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Widyalankara, R. C. (2012). The Judicious Integration of L1 in ESL Learning Contexts: A Sri Lankan Perspective. LAP Publications: Amazon. ISBN10: 3848434849
Rohini Chandrica Widyalankara To Radhi, Thisari and Senaka
Contents Acknowledgements
i
List of Tables, Graphs and Figures
ii
Chapter 1- The sociolinguistic background
1
1.1 Introduction 1.2 Strengths in the learner population 1.3 Defining „Judicious integration of L1‟
3
1.4 Delineated areas for integrating L1 for vocabulary enhancement
4
1.4.1 Developing dictionary skills
5
1.4.1.1 Consolidating the content and experience words 1.4.1.2 Mapping orthography to phonology through loan words
7
1.4.1.3 Accelerating reading comprehension through glossing
8
1.4.1.4 Developing inferring skills L1
9
1.5 The ethnolinguistic ontological history and epistemology of ESL in Sri Lanka – a plausible weakness?
11
1.5.1 Kaduva in sociolinguistic repertoire
14
1.5.2 Theory of Resistance in/through Language
18
1.5.3 Linking history to the Theory of Resistance 1.5.4 Current semantic status of Kaduva – An ethnolinguistic survey
22
1.5.5 Anti norms and broadened standards
30
1.5.6 Bursting of the broadened standards
31
1.5.7 The role of the English teacher – kaduva polish
36
karanna enna? 1.5.8 Discussion
38
1.6 Methodological framework of the thesis
41
Chapter 2 –Target situation analysis
47
2.1
48
Stage I - Pre research tasks 2.1.1 Pre research task I – Is there a need for L1 translations in an ESL classroom? 2.1.2 Pre research task II- Needs analysis and
2.2
.
group divisions
52
Stage II – Pilot studies
56
2.2.1 Pilot study I – Inferring skills of ESL learners
57
2.2.2 Pilot study II- Dictionary usage patterns of ESL learners
60
2.2.3 Pilot study III - Bilingual dictionary skills of ESL learners
62
2.2.4 Pilot study IV- Preference to the use of L1 and the method of providing the Sinhala translations 2.3
Discussion
65 67
2.3.1 Findings of the pre research tasks 2.3.2 Findings of the pilot studies Chapter 3 – Research Review
69 76
3.1 Introduction 3.2 Lexis over Grammar 3.3 Processing a written text
79
3.4 Cross linguistic reading
87
3.4.1 Differences in orthographic systems of English and Sinhala
88
3.4.2 Non volitional and non selective transfer of phonological
91
coding strategies 3.5 Lexical knowledge
93
3.6 Vocabulary acquisition through reading and provision of glosses
98
3.7 Summary statement
101
Chapter 4 - Main research: The correlation between provision of
104
glosses and text comprehension. 4.1
Introduction 4.1.1 Utilization of Krashen‟s Input Hypothesis for test
106
battery selection 4.1.2 Application of a „related statement‟ of the hypothesis
107
to the current research 4.2 Methodology 4.2.1 Participants 4.2.2 The test battery and its suitability indices
108
4.2.2.1 Flesch Reading Ease test 4.2.2.2 Rater Agreement Proportion statistic on reader indices 4.3 Instrument allocations and evaluation process
110 113
4.3.1 The instruments
4.4
4.3.2 Allocations
114
4.3.3 Evaluation process
115
The inquiry system and procedures for statistical analysis 4.4.1 The inquiry system 4.4.2 Procedures for statistical analysis
4.5. Results and analysis 4.5.1 Histograms, Means Analysis and the Chi Square Tests
116 118 119
4.5.1.1 Low proficiency learners 4.5.1.2 Intermediate proficiency learners
121
4.5.1.3 High proficiency learners
123
4.5.2 Mann Whitney tests for comparison of medians
125
4.6 Discussion
130
4.7 The findings: The research questions
135
4.8 Limitations
136
4.8.1 limitations in generalizability 4.8.1.1 Temporal generalizability 4.8.1.2 Population generalizability 4.8.1.3 Proficiency level division generalizability
137
4.8.1.4 Test battery generalizability 4.8.2 Methodical limitations
138
4.9 Comparing the findings with existing research
139
4.10 Rethinking the limitations to the test battery
140
4.11 Summary statement
141
Chapter 5 - Pedagogical implications and Conclusions
142
5.1 Scaffolding the findings of the main research to pedagogy through literature on vocabulary instruction
5.2 - Explicit lexical instruction
148
5.2.1 – Phase I - De-contextualized high frequency word instruction 5.2.1.1 - High frequency words
149
5.2.1.2 Function words
151
5.2.1.3 Content and experience words
152
5.2.1.4 Loan words 5.2.2 Class plan for Phase 1 - explicit instruction on high
156
Frequency words 5.2.2.1 Instruction on mapping orthography to phonemes –
157
235 loan words 5.2.2.2 Introducing phonetic symbols found in dictionaries
158
which are not represented by letters of the English alphabet 5.2.2.3 Characteristics of SSLE
159
5.2.2.4 Phonetic transcription of loan words
160
5.2.2.5 Spelling and sound symbol correspondences
161
5.2.3 Morphological awareness
162
5.3 Phase 2 - Exposure to texts with bilingualized glosses 5.3.1 Elaboration of lexis 5.4 Implicit lexical learning strategies
164 165
5.4.1 Developing inferring skills
166
5.4.2 Extensive reading
168
5.4.2.1 Fiction 5.4.2.2 News papers 5.5 Conclusions
169 170
Acknowledgements
I extend my sincere gratitude to Professor Manique Gunesekera, Chair (English), Dean Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka who guided and provided me with apt, timely, all-inclusive supervision and counsel. Thanks are also due to Professor. Asoka
Premarathne, Department of Linguistics
University of Kelaniya for the contribution to my progress in research work. I wish to extend my gratitude to all my colleagues at the English Language Teaching Unit at University of Kelaniya To Senaka, Radhi and last but not the least Thisari my deepest gratitude and love for the blessings and encouragement the provision of the necessary time and space.
Rohini Chandrica Widyalankara
List of Tables, Graphs and Figures List of tables
Table 1: Literacy rates and ability to speak read and write English
12
Table 2: Percentage ability to speak, read and write English, 2001
13
Table 3: Categorizations of users of English in Sri Lanka as recorded by Linguists
17
Table 4: The % population categorized according to grade obtained
23
for General English at G.C.E.A/L Examination Table 5: Calculation procedure for obtaining the quota sample
24
Table 6: Tabulation of Reponses – Q (4)
25
Table 7: Categorization of attitude towards English based on semantic Guides Table 8: Tabulated responses for Q (6)
28
Table 9: Tabulated responses and the # of participants Table 10: Choice of language medium for responding to question (5)
29
Table 11: Suggested mode for controlling the use of L1 (Sinhala)
37
Table 12: Frequency of consulting a bilingual dictionary
49
Table 13: Descriptive statistics: inferring skills, composition and overall
53
performance at the test and their contrastive % mean. Table 14: The participant population
55
Table 15: Categorization of participants Table 16: Descriptive information of research instrumentsinferring skills
58
Table 17: Mean scores on measures of English inferring skills
59
Table 18: Dictionary preference of participants
60
Table 19: Results- Dictionary consultation for pronunciation
62
Table 20: Descriptive information of research instrumentsdictionary skills
63
Table 21: Descriptive statistics for performance-Mean scores on measures of bilingual dictionary skills
64
Table 22: Success rate at obtaining the right meaning for the lexical
65
item „bluff‟ Table 23: Tabulated results for Q-4 - % preference for L1 translations
66
Table 24: Tabulated results for Q. 5 - % preference for the mode of provision of L1 translations Table 25: Percentage variance indicating the contribution of vocabulary
78
and grammar towards L2 reading ability (Brisbois,1995) Table 26: Sample English sounds and their representations- Vowels
89
Table 27: Sample English sounds and their representations – Consonant Table 28: A Sample English letter and its different phonemic representations
90
Table 29: Categorization of participants
108
Table 30: Complexity of vocabulary
111
Table 31: Final selection based on RAP indices
112
Table 32: Complexity of syntax gauged through the # of passive verbs vs. active verbs Table 33: Allocations and participating groups
114
Table 34: Description of level formation according to scale based
118
Table 35: Self assessed % of the passage comprehended on performance 119 Table 36: Tabulated results of performance - low proficiency learners
120
Table 37: Tabulated results of performance - intermediate proficiency
122
learners containing means analysis Table 38: Comparison of means - High proficiency learners
124
Table 39: Summary of Findings - Chi Square Test for Dependency
132
Table 40: Summary of findings - Mann Whitney test for median comparison
134
Table 41: Synopsis of existing literature on provision of glosses
139
Table 42: Vocabulary size required for text coverage
150
Table 43: Loan words from English +/ekə/ used in Sinhala discourse
153
Table 44: Other usages Table 45: Performance at identifying L1 equivalent of a loan word
154
Table 46: Loan words with identical pronunciation Table 47: Class plan for Phase I - explicit instruction on decontextualized igh frequency word list (235 loan words) Table 48: Student handout 1 – sample of the first 10 loan words of
156 195
Vocabulary Record Book I
160
Table 49: Suffixation for a loan word
162
Table 50: Classroom plan for the second semester of the first year
165
Table 51: Density of unknown words in novels for teenagers
168
List of graphs
Graph 1: Graphical representation of attitude towards English based on semantic guides
26
Graph 2: Graphical representation for Contrastive % mean53 for inferring skills, essay and overall proficiency Graph 3: Graphical representation for contrastive performance at inferring skills: low, intermediate, high
58
Graph 4: Graphical representation of dictionary preference of participants
61
Graph 5: representation for contrastive performance at dictionary skills: low (n=30), intermediate (n=30), high (n=30) Graph 6: Graphical representation for contrastive performance: low proficiency learners:120
63
Graph 7: Graphical representation for performance – intermediate proficiency learners
122
Graph 8: Graphical representation for performance- high proficiency
124
learners
List of figures
Figure 1: Brutal vs. Prevail Paradox (Cited in Liyanage, 2002)
40
Figure 2: Natural order of self meaning identification followed by ESL learners when encountering difficult English words
51
Figure 3: A schematic representation of lexical comprehension /production model for oral and written modalities Figure 4: A schematic representation of lexical comprehension
83 85
for written modalities Figure 5: A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary
145
Figure 6: A framework for short listing lemma for explicit vocabulary instruction
155
Figure 7: Mapping orthography to phonemes - 230 loan words
157
Figure 8: Elaborating known vocabulary though concept mapping
167
Chapter 1: The sociolinguistic background 1.1 Introduction „We in English Language Teaching (ELT) should remember that while providing learners with immediate nourishment in our lessons we can and should also be giving them tools to go out and find such nourishment on their own‟ (Ranall, 2005). The area of nourishment this thesis investigates is vocabulary enhancement which is based on the tenet „Judicious integration of L1‟ into English as Second Language (ESL) pedagogy. The domain is tertiary education; the learner population consists of undergraduates in an ELT context within a university locale in Sri Lanka. L1 in the code repertoire of the learners is Sinhala and they bear a mean age of 23 years. Lightbown & Spada (1999: 169) caution that vocabulary instruction is successful only if „methods are appropriate to the learners‟ sociolinguistic background, interests, age and learning styles‟. Thus the methodological framework of the study takes into account three main strengths in the learners and the plausible legacy of an ethnolinguistic weakness evidenced in the ontological1 history and the social epistemology2 of ESL in Sri Lanka: Resistance to English (Parakrama, 1995).
