This study investigated whether the framework of writing for English learners should be guided by the well-established reading-writing relation or by the receptive and productive nature of literacy skills. The writings of 209 advanced English learners in Korea were analyzed in relation to receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension while controlling for writing fluency. Two sets of structural equation models were fitted: (1) productive skills (productive vocabulary and writing fluency) mediating receptive skills (receptive vocabulary and reading) and (2) reading mediating receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The results supported the second model in which reading completely mediated the contribution of receptive and productive vocabulary to writing. Although there were no direct effects of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, both had significant indirect effects on writing through reading and writing fluency. These results show that reading has a strong direct effect on writing above and beyond vocabulary, and that vocabulary knowledge contributes to writing development through reading.
The current study examined the potential contribution of advanced Korean EFL learners’ writing abilities to their reading comprehension abilities. A total of 191 college students participated in this study and were tested on writing and reading comprehension abilities as well as other literacy-related measures including listening comprehension, textreading fluency, and knowledge of vocabulary to control for their effects. In order to account for different aspects of writing and reading comprehension abilities, multiple measures of reading and writing abilities were adopted. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analyses demonstrated that the advanced Korean EFL learners’ English writing abilities had a significant effect on their reading comprehension abilities when other relevant literacy skills were controlled for. Furthermore, their writing abilities mediated the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension abilities. These results highlight the important pedagogical implications on the critical role of writing abilities in enhancing the reading comprehension abilities of L2 learners.
This study was designed to explore effective techniques to be used in IERW (Integrated English Reading and Writing) classes for college students. The study last for 15 weeks and included 457 students and 11 instructors at E University. The participants were freshmen who were taking a compulsory English reading and writing class, and the instructors were seven native English speakers and four Koreans. To ensure the effectiveness of IERW classes, it is important to identify what teaching activities are being used and which activities students prefer. To address these issues, the instructors were interviewed regarding their teaching activities in IERW classes. From the interview results, a survey was made that asked students which class activities they consider useful. The results show that most students responded positively to the activities that the instructors were using, with a preference of around 70 percent. Notably, pair or group activities were rated as less favorable than other activities, with a score of under 50 percent. Some implications of the findings and suggestions for teaching activities for IERW classes are provided.
In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, creativity plays a pivotal role in the competitiveness of a country. The importance of creativity education therefore cannot be overemphasized. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of discussion-based English reading and writing activities on Korean high school students' creativity, English writing, and self-assessed creative thinking. The participants were 45 high school students in Seoul, Korea. They were divided into two groups: the discussion-based English reading and writing group (n=24) and the traditional English instruction group (n=21). The experiment was administered during two semesters of the 2017 academic year. The major findings are as follows: First, the experimental group showed significant improvement on the creativity test, especially in the areas of fluency, flexibility, and original thinking. Second, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the writing test. Third, the experimental group showed positive changes in their self-assessed flexible thinking, convergent thinking, and intrinsic motivation. All of these indicate the beneficial effects of the discussion-based English reading and writing activities. Based on the results, some pedagogical suggestions were made for the effective integration of creativity education into the teaching of English as a foreign language.
By examining two low-proficiency EFL students’ experiences of reading literature, and of writing about what they have read during a semester-long reading/writing course, we investigate literature’s place in EFL writing classes. We also observe whether using literature in EFL writing classes lead to successful synergies among LW (learning-to-write), WLL (writing-to-learn language), and WLC (writing-tolearn content). We adopt a case study methodology. The participants, Mia and Sun, are first-year students who attend a private university in Seoul. Both students favor the inclusion of literature in the reading-writing classroom. Mia experiences the literature-reading-writing connection mainly as language knowledge, with the strong appreciation for WLL perspective. By comparison, Sun concerns for LW dimensions of writing, together with the WLL perspective. This study provides evidence that literature-reading-writing connection serves as a vehicle not only for a rich reading experience but also for the synergistic learning of writing, content, and language.
The present study aims to investigate the direct and indirect contributions of Korean EFL college students’ L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge to their L2 writing performances by using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis with a goal to explore the pathways of vocabulary knowledge to writing. Data from 178 students were collected through tests of receptive and productive vocabulary breadth and depth, a writing test and a reading test. In testing a hypothesized model on the roles of receptive and productive vocabulary in writing, the results of the SEM analysis reveal the direct role of productive vocabulary in writing. The indirect role of receptive vocabulary on writing was observed through the mediating role of productive vocabulary or reading ability due to the direct contribution of receptive vocabulary to both productive vocabulary and reading and that of productive vocabulary and reading to writing. Findings from the study shed light on the relations of L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge with L2 writing abilities, suggesting potential benefits of both receptive and productive vocabulary learning for L2 writing.
