for developments in technology and for the different language learning contexts. Carrying out the same tasks in subsequent years with increasingly newer technologies and with teachers and learners from different cultural backgrounds provided insights into the effect of the context, the technology, and role of both teachers and learners in successfully implementing the tasks.

One size fits all? In search of the desirable caption display for second language learners with different caption reliance in listening comprehension

Existing research has established captions as effective second-language (L2) or foreign language (FL) listening comprehension aids. However, due to the transient nature of captions, not all learners are capable of attending to captions in all cases. Previous work posited that to leverage the impact of technologies in learning and instruction, a better understanding of the interplay between technology and cognition is warranted. In this vein, the current study set out to investigate the effects of four different caption modes (full vs. partial vs. real-time vs. control) on the listening comprehension of 95 high-intermediate Taiwanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different caption reliance (i.e. more-caption-reliant vs. less-caption-reliant). The results showed no significant difference between the participants’ listening comprehension outcomes under the four caption conditions when their caption reliance was not considered. However, when this was considered, the differences among the four caption conditions became salient, which was suggestive of the selective effect of captions on L2 learners with different caption reliance. While less-caption-reliant L2 learners had the best listening comprehension outcome under the partial-caption condition and the worst under the full-caption condition, more-caption-reliant L2 learners exhibited the best performance under the full-caption condition yet the worst under the partial-caption condition. The finding underscores the importance of considering L2 learners’ processing profiles when utilizing captioned videos as multimodal instructional/learning materials and speaks to the need of utilizing differentiated video materials for optimal listening outcomes.

Citizen journalism as a form of multimodal composing: understanding students’ self-reported affordances, constraints, and follow-up learning goals

ABSTRACT The current study invited a group of adolescent Taiwanese learners to take the role of citizen journalists and make news reports on issues of their interests. Student perceptions of the affordances and constraints of this multimodal writing assignment were gauged through an open-ended questionnaire which students filled out at the end of the semester. It was found that the top three affordances perceived by students were film-making techniques, Chinese-to-English translation skills, and organizing information to make a video. The project also provided them with novel experiences such as interviewing someone. However, because of the varying levels of student commitment to group projects and how different tasks were delegated, some students felt that their exploration was not in-depth enough, and their learning was limited to the tasks they were responsible for. Students also set their future learning goals after they completed their videos. This article concludes with recommendations for future research and pedagogy.

ATTITUDES: AUTHORIAL STANCE IN THE REVIEW GENRE OF TAIWANESE MA GRADUATES

Evaluation is a central linguistic feature that expresses a writer’s critical stance and plays a prominent role in academic discourse. By using Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework, particularly regarding attitude, this study conducted a textual analysis of literature review chapters in master’s theses written by Taiwanese graduates. Attitude can be regarded as a manner of behavior caused by feelings and opinions. The review genre was selected for study because that is where the writer’s position toward the status of knowledge is displayed. Furthermore, studies have explored various types of linguistic features, and the data sources were mainly journal articles. Few studies have yet studied the review genre in master’s theses in applied linguistics written by master’s students. The results of the study will render additional understanding of advanced EFL Taiwanese learners’ evaluation in the literature review genre and offer advice for instructors in academic writing.

Learning experience reigns – Taiwanese learners’ motivation in learning eight additional languages as compared to English

ABSTRACTInformed by Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System and intended to fill a gap in learning motivation research on languages other than English (LOTEs), this study investigated learners’ motivation for three language clusters – Southeast Asian (Vietnamese, Thai and Malay), Northeast Asian (Japanese and Korean) and European (German, Spanish and French) – and compared the results against the same learners’ English learning motivation. Regression analyses revealed that for all three language groups, the strongest predictors of intended effort were learning experience, followed by ideal self and culture/community interest. Ought-to self and instrumentality, both promotional and preventive, were ruled out in all three LOTE regression models. The significance of learning experience as a motivational predictor was comparatively new in LOTE-related findings. These learners’ English learning motivation presented a similar but more complicated picture, with predictive variables being, in descending order, learning attitude, culture/community interest, learning experience, ideal self and instrumentality. While externally imposed motivators played a role in English, they did not do so for the same learners in LOTE situations. Discrepancies with earlier results concerning LOTE motivation as well as with similar learner populations are discussed. Implications for both pedagogical practice and the theoretical development of foreign language motivation are suggested.

대만인 학습자의 한자어 오류 연구-대만 국립가오슝대학교 초중급 학습자를 대상으로-

대만인 학습자의 한자어 오류 연구-대만 국립가오슝대학교 초중급 학습자를 대상으로-

The Experimental Study on Korean Monophthong of Taiwanese Learners of Korean-Focusing on College Students Majoring in Korean

The Experimental Study on Korean Monophthong of Taiwanese Learners of Korean-Focusing on College Students Majoring in Korean

台湾人学習者による日本語使役文の用法別の使用実態 : LARP at SCUの分析結果から

台湾人学習者による日本語使役文の用法別の使用実態 : LARP at SCUの分析結果から