1.2 Strengths in the learner population The three strengths embedded in the learner population, which can be employed to accelerate the vocabulary acquisition process, exist irrespective of their diverse proficiency levels in English.
1. Ontology is a formal explicit description of concepts in a domain of discourse. Ontology in linguistics refers to „what exists‟ in a sociolinguistic system (Guarino, 1998). It relates the existence of language to cultural issues, views, beliefs and attitudes towards language learning (Bateman, 1997; Gruber, 1993). 2
Social Epistemology (Ginet, 1986) includes knowledge and justified belief within a particular
social and historical context, (Feldman, 2003) and is concerned with examining methods of acquiring knowledge of languages, limits of such knowledge, the sources and criteria of knowledge and the kinds of knowledge possible (Axtell, 1997)
1
The first strength identified in the learners is their cognitive maturity, „the ability to engage in problem solving, deducting and complex memory tasks‟ (Lightbown & Spada, 1999). The second consists of two literacy based competencies, the strategic (Hammerly, 1991; Varadi, 1980) and the pragmatic (Kasper 1992; Schmidt, 1993; Weinert, 1995), internalized through their prior literacy experience in L1. Linguists regard these competencies as a reservoir of knowledge, skills, and abilities that is available when learning a new language as well as the literacy skills in that language (Krashen, 2004; Riches & Genesee, 2006). Strategic competencies arm the learners with a high aptitude in learning styles which incorporate cognitive (processes of acquisition of knowledge through reasoning and by intuition) and metacognitive (regulating, directing, and evaluating ones own learning) competencies (Bialystok, 1990). Pragmatic competencies encompass the sense based techniques of interpreting and producing meaning during language learning (Kasper, 1995).
These well
established and well rehearsed first language competencies, according to the Connectionist Theorem (Ellis & Schmidt, 1997; Gasser, 1990), are triggered by L2 input (Koda, 1998). This triggering facilitates Transfer (Anderson & Krashen, 1990; Koda, 1993) which, according to Genesee et al (2006), is „the ability to learn new skills in L2 by drawing on previously acquired resources in L1‟. Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis (Cummins, 1991) too assumes that there is a common underlying cognitive ability between L1 and L2 and that L1 provides a familiar and effective way of quickly getting into grips with the meaning and content of what needs to be used in L2. The third strength is based on the premise ESL learners are fluent users and makers of meaning within their L1 contexts and thus they have a well developed mental lexicon in L1 (Franklin &Thompson, 1994). Mental lexicon is a person‟s mental store of words, their meanings and associations (McCarthy, 1990), which in a proficient user of language with a high level of functional frequency (Kroll & De Groot, 2005) has a well developed retrieval sophistication (Wong, 2005). L1 mental lexicon, according to research and theory (Gass & Selinker, 1994; Kroll & Sunderman, 2003; Taft, 1993), make available a vast resource of lemma, with
2
automatic activation of associative schemata, for L2 vocabulary enhancement. Thus the L1 mental lexicon in each individual of the learner population provides a sophisticated organizational structure, a strength, which could be used in ELT. Maximizing on the capacity of these strengths to enhance vocabulary acquisition the study defines „judicious integration of L1‟ within the ELT context under discussion. 1.3 Defining ‘Judicious integration of L1’ Integrating L1 into the language classroom gains accord from a plethora of studies (Auerbach, 1993; Nation & Waring, 2003; Yamashita, 1999). Knight (1996) examined the effects of gaining control of L2 vocabulary in a L1 context and records findings signifying that it is a very effective strategy of speeding up vocabulary growth. Use of L1 in ELT is congruent with current theories of Second Language Acquisition. They demonstrate that the use of L1 in ESL acquisition facilitates the transition to English (Garcia, 1991), and its use reduces anxiety and enhances the affective environment for learning (Kasper & Rose, 2002) as adopting a bilingual approach is to value the knowledge the learners already have gained in L1 (Shamask, 1990). Furthermore according to James (1994) „raising awareness in learners‟ own native language can help learners understand the second language by comparing the two languages and facilitating bridges between them, through which the learners can recognize that what they already know in L1 appear quite new in L2‟. Nation (2005), a strong advocate of integrating L1 into ESL pedagogy, states that „it is foolish to arbitrarily exclude this proven and efficient means of accessing meaning‟. This study, as it integrates L1 into the ESL classroom, concurs with Auerbach‟s (1993) argument that „teaching bilingually does not mean a return to the Grammar Translation Method, but rather a stand point which accepts that the thinking and feeling of a person is very much rooted in their mother tongue‟. Astute restriction of L1 use in ESL locales gains accord from Schweers (1999), who advocates „limited and judicious use‟ of L1, and Tang (2002:41) who identifies its pedagogical benefits stating that „limited and judicious use of the mother tongue
3
in the English classroom does not reduce students‟ exposure to English….. but rather can assist in the teaching and learning process‟. Furthermore, according to Krieger (2005:14) it would „behoove ESL teachers to preempt L1 usage that does not serve some purpose by making absolutely clear what constitutes acceptable L1 usage and what is not‟. Krieger (ibid) further states that „the goal of the teacher is to organize and structure L1 usage so that it can be used only in pedagogically beneficial ways‟. Thus this thesis in the process of conceptualizing „Judicious integration of L1‟ eschews the practice of Grammar Translation within the ELT classroom, refrains from advocating non-discriminate use and „restricts the integration of L1 to selective, targeted, delineated functions‟ (Chang, 1992). The targeted delineated functions for which L1 is integrated encompass consolidating the 2000 high frequency word list3, developing inferring and dictionary skills, developing skills in mapping orthography to phonology through loan words and accelerating reading comprehension through glossing, which collectively enhance L2 vocabulary acquisition.
1.4 Delineated areas for integrating L1 for vocabulary enhancement A caveat to bear in mind is whether the use of L1 in ELT is required by all members of the learner population. Many empirical studies have investigated the efficacy of integrating L1 in developing inferring skills (Newton, 1995; Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999), developing dictionary skills through consolidating a decontextualized 2000 high frequency word list (Lawson & Hogben, 1998; Nation, 1990; Wang & Thomas, 1999), and in enhancing text comprehension (Tang, 2002; Yamashita, 2004; Yoshii, 2006). All are in common agreement that each area of vocabulary enhancement benefits through L1 integration. But a common feature across all these studies is that the participant
3
Frances, W. N. & Kucera. H. (1982).Brown Corpus, Words listed by frequency: The first 2000 most frequent words.
www.edict.com.hk/lexiconindex/frequencylists/words2000.htm (Retrieved on 11 June,
2008).
4
population either consists of one proficiency level or proficiency is not a variable under examination. What has gone uninvestigated is whether a need for such integration can be empirically validated across learners of diverse proficiency levels. Therefore each of the delineated areas for integrating L1 will undergo prior inquiry, through cross sectional research, to investigate whether the need for such integration is dependant on the learners‟ proficiency in English. Categorizing the learners into high, intermediate and low proficiency levels in English based on performance and obtaining samples, through stratified random sampling procedures, this study conducts research procedures which estimate the correlation between proficiency and the delineated areas for integrating L1: inferring skills, dictionary skills, and text comprehension. Analyzing performance statistics to either justify or invalidate integrating L1 across three proficiency groups the study scaffolds the findings to pedagogical practices which enhance vocabulary acquisition.
1.4.1 Developing dictionary skills Though prior research (Laufer & Harder, 1997; Luppescu & Day, 1993; Schmitt, 2000) restricts bilingual dictionary consultation to low level learners, a posteriori knowledge (knowledge that is known by experience: Boghossian & Peacocke, 2000) on dictionary consultation practices of the undergraduate ESL learners affirms that the majority of them consult bilingual dictionaries.. To clarify this ambiguity this thesis subjects dictionary preferences to investigation across three proficiency groups. Furthermore the study evaluates a cross sectional sample of headwords and their annotations in a bilingual dictionary which has a high frequency of consultation amongst the learners to ascertain weaknesses.
