Third-year University Students Research Articles

DYNAMICS OF STABILOMETRIC PARAMETERS IN THE HEAD TURN TEST IN STUDENT-ATHLETES

Aim. The article deals with studying the dynamics of stabilometric parameters during head turns in college students involved in symmetrical sports. Materials and methods. Third-year college students (n = 24) involved in symmetrical sports (volleyball, basketball, rowing, swimming) participated in the study. The average age is 18.2 years. The study of stabilometric parameters was carried out following the procedure of the “Head turn test”. Results. In a basic European stance, we registered a shift of the common center of pressure (CP) to the back and the left. The parameters of balance had average values. The quality of balance function was 89.43%; movement values were 63.08 rad/s. During right head turns we registered the increase of the CP root-mean-square deviation along the frontal line. During left head turns we registered a statistically significant increase of the CP root-mean-square deviation along the frontal line with a shift of the common center of pressure to the back, a statistically significant decrease of balance function to 79.35%, and a parallel increase of movement values to 74.08 rad/s, which prove balance worsening. Conclusion. Left and right head turns provoke different dynamics of the parameters studied. In particular, there are changes in deviation values. Movement values and the quality of balance function had statistically significant differences only during left head turns. It proves balance worsening in a European stance in college students involved in dynamic sports. The analysis of the CP root-mean-square deviation allows us to conclude that students had circulation disturbance in the vessels of the vertebrobasilar artery to the right.

Motivation to English Academic Writing: Chinese Students’ Literacy Autobiography

This study looks at literacy as a site of power in which some forms of literacy practices have more power. Such power relations is even more complicated in English as a foreign language context, where school literacy, family literacy, and English language come into the picture. Many studies have explored different research methods to examine language learners’ voices in literacy practices, while literacy autobiography (LA) is not frequently used. LA is a reflective, first-person narrative of personal engagement in literacy practices. Through the LAs from a group of third-year university students in China, this qualitative case study examines motivation to in-school writing in general, their L1 and L2 in- and out-of-school writing experiences in particular. The main dataset includes 25 participants’ LAs; critical discourse analysis was used for data analysis. The findings suggest that their motivation to English academic writing is closely intertwined with their L1 academic writing, that it is the pedagogies employed in both L1 and L2 in-school writing that has affected their engagement, and that EFL students’ border-crossing experiences between both temporal and spatial spaces have shaped their engagement in writing. More important, demotivated students are not necessarily slow students in writing classes.

The role of PWWs in helping students to prove the cosine of a sum

In learning mathematics, students learn to compile a mathematical argument and proof. However, the objects studied in mathematics are abstract objects. Sometimes, the visualization of the object is required to make students easier in understanding it so that they can prove it. Proofs without Words (PWWs) is an image media that has the opportunity to play a major role in learning mathematics from the basic education level to higher level. This study aims to explore how third-year students majoring in mathematics education in prove the cosine of the sum with the help of PWWs. This study uses a qualitative approach. Forty five third-year college students majoring in mathematics education were shown the PWWs images. Then, they were given the related questions of the drawing to assist the students in understanding the formula of cosine of the sum. The analysis on the students ‘answer showed that PWWs provide visualization of the abstract mathematical concepts. However, in the process they need to be reminded about polar coordinate concept and the concept of distance between two points on the Cartesian coordinates to answer the questions. PWWs can be used to assist them in constructing an understanding and proof of the cosine of the sum. Nevertheless, it depends on the students’ prior knowledge which is the basis for the concept.

Analysis of physics students’ problem solutions: calculating the work done by a three-dimensional conservative force field

The aim of this study is to analyze physics students’ problem solutions related to calculus-based physics problems. The sample of this study consists of 41 third-year university students studying in a physics education program. Two physics problems were posed to the students in the study. The students’ problem solutions were analyzed descriptively. According to one of the results obtained from the study, most of the students calculated the curl of the force field and proved whether it is conservative or not. However, the students had difficulties while calculating the work done in the force field. In relation to this, some students tried to calculate the work using mathematical equations which are incompatible with the analysis of the unit systems and contrary to the nature of the vector quantities. Besides, it has been determined that students have difficulties with the limits and variables of integrals.

