Post on 30-Dec-2015
Terms to Know
❖ Metacognitive skills➢ Awareness of one’s own learning or thinking
processes❖ “Improvement”
➢ A higher score on the post-test as compared to the pre-test
❖ “Acquired”➢ Marked the correct answer on the post-test
that s/he had marked incorrectly on the pre-test
Language AcquisitionAccording to Vygotsky:
“...the meaning of a given word is approached through another word, and whatever we discover through this operation is...a record of the relation in the child’s mind between previously formed families of words”
Lev Vygotsky
❖ 1896-1934❖ Jewish❖ Moscow University (Law)❖ Thought and Language, ❖ Mind in Society, etc. ❖ Communist Suppression
How History Shaped His Ideas
❖ Marxism❖ Engel’s use of tools
➢ Vygotsky: Language is a tool to deal with one’s environment
➢ Individuals create psychological tools to learn, or Metacognitive Skills
Vygotsky’s Theories❖ Zone of Proximal Development
➢ an area / “zone” between the child’s ability to perform independently and with assistance, where the most effective instruction occurs.
❖ Mediation➢ Movement from a lower form of thought to a
higher form of thought❖ Tools
➢ Language and Metacognitive skills
Krashen❖ Born in Chicago, 1941❖ Ph.D at UCLA in Linguistics❖ Emeritus Professor of
Linguistics and Education at the University of Southern California
❖ Published over 350 books and papers
Krashen’s Theories
❖ Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis-immersion and custom -vs- formal active development
❖ Monitor Hypothesis-We use what we know of a language to self-correct/“monitor” our output
❖ Affective filter-the ability to learn a language is affected by external and internal factors-motivation, anxiety, self-esteem
❖ Natural Order Hypothesis- grammatical structures are acquired in a natural, predictable order
Krashen’s Input Hypothesis❖ Input Hypothesis
➢ We acquire language when we receive language input that is one step beyond current comprehension level (i +1)
Hypothesis
We believe that the bilingual students are more likely to acquire more vocabulary than the monolingual students. Bilingual students have already developed higher metacognitive skills due to their experience with a second language. According to Vygotsky’s Theory of the Zone of Proximal Development and his expansion on Engel’s Tools with Krashen’s Input Theory, without any assistance to both groups the bilingual students should perform better than the monolingual students.
Original Study❖ “Beyond raw frequency: Incidental
vocabulary acquisition in extensive reading” (2008)
■ conducted in South Korea❖ Based on the idea that “second language
can be learned incidentally while the learner is engaged in...reading for meaning, inferring the idea of unknown words”
Original Study: South Korea
Replication:Irving, TX
Prior Assessment of ENGLISH language ability TOEFL None taken
Subject(s) South Korean ELLsBilingual students & Monolingual English-speaking students
Age College (21 years old) 5th grade (9-10 years old)
Time Allotted 5 weeks4-6 hours reading/ day
1 day10 minutes / entire text
Kind of Text narrative: chapter books (ie Holes, Hatchet)
informational: online article about animals
Material selected for assessment high and low frequency words
Tests 1 pre-test, 2 post-tests 1 pre-test, 1 post-test
Subjects
❖ 10 children from Holy Family School➢ 5 Bilingual 5th
grade students➢ 5 Monolingual 5th
grade students
Pre-test/Post-test
1) What do all vertebrates have in common?a) They live on land.b) They all have a hard internal skeleton or backbone.c) They all have legs.d) They are all warm blooded.
2) When we went to the zoo, my family and I visited several pachyderms, including elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami.
Pachyderm most likely describes an animal that a) is small and soft-skinnedb) is large, thick-skinned, and hoofedc) has scaly skin, like a reptiled) is covered in feathers
(sample questions)
Reading (sample)6 Amazing Animals that Practically Lived
Forever
ADWAITA THE TORTOISE (1750-2006)Even with the long life expectancy of giant tortoises, an Aldabra Giant Tortoise named
Adwaita blows all others away with a life lasting around 255 years. Estimates put his
birth date around 1750, making him an entire generation older than the United
States of America.
The tortoise was originally owned by a man named General Robert Clive, an important
member of the East India Company, who [died in] 1774. Barely a toddler at that time,
Adwaita bummed around for a bit before eventually being transferred to an Indian
zoo in 1875, where he spent the rest of his life eating and...that's pretty much it.