1.4.1.1 Consolidating the content and experience words Dictionary skills or the learners‟ ability to identify the correct meaning when multi meanings are provided for a head word are examined across three proficiency levels. Based on findings and research to date (Atkin & Varantola, 1997; Knight, 1994; Laufer, & Kimmel, 1997; Summers, 1988) which
5
collectively support the use of monolingual dictionaries the study argues that the learner population has to be upgraded to consulting English-English dictionaries. For this to be feasible the automatic receptive and productive activation of the 2000 high frequency words is imperative as Tang (1997) states that „the definition vocabulary in a monolingual dictionary usually consists of the 2000 high frequency words‟. Thus it is reasonable to assume that consolidating the 2000 high frequency words (Frances and Kucera, 1982) will upgrade the learners to confidently consult English- English dictionaries since according to Grabe & Stoller (1997) monolingual dictionary use aids retention of vocabulary. Furthermore, many theorists and educationists (Cobb & Horst, 2001; Kyongho & Nation, 1989; Nation, 1997; 2001), accentuate the importance of giving priority to consolidating the 2000 high frequency words in a vocabulary enhancing curriculum as words encountered often are likely to be learned before low frequency ones. Others (Atkin & Verantola, 1997; Coady & Huckin, 1997; Schweers, 1999; Sokman, 1997) collectively suggest that the consolidation of the 2000 high frequency words to automatic activation status could be expedited through the provision of L1 glosses. Thus the study utilizes L1 glosses to activate meaning and associative schemata for consolidating the 1680 (2000 high frequency words - 320 function words; Appendix A) content and experience words contained in the high frequency word list. The compilation of an individual decontextualized vocabulary storage system with headword lexical information recorded in bilingualized format (L2 definitions, L2 sentence examples, and either full L1 translations of the L2 information or L1 synonyms of the headword) gains acquiescence from Laufer & Harder (1997) and Laufer & Kimmel (1997). According to Ellis (1995) „decontextualized learning of vocabulary is proven to have a consistently positive influence on lexical acquisition‟, and „frequent words are more likely to pass from passive to active lexicon because they are indispensable for communication (Laufer & Paribakht, 1998).
6
1.4.1.2 Mapping orthography to phonology through loan words Experience states (research would be used to confirm) that the majority of the learners do not consult a dictionary for pronunciation. Due the complexity of the phonetic transcriptions available in English-Sinhala dictionaries and the inability to read the transliterated phonemic representations in English-English dictionaries learners abstain from consulting a dictionary for pronunciation. To attain this important competency in vocabulary acquisition, a tool for self accessing pronunciation is provided through establishing the English phonetic alphabet (as given in a dictionary) through 230 loan words (Appendix B) contained in the high frequency word list which have an identical, or a closely related acoustic link to their Sinhala enunciation. „Sinhala language borrows a large corpus of words from English and such borrowings have a high frequency of occurrence in Sinhala discourse‟ Premawardana, (2003). „Encouraging learners to notice borrowings and use loan words to help the learning of English is a very effective vocabulary expansion strategy. This involves deliberately exploring L1 and L2 relationships‟ (Nation, 2003). The L1 and L2 relationship explored in this case in point is that these English loan words, in the area of pronunciation, have a strong acoustic link to their Sinhala usage. The minute corpus of 230 loan words obtained from the 2000 high frequency word list links familiar aural experiences to orthographic representations in English. Building on this triggering of familiar pronunciation the learners record phonetic transliterations of the loan words from a dictionary and progress towards gaining phonemic coding ability. Phonemic coding ability, according to Gass & Selinker (1994: 247), „is the ability to discriminate among sounds and to encode them in a manner such that they can be recalled later‟. Thus not only will the learners be able to consult a dictionary for pronunciation, additionally, the exposure to phonemic coding will provide the learner a source of moving away from non standard pronunciation. For example the introduction to the phonetic alphabet provides exposure to the symbol /ɔ/, which is absent in the Sinhala vowel system (Disanayaka, 1991; Karunatillake, 1989), and the corollary
7
enables the learners to grasp that /ɔ/ contrasts with /o/ and thus /hɔ:l/ ()
contrasts with /ho:l/ ().
1.4.1.3 Accelerating reading comprehension through glossing Glossing, Nation (2001) claims, „allows authentic texts to be used that may be too difficult for learners to read without glosses; …provides accurate meanings for words that might not be guessed correctly; and provides minimal interruption of the reading process.” (p. 175). A fast and easy access to the meaning of an unknown word can be provided through a gloss which is ‘a brief definition or synonym, either in L1 or L2, which is provided with the text‟ (Nation, ibid: 174). Researchers have maintained that to initiate word acquisition during reading learners' attention must, at some point, be directed to form-meaning relationships of new, unfamiliar words encountered (Ellis, 1995; VanPatten, Williams, & Rott, 2004; Wong, 2005). Provision of glosses in reading can facilitate vocabulary learning by directing readers' attention toward the form-meaning relationships of target words when they encounter the word forms (Davis, 1989; Hulstijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Leefa, 1992; Liou, 2000). Results from empirical studies in learner behavior have pointed to the value of providing simple textual glosses in L1 for reading purposes. For instance, Gettys et al. (2001) compared the effects of two glossing methods, namely sentence-level translation equivalent form of L2 words and basic dictionary form, on text comprehension and vocabulary retention. They found that the group exposed to basic dictionary forms showed a significantly greater overall retention of vocabulary and better attitude towards it. They concluded that the easy and fast access to the meanings of unfamiliar words motivated the subjects to read more and, as a result vocabulary gain and retention were enhanced. A study conducted by Davis & Lyman-Hager (1997) showed that the most frequently consulted annotation type was L1 word translation, which constituted 85% of the information learners had accessed. Likewise, Lomicka (1998) reported students' strong dependence on first language (L1) definitions when word meanings were unknown. Gettys et al. (2001) explain students' behaviors with the concept of
8
human mental capacity. They contended that offering various modes of information might overrun the real needs of readers and thus cause cognitive overload in the process of reading. The study reasoned that L1 textual glosses are both feasible and effective for use in reading environments and claim that glosses help students to „enhance general comprehension, improve vocabulary retention, and save student‟s time and effort in reading L2 texts‟ (ibid: 91) In sum, the literature above suggests that the effects of glossing on vocabulary learning retention are generally positive. But many failed to examine whether learners of all proficiency levels needed glosses in texts processed for comprehension restricting inquiry to one proficiency level. Thus this study, before it integrates L1 glosses into text comprehension, attempts to empirically investigate the correlation between provision of glosses for low frequency words and text comprehension across three proficiency groups through its main research component. The effect of two independent variables, L1 and L2 glosses, in comparison with the control no gloss conditions on comprehension is statistically evaluated. This thesis aims to weave the results of such research into ESL reading and vocabulary teaching practices.
1.4.1.4 Developing inferring skills through L1 Although the study argues that provision of glosses can enhance the pace at which text comprehension occurs the primary emphasis is placed on meeting words in context. Adult L2 learners are often encouraged to acquire new words through inferring during reading in order to promote language proficiency. But Xeu & Nation (1985) and Nation (1990; 2001) warn that, for learners to be able to guess meanings of words in context, they must know about 95% of the text. Research very often associates poor inferring skills with low proficiency in English (Bengeleil & Paribakht, 2004; Morrison 1996; Robinson, 2003). To clarify this restriction the study examines performance at inferring skills across three proficiency levels to identify the need for developing inferring skills within the learner population of this study.
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Correct inferences of word meanings are conditional upon accurate recognition of surrounding words and sensitive use of reading strategies (Huckin & Coady, 1999). Current pedagogy (Clark & Nation, 1980; Fraser, 1999; Hunt & Beglar, 2005; Nassaji, 2003; Nation, 2005; Nation & Waring, 2003) too places high importance on strategic development of inferring skills. Thus the first stage of developing inferring skills in this study commences with texts with bilingualized glosses for difficult key words provided. When processing such texts the learners will not only have more time to infer the meanings of the other lexical items, but also will be more successful and accurate in the process of inferring. The second stage upgrades the learners to processing texts without glosses. At this stage the study integrates L1 to activate the appropriate lemma and background schemata for difficult low frequency words. This gains accord from De Bot et al (1997) who state that „important factors in successful inferring include appropriate use of background knowledge in both L1 and L2‟. According to Paribakht (2005: 729), Readers try to extract lemma features by drawing on multiple knowledge sources (cues available in the surrounding text, morphosyntactic and graphic information in the target word itself, and their background knowledge) which will in turn activate the appropriate lemma in their mental lexicon. From this perspective, it is plausible to hypothesize that the unfamiliar L2 word which is lexicalized in L1 represents an existing, or largely overlapping, lemma in the learner‟s mental lexicon. Thus, in inferring the L2 word, once the constituent features are extracted, the L1 lemma may be activated in the mental lexicon. It is further conceivable that such activation may occur simultaneously with the learner‟s search for a mental translation of the item and access to its L1 form, leading to comprehension of the target word. Clark & Nation (1980) and Nation (2001: 257) concur stating that „accessing both L1 and L2 inferences promotes self inquiry and understanding of inferential strategies‟. Furthermore the study aims to familiarize learners with the „Inductive Instructional Procedure‟ (Nation, ibid) to finetune lexical inferring skills with associative activation of schemata in the learner‟s L1 mental lexicon. Attempting
10
to infer meaning of unknown words can be understood as lemma construction in mental lexicon (De Bot, Paribakht & Wesche, 1997:316) and the study maximizes on the accurate semantic retrieval capability in L1 to establish L2 schemata and to minimize the regularity of the learners becoming highly susceptible to the recurrence of the following chain progression where inferring the wrong meaning will result in erroneous fossilization of wrong schemata. Erroneous inferring
erroneous intake
erroneous fossilization of wrong schemata
1.5 The ethnolinguistic ontological history and social epistemology of ESL in Sri Lanka – a plausible weakness? According to many researchers (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Fairclough, 1992; Gee, 1996; Young & Miller, 2004)) language is inseparable from social context and identity and sociolinguistic studies bridge the epistemological divide between language learning and social context. Others (Candlin & Sarangi, 2004; Dufva, 2003; Oxford, 2003; Schumann, et al., 2004; Zuengler & Miller, 2006) have investigated the ontological and epistemological perspectives in the field of language education and according to Bernat (2008) perception, attitudes and beliefs play a significant role in directing learner behaviour in the field of language education. It has been argued that while some beliefs may have a facilitative effect on learning, others can hinder it. Supportive and positive beliefs help to overcome problems and thus sustain motivation while negative beliefs can lead to decreased motivation towards learning a language (Horwitz, 2001). Thus Bernat (2008) concludes that an awareness of learners‟ beliefs, attitudes and perceptions towards second language learning are central to the ESL classroom and Dole & Sinatra (1994) point out that future studies should explore the changes beliefs, attitudes and perceptions undergo by re-administering dependant measures over time. Given the complex ontology and epistemology of ESL within Sri Lanka it is imperative to examine and cognize its current social and ethnolinguistic milieu as
11
it will assist the teacher in creating the optimal space for learning English. According to a plethora of linguists (Fernando, 1976; Fernando, 1985; Gunesekera, 2005; Kandiah, 1981a & b; Parakrama, 1995) the social dynamics and power relationships between Sinhala and English within the socio-economic space of Sri Lanka has given rise to sociolinguistic diversity and linguistic strife. Literacy in English has the potential to increase social status and grants power to one section of the society while it generates a sense of anomie in the others who are struggling to advance, but are yet stagnating at the lower ends, of a cline of proficiency in English. . Sri Lanka has an overall literacy rate of 90.7% and exhibits gender equality in literacy but the truism in Gunesekera‟s (2005:36) statement „the level of education and the level of English are not necessarily connected‟ is indicated by following statistics.