Opinions of Prospective Primary School Teachers about Methods and Techniques Suitable for Teaching Science: A Case Study from Turkey

The aim of this study was to determine opinions of a group of prospective Turkish primary school teachers aboutwhat teaching methods and techniques are more suitable to teach science. In addition, their perceived competence inselection of teaching methods and techniques was explored. In Turkey, primary school teachers offer various coursesin the first four years of primary education. Their ability to benefit from teaching methods and techniques suitable forsubjects and courses is considered important in terms of realization of learning. The study was also directed towardsexamining whether third-year university students having taken courses for methods and techniques used to teachdifferent subjects felt competent about selection of suitable methods and techniques.This is a case study using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Quantitative data were gathered withPerceived Competence Scale for Selection of Teaching Methods and Techniques for Prospective Teachers,developed by Durdukoca et al. (2017). Qualitative data were collected through an open-ended question “Whatteaching methods and techniques do you think you want to use in the future”. All the participants answered thisopen-ended question and completed the scale. Data obtained through the open ended-question were analyzed withcontent analysis.The study sample included 96 third-year students studying in the Department of Primary Education in BucaEducation Faculty of Dokuz Eylül University in the spring term of the 2017-2018 academic year. Quantitative datawere analyzed with SPSS v. 22 and t-test.The prospective primary school teachers were found to plan to use student-centered methods and techniques and tohave high perceived competence concerning selection of teaching methods and techniques. Their perceivedcompetence did not differ between genders and students with different academic performance. Only having apositive perception of competence significantly differed between branches of students.

The Use of Problem-Solving Heuristics Approach in Enhancing STEM Students Development of Mathematical Thinking

One of the major aims of STEM education is the development of mathematical thinking. The common misconception is that “doing mathematics” is the same as getting involved in “mathematical thinking”. Rallying to such argument, many would agree that mathematics should be taught as a thinking activity. Thus, this study endeavours to review the effects of a problem-solving heuristic application technique on learners’ mathematical thinking development. This two-phase study analysed the data utilising a descriptive design (N=660) and experimental design (N=54). In the first phase, 660 High School Leavers, with 93% obtaining an A grade in the Math National Examination, ages 18 – 19, registered with a college to undergo a two-year Diploma engineering program were administered a Mathematical Thinking Test. Then, fifty-four of these students participated in a seven-week Pre-Post experimental design to investigate the impact of heuristics application on their development of mathematical thinking. These student’s post-test score was also compared with a batch of one hundred and twenty third-year university students (N=120) majoring in STEM related courses where all these students have taken at least five university level related math courses. Firstly, the results indicate that the high school leavers grades obtained in the national Examination was not translated into their Mathematical Thinking prowess. Secondly, the results depicted a significant increase in the mathematical Thinking post-test score among the students who underwent a seven-week pre-post problem solving heuristic treatment. Thirdly, the students involved in the heuristic application treatment performed better than the third-year students in the Mathematical Thinking test. It is vital that the heuristic method of teaching mathematics be employed to enhance student’s development of mathematical thinking, especially for STEM students.

A series of multimedia English activities for developing third-year university students’ lingua-socio-cultural competence in listening comprehension while self-studying with an authentic video

This publication presents a series of multimedia English activities for developing third-year university students’ lingua-socio-cultural competence in listening comprehension. These activities are performed while extracurricular self-studying with the authentic video «Meet 500 Years of British Art» within the curriculum-based theme «British Art». The suggested activities were developed by the author with the use of training modules of the online application Web 2.0 LearningApps.org. For more detailed familiarization with the interactive series of activities «Meet 500 Years of British Art» please visit https://learningapps.org/display?v=pk8rcejin17.

A training case for developing third-year university students’ English listening comprehension and speaking skills

У цій публікації представлено навчальний кейс «Expressing feelings and emotions through monologues» для розвитку в студентів третього курсу вмінь аудіювання із загальним розумінням та монологічного мовлення англійською мовою в межах програмної теми «Feeling and emotions». Кейс складається з переліку дібраних автентичних відеоматеріалів, рекомендованих для навчання аудіювання та монологічного мовлення за темою, завдань до трьох етапів роботи з одним із відеофрагментів і завдань для продукування англомовних монологічних висловлювань на основі переглянутого уривку.

Arab EFL Learners’ Identification of English Sentence Patterns

The article investigated if a significant relationship existed between Arab EFL learners’ and the English sentence pattern identified. The participants were 64 third-year college students studying in the Department of Linguistics at Princess Nourah University, Saudi Arabia. They were assigned 28 literary texts and asked to derive examples for each of the nine sentence patterns listed in Stageberg (1981). An ANOVA test at alpha level P 0.05 and a post hoc test were used to analyze data. The findings of the study showed a highly significant result at p between participants’ performance and the pattern identified. Seven levels of difficulty were identified, where Pattern 1 was the easiest and Pattern 8 was the most difficult. The main components of each English sentence pattern were also investigated to find possible sources of difficulty, such as the use of the copula; transitive, intransitive, and ditransitive verbs; dative case; and double object structure. The denoting of referents, dative case, and double object structures were found to be the main sources of difficulty.

