Teenage Learners Research Articles

The world gathering in a classroom – empirical findings and conceptional reflexions on comprehensible input in culturally responsive mathematics instruction

Viewed from an intercultural or transcultural perspective respectively, individual and socio-cultural parameters have to be taken into account when looking at the acquisition of mathematical competences. This article outlines the sociological base and the principles of mathematics methodology, and presents first findings from a research project that follows teenage asylum seekers attending vocational schools. Based on concrete mathematics classroom situations, thoughts on aspects of educational theory and mathematics pedagogy are developed that illustrate how classroom participation of linguistically diverse teenage learners can be facilitated.

ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЕ УСЛОВИЯ РАЗВИТИЯ ТВОРЧЕСКИХ ВОЗМОЖНОСТЕЙ ОБУЧАЮЩИХСЯ ПОДРОСТКОВОГО ВОЗРАСТА

ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЕ УСЛОВИЯ РАЗВИТИЯ ТВОРЧЕСКИХ ВОЗМОЖНОСТЕЙ ОБУЧАЮЩИХСЯ ПОДРОСТКОВОГО ВОЗРАСТА

Różnice indywidualne w uczeniu się języków obcych w wiejskiej szkole gimnazjalnej

School achievement in foreign languages is often reported in mean scores, or on normalized scales, where schools are compared with each other and against a national average. This has led to the common belief that rural lower secondary schools in Poland are ‘worse’ than schools in larger centres of population. This paper sets out to demonstrate that such a view is erroneous as it fails to take into consideration the context, either at the level of the school as a whole, or at the level of individual learners. Based on data obtained from the first two years of a large scale longitudinal research project, “Teaching and Learning Foreign languages” (BUNJO 2012, 2013), this case study describes the context of one lower secondary school in a village in the east of Poland and profiles four teenage learners (aged 13-14) who attend this school and their achievement in English over the period of one year.

The Development of Reading and Operation Span Tasks in Persian as Measures of Working Memory Capacity for Iranian EFL Learners

This paper presented two complex span tasks in Persian as measures of working memory capacity (WMC). Firstly, the construct of working memory (WM) and possible WM measures that could assess this construct efficiently were critically reviewed. Accordingly, as measures of domain-general components of WM, a reading span task and an operation span task which were documented to assess this construct efficiently were chosen and developed. Following this, the developed tasks were conducted on 151 teenage learners in a foreign language institute in West Azerbaijan Province. Then, the administration and scoring of the measures were described step by step. The tasks were validated against each other as well as against a digit span task which assessed the domain-specific aspect of WMC as well. The result showed a strong correlation between the reading span task and the operation span task, and a moderate correlation of either of the functions with the digit span task. Consequently, both of the developed span tasks can be valid indicators of WM capacity for Iranian individuals and can be used in a wide array of research domains in second language acquisition studies.

Understanding Taiwanese Adolescents’ English Learning Selves through Parental Expectations

This paper explores the interplay of Taiwanese adolescent English learners’ motivational selves and their parents’ expectations, with a special focus the identified perceptions of both teenage leaners and their parents towards English learning as a duty and obligation. Using the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS, Dornyei, 2009), the qualitative study foregrounds the cultural and relational aspects of the self system in understanding language learning motivation. Results from semi-structured interviews suggest that parental expectations of children’s English learning exhibit a duality characterized by the hope that their children will become successful members of the globalized world and a belief that English learning is a basic responsibility for their children. Adolescent language learners’ and their parents’ actual selves, including their identification with societal roles and social obligations, mediate between parents’ investments in their children’s English education and teenage learners’ perceived obligations to meet parental expectations. The paper concludes by suggesting further research on parental expectations and the development of global selves, and on the synergized effect of language learners’ actual selves and future self-guides in motivating language learning.