Table 1: Literacy rates and ability to speak read and write English
% literacy rates Year (10 years and over). Male Female Overall 2001 92.2
89.2
90.7 4
Ability to speak
Ability to read and write
English %
English - %
Overall
Overall
14.42
17.15
Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk Consulted June 12, 2008
The sense of anomie within the majority of the population who cannot claim literacy in English creates anxiety, frustration and hostility towards the language and results in attitude formation. Attitude towards a language is a variable which affects language learning (Ellis, 1994: 128), and depending on the attitude,
4
Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk Census on Social Conditions in Sri Lanka, 2001.Table 2.1 (18 districts) 5 Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk Census on Population and Housing, 2001. Table 14
12
learning a language can be a source of enrichment or a source of resentment (Lightbown & Spada (1999:56). Linguists (Gunesekera, 2005; Kandiah, 1981; Parakrama, 1995) record an existing resentment amongst the non elite users of English, specifically within the Sinhala speech community, in Sri Lanka and according to Parakrama (ibid) this resentment morphs into resistance. Resistance to a language is a manifestation of linguistic strife but such resistance can debilitate learning a language. This study through historical evidence identifies that the major resistance to English came from the Sinhala population in Sri Lanka. The following statistics (Table 2) reflect that the ability to speak, read and write in English in the Tamil population is higher than in the Sinhala population.
Table 2: Percentage ability to speak, read and write English, 2001
Ethnicity
Ability to speak %
Ability to read and write %
Sinhala
13.2
16.1
Tamil
24.1
24.1
Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk Consulted on June 1, 2008.
Assuming that both ethnic groups had equal opportunities to learn English, the statistics reflect that the Sinhala population lags behind: it can be argued that the „kaduwa syndrome‟- a sociolinguistic resistance to English within the Sinhala population with its zenith in the 1970s has been an impediment towards their learning English. Parakrama (2005) in his Theory of Resistance comprehensively analyses the sociolinguistic premises of such resistance towards English. Thus this thesis wishes to scrutinize the milieu of English within the social, linguistic, and economic space of Sri Lanka in a brief ethnolinguistic survey, which traces the ontology and epistemology of the evolution of the resistance to 13
the language English. It evaluates whether resistance to English exists as a plausible weakness within the learner population of this study. This is made feasible through an open attitude questionnaire which ascertains the current semantic value given to Kaduwa. This cognition of the sociolinguistic and socio-political dynamics behind the evolution is imperative as Gass & Selinker (2001) urge that sociolinguistic factors should be taken into account in ELT as sensitivity towards these factors allow for learner centered curriculum development (VanPatten, 2003).
1.5.1 Kaduva in sociolinguistic repertoire ‘Kaduva Polish Karanna Enna!’ entreated a poster which sprang up on notice boards in the University of Kelaniya on the 6th of December 2006. A week later notices went up stating that the „Kadu Polish kiriime 2veni vataya’ [the second round of polishing Kaduva] will be held on the 18th. (Kaduva in vernacular Sinhala is a sword, kadu, its plural). This double edged usage of the lexical item Kaduwa, as a term of reference for English, which had undergone a semi-dormant period in the linguistic register of the undergraduate communities within the universities of Sri Lanka was regaining currency within the locale of the University of Kelaniya. These posters were put up by a group of undergraduates who were reading English as a subject. These students, for the purpose of classification, approximate and represent the elite users of English within the university undergraduate community. They use Standard Sri Lankan English (SSLE; in Gunesekera, 2005: 24) in discourse. These posters addressed the nonEnglish medium undergraduates of the faculty of Arts who needed „polishing the Kaduva’. Their L1 is Sinhala and they approximate and represent the less fluent, non-elite users of English. The majority of this population belongs to the lower stratifications in a cline of proficiency and a fairly high percentage would use a non-standard variety of Sri Lankan English (SLE) – „not pot English‟ (Gunesekera, 2005:36). Gunesekera further identifies the sociolinguistic dichotomy between these two groups as an intrinsic result of a system of education whose policies, though egalitarian in ideology fail in many aspects,
14
especially within the sphere of English education. According to Gunesekera (ibid), The education system of Sri Lanka is largely responsible for spawning two varieties of English. They are class based varieties. Sri Lankans with access to English in their homes are far more familiar with and fluent in the language than their compatriots who study it as a classroom language.”
Gunesekera (ibid) identifies one main non-egalitarian aspect which helps to widen the dichotomy- the dearth of „teachers who could teach‟ English who are required to facilitate the latter group who mainly consist of rural masses. It is ironical that the „good‟ English teachers are the pride of urban schools where they further enrich and „polish‟ the language proficiency of the former group. As a corollary the undergraduates of the Department of English possess the power to address the latter population with an offer to „polish‟ kaduwa or their knowledge of English.6 Through these notices the announcers of the posters acknowledge the following: a) b)
All members of the addressed population possess the kaduwa. The kadu or English in the possession of a majority of them need polishing. (The imagery created is of a weapon which is rusty, blunt, lacks vigour and thus cannot be handled with dexterity).
c)
They, the undergraduates of the Department of English possess a superior proficiency of the language. (a juxtaposed imagery of polished, sharp, rapier thin weapon handled with finesse)
d)
Thus they have the power to „polish‟ the swords of the less proficient members of their peer group i.e. improve by correcting, making changes and adding new material.
The addressed population could interpret the posters a)
As a friendly hand extended to attempt to bridge, at least to a certain extent, the linguistic chasm between the two groups.
6
I wish to commend the valiant effort of these undergraduates but would refrain from embarking on an evaluation on how successful the project was/is.
15
b)
Or will it be interpreted as:
Kadde venasa danawa: an attempt to „stress the difference between the swords‟?
A “case of us and them”. Gunesekera (ibid: 22) in this instance us denoting the creators of the posters who use SSLE and are thereby privileged and rendered linguistically superior. They, a subaltern sociolinguistic community. Before embarking on further analysis of the semantic power-play embedded in the captions on the notices, inquiry into the genealogy and entry of kaduva into the arena of academic discussion is deemed appropriate. Kandiah in 1984 states how the Sinhala lexical item kaduva acquired a new linguistic connotation and identity. About a decade or so ago, the vocabulary of colloquial Sinhala acquired a new term of reference for the English language, namely Kaduva a familiar word which meant, until then, simply „sword‟. No one knows for certain when and where this use of the word originated. It is widely believed, however, that it did so in the speech of some hapless children in rural or semi-urban government schools, as their response to their traumatically frustrating experiences in the well-nigh English classes they were obliged to attend, and that from there it spread to the universities. (Kandiah, 1984: 117)
Though not directly stated by Kandiah, the birth of the lexical usage can be positioned chronologically during or as an aftermath of the JVP insurgency in 1971. Though there may be many reasons for the youth uprising, the sociolinguistic importance of the birth of kaduva during this era cannot be ignored. This emergence of the term kaduwa within the repertoire of non elite users of English as an antagonistic descriptor of the language mark the second stage of the Theory of Resistance in/through language (Parakrama, 1995) which is defined as a de-hegemonization process of language standards. Before discussing the theory I would like to identify the perpetrators of this linguistic anarchy, termed as resistance by Parakrama (ibid), through genealogical
16
evidence. Over the ages, the users of English in Sri Lanka have been classified according to a dichotomy. The following classification bears evidence to the fact that perpetuation of unequal social relationships provides a hierarchical tenet for social stratification where the retention of English is a distinctive part of elite identity. The terminology on record in literature by a plethora of linguists and theorists (table 3) as utilized within the Srilankan linguistic community to identify category B strongly evidence that category B is looked upon by representatives of category A with ……shall I say, sociolinguistic condescension?
Table 3: Categorizations of users of English in Sri Lanka as recorded by linguists
Source
Classification
Category A
Category B
Passé, H. A.
Ceylon
Purists. Speakers of Users of „ignorant English‟
(1950)7
English
good English (RP) (p. 133)
(p. 133)
Fernando,
Lankan
group I:
group II:
group III:
Chitra.
English
Anglicized near-
English was
Receiver
native speakers of
a Foreign
bilinguals.
English.
Language.