Three activities to promote the development of standard professionals

I was involved in three projects to educate standard professionals in 2017. The first was conducted for first through third-year university students as a part of standardization education in collaboration with several universities in the west Tokyo area, and many students participated. In the second, the Japan Standards Association began a system for registering standard professionals, and prepared and implemented a training system for acquiring registration qualifications. In the third, Yamaguchi University used government funds to create education materials for instructors for standardization education. These three projects are aimed at solving the problems found in past standard professionals’ education. I will report the details of these three projects as a case example of standard professionals’ development activities in Japan.

The value of drama-in-education as a decolonising pedagogy through embodied drama strategies in a higher education classroom

In this paper I provide a detailed account of how drama-in-education was used to engage third-year university students in an education module entitled Issues and challenges in education. The aim of the research was to introduce aspects of decolonisation in South Africa through the module and to implement drama-in-education strategies, such as the use of tableaux, improvisation, and role plays to enhance the understanding of these issues. The data collection method I implemented was based on students’ written reflections on their experiences of drama-in-education as pedagogy in this module. The findings indicated that although students were initially resistant to engaging with the drama-in-education process, through their embodied participation they became more involved in their learning. They felt that, since the strategies provided a context for learning, the issues that led to enhanced learning, engagement, and reflection could be interrogated more critically. I argue that as a decolonising pedagogy in the university lecture room, drama-in-education contributes significantly to an enhanced understanding of teaching and learning and the development of students’ critical and creative skills.

The Impact of the Application of Lexical Approach on Developing Students’ Writing Skills at a University Level

This paper aims at investigating experimentally the effect of applying the Lexical Approach (henceforth LA) on the achievement of third-year University students of English in the cause and effect essay writing. It examines theoretically and practically the LA and the notion of lexical units in English along with explaining some other relevant points. The two groups, pre-test and post-test experimental design were adopted to ensure groupmatching control over the intervening variables. After six weeks of instruction based on the LA, the results revealed that the experimental group had statistically significant gain scores between their pretests and posttests in the essay-writing test. The control group, however, did not have statistically significant gain scores on the dependent measure. The LA was beneficial to the third-year students. Consequently, the major findings validated the hypothesis of the study. In view of the findings obtained, application of the LA has been recommended and a number of pedagogical implications have been presented.

Micro- and Macroscale Ideas of Current Among Upper-Division Electrical Engineering Students

The concept of electric current is fundamental in the study of electrical engineering (EE). Students are often exposed to this concept in their daily lives and early in middle school education. Lower-division university courses are usually limited to the study of passive electronic devices and simple electric circuits. Semiconductor physics is an upper-division course that presents the physics behind semiconductor devices in depth and exposes the students to microscale explanations of different types of current, such as drift and diffusion currents. This paper investigates how third-year college students majoring in EE link microscale and macroscale concepts of current, and what misconceptions they reveal after one quarter of advanced instruction in semiconductor physics. The interviewees were posed a problem, based on a distracting device structure that exposed student difficulties in defining current, charges and doping, and the plotting of current–voltage ( I–V ) characteristics. For example, some students had the naive idea that current is the flow of a particular type of charge (i.e., only electrons or only holes) or that there is a “spectrum of doping.” Almost all students drew a one-quadrant coordinate system for the I–V curves, which might imply that students think only about positive voltages. These findings can inform further studies to identify and address misconceptions in the important area of semiconductor device physics.

Project-based physics labs using low-cost open-source hardware

We describe a project-based physics lab, which we proposed to third-year university students. These labs are based on new open-source low-cost equipment (Arduino microcontrollers and compatible sensors). Students are given complete autonomy: they develop their own experimental setup and study the physics topic of their choice. The goal of these projects is to let students to discover the reality of experimental physics. Technical specifications of the acquisition material and case studies are presented for practical implementation in other universities.

Should Dictionaries be Used in Translation Tests and Examinations?

Motivated by the conflicting views regarding the use of the dictionary in translation tests and examinations this study was intended to verify the dictionary-free vs dictionary-based translation hypotheses. The subjects were 135 Arabic-speaking male and female EFL third-year university students. Agroup consisting of 62 students translated a text from English to Arabic without a dictionary at the beginning of the semester and translated the same text with a dictionary at the end of the semester. Another group of 73 students translated a text from Arabic to English twice in the same way in the same semester. Both groups used electronic mobile dictionaries in the second translation. The lexical errors were detected and statistically analyzed. The t-tests revealed a highly significant difference in favor of dictionary-based translation. The errors committed in the dictionary-based translation were remarkably less than those committed in dictionary-free translation. Further research is needed to settle the dispute.

