線上學術英文詞彙教學對大學生寫作的影響

Effects of online academic vocabulary instruction on EFL college writing

林明佳(Ming-Chia Lin)

指導教授 ： 劉顯親博士

國立清華大學/人文社會學院/外國語文學系/碩士(2006年)

https://doi.org/10.6843/NTHU.2006.00701

摘要

英文單字能力是判別外語讀寫能力的一項重要指標，先前的研究指出豐富的外語詞彙可使學生有較好的閱讀能力及寫作表現。為了提升學生的外語讀寫能力，將單字學習融入閱讀活動中是一個最常見的教學模式。然而，有研究證實，閱讀時非刻意的單字學習（incidental vocabulary learning），並不足以擴充學生的單字使用能力。為了讓學生充分學習如何正確地使用單字，直接單字教學的必然性不容忽視。高等教育中，學術英文詞彙表（the academic word list）的重要性無庸置疑，由於此字表概括廣泛的學門中最常用的學術單字。有學者認為，直接地教授學術英文單字，並提供使用的機會，可使學生轉化他們被動的單字能力成為主動。另外，利用語料庫的索引，讓學生可立即查詢單字的真實用法，是一項有力的單字學習工具。然而，少有研究探索直接的學術英文詞彙教學（explicit academic vocabulary instruction）加上語料庫索引的工具，能否有效地增進學生的字彙使用能力，以增強他們的學術寫作能力，達成提升學生英文學術讀寫能力的教學目標。
本研究旨在探討線上學術英文單字教學對大學生寫作能力的影響。此單字教學依據學術英文詞彙表而建立，我們將線上教材建構在一個網路課程的平台上，並提加入語料庫索引工具。教材包含三個主要設計：學術英文單字課程，線上單字小考，學生作業上傳區。八週的單字教學在寫作課中展開，每次上課時間為50分鐘。教學流程包含：閱讀一篇含有學術詞彙的文章，針對語形、語意、用法給予直接的詞彙教學，學生親自檢索單字，小組的寫作練習。教學成效透過下列工具評量：兩種單字測驗、三次短文寫作測驗、兩種問卷。共有二十五位英文系的大學生參與本實驗。一開始，背景問卷調查了學生的單字學習經驗。為了瞭解教學後學生使用單字的能力，我們使用多種的評量工具：VLT單字廣度、VKS單字深度、及一項分析文章單字密度的工具VocabProfiler以計算學生寫作中單字運用的比例。寫作部分由兩位外語教學所的研究生，依照分析式的寫作量表批改(the ESL Composition Profile)。最後，我們使用評量問卷，針對線上教材設計及教學的成效，調查學生的滿意度。
資料分析顯示：第一、學生並無明顯地擴充他們的學術英文詞彙的廣度(academic word size)，不過他們的單字深度(depth)卻有顯著的進步。 第二，ANOVA 分析指出，學生確實在教學過後的寫作中能正確地使用較多的學術英文詞彙；他們的整體寫作品質也提升了，主要在單字及文法兩分項上有顯著進步。此外，他們用於寫作的學術字彙進步情況至少維持了四週。又依據典型分析（Canonical Analysis），教學後測中，學生的單字能力似乎與他們的寫作能力有正相關。第三，學生大致上認為線上單字教學，可加強他們運用學術英文詞彙的能力。以上顯示直接的學術英文詞彙教學可增進學生於寫作中使用單字的能力。也部分驗證了結合非刻意與直接單字教學的成效。
本研究呈現了一個可行的單字教學大綱，針對如何明確的教大學生使用學術英文詞彙。除了直接的單字教學外，教學中也應提及單字能力與寫作表現的相互關係，才能有效地提高學生的學習動機。隨著學生在寫作中使用學術英文詞彙能力的增加，他們便能輕易地融入學術研究的社群中。