Zero end of a
English was their
Until recently bilingual
adopted mother
referred to as
tongue.
„not pot‟
(1976)
(p.348)
cline. (p. 356)
users. (p.352)
Kandiah,
Lankan
Habitual speakers of Non elite users of English
Thiru.
English
English
(1981a) Fernando,
(p.104)) Sri Lankan
SLE users
7
Learner inter-language users.
Chapter VII of The English language of Ceylon, Ph. D., thesis, August 1948, University of London.
17
Shiromi.
English
(p. 153)
(1985) Parakrama,
Lankan
Users of „educated
Users of „uneducated‟
Arjuna.
English
English‟
English
Elite users of English
Non-elite users of English
Kults* 8- cultured,
Haras*- uncultured, rural.
(1995) Gunesekera, Manique. (2005)
Standard Sri Lankan
urban.
(p. 22)
English
SSLE users.
(p. 24)
English speaking class
(p.119)
(p. 22) Not pot users
(p. 36)
Yakkos
(p. 36)
(p. 36)
1.5.2 Theory of Resistance in/through Language The linguistic community represented in category B, the perpetrators of linguistic anarchy, the de-hegemonizers, are identified by Parakrama(1995) as the main force which activates his Theory of Resistance (ibid: xii) and consists of three broad stages9. 1)
Active intervention is near impossible within the language in question due to the systemic lack of access to facilities for basic learning.
2)
Intervention in the form of creating different lexical items, borrowing extensively from the native language and using „new‟ and antagonistic descriptors of the language context gain wide currency.
3)
Direct intervention by non-elite users who confront the hegemonic meanings and norms of standard dialects through alternative meanings and anti norms of the same practice.(ibid:190) To trace the evolution of these three stages the study conducts a brief historical overview of the development of the English language within Sri Lanka.
1.5.3 Linking history to the Theory of Resistance 8
Gunesekara identifies that this usage is restricted to the locales of universities. Parakrama further states that „these phases can operate in the same temporal space as well as being chronological steps. 9
18
This brief historical overview examines the causal factors for the emergence of resistance towards English from within the Sinhala speech community to which the participant population of the study belong. Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) had two main vernaculars Sinhala and Tamil before the Maritime Provinces were annexed by the British East India Company in 1796 and English became the official language in these provinces. When the country became a colony of the British Empire in 1802 English was designated the only official language, the language of administration, justice and education. The first stage of the Theory of Resistance dawns with the creation of a minute group of English educated locals who were provided with an education in English by the imperial rulers whereas the masses were deprived facilities for acquiring a basic knowledge of the language. The creation of such a linguistic community was common to all colonized nations. According to Macaulay‟s „minute‟ (cited in Kachru, 1986: 5), this linguistic community was, a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern-a class of persons ……. in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect. This newly created class in Sri Lanka mainly consisted of the traditional elite- the Kandyan aristocracy and the chieftains and village headmen from the low country. They became steeped in western ideology and culture and were so anglicized that they were labeled „brown sahibs‟. „Their power increased proportionately with the degree of westernization and identification with their colonial rulers‟ (Obeyesekara, 1984:73). In 1833 this new social class, according to the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission, was still a minority. It has been stated that the number of children nominally instructed in the public and private schools throughout the island amounts to 12,000 in a population of 900,000; and the number who are taught in the English language does not exceed 800.”(Mendis, 1956:73) For the masses education continued through the traditional pirivena and village schools in Sinhala and Tamil. They were denied the right to learn English as the aim of the colonial masters was to fulfill the requirement for „interpreters‟, not to
19
educate the masses. This linguistic praxis formed a new stratification in Sri Lankan society that transcended race and caste- the English educated westernized elites and the Sinhala/ Tamil speaking masses. Thus under the British auspices a new social order was being created. The imperial language became not only a class and social indicator but also a weapon of subjugation, oppression and frustration for the non English educated masses. Yet neither a symbolic linguistic lexical item equivalent to kaduva nor an idiomatic usage gained currency to connote these emotions. It was impossible for the vernacular educated masses to intervene as they lacked knowledge of English. Sociolinguistically they were still in stage I of the Theory of Resistance. Expansion of education and the increase in the number of students in English educational institutions which totaled more than 200,000 in 1900 (U. S. Library of Congress, 2006), reflects the entry of the children of the upwardly mobile bourgeoisie to the English medium schools. Though they were educated in the English medium they possessed some proficiency in the vernaculars unlike the „brown sahibs‟ of the previous era. By 1942 with the establishment of the University of Ceylon free education was available for these English educated middle classes from kindergarten through the university level. This created a powerful group of bilingual intelligentsia.1948 brought independence to the country but the power remained in the hands of the westernized, English educated elites and bourgeoisie. The masses dreamed about freedom, equality and release from years of subjugation and oppression. But no fundamental change occurred in the sphere of linguistic hegemony. Still English occupied the position of a class indicator. It was still the official language. Vernaculars were secondary in the linguistic hierarchy. Ironically, even at this juncture of de-colonization, from the lower stratifications of society, the disillusioned urban and rural masses, did not spring any resistance to this continued linguistic hegemony in the form of a lexical equivalent to Kaduva. But borrowing extensively from the native language, the other feature of stage II of the Theory of Resistance was clearly evidenced due to nativization and acculturation of the language and its use by the bilingual intelligentsia,
20
publications and media. Thus it could be theorized that stage I of the theory of resistance was receding and stage II of the theory was emerging within the sociolinguistic sphere of the country. Within the contemporary global linguistic sphere a change in the outlook towards the mother tongue as the medium of education was taking place concurrently. A resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949 recognized the mother tongue as the most effective medium of instruction within the institutions of education. „According to educationists, adopting the mother tongue as the medium of instruction would be advantageous as it would create individual ease, speed of expression and greater speed in learning subject matter.‟ (UNESCO, 1953) How far this affected the birth of the „Sinhala only‟ policy and the changing of the medium of instruction to Sinhala cannot be gauged. But in 1956 as a result of political change and nationalistic euphoria the Official Language Act No 33 of 1956, gave legal sanction to elevate the position of Sinhala as the official language, the language of administration and education. Act 28 of 1958 provided the legislation for the use of the Tamil language without conflicting with the provisions of the Official Language Act, especially with the local authorities of the North and East. Within the government educational institutions the vernaculars- Sinhala and Tamil became the medium of instruction. English was taught as a second language. Though egalitarian in ideology this new system of education did not provide equal opportunities to learn English. It widened the gulf between the urban bilinguals and the Sinhala educated rural masses. English still remained a de facto official language and retained its power as a class indicator. The frustration created is aptly conveyed by the editorial of The Sun on 2 April, 1970 (cited in Gunasekara, 1996:63).
There is a continued existence in this country of a powerful, entrenched Englishspeaking oligarchy who may fairly be described as the real rulers of the country. In terms of power and effective political control they continue to remain
21
paramount. The vast majority of people of this country remain powerless and inert. This inertia did not last long. Most youth who joined the armed struggle in 1971 were educated in the Sinhala medium, learned English under protest as a second language without much success and the majority belonged to the rural masses. Many of them were armed with university degrees. Kandiah (1984:140) cites de Silva (1973) who states “the martyrs of 1971 were, indeed, the children of 1956 and it is to these that English first became kaduva.” The lexical term reached its pinnacle of usage and gained entry to the repertoire of the Sinhala educated school and university students who witnessed the aspirations of the generation educated in the Sinhala medium before them being shattered. The emergence and the wide spread use of the lexical item kaduva completes the linguistic requisites for the second stage of the Theory of Resistance. Before progressing to stage III, I isolate kaduva and identify it as representative of one of the tenets in stage II of the Theory of Resistance – „antagonistic descriptors of the language‟ and use it as a keyword to trace the evolution of the theory. I examined the existence of such an evolution through a sociolinguistic survey which ascertained the attitude towards the lexical item Kaduwa within the undergraduate population of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences who register for courses at the English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU), University of Kelaniya. This was done by collecting data through an open attitude question and semantic analysis to obtain the current semantic value of Kaduwa. 1.5.4 Current semantic status of Kaduva – An ethnolinguistic survey Objective – to ascertain whether sociolinguistic usage of the term kaduva has undergone a semantic change Research questions1. What percentage of the participants knows that English is referred to as Kaduwa?
22
2. Is English still Kaduva, a symbol of oppression and subjugation for the participants?
3. Has the attitude towards English of the participants undergone a change?
Research method: Questionnaire- (Appendix C, attitude survey) Participants -
The participants were selected from a shortlisted population of
first year undergraduates who registered for ELTU courses (2007) in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. A total of 621 out of 1000 undergraduates registered for the course in 2007. The selections were conducted according to the statistical procedure- stratified sampling. They were stratified into distinct sub groups based on their proficiency in English and then a random sample was taken from each stratum. All of them had sat for the G.C.E. Advanced Level examination which is used to select students for university education in Sri Lanka. General English is a paper at this examination. Its resulting grades ranged from W (fail) to A (distinction pass) but the obtained grade is not included in the selection criteria. Thus the failure in General English does not prevent students from gaining entry to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences whereas disciplines such as Medicine, Engineering and Law have a prerequisite of a „S‟ pass or above in General English to qualify for entry. The population was grouped according to the grade they had obtained for General English at the G.C.E. Advanced Level Examination in 2006 (table 4). Their ages ranged from 21-23 years, language spoken at home and their medium of instruction at the university is Sinhala. Equal gender representation could not be achieved as the majority of the population (73%) consisted of female undergraduates.
