ERIC Number: EJ1202781
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1436-4522
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Using a Bilingual Concordancer for Text Revisions in EFL Writing
Yang, Yu-Fen; Harn, Ruey-Fen; Hwang, Gwo-Haur
Educational Technology & Society, v22 n1 p106-119 2019
Many students who study English as a foreign language (EFL) have difficulty transferring linguistic features between languages while writing. This study aims to investigate how college students improve their EFL writing with text revisions by using a bilingual concordancer (Chinese and English). A sample of 32 college students consented to participate in a writing program. According to pre-test scores, they were grouped into an experimental (N = 15) group, which used the bilingual concordancer, and a control (N = 17) group, which used Yahoo's Chinese-English online dictionary. The results of the study indicate that the experimental group made greater improvement in text revision than those in the control group, as they raised metalinguistic awareness to evaluate word choice and sentence construction, by viewing authentic language examples retrieved from the bilingual concordancer. The bilingual concordancer also provided the experimental group with rich linguistic contexts to compare the differences between two languages and induce the rules of the target language (English), which lead to a reduction in errors due to the interference of the native language in EFL writing. In contrast, the control group relied mostly on limited sample sentences listed in the online dictionary, and lacking contexts resulted in little writing improvement.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Indexes, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Control Groups, Experimental Groups, Teaching Methods, Transfer of Training, College Students, Writing Improvement, Writing Instruction, Chinese, Dictionaries, Electronic Publishing, Metalinguistics, Pretests Posttests, Instructional Effectiveness, Foreign Countries, Revision (Written Composition)
International Forum of Educational Technology & Society. Available from: National Sun Yat-sen University. Department of Information Management, 70, Lien-Hai Rd, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan. Web site: http://www.ifets.info
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Taiwan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A