關鍵字

寫作課直接的單字教學 ； 學術英文詞彙表 ； 線上單字課程

並列摘要

Vocabulary competence has been identified as one of the indicators for the level of L2 literacy (Hinkel, 2006; Schmitt, 2000). Previous studies point out that the command of a rich L2 word repertoire can contribute to the quality of learners’ reading comprehension and writing performance positively (Astika, 1993; Laufer & Nation, 1995). To promote the L2 learners’ literacy, embedding vocabulary learning into reading tasks is one of the most common teaching practices. However, it is evident that learning vocabulary incidentally from reading texts is insufficient to expand the learners’ productive vocabulary (Huang, H.T., 2004; Lee & Munice, 2006). To enhance the learners’ sophisticated mastery of productive vocabulary, explicit lexical instruction should be emphasized. In tertiary education, the Academic Vocabulary List (Coxhead, 2000, AWL) is a crucial learning goal, as it contains the high-frequency words applicable to a wide range of academic disciplines. Offering the explicit academic word instruction and providing opportunities for word production may instrumentally facilitate the transfer of the learners’ receptive vocabulary into active use (Coady, 1997; Coxhead, 2006). Also, vocabulary learning is claimed to be assisted by recent innovative referencing tools such as a concordance (Horst, et al., 2005; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005). Nevertheless, few studies explore whether and how explicit academic vocabulary instruction with the online concordancers can enhance the learners’ productive vocabulary for writing.
The present study aims to investigate the effects of self-designed online academic vocabulary instruction on college learners’ writing performance. Adopting the AWL as the basis, the online instruction was developed on a web platform, MOODLE (a freeware for online course construction) with the integration of a useful concordancer. Twenty-five EFL college students of English majors participated in the project. Three features of the online course were designed: (a) the explicit academic vocabulary lessons (wordlists, weekly lecture notes), (b) online quizzes (gap-filling, crosswords), and (c) learners’ vocabulary logs uploading section. Within the eight-week lexical teaching, the regular instructional flow included a reading task highlighting academic words, explicit academic word instruction, the learners’ hands-on concordancing (http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw/collocation), and a pair-writing task.
To gauge the developments of the learners’ academic vocabulary after the eight-week instruction, various measures were used at three time points: two types of vocabulary tests, three timed-essay tests, and two questionnaires. At the beginning, a background questionnaire probed into the learners’ prior lexical learning experiences. To estimate the instructional gains on the size and depth of learners’ vocabulary, the VLT (Schmitt et al., 2001) and the VKS (Joe, 1998) were adopted in pre- and post-tests. The writing samples from the three essay tests (at the pretest, posttest, and four-week-after delayed posttest stages) were analyzed to reveal the learners’ “free active” academic vocabulary use (Laufer, 1998). The VocabProfiler program (Cobb, 2004, http://132.208.224.131/) was used to show the Lexical Frequency Profile (Nation & Laufer, 1995) ratios of 1000-words, words in AWL and offlist words in the learners’ writing. The overall writing quality was further rated by two TEFL graduate students via the ESL Composition Profile (Jacob et al., 1981) from a comprehensive perspective. Finally, the learners’ attitudes towards the design and effectiveness of online instruction were elicited via an evaluation questionnaire.
The t-test comparison showed that the EFL college learners did not expand the size of their academic vocabulary significantly, but enhanced the depth. Second, given the ANOVA analyses on the LFP ratio, the learners incorporated more academic words correctly in their post-instructional essays. Their overall writing quality was also upgraded, with the substantial improvements on lexis and grammar. Moreover, their lexical richness in writing partially sustained over the span of four weeks. Their lexical ability appeared to be positively correlated to their writing scores, particularly for their post-instructional performances, according to the Canonical Analysis. Third, the learners generally perceived the overall lexical instruction as effective for the expansion of their productive academic vocabulary. The afore-mentioned results show that the explicit academic vocabulary instruction can relatively enlarge the learners’ productive vocabulary for writing. The efficacy of the explicit lexical instruction is partially supported, as it combines the benefits of incidental and intentional lexical learning. Pedagogically, the present study appears to display a feasible lexical syllabus of how to explicitly address the academic words for the college learners. With the advance of the learners’ academic words use in writing, the L2 learners can socialize into the academic community with greater ease (Corson, 1997; Coxhead, 2006).

並列關鍵字

Explicit lexical instruction for writing ； The Academic Word List ； Online lexical syllabus

參考文獻

Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238.

Hulstijn, J. H. (2001). Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: a reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In P. Robinson (Ed), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 258-286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Joe, A. (1998). What effects do text-based tasks promoting generation have on incidental vocabulary acquisition? Applied Linguistics, 19(3) , 357-377.

Kaur, J. & Hegelheimer, V. (2005). ESL students’ use of concordance in the transfer of academic word knowledge: an exploratory study. Computer Assisted Language Learning,18(4) , 287-310.

Laufer, B. (1998). The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: same or different? Applied Linguistics, 19(2) , 255-271.