T
23
able 4: The % population categorized according to grade obtained for General English at G.C.E.A/L Examination
Group title
% of students
Sample (n)
W
45.25
45
S
34.30
34
C
13.53
14
B
5.31
5
A
1.60
2
100.00
100
Total
A quota sample from the above population was used to obtain 100 participants representing the specific percentage of the groups in the main population. Table 5: Calculation procedure for obtaining the quota sample
Grade
# of students % of students
W (weak= fail)
281
45.25
S (ordinary pass)
213
34.30
C (credit pass)
84
13.53
B (very good pass)
33
5.31
A (distinction pass)
10
1.60
621
100.00
Total
Instrument – Questions 8, the open ended attitude question 9 and question 10 from the questionnaire component of Appendix C were used to collect data. Question (8) – Do you know that English is sometimes called ‘kaduva’? Question (9) – If your answer is Yes why do you think English is called ‘kaduva’?
24
As this was an open ended attitude question the participants were required to produce sentences as responses. To prevent language being a barrier to the obtaining of responses the participants were allowed to use the language of their preference L1 (Sinhala) or L2 (English). Question (10) – Is English, in the sense you have explained in Question ‘kaduva’ to you? Procedure – Sinhala translations for the questions were provided for the low and intermediate proficiency participants. The responses for the open ended attitude question (9) were divided into four categories. The percentage preference for each category was calculated separately. Due to the difficulty in categorization a panel of five evaluated the data with either unanimous or at least 3/5 agreement being needed for categorization. Interviews were conducted for 31 responses to clarify their categorization. Many responses were in Sinhala and much effort was put in to retain their semantic values during translation. The primary mode for categorization was the key lexical items and their semantic values. Results Research question (8) – Do you know that English is sometimes called ‘kaduva’? Table 6: Tabulation of Reponses – Q (8)
Responses Yes
No
81
19
Research question (9) – If your answer is Yes why do you think English is called ‘kaduva’?
25
Table 7: Categorization of attitude towards English based on semantic guides Category
I
II
affinity
enmity
III
IV
Attitude identity
uncertain
not decided
Important,
Threat,
I don‟t
Defend,
Semantic
essential. Gives me
to be feared.
know
regret.
guides
power, protection,
harms /makes
(unavailable
safety. Won‟t be
you uneasy
for
afraid, can defend
clarification)
myself. # of participants
58
12
7
4
/ 81
Graph 1: Graphical representation of attitude towards English based on semantic guides
# of participants
Attitude towards English gauged through semantic values given to kaduwa 80 60 40 20 0 affinity
enmity
uncertain
Semantic value of kaduwa
The following responses provide some sample data considered as representative of the category divisions. (*1) indicates a translated version. (*2) a clarified
26
categorization where the first person plural/second person/ third person usages were identified as representing the respondent..
Category I
It is an important weapon for me. Gives me power and protection. *1
Kaduva is a Sinhala word and its meanings are for safety, protect etc., like English is safety for our life. It‟s also protect my life.
If you know English well we can go any place and do anything. We won’t be afraid. That‟s why it‟s called Kaduva. .*1*2
English contributes to your protection and greatly helps to fulfill your ambitions.*1*2
Kaduva is a weapon. We can use English language to cut off every difficulty that we have to face in modern society. *1*2
Category II
It is a threat and is to be feared. *1*2
Yes, English is kaduva. I‟m experiencing it now10. *2
The one who know English cut the other people on his path to go in front. I have been cut.*1
You feel uneasy when you use wrong English. Using English correctly can make the other person uneasy. If you can‟t use a sword correctly you fall into trouble. English is also like that to me.*1
English is an important language but if not used carefully it will harm you- like a sword. *1*2
Category III - I don‟t know
I can‟t tell it correctly. So many people calling it kaduva. But I don‟t know reason.
10
This response came from a student (C for A/L General English) who due to time table clashes had to attend a class where the main body of students consisted of „A‟ or „B‟ pass holders at A/L General English,.
27
English as a social indicator Within this categorization I witnessed many references to English as a social indicator.
When high class use English people don‟t have English regret. I am regret (Category II)
As a sword helps to conquer a battle field English helps me to win the society.*1 (Category I)
In society English can be used to defend yourself or you can make some feel ashamed regarding his or hers knowledge of English. (Category - not decided)
Some of v r having the idea of learning English is only for to show off our level of society. (Category –not decided)
English is used by urban elitists. It is not used in rural areas. Lack of usage in rural areas such as ours generates my fear towards it.*1 (Category II).
Question (10) - Is English, in the sense you have explained in Question 9, ‘kaduva’ to you?
Table 8: Tabulated responses for Q (10)
Responses Yes
No
No answer
66
6
9
28
Table 9: Tabulated responses and the # of participants
Groups
Category I
Category II
affinity
enmity
Category III Category uncertain
IV-
not
decided Total # of participants
58
12
7
4
Response
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
# of participants
58
0
7
3
0
3
1
0
Question (6) unanswered
0
2
4
Observations – The majority of the participants requested Sinhala translations for the questions and used L1 as a language processing device. They were given the provision of using L1 (Sinhala) or L2 (English) to provide the written feedback for the open ended attitude question 5. This was done as the responses were to be produced within a limited time frame. I feel that the majority of the participants opted to use L1 as such usage activated the necessary schemata and accelerated the processing of the out put.
Table 10: Choice of language medium for responding to question 5.
English
12
Sinhala
69
Total
81
29
3
Analysis This sociolinguistic survey used the statistical procedure quota sampling for selecting the participants as it needed a percentage representation of the English proficiency levels of the participant population. Responding to question 8, 19% of the population denied knowledge that „English is sometimes called ‘kaduva’. The 81 respondents who said „yes‟ to Question 8 consisted of the population short listed to analyze different attitudes towards ‘kaduva’. Categorization in Table 9 was done through analysis of semantic indicators in the responses. The highest percentage (72%) of the „yes‟ respondents felt that the term ‘kaduva’ connoted a positive outlook towards English while 15% still associated the term with „fear‟ and considered English to be a „threat‟. 9% of the population stated that they knew that the term ‘kaduva’ was used for English but declared that they had no knowledge of why it was called so. Categorization of 4% was not done due to uncertainty of semantic values of the key lexical items and as the respondents were unavailable for clarification. . The sociolinguistic importance placed on English was indicated by many responses which either directly or indirectly claimed that English was a class indicator. 69 participants out of a total of 81 who responded to the open ended attitude question 9 opted to use Sinhala to express their views. In sum the findings of the study are interpreted as reflecting an attitudinal shift which is indicated by the new terminology associated with the lexical item ‘kaduva’. I recognize it as symptomatic of an evolution of Parakrama‟s Theory of Resistance and would, for the purpose of categorization, temporarily slot it into a „stage IV‟ and attempt to compile further evidence for the evolution of the Theory of Resistance and to justify the sociolinguistic need to identify a stage IV. According to Parakrama (1995: 190) the elite users of English during stage two of the Theory of Resistance dealt with kaduva through avoidance; “For instance the elites can „ignore‟ the criticism implied by kaduva by simply not using the word”. I recognize evidence of an evolutionary process in 2007. The elite users of SLE within the university community represented by the undergraduates of the
30
Department of English, through using the term kaduva in their posters, have claimed their right to use the lexical item.
1.5.5 Anti norms and broadened standards The second tenet of the theory I wish to investigate for evolutionary evidence is the practice of „anti norms‟ identified in stage III of the Theory of Resistance (Parakrama, 1995). During this stage, the activators of the theory cognize that kaduva „if grasped firmly in his own hands will endow him with the power to be truly free, to be himself and to live in dignity on terms of equality with other men; in someone else‟s hands, it remained the instrument of his oppression, the means of his subjugation‟. (Kandiah, 1984:139). This perception would have made the non elite users of English re-think of a strategy to face the danger of grasping a weapon which was increasingly becoming a sociolinguistic necessity. Another factor which pressurized them was the open economic policies introduced in 1978 and the resulting socio-economic changes which made the private sector flourish in Sri Lanka, making English the language of the private sector. The public sector ceased to be the main source of employment and it was here that most Sinhala educated youth found employment. Thus English was becoming an absolute requirement for employment. This made the non elite users of English realize that total resistance will make them continue in the role of the oppressed. Their partial attitudinal change towards the language resulted in the masses making a conscious effort to learn English as a second language in schools and mushrooming tutories and at the same time using the antagonistic term kaduva when referring to the language. Realization that repulsing the global linguistic wave that necessitated the global community to have a universal language –English (being the most suitable contender) will be to their disadvantage motivated them further. But most of them were not ready to practice it according to the norms and standards set down by the elite users of SLE .Thus stage III of the Theory of Resistance emerges with
the non elite users of SLE resorting to flouting
standards through the use of „anti norms of the same practice‟ (Parakrama , 1995)
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The most accessible means of natural resistance to the language- verbal communication, is extensively researched by Parakrama (ibid) and one form of „anti norm‟ is labeled as „code thrashing/ odd mixing‟(ibid:119). In one segment of a sample speech context the ratio of word occurrence English: Sinhala is 4:3. „Machang my katahanda is very baraarum no?‟ Parakrama(1995) theorizes that a „broadened standard‟, which accommodates the „so called uneducated speech‟ such as the above given example of code trashing /odd mixing is linguistically needed. While acknowledging that the language standards need broadening one has to remember that Parakrama states- „We are still at the threshold of this third stage‟. But as the Theory of Resistance passes the threshold level of stage III, I would like to discuss new forms and practices which have emerged and attempt to identify two such current practices. By doing so, I wish to question whether these practices could be recognized as acceptable linguistic norms even within the „broadened standards‟ which Parakrama recommends.
1.5.6 Bursting of the broadened standards The first bears evidence to the fact that the odd mixing/ code thrashing Parakrama identifies as a form of resistance, has evolved into an intelligible discourse being conducted in the following format. Interlocutor „B‟ is an undergraduate of the faculty of Humanities who is following an English course at the ELTU and falls within the lower stratification in a cline of proficiency in English. Interlocutor „A‟ is a teacher of the ELTU who did not relent under the resistance to the language (in most speech situations „A‟ would code shift to Sinhala). A- You cannot do the speech test if you don‟t have at least 75% attendance. B- Mata enna beha. veda karanawa [ I can‟t come. I‟m working] A- Then you will lose twenty marks. B - Prashna paththareta liyanna puluwan neda? [I can write for the paper no?]