This study examines the effects of the integrated reading-writing tasks (e.g., writing summaries or reflective essays) on college students’ writing performance. A pre-test and a post-test which consisted of reading comprehension questions and a writing task were administered to 207 EFL college students at the beginning and end of a semester. The data was analyzed both quantitatively using ANOVA and post-hoc test, and qualitatively using a questionnaire survey and interviews. The mean scores of the posttest for the classes which utilized the integrated reading-writing tasks were higher than that of the control group. Also, higher level students in the two experimental groups and a control group showed that there were improvements between the pre-test and post-test, specifically in the treatment groups. The analyses of the questionnaire survey and interviews revealed that the treatment groups which integrated reading-writing in class perceived writing summaries and reflective essays as helpful and effective tools for enhancing their writing ability. The overall results of the study indicated that implementing the integrative approaches to language instruction in the EFL classroom is beneficial in improving learners’ writing performance regardless of the learners’ proficiency level.
This study investigated the effects of types of post-reading instructional scaffolds on university-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ WebQuest writing performance. One hundred twenty students, randomly selected from 8 EFL classes at a Korean university, were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (a) online Instructional Conversation (IC), (b) online recitation, or (c) no post-reading instructional scaffold (i.e., control). After reading WebQuest texts, the online IC and online recitation groups received their treatments, using an Internet-based synchronous textual communication tool as a medium for communication. The control group, on the other hand, did not receive any post-reading instructional scaffold and continued to read the WebQuest texts for the same amount of time that the IC and recitation groups received their treatments. Results showed that the online IC group outperformed one or both of the other two groups in overall WebQuest writing performance and in the specific areas of overall writing quality and content. Implications are discussed in both theoretical and practical terms.
This case study investigates the impact of cognitive style (field in/dependence) on errors in English writing through extensive reading (ER). It explores different possibilities between two field-independent (FI) and field-dependent (FD) learners through ER, and it considers the types of errors (interlanguage or intralingual) that they are more likely to commit. The participants were two Korean female high school students with different cognitive styles. To ascertain their respective cognitive styles, the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was conducted. The participants were asked to write a reading log once a week for six months. Data analyses were performed by two raters, and for further qualitative analysis, Nvivo 10 was used. The results showed that ER was more beneficial to the FI learner with regard to writing proficiency, and both the FI and FD learners committed considerable interlanguage errors. Furthermore, there were similarities and discrepancies between the FI and FD learners as a result of the ER treatment in interlanguage error change.
When one is reading or writing, various forms of bottom-up knowledge—e.g., grammar, vocabulary, orthography, and the mechanics of written language—interact with the top-down processes at the level of discourse. One of the reasons English language learners encounter a lot of difficulty when they are engaged in academic reading and writing is that they have been taught grammar only at the sentence level and not at the discourse level. In order to illustrate how discourse-based grammar instruction can facilitate the acquisition of academic reading and writing, this paper discusses various ways in which the following four topics can be dealt with at the discourse level: cohesion, the tense and aspect system, comma usage, and existential there. Obviously, discourse-based grammar instruction should be integrated with the teaching of the other top-down and bottom-up skills necessary for academic reading and writing. EFL teachers, however, need to know more about discourse grammar to effectively make their learners aware of it and to offer them learning activities that will contribute to better reading comprehension and written production.
Although reading is part and parcel for the development of L2 literacy skills, such as in reading and writing, the skill has been practiced more often for grammar instruction and literal translation in EFL contexts. While realizing there is less focus on the development of L2 skills through extensive reading (ER) in EFL university contexts,the purpose of the present study was to explore the outcome of an in-class ER approach in English university classrooms. With 249 students, the study reports on the implementation of a university level ER class and the outcome for L2 development via the measures of L2 reading speed, L2 speed reading comprehension, and L2 lexical writing ability. Results indicated positive outcomes for the development of students’ L2reading ability, productive retrieval of academic words and lexical variety. The outcome of the ER program validates the effort and time expended on such programs when graded readers are utilized at matching student Lexile levels.