The Use of Models as Written Corrective Feedback in English as a Foreign Language (EFL)Writing

ABSTRACTThe language learning potential of writing has been an underresearched topic in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The present study investigates what Basque-Spanish EFL teenage learners (n = 60) notice when writing a composition in response to visual stimuli in a three-stage writing task including output, comparison, and delayed revision. The present study also explores how this noticing and feedback processing affects their subsequent revisions. The findings revealed that participants noticed mainly lexical problems, although they also paid attention to content features. Moreover, more proficient learners and guided learners noticed more features. A qualitative analysis of the results indicated that, overall, learners had a negative attitude toward writing and modeling, but those with more positive beliefs incorporated more items in subsequent revisions. A number of implications for research and pedagogy will be discussed.

Learning English with electronic textbooks on tablet PCs

ABSTRACTPrevious studies on electronic textbooks were all survey studies of college students in the U.S.A. Their main findings revealed that using electronic textbooks and using print textbooks showed no statistical differences in learning achievements. As mobile devices became popular in classrooms, the present study was intended to confirm the competitive nature of electronic textbooks on mobile devices in an experiment. The differences of the present experiment from previous survey studies included its involving teenage learners of English and its examining their learning with electronic textbooks on mobile devices. This experimental study recruited adolescent learners to participate in a mobile-assisted English learning program requiring them to study with their electronic textbooks on mobile devices exclusively. Their counterparts used print textbooks as usual. The findings presented no significant differences in various achievements between the two groups. The mobile group furthermore approved their studying English on their mobile devices with satisfaction and perceived its usefulness and ease of use. Endorsing the competitiveness of electronic textbooks on mobile devices, the teenage English learners also highlighted the strengths characterized by mobile technologies.

Willingness to Dropout among Pregnant Teenage Learners in South African High Schools

AbstractThe study investigated the impact of the discrimination against pregnant teenage learners and their willingness to drop out of school. It uncovered pregnant learners’ non - attendance of sc...

Differential effects of SA and intensive AH courses on teenagers' L2 pronunciation

The present study compares the differential effects of two learning contexts on the L2 pronunciation accuracy of L1‐Spanish/Catalan teenage learners of English. The learners engaged in either a study abroad (SA) course in the UK (n = 14) or in an intensive course at home (AH) in Spain (n = 22) for 3 weeks. Sentence‐sized production samples were elicited before and after the SA and AH courses through a delayed imitation task targeting difficult L2 phonetic and phonological features. L2 pronunciation accuracy was assessed through voice onset time (VOT) and perceived foreign accent (FA) measures. The results indicated that the SA learner group significantly improved their VOT and reduced their FA to a greater extent than the AH learner group did. VOT gains were significantly correlated with amount of FA reduction, suggesting that speakers who had developed a more target‐like production of oral stops were also perceived to have reduced their overall FA to a greater extent. Taken together these results underscore the potential of SA to induce improvement in L2 pronunciation. Several pedagogical implications are discussed.

Could a mobile‐assisted learning system support flipped classrooms for classical Chinese learning?

AbstractIn this study, the researcher aimed to develop a mobile‐assisted learning system and to investigate whether it could promote teenage learners' classical Chinese learning through the flipped classroom approach. The researcher first proposed the structure of the Cross‐device Mobile‐Assisted Classical Chinese (CMACC) system according to the pilot survey and reviewed literature, and then adopted a quasi‐experimental design to understand whether the developed system could promote and support flipped classroom learning for classical Chinese. A total of 56 eleventh graders from two classes participated in the experiment. The learners in the experimental group learned classical Chinese with the flipped classroom learning strategy with the assistance of the CMACC system, while the control group adopted the flipped classroom learning strategy without using the CMACC system. The results reveal that all of the students improved their Chinese performance, but it was noticeable that the learners who used the CMACC system showed better motivation in terms of self‐directed preview learning, while those who only learned with the traditional textbooks tended to be more passive. In sum, the mobile‐assisted learning system added value in providing learners with opportunities to achieve anytime and anywhere flipped classroom learning. The integration of ubiquitous mobile learning technology and the flipped classroom strategy can be viewed as a critical factor leading to students achieving self‐regulated learning. It is also suggested that instructors should carefully take the targeted learners' cultural background and the availability of supporting learning devices into consideration so as to prevent the flipped classroom from exacerbating the digital divide. Other suggestions for educators and instructional designers are also proposed.