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A- Yes. If you have registered for the course.
This strong resistance even to the use of code thrashing/odd mixing could be identified as a form of Sinhala chauvinism, as odd mixing is within the linguistic capabilities of all members of this learner population. Parakrama (1995), further states that non standard forms of writing are less prolific. I wish to investigate the validity of this in 2007. Given below is an attempt of a low proficiency user of English to utilize a new “anti norm‟ within the genre of formal writing. The extract is from an answer script submitted for English for Communication (2006) which is a two credit issuing first year course evaluated at the end of the academic year. Question 6 – You are a first year student of the University of Kelaniya boarded in a hostel. Write a letter to your grandmother describing …….
Extract AAadaraneeya aththamme. Me pradeshaya harima venas. Gedara vage nemei. Goda denekva mama danne nehe. Harima paluy.
[Dear grandmother, this place is quite different. Not like home. I do not know most of the people. It‟s very lonely.] The bold use of the English font to construct sentences in Sinhala, with a non occurrence of English lexical items bears evidence to the fact that this practice goes even beyond the „anti norms‟ of the Theory of Resistance. Phonological mapping of the orthographical representations produces Sinhala lexis. It was the unanimous decision of a panel of 12 markers to allot 0/10 for the answer provided. This reflected a rejection of the practice within formal written discourse. Identification of the culprit source as SMS (Short Message Service)
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discourse11 led to the query, „if this was a text message how will you respond?‟ They all agreed that if this was SMS discourse they would have had to recognize it as a discourse variety within a natural form of communication in Sri Lanka: text messaging. In an attempt to gauge the rate of usage of the linguistic phenomenon in extract „A‟ in SMS discourse I conducted a short survey of text messages sent to a Sri Lankan television channel. My objective is restricted to identifying the extent of the usage in extract A and data was collected at a given point of time from a selected electronic media. In comprehensive empirical research on SMS discourse Mendis (2006:134) concludes „SMS discourse therefore appears to defy explanation or categorization‟. Though pre warned I attempt a broad categorization as I wish to identify the ratio of occurrence between the SMS discourse varieties within the minute corpus. This broad categorization too has its limitations as the corpus is a narrow representative of variations in SMS discourse. This short survey was done in 2007 when the World Cup fever was at its height due to the fact that the Sri Lankan team had reached the finals. 231 crawlers on Sirasa12, were tabulated on 28th of April, the day of the finals and just before the match commenced, from 10.00 – 13.00 hours. These crawlers were text messages or SMSes sent to electronic media, and this form of text messaging is not restricted to cricket matches. They appear on most of the popular musical and reality shows.13 The crawlers were recorded by a panel of 6. As the speed of the crawlers on the television screen very often prevented a full text from being recorded by one individual one crawler was recorded by two members of the panel. Every third SMS was recorded. Out of the 231 crawlers recorded, 25 were rejected due to recording deficiencies and from the remaining sample, 100 crawlers were 11
When interviewed the student complied with a request for scrutinizing random „sent items‟ selected by him from the records in his mobile phone. The samples proved that he was very proficient in this usage within the genre of SMS discourse. His „inbox‟ indicated that many responses he received too were in a similar format. 12 A popular television channel especially among the young. 13 Though Sinhala as SMS language has been introduced at the time of the survey it was restricted to one mobile service provider and only one brand of phone was compatible. Thus all SMSes used English font.
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randomly selected for analysis. One limitation of this survey is that though the crawlers carried names no access was possible to categorize the personal information such as the educational background of the senders. Gender could be identified through most of the names but as they were in English font some names were problematic („Tharaka‟ pronounced with the final / / will be a female whereas a final schwa will make it a male). Most of the crawlers were sent by groups which again defied gender analysis. The data bore clear evidence to justify that stage III of the Theory of Resistance had reached a point of evolving into stage IV. SMS
language is a living, evolving language and has a multitude of discourse
variations14. This study identifies four such varieties in SMS discourse in the crawlers sent to electronic media. According to Mendis (2006: 127) her study included „only SMSes where the base language is English‟. This study identifies a variety where the base language is Sinhala though the font is English (category „d‟)
The crawlers broadly fell into four categories according to linguistic denominations. a) Good syntactical structure. No spelling mistakes15. Lexis is English. e.g:-„Our heroes, u hv da ability to make us proud‟ b) Wobbly syntactical structure. High frequency of what would be considered spelling mistakes in formal writing. Lexis is English. e. g:- 1. „Our crikat teem me wish al da bast‟ 2. „Wising u todey win‟ c) Code mixing/ code thrashing/ odd mixing. Mapping orthography to phonetic representations results in the production of English and Sinhala lexical items. e. g:- 1. „Ape criket kandayama wish u al da best! [Our cricket team……] 14
I feel that it has its own standard SMS language users who look upon the non use of abbreviation in texting as a pidgin variety. 15 non SMS language lexical items, when compared with formal written discourse.
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2. „Ohoma yung! Ohoma yung! Ohoma giyoth v wil win!‟[continue with the success and ……] d) Sinhala words written in English font. Mapping orthography to phonology results in the production of Sinhala lexical items. e. g:- 1.‘Mahela athulu ape teem ekata jaya pathamu.’ [We wish Mahela and our team victory.] 2. ‘Era! Mahela era!‟16 [Smash them Mahela smash them! or Go Mahela go!]17
The ratio of occurrence for the linguistic categories wasa: b: c: d = 1.1 : 2.0: 2.8 : 4.1
These linguistic usages (categories a, b, c, d) are orthographic productions unlike speech discourse analyzed and identified as code bashing/ odd mixing by Parakarma (1995). As they are orthographic productions they have a strong probability of being converted into extended usage in formal written discourse by low proficiency users of English as evidenced by extract A (which would fall under category „d‟ of the above categorization). The high proficiency users of English have the necessary linguistic ability for a smooth transition from SMS language to a formal form of written discourse when the circumstance requires it. Thus I feel that the low proficiency user is granted a false sense of equality during text messaging. Attempting to use the same form of linguistic usage when required to produce formal written discourse, the low proficiency learner of English who would have, for example, been active in usages identified as category „c‟ or „d‟ within the genre of SMS discourse faces the brutal reality. Furthermore the ratio of occurrence of category (d) bares evidence to the fact that using English font to write in Sinhala during text messaging was gaining 16
I, being a bilingual read „era‟ as the English lexical item /i:ra/ ( a period in history) and construed it as hailing an „Era with Mahela at the helm‟ where the Sri Lankan team would be able to regain the glory of 1994 when Sri Lanka won the world cup. But the younger members of the recording team, equally bilingual, had tabulated it under category (d) where the pronunciation was identified as / ra/ not //i:ra/ which changed the semantic connotation of the whole statement. 17
The closest translations to the emotionally packed utterance.
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currency. This linguistic phenomenon then provides more evidence that recognition of a stage IV of the Theory of Resistance is timely. Thus in sum I identify the culprit source in extract „A‟ as belonging to category „d‟ of SMS discourse. In 1995 Parakrama identifying code bashing and odd mixing in verbal discourse had used the imperative „encourage!‟ I suggest that in the hypothesized stage IV of the evolving Theory of Resistance the key tenet should be an equally emphatic „control!‟ I wish to state that a bursting at the seams of the linguistic fabric which enrobes and protects norms and standards of SSLE, which had been stretched to the maximum through the acceptance of code thrashing/odd mixing in speech situations, will be witnessed if SMS discourse is deemed acceptable in formal written discourse. 1.5.7 The role of the English teacher – kaduva polish karanna enna? The English teacher‟s role in this sociolinguistic context is a complex one. Parakrama (1995:191) discussing the threshold level of stage III of his Theory of Resistance states that „the onus on those in some tenuous relation to linguistic authority (such as teachers for instance) at such a time is doubly difficult since we need to encourage and nurture such incipient confrontation without pretending we are its bandwagon‟. As argued by Parakrama such incipient confrontation through code bashing /odd mixing in spoken discourse should be encouraged as it is an attempt at being active in the L2 linguistic context. This grounding for encouragement should be equally applicable SMS discourse. Yet I, as a teacher of English, would seek to control the above linguistic acrobatics from infiltrating all genres of language practice. My acquiescence to Parakrama‟s (1995) „broadening of standards‟ is based on the fact that in the area of spoken discourse „standardization makes elite discourse normative and marginalizes other voices‟ (ibid). I agree that the „other voices‟ should not be curbed. But should this type of discoursal resourcefulness of the non elite users be allowed entry into a knowledge structure which requires a standard such as the formal written contexts?
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According Kandiah (ibid: xxxi) „ Not to know and control these patterns and conventions is to remain outside the community they define, to be characterized as an „other‟ who has neither the entitlement nor the ability to participate actively in it.‟ In controlling the patterns the ESL teacher acquires the role of a chameleongreen signaling „go ahead, use it‟ in informal speech contexts, red „stop you cannot use it in formal writing‟. Thus in an avowed personal statement with an attached invitation to dissidence I sketch the following language selection criteria as a suggested mode of controlling code mixing/thrashing and the use of SMS language in written discourse within ESL locales.
Table 11: Suggested mode for controlling the use of L1 (Sinhala)
ESL environment
Productive skills- use of L1
Receptive skills- use of L1
speaking
writing
listening
reading
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable with
Acceptable with
with
conditions *2
conditions *3
Classroom
conditions*1
Examination
Non-
Non-
Non-acceptable
Non-acceptable
acceptable
acceptable
(listening tests)18
Comprehension
(oral tests)
passages
A*1 - Writing –classroom The students could be allowed to produce written contexts in free writing exercises where the Sinhala equivalent of a difficult English word could be written in erasable form and substituted with its English equivalent after peer group, dictionary or facilitator consultation. This may be a practice which leads to acknowledging that the final draft should be in English. No SMS language.
