Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enfoque por tareas

Resumen:

The present study explores whether a focused task-based peer interaction pedagogical intervention leads to increased explicit and implicit knowledge of past simple tense among young learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) and whether adding pre-task explicit grammar instruction or explicit interactional instruction or both has any impact on the results. Four groups of 6th grade EFL learners aged 11–12 years participated in an 8-week pedagogical intervention (50 minutes per week) while a fifth control group only participated in the testing sessions (n = 36). Groups were divided according to the intervention received: grammar+interaction strategy (n = 26), grammar (n = 26), interaction strategy (n = 24) and task-only (n = 24). The four groups who underwent treatment also participated in past tense focused task-based peer...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de vocabulario

Resumen:

The increasing number of students with German as a second language (GL2) poses a great challenge for schools. Previous studies showed that especially young learners with a migration background are lagging behind in the acquisition of second language (L2) literacy. Experiencing problem behaviors (PB) in addition, might pose even greater challenges. Adequate vocabulary, including knowledge of additional vocabulary facts, is essential for appropriate L2 proficiency, and therefore, it is a crucial aspect of support that should be focused on. Thus, the aim of the study was to support vocabulary acquisition in students with GL2 regarding two aspects: (1) the acquisition of expressive and receptive vocabulary, and (2) the incidental acquisition of additional information regarding the vocabulary that are not explicitly focused on during...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: pronunciación

Resumen:

This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French aspirateur, Catalan aspirador ‘vacuum cleaner’) while clapping to the rhythmic structure of those words or only repeated the words. Participants’ oral productions before and after training were rated for accentedness by three French native speakers. Results showed that in both groups, participants’ pronunciation improved after training, and crucially, children in the clapping group improved significantly more than those in the non-clapping group. Additionally, an acoustic analysis of the duration of word-final vowels indicated that only children...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: interacción

Resumen:

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Classroom relationships represent a complex and dynamic system, in which students’ relationships with teachers and peers are intertwined with each other. A person-centered approach was used to investigate how multiple characteristics of a good-quality relationship (i.e., validation, caring, and instrumental guidance) with teachers and peers combined to form English-as-a-foreign-language primary school students’ classroom relationships profiles. Four distinct profiles of classroom relationships were identified: Supportive, Teacher-oriented, Moderate, and Isolated. Whether students’ gender and English proficiency level significntly predicted their likelihood of belonging to each profile was tested...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: motivación

Resumen:

Self-efficacy, the belief in one’s own capability, is an important element in students’ academic success and positive functioning in school settings. However, self-efficacy, like motivation, is easily frustrated by the social environment in school. Although studies have investigated the cross-theoretical relationship between self-efficacy and autonomy support in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in a university and a secondary school setting, it has not been examined in the primary school context. To address the research gap, the present study explored the relationship that might exist between self-efficacy and perceived autonomy support in primary EFL classrooms. The participants were 454 fifth-grade students from three primary schools in Japan and Taiwan. They responded to scales measuring academic self-efficacy and...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: motivación

Resumen:

This study was to examine the individual differences in primary school students’ motivation (i.e. growth mindset, self-efficacy, and interest), self-regulated learning strategy use in English writing and the relationships between motivation, strategy use and English writing competence. Participants were 523 4th grade primary school students in Hong Kong. Although the findings showed a general pattern that the high achievers reported higher levels of motivation (i.e. growth mindset, self-efficacy, and interest) and self-regulated learning (SRL) strategy use than the average achievers, who in turn outperformed the low achievers, all the students showed quite a low level of interest in English writing. Interestingly, motivation impacted SRL strategy use very differently for students of different writing competence groups on the whole....

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: storytelling/narración

Resumen:

Storytelling has a long tradition in education including language learning and teaching because of its extensive benefits in language development. In second and foreign language education, stories and storytelling have been integrated into school curricula to enhance language development; however, there is scarce empirical evidence about how storytelling facilitates children’s English as a foreign language (EFL) learning and its potential as a holistic pedagogy. This article explores a living educational theory (Whitehead & McNiff, 2006) of how storytelling works as a pedagogy in storytelling workshops with an English class at a private tuition centre in Vietnam to facilitate children’s EFL learning. Key pedagogical elements identified through the living theory methodology included storytelling as: a responsive strategy;...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: expresión escrita

Resumen:

The benefits of using digital storytelling are well documented in the literature. Whether and how these advantages can be extended to digital story-writing, especially for young learners, remains underexplored. Recent advancement in technology has the potential of streamlining the stages of planning and revising in a process approach to second language writing. The present study examined how English teachers in two Hong Kong primary schools adopted a process approach to teach digital story-writing. They planned eight writing lessons for 10 Primary 3–4 classes. Students were taught to use Google Slides to write their stories on iPads and complete a recording in small groups, which were then published on an online platform. Findings from focus-group interviews, lesson observations and student writings revealed that students were highly...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: creencias y actitudes de los estudiantes

Resumen:

Although language learner beliefs are a distinct individual difference factor that can significantly influence the success of language learning, limited attention has been given to young language learners’ beliefs about grammar instruction and their relationship with students’ learning outcomes. In this study, we administered a questionnaire tapping into learners’ beliefs regarding grammar instruction to 277 Chinese primary school students and utilized the Cambridge Young Learners English Tests (A1 Movers) to measure their second-language proficiency, including listening, reading and writing, and speaking skills. Our results revealed that the participants preferred form-focused and inductive grammar instruction over meaning-focused and deductive grammar instruction. Moreover, the results of multilevel modeling suggested that the...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de lenguas

Resumen:

This study investigates Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding oral corrective feedback, exploring and seeking to explain some of the relationships between beliefs and classroom practices. Data were collected in primary schools in Vietnam, and consist of 24 classroom observations and interviews with six teachers. Overall, the teachers showed high levels of awareness of the benefits of oral corrective feedback. They nominated pronunciation errors as the most important target for correction in the primary context. In practice, although pronunciation and grammar accounted for the majority of the total errors, leading to the majority of total feedback moves, the frequency of feedback per error was much higher for vocabulary errors. Prompts were reported by teachers to be more effective and more favourable than...

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