Effects of Graded Texts on EFL College Students' Incidental ...

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if appropriate non culture-oriented reading texts are selected and glossing problems are overcame. 4.3.2. Learners’ feedback towards the online extensive reading syllabus After the twelve-week extensive reading experience with the online extensive reading syllabus, learners’ reaction towards the syllabus were largely positive and they have approved <strong>of</strong> the various vocabulary enhancement features as being effective for vocabulary acquisition. Improved reading and vocabulary abilities were perceived by learners and indicated as the major advantages <strong>of</strong> the syllabus. Though functions such as the bilingual concordancer Totalrecall, highlighting, and repetition <strong>of</strong> target words were endorsed effective in general, a particular tool, gloss, however, was considered unsatisfactory with the suggestion that more words be glossed. In accordance with the opinions on gloss, about one-thirds <strong>of</strong> the learners felt that the texts were too difficult to comprehend despite the fact that they had enjoyed the reading process. Moreover, texts were regarded as being too long. Learners’ frustrations were evident in their performance <strong>of</strong> multiple choice comprehension questions as they merely achieved a comprehension <strong>of</strong> about 75% while reading. These feedback contradicted greatly with our previous attempt to ensure the number <strong>of</strong> target words and the estimation <strong>of</strong> learner vocabulary level confirmed in pretest. From observing learners’ reading process, we suspect that the above learner difficulties might originate from the same problem, Taiwanese college learners’ inexperience in extensive reading. Learners reported that they were not used to long texts and they either grew out <strong>of</strong> patience or their eyes easily felt tired from reading on-line. Comprehensibility dropped as they struggled towards the end <strong>of</strong> the texts. Thus, though the new word rate had been controlled by sequencing procedures and pretest had confirmed our estimation <strong>of</strong> their vocabulary level, learner’ heavy reliance 73
on gloss suggested that they still did not grow out <strong>of</strong> habits in senior high instruction—intensive reading. From results <strong>of</strong> the background questionnaire, it is found that despite learners’ rich experience in receiving extensive reading instructions, very few <strong>of</strong> them have extensive reading habits. Without much practice, their intensive reading habits were remarkably obvious while reading texts from the on-line reading syllabus. Low tolerance <strong>of</strong> ambiguity was observed as learners tended to look up every word that they were not completely sure. From the tracking records, it is shown that learners seldom looked up target words in the bilingual concordancer, Totalrecall, for more information besides Chinese translation. Instead, unglossed words, including words from the familiar word lists, were the ones searched. It is speculated that instead <strong>of</strong> using extensive reading strategies such as contextual guessing, learners immediately sought for help whenever they stumbled across sentences they did not understand. Furthermore, learners had the tendency to make clear every single sentence before proceeding to read, a habit not encouraged in extensive reading. This intensive reading habit in turn made reading long text more tiresome. Day and Bamford (1998) pointed out that learners’ previous experiences on reading might predispose learners against extensive reading. Since intensive reading, in which all vocabulary and grammatical patterns were carefully studied within texts, was the common in-class practice in Taiwan, learners’ reading habits were difficult to adjust even with extensive strategy instruction implemented. It is suggested that in addition to making extensive reading strategies explicit in class, more practice sessions should be scheduled as guidance to the extensive reading ability. Moreover, on-going time to time reminders on goals and strategies <strong>of</strong> extensive reading could be emphasized throughout the activity. One other explanation for the contradiction on the presumably low new word 74
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國立清華大學碩士論文英
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Abstract Incidental vocabulary lear
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implicit learning for learners’ q
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4.3. Discussion 70 4.3.1. The Feasi
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List of Figure Fig
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competence (Elley, 1991; Hafiz & Tu
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EFL classes, and determining the am
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consultation for second language le
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vastly reinforced with the ease and
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learning to occur. 2. Word meaning
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inging learners who are competent <
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(1993) suggested a required 5,000 w
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words in this set of</stron
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Besides the above potential limitat
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immediately after reading, one week
Page 31 and 32: 2.6. Measuring Incidental Vocabular
Page 33 and 34: 2.7. Summary We incorporated the em
Page 35 and 36: 3.1. Overview Chapter Three METHODO
Page 37 and 38: The Sinorama magazine is dedicated
Page 39 and 40: Word List (鄭恆雄, 2002; 2003),
Page 41 and 42: for the cut off po
Page 43 and 44: TextLadder; instead, our program pu
Page 45 and 46: target words within each text. Afte
Page 47 and 48: Table 3.2 Target word rate and targ
Page 49 and 50: 7. into the Exposed Word List Selec
Page 51 and 52: Table 3. 5. A comparison between Gh
Page 53 and 54: 3.3.4 Glossing of
Page 55 and 56: participants were required put a ch
Page 57 and 58: score of 2. If a t
Page 59 and 60: Table 3.9 Instruments used in the s
Page 61 and 62: had finished all sixteen texts. The
Page 63 and 64: technical feasibility of</s
Page 65 and 66: a result, valid subjects dropped fr
Page 67 and 68: Table 4.2 Learners’ perspectives
Page 69 and 70: estimation of lear
Page 71 and 72: words from known words. The provisi
Page 73 and 74: vocabulary level, on the other hand
Page 75 and 76: 4.2.4 The results of</stron
Page 77 and 78: Table 4.11 shows learners’ respon
Page 79 and 80: 4.3 Discussion 4.3.1. The feasibili
Page 81: direct phonetic translations <stron
Page 85 and 86: measurement tool for its function <
Page 87 and 88: learners’ processing of</
Page 89 and 90: not be untangled without considerin
Page 91 and 92: 5.1. Overview Chapter Five Conclusi
Page 93 and 94: with the same group of</str
Page 95 and 96: also accelerate sequencing time wit
Page 97 and 98: esponsible for connecting the two b
Page 99 and 100: REFERENCES Berman, R.A. (1984 ). Sy
Page 101 and 102: Hulstijn, J. H., Hollander, M., & G
Page 103 and 104: Rationale for Pedagogy (pp. 174-200
Page 105 and 106: 第 1-6 題電腦方面 Appendix A
Page 107 and 108: Student Post□ 其他□__________
Page 109 and 110: 26. optimistic 27. consumption 28.
Page 111 and 112: 1. entrepreneur: VI. 我對這個
Page 113 and 114: 21.calligraphy: I. 我對這個字
Page 115 and 116: 41.insufficient: I. 我對這個字
Page 117 and 118: 3 points entrepreneur: (item three
Page 119 and 120: Appendix F The In-class Evaluation
Page 121 and 122: Appendix H The Introductory Page on
Page 123 and 124: Appendix J A Search Example <strong
Page 125 and 126: Appendix L Student Reading Process
Page 127 and 128: 第 1-6 題電腦方面 Appendix N
Page 129 and 130: 13(2). 英文雜誌 41.7% (28/67) (
Page 131 and 132: Appendix P Results of</stro
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