Analysis of learning behavior in a flipped programing classroom adopting problem-solving strategies

ABSTRACTPrograming is difficult for beginners because they need to learn the new language of computers. Developing software, especially complex software, is bound to result in problems, frustration, and the need to think in new ways. Identifying the learning behavior behind programing by way of empirical studies can help beginners learn more easily. In this study, a flipped classroom combined with the blended learning mode was adopted by switching the in-class instructional time and the out-of-class edX lecture time. The research laboratory developed a system that collected the teacher and students discussion activities when adopting problem-solving strategies in online discussion. The participants were 44 third-year college students from the computer science course of a university in northern Taiwan. The experiment was from 30th March to 4th May in 2015. A total of 120 initial comments were collected, along with 401 responding comments. These 521 comments were coded according to the problem-solving steps as posing questions, offering solutions, discussion, and sharing conclusions. The inter-rater reliability of the two coders reached a kappa value of 0.81. The results indicated that the flipped classroom combined with the problem-solving strategy was more effective than the previous problem-solving behavior sequence.

English Lexical Acquisition of Adult Learners in Instructional Settings: Issue on Lexical Input

<p>This study examined the receptive and productive English vocabulary knowledge of tertiary students. Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) consisted of three tests, namely Passive Vocabulary Test (PVT), Controlled Active Vocabulary Test (CAVT), and Free Active Vocabulary Test (FAVT) was used to collect the data. A total of 360 first-, second- and third-year university students were involved in the study. The findings revealed that majority of them had very limited lexical knowledge to use English as their second or foreign language, though formal exposures to English language had been given to them for at least 11 years before entering the tertiary level. In trying to unfold the unsuccessful attempt to enhance the students’ lexical competent through the present Malaysian education system, the issue of lexical input in terms of quantity and quality had been raised.</p>

ENGLISH LEXICAL ACQUISITION OF ADULT LEARNERS IN INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS: ISSUE ON LEXICAL INPUT

This study examined the receptive and productive English vocabulary knowledge of tertiary students. Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) consisted of three tests, namely Passive Vocabulary Test (PVT), Controlled Active Vocabulary Test (CAVT), and Free Active Vocabulary Test (FAVT) was used to collect the data. A total of 360 first-, second- and third-year university students were involved in the study. The findings revealed that majority of them had very limited lexical knowledge to use English as their second or foreign language, though formal exposures to English language had been given to them for at least 11 years before entering the tertiary level. In trying to unfold the unsuccessful attempt to enhance the students’ lexical competent through the present Malaysian education system, the issue of lexical input in terms of quantity and quality had been raised.

University Students' Visual Cognitive Styles with respect to Majors and Years

Visual cognitive style is an individual difference that is related to the preference or visual imagery tendency of an individual of processing visual information. This study examines the visual cognitive styles of university students according to their study subject, study year and genders and includes 448 first- and third-year university students from seven departments. The results indicate that spatial imagery tendencies were stronger among students in the sciences, whereas verbal tendencies were strong among students in linguistic fields. The spatial imagery tendencies of third-year students from the Department of Physics Engineering and the verbal tendencies of third-year students from the Department of English Language Teaching were significantly higher than those of first-year students of related departments. Different from previous studies the finding about the tendency increment among first to third year of study is remarkable which can be investigated through experimental studies.

Redefining the Roles of Parents and Social Structure in the Educational Outcomes of Cambodian Young Adults

In this article, we examine the roles of Coleman’s social capital in university attendance among Cambodian young adults, utilizing grounded theory that includes in-depth interviews with 10 purposefully selected third-year university students. Results indicate that self-motivation, parental expectations, extended family assistance, mentors’ assistance, sibling inspirations, and social norms serve as student-acquired resources that facilitate university attendance. Under Coleman’s framework, numerous studies concentrate on the role of authoritative figures (e.g., parents or parents’ networks) in children’s developmental trajectories, viewing parents as sole distributors of resources to children whose outcomes depend on what they receive—in the absence of which, their positive developmental outcomes would be negated. This study, however, provides further evidence that children are capable of assisting each other, motivating themselves, and overcoming adverse social norms to help them advance academically, in the absence or lack of parental attention and/or involvement. This study suggests that individuals’ self-motivation be integral in social capital concepts.