The effect of product-based and process-based teaching on writing efficiency of Iranian EFL learners

Writing in English has been a major topic of interest for the researchers in the last decade. Learners, who are learning English as a foreign language have always tackled with the problem of writing. There have been many investigations conducted in this regard, all of which proposed various solutions to this problem. In the present study it was endeavored to investigate whether teaching based on product and process writing can affect the performance and efficiency of Iranian EFL learners in writing. In order to achieve this goal, a group of intermediate and teenage learners were instructed based on product and process orientation to writing and the writing assignments in each group were corrected and an inter-rater rating system was used through which the assignments were corrected by two rates, who were experienced EFL teachers, as the last phase of the study a retrospective think-aloud procedure was conducted and the learners provided their opinion on the product and process writing. The results proved that the scores of the writing assignments based on process writing were higher than those of product-writing, therefore it was concluded that process-based teaching of writing had positive effects on improving the writing efficiency of learners.

The Impact of Computer-Assisted Language Learning Applications on Incidental Vocabulary Recall and Retention

This study reports on an investigation into the effect of Computer Assisted Vocabulary Learning (CAVL) on fostering the incidental vocabulary gain of 62 pre-intermediate teenage learners of English studying in a language institute in Iran. These participants were randomly assigned to CAVL and traditional teacher-led groups. Additionally, the two groups’ perceptions towards Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) were surveyed and compared. A multimedia application integrating contextual cues, frequency of occurrence, dictionary definitions, and textual and audio annotations, was developed uniquely for the purposes of this experimental research. In order to measure and compare the vocabulary recall and retention of the two groups, a pretest-posttest research design was utilized. The results of the immediate posttest demonstrated that the students in the CAVL group significantly outperformed those of the non-CAVL group, confirming superior recall of the new words. Although the latter groups’ scores on the delayed posttest were also higher than the former groups’ scores, in comparison to the immediate posttest, a considerable decrease in the CAVL groups’ vocabulary retention was observed. Moreover, even though both groups perceived CAL as an effective method of learning, the perceptions of the participants in the CAVL group were more positive toward CALL.

The Effect of Lexical-Temporal-Indicator Prompt vs. Metalinguistic Prompt on The Field-Dependent EFL Learners’ Past Tense Acquisition

This study investigated the efficacy of lexical-temporal-indicator (LTI) prompt vs. metalinguistic prompt among field-dependent (FD) learners in their acquisition of past tense. To this end, four intact classes at Iran Language Institute (ILI) with a total number of 86 teenage learners at elementary level were selected. A Group Embedded Figures Test was utilized to specify field-dependent learners. A pretest with a focus on past tense was used to ascertain that the learners were not familiar with the targeted feature. Two groups out of four classes with an equal number of FD learners (n=17, n=17) received LTI and metalinguistic prompts as their treatments respectively. The one-month treatment was administered for the first 20 minutes of eight sessions. Then, an immediate parallel post-test was administered to compare the performance of the two groups. The findings revealed that FD learners receiving LTI prompt did better than those receiving metalinguistic prompt. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that LTI prompt is more favored than metalinguistic prompt by FD learners. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p482

Enacting a People-Centred Curriculum in ELT With Teenage Learners

In this paper we reflect on the extent to which the learner-centred curriculum in English language teaching includes teachers and learners. We briefly describe the top-down nature of curriculum development in Argentina, then describe and discuss personal and collaborative explorations based on our identities as teachers of English in secondary education with a people-centred approach in the classroom. Through this paper we wish to highlight pedagogies and teacher strategies which are enacted for and from the classroom and built around both teachers and learners. Recommendations for policy makers are included.