After his death in 2006, carbon dating on his shell confirmed his age, making him
quite possibly the oldest living creature ever, and almost certainly the oldest living
vertebrate.
Data Analysis: Monolingual
• 3 students(1,3,5): scores remained the same
• One student (2): score increased by 1
• One student: (4): score increased by 3
Data Analysis: Bilingual
• 3 students (1, 2, 4): scores slightly increased
• 1 student (3): score stayed the same
• Exception: Score of student 5 dramatically decreased by 4
Metacognitive Strategies Survey
For each question, when you weren’t sure of the answer in the first test, why did you select the answer you choose in the post test?
a. Remembered from the article (post test) d. Guessedb. Looked like a word I already
knew e. Otherc. Sounded right
Student # Bilingual (Y/N)
Score Answer Letter
Comments
Monolingual Survey Responses
Student #
Answer Students’ Comments
1 Sounded right, guessed
Already knew some
2 Sounded right Tried to do process of elimination, tried to match the word with whichever word seemed like it in the definition
3 Looked like a word I already knew
“Learned from context clues” when she saw the sentences
4 Guessed, Other Went back and read from my mind, remembered what article said about the words
5 Other Remembered the answer “from the outside”
Bilingual Survey ResponsesStudent #
Answer Students’ Comments
1 Remembered from the article
Learned
2 Other Process of elimination, maybe noticed in the article
3 Sounded right
4 Other Process of elimination on the pretest; on post-test used context clues “if it was an adjective I read the noun it was describing, to see”
5 Other I used context clues, looked at words around it, and used process of elimination on the pretest
Explanation of Data
Monolingual: Highest percent:- “guessed” and “already knew” (both 17%)- “other” (25%)
Bilingual: Highest percent: - “Context clues” and “learned from article” (both 22%) - process of Elimination (34%)
In relation to VygotskyEngel’s Tools Ext. Zone of Proximal Development
Definition
Objects/Skills to manipulate one’s environment, such as language and metacognitive skills
an area / “zone” between the child’s ability to perform independently and with assistance, where the most effective instruction occurs.
Our Study
The survey tested what metacognitive skills or tools the students were using
The pre-test was moderately too difficult to do for the students to do before the reading, but with the aid of the reading, they were able to perform better on the post-test
In relation to KrashenInput Hypothesis Acquisition-Learning
HypothesisMonitor Hypothesis Affective Filter
Definition We learn language when we receive language input that is one step beyond current comprehension level (i +1)
immersion and custom -vs- formal active development
We use what we know of a language to self-correct/“monitor” our output
the ability to learn a language is affected by external and internal factors-motivation, anxiety, self-esteem
Our Study We gave students a reading harder than their level, but not too difficult
Students were immersed in a natural reading source, receiving communication from the author in the article
One student responded that s/he checked the grammar in the sentences to see what was right, demonstrating an ability to self-correct
We informed the students beforehand that they were not to be graded or negatively affected in anyway
Challenges and Limitations❖ Of the monolingual students provided for us, one
was partially fluent in a second language.
❖ We were unable to acquire a larger sample size due to time constraints and number of students available.
❖ We were unable to obtain an objective measure of the students’ prior knowledge before the pre-test.
❖ The wording of question 7 seemed to affect the results such that students circled several wrong answers for the remainder of both tests.
Question 77) Circle all that apply. There may be more than one right answer.
When the presidential candidates discuss the hotly contested issue, the topic might be
a) controversialb) enthusiasticc) calmly discussedd) exciting
8) What would happen if you survey a classroom?a) You would watch children learning and playing.b) You would paint it different colors.c) You would grab the pencils.d) The kids would spread out around the room.
Conclusion
Our hypothesis was disproved upon finding that the rates of improvement were the same for both groups.
However, it appears that bilingual students demonstrated more metacognitive skills or tools as proven from our survey.
Bibliographyhttp://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/krashen.htmhttp://www.s9.com/Biography/Stephen-Krashenhttp://unt.unice.fr/uoh/learn_teach_FL/img/figures/Stephen-Krashen.jpghttp://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.htmlhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/29830/6-amazing-animals-practically-lived-foreverhttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metacognitionThought and Language, Page 52 Chapter 5: An experimental study of the development of ConceptsCatherine