This study investigated the relationship of collocations to reading and writing skills. Eighty-six Korean university students were given a collocation knowledge test, followed by a reading test; both lexical and grammatical collocations in the collocation test were extracted from the passages in the reading test. Subsequently, the students were given a writing test, and its topic was related to the content of the reading passages; both lexical and grammatical collocations appearing in their compositions were counted based on the classification criteria provided in The BBI Combinatory Dictionaty of English. The findings are as follows. There were no significant correlations between the students' co llocation knowledge and reading ski ll s. However, a significant correlation was found between writing quality and col location use. Good and poor readers were simil ar on average in both grammatical and lexical co llocations, which corroborates the nonsignificant relationship between reading and collocation knowledge. In contrast, good and poor writers showed significant differences in the use of both grammatical and lexical collocations, thus substantiating the significant correlation between writing quality and collocation use. The group difference was more pronounced in grammatical collocations. Across good and poor writers, lexical collocations were used much less than grammatical collocations. Taken together, these results support a need for EFL writers to learn both grammatical and lexical coll ocations to improve writing quality. The results also caution not to overgeneral ize the influence of co ll ocation knowledge on reading performance . •
The article strives on the primary school Chinese words learning&writing theory and practice per IT for integration of IT and teaching. Attached details as below for colleagues’reference!
In this study, we randomly select two urban primary schoolsin Beijing, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Shanxi, and two classes of students fromeach of the 1-6th grade from each school. We test the students ’recognizing, reading and writing ability on their major languagetextbooks and extra reading materials and also give them relatedquestionnaires, aiming to search the impact of network towards Chineseprimary students' reading and writing abilities of Chinese characters.
최근 교육과정에 있어서 의사소통능력이 강조됨에 따라서 듣기, 말하기가 특히 강조되는 반면, 읽기와 쓰기 즉, 문자언어에 관한 학습능력 역시 같이 향상되고 있는지에 대해서는 논란의 여지가 많았고, 학교단위 수준에서 보면 오히려 부정적인 견해도 많았다. 이것은 알파벳, 단어, 문법, 구문, 독해로 이어지는 기존의 일반적인 상향식 학습의 폐해로 여겨지기 때문에, 문자언어에 미숙한 중학생이라 할지라도 텍스트 전체로부터 접근하는 하향식 읽기 방법을 접목할 필요가 있다. 글의 전체적인 구조와 전개방식에 대해 배경지식을 가진다면 읽기가 훨씬 수월해 질 것이기 때문이다. 쓰기의 경우에도 빈칸 채우기나 문장 단위의 통제되거나 유도된 수준에 그치는 경우가 많고, 실생활에 필요한 자유 작문 형태의 쓰기 학습은 소홀히 다루어지고 있는 것이 현실이다. 이 문제 역시 영어교사들이 자유 작문을 시도해 볼 신뢰성 있는 틀이나 형식이 없기 때문에 그 필요성을 인정하면서도 실제로 수업에서 적용키 어려운 점이 있었다. 이 같은 상황을 학생과 교사 입장에서 개선할 수 있는 효과적인 방법으로서, EFL(English as a Foreign Language) 상황 하에서 읽기와 쓰기를 체계적으로 연계시킨 좀 더 새로운 학습방법이 고안될 필요가 있었다. 본 논문은 비교적 최근의 이론인 과정-장르 중심 접근법에 이론적 근거를 두고, 장르별로 텍스트의 전체적인 구조와 언어적 특징을 구별하고, 이것을 쉽게 도식화한 스켈레톤 다이어그램을 그려 봄으로써, 읽기와 쓰기에 동시에 효과적인 새로운 접근법을 구안하였다.
The study investigated whether Korean EFL students' vocabulary used in reading-based writing differed according to writing topic and their reading and writing proficiency. College students enrolled in writing courses (n=95) were asked to write argumentative essays in response to two readings on judging people by appearance (JPA) and disclosing personal information of serious criminals (DPI). These students were divided into high and low proficiency writer groups and into high and low proficiency reader groups according to their writing and reading scores respectively. The students' vocabulary used in writing was then analyzed by VocabProfile, which provided four lexical frequency lists: the first 1000 frequent words (K1) including function words (FW) and content words (CW), the second 1000 frequent words (K2), academic word list (AWL), and off the list words (OLW). The results indicated that the topic JPA produced a higher proportion of K1 and content words, whereas DPI generated more K2 and off the list words. None of the vocabulary profiles, however, significantly differed according to the students’ reading proficiency. In contrast, proficient writers were found to use significantly more K1 and function words than their counterparts. With the topic effect further considered, for JPA, proficient writers used more K1 words and function words whereas less proficient writers used more K2 and off the list words. With regard to DPl, proficient writers were found to use more function words than low proficient writers. Findings are discussed in more detail, along with implications.