Dynamic Assessment of Grammar with Different Age Groups

This study intended to explore the effect of an interactionist model of dynamic assessment (DA) on Iranian EFL adult and teenage learners’ grammar performance. To this end, 80 students were selected based on the convenience sampling procedure and assigned into teenage ( n = 40) and adult ( n = 40) groups. An interactionist model of DA was implemented in both teenage and adult groups. The data obtained from the pre-test and post-test scores were analyzed by the independent samples t -test. The results indicated a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the grammar test. It is concluded that the adult EFL learners benefits from DA more than the teenage EFL learners.

Task-Based Writing to Improve Young Teenage Learners’ Reading Skills

Following the shift from traditional teacher-fronted towards learner-centered approaches to language teaching, theidea that languages are acquired through authentic acts of communication is now widely accepted as a central tenetof language teaching methodology. As a strong version of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Task-BasedLearning (TBL) lays great emphasis on language use and entails using the English language in order to acquire it. Ofthe four language skills, it is possibly writing that has had the least attention paid to its role in fostering languageacquisition, though some kind of reciprocal interrelationship has been acknowledged between reading and writing.Reporting on a quasi-experimental study, this paper presents an investigation into the impact of task-based writing onyoung teenage EFL learners' reading skills. It suggests that task-based writing helps such learners makeimprovements in their skills of reading for gist, specific information, and detailed comprehension to a significantlymeasurable extent.

The curse of the teenage learner

The curse of the teenage learner

An Experimental Study on Korean Pitch Patterns of the First Syllable in an Accentual Phrase: A Case Study of Korean Heritage Teenage Learners in the United States

An Experimental Study on Korean Pitch Patterns of the First Syllable in an Accentual Phrase: A Case Study of Korean Heritage Teenage Learners in the United States

Exploring the Role of Grandparents in the Lives of Teenage Learners

Historically, grandparents have often served as an alternative when birth parents were unable to care for their children. The number of grandparents who are taking care of grandchildren, in this case teenage learners, in South Africa is an issue that is unlikely to go away. With the prevalence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, unplanned/ teenage pregnancies and parental negligence, it is likely that the trend seen in the past decade will continue, with an increasing number of grandparents parenting their grandchildren. It is often difficult for grandparents to take care of smaller grandchildren with basic needs. It is, however, even more difficult to parent teenage learners who require emotional guidance during this transitional stage in their lives. Their demands are often overwhelming, as they need support with school work, coping with life challenges and finding direction. A study was undertaken to determine the challenges faced by grandparents who take on the surrogate parental role for teenage learners. A small-scale survey consisted of ten grandparents was conducted in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. The findings show that the participants were often stressed by the school demands, lack of support from the government agencies, and severe limitations on their bodies due to health and age. These challenges impact on their parenting role as they are progressively unable to adequately provide for the teenage learners in their care. Therefore, this study aims at exploring these challenges with a view to making recommendation on intervention strategies. These intervention strategies are essential and may help to reduce negative effects, provide information and coping skills not only to grandparents but also to teenage learners and school personnel.

Pedagogy of autonomy for difficult circumstances: from practice to principles

This article sets out to consider the place of learner autonomy in an African context by recounting the first author's experience of teaching a very large class of more than 200 teenage learners in an under-resourced secondary school setting in Cameroon. It describes the essentially pragmatic solution he adopted in this context of engaging pupils in group work under trees outside, having negotiated rules and work plans. The subsequent value of creative writing activities is also emphasised given the lack of textbooks in this context. On the basis of this narrative, we shed new light on issues in language learner autonomy including the cross-cultural relevance of autonomy, the distinction between a pedagogy of and a pedagogy for autonomy, and how a pedagogy of autonomy can be an appropriate response to otherwise ‘difficult circumstances’. The article ends with a number of principles derived from this practice that may equally be of broader relevance in the field of learner autonomy. Overall, the article is structured in an original manner that is presented as a possible model for future collaborative reports of bottom-up language teaching inquiry, in that an author's narrative of teaching experience is foregrounded and only subsequently related to (autonomy) theory.