18
Though authentic speech discourse contains code switching my contention is that it should be kept to a minimum in listening tests. We cannot test the L2 listening skills of learners if there is frequent code switching to L1 (Sinhala).
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A*2 – Listening –classroom It is argued that the teacher should judiciously decide when to provide verbal Sinhala translations when intuition recommends that such a provision would accelerate comprehension. A*3- Reading –lesson material It is hypothesized that providing Sinhala glosses for difficult English words which occur in comprehension passages within the lesson material will accelerate and increase comprehension in low proficiency groups. No texts with SMS language other than in instances where the subject is SMS discourse. I obtain support for my argument from Kandiah (1995) who in the process of discussing code bashing/ odd mixing states that „the tendency to use a version of intelligibility, namely, the ability to get the message across, as a criterion for acceptance raises some discomfort‟. This was generated as a reaction to verbal discourse. This discomfort will elevate itself to a point of pedagogical disaster if control is not used to prevent SMS language entering formal written discourse and examination contexts. Re-entering‟ the discussion on „kaduva polish karanna enna!, though what we really do in the classroom is „polish the kaduva’, I contend that the ELTUs of universities are denied the right to advertise their courses in a format equivalent to „kaduva polish karanna enna!‟ While witnessing and acknowledging the catchy, trendy, attention gaining usage with great envy, this is what we are struggling to stop infiltrating into formal written contexts of the undergraduate population. If the undergraduate population is denied even code mixing in formal written format it is argued that the ELTUs are forced not to use the denied formats to address the undergraduate community in written discourse. Furthermore the ESL teacher should possess the deep psycho-sociolinguistic comprehension that stratification as the „other‟ will deny you the „entitlement‟ of active participation within the speech community of the learners. The semantic power play within the caption in the notices convey a stratification of, „we, the elite users of English and „you, the subaltern‟. This is recognized as an arena the ESL teacher facilitating a university undergraduate community should refrain from entering.
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1.5.8 Discussion The genesis for this study is Parakrama‟s (1995) Theory of Resistance in/through Language in which he identifies a form of linguistic anarchy which is articulated in the form of a resistance towards language norms by non elite users of English. He states that it is a process of de-hegemonizing language standards. Through this study I endeavour to identify an evolutionary process through evidence gathered through sociolinguistic surveys. First I investigated the current status of kaduwa which gained wide currency in the 80s. The impetus for this was created when I witnessed a reemergence of the term kaduwa within the locale of the University of Kelaniya. This reemergence is significant as the term was used by the undergraduates of the Department of English to address their peers who needed „polishing the kaduwa’. This is symptomatic of a sociolinguistic shift as kaduwa was formerly restricted to the repertoire of the non elite users of English and the elite users of English of that era, according to Parakrama (1995; 190), „ignored‟ the usage. The sociolinguistic survey bore empirical evidence to the fact that for a majority of the undergraduate participants the term still did exist in their linguistic repertoire. But an attitudinal change towards English was clearly indicated by the semantic values allocated to the lexical item kaduwa. For a minority of the population kaduwa was still a derogatory usage and bore semantic evidence which conveyed hostility towards English. Next I explored the evolution of „anti norms‟ in stage III of the Theory of Resistance. Parakrama (ibid) vociferously argues for accepting the alternative practices and anti norms of these non elite users of English specifically the code thrashing and odd mixing in speech contexts. He theorizes that a „broadened standard‟ should accommodate such usages. Attention is requested to fact that these alternative practices and anti norms were recorded in 1995 as symptomatic of the threshold level of stage III of Parakrama‟s Theory of Resistance (ibid). I provide sociolinguistic evidence through analysis to build a moot point that in 2007 these anti norms and alternative practices have evolved into linguistic
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usages which have resulted in these broadened standards reaching its bursting point. The question raised in this paper is: how far can we broaden the standards? The bold use of the English font to produce a written answer for a question paper of a credit issuing subject at a university could be construed as stretching these broadened standards to the very limits. My contention is that at least within the locales of English language teaching, control should be used to prevent SMS language and the use of English font to produce Sinhala lexical items from entering the sphere of written discourse. I again produce support from Kandiah, (in Parakrama, 1995: xxxi) who states „if standards are redefined to accept without control, such criteria has the potential, it appears, not to advance but to seriously weaken the de-hegemonizing battle‟. Discussing the role of the English teacher I point out that it too has to undergo evolution as control is needed at the IV stage of the evolutionary process. I record statistical evidence that the majority of the first year undergraduates (79% in the current study) who register for ELTU courses fall within the lowest range in a cline of proficiency in English. This is evidenced by the low results obtained for General English at the Advanced Level examination (Table 4). These statistics reflect the brutal reality the teachers of English as a second language, have to confront. As their mission is to achieve linguistic equality for the low level learners they facilitate. Thus their working environment equates a sociolinguistic and pedagogic interpretation of the brutal vs. prevail paradox.
Figure 1: Brutal vs. Prevail Paradox (Cited in Liyanage, 2002) Confront the brutal facts of your reality
Retain faith that you will prevail in the end
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In summation I wish to state that the brutal sociolinguistic reality within the English Language Teaching sphere makes the paving of a path towards linguistic socialism where proficiency in a language, English in this instance, should be equally distributed seems just linguistic utopia. Acknowledging that every individual has the fundamental right for linguistic equality I wish to state that English Language teachers are faced with an arduous task. Confronted with the brutal truth that the majority of the undergraduates belong to the lower levels of a cline of proficiency they have to retain faith that they will prevail in the end and facilitate linguistic equality. Based on this complex ontology and epistemology of ESL contexts in Sri Lanka, I construct the Methodological framework of the thesis.
1.6 Methodological framework of the thesis The study identifies three strengths in the target population: their cognitive maturity, ability to transfer competencies of knowledge acquisition from L1 to L2, and that they are fluent users and makers of their L1, Sinhala, which makes available a vast resource of L1 mental lexicon. The ethnolinguistic study further reveals that a weakness in the Sinhala linguistic community: resistance towards English, identified as a threat to ELT, has undergone an evolutionary process as indicated by the semantic value of the lexical usage Kaduwa shifting from negative to positive for the majority of the learners. But recollecting that Kandiah (in Parakrama, 1995: XXXII) has stated that one basis for resistance is „the genuine lack of proficiency, a true inadequate learning of English‟ it is argued that this attitude shift should be supported by concurrent proficiency development, to gain maximum advantage out of the new ethnolinguistic development. Significant research states that one difference between achieving and nonachieving students is their level of vocabulary development (Kramsch, 2000; Lee & VanPatten, 2002; Sebastian-Callas et al, 2005; Wray, 2002). According to Blachowicz & Fisher (2004) for learners with limited vocabularies it may be appropriate to make vocabulary the focus of instruction simply to develop their
42
knowledge of word meanings. Thus this thesis endeavours to compile research which identifies the requirement for lexical enhancement in the participant undergraduate population, and provides statistics accumulated through cross sectional research to justify the current pedagogical practice of integrating L1 in the ESL classroom but identifies delineated areas of „judicious integration‟. It makes maximum use of the insider role provided for investigation. The role of a teacher-researcher brings with it a unique combination: the powers associated with first person insight, the limitation of participant perspective, and perhaps a bit of tension involved with trying to simultaneously teach and study ones teaching environment. It is this unique combination of qualities that gives teacher research its individuality. Thus teachers are in the best position to explore their own practice and make sense of the classroom world. The methodological structure commences with pre research tasks and pilot studies which are forerunners to the main research (Chapter 4). The main research wishes to empirically test the magnitude of correlation between text comprehension and the provision of L1, L2 and No glosses. This required prioritizing lexis over grammar in all research conducted in the study. Before conducting the main research the forerunners collected data to ascertain whether there was a pedagogical need for the provision of glosses in an ESL classroom, specifically in the language teaching contexts for the undergraduates of the University of Kelaniya. These pre research tasks and pilot studies consist of two stages. The first stage contains two pre research tasks while stage II consists of two pilot studies. Each of these components will collect and analyze data, discuss the findings and when required draw conclusions and form or validate assumptions through the findings. These conclusions will form the basis for Chapter 3 which will review the relevant literature to the main study. The researcher wishes to follow this procedure as the main research (Chapter 4) which follows the research review, utilizes the findings, conclusions of these preliminary components, the pre research tasks and pilot studies as its primary source.
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Pre research tasks and pilot studies Stage I – Pre research tasks Pre research task I- Classroom observation The objective of this component was to observe current pedagogical practices which used L1 in the classroom and identify and define a practice which could fulfill the linguistic needs of the target population – undergraduates of the University of Kelaniya. Furthermore it consists of data obtained during personal interviews through which the study recognized the following pedagogical issues: a) L1 could be effectively utilized in an ESL classroom to provide immediate and accurate equivalents which will accelerate comprehension of difficult lexical items. This mode of provision was titled „judicious integration of L1‟. b) Most ESL learners have poor inferring skills and as a result will refer to bilingual dictionaries for meanings of difficult English words if they are not provided within the classroom. c) Bilingual dictionaries in Sri Lanka contain multiple, contradictory meanings and do not provide context sentences for most difficult words. Thus learners could identify a wrong meaning.
This pre research tasks formulated the following research questions: Research question I – Is the ability to infer the meanings of difficult English words dependant on the proficiency in English of ESL learners and does this dependency vary across proficiency levels? Research question II – What is the dictionary preference (bilingual /monolingual) of ESL learners when required to obtain meanings or clarify an inferred meaning? Research question III –
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Are the bilingual dictionary skills of ESL learners dependant on their proficiency in English and does this dependency vary across proficiency levels? „Proficiency‟ in this context refers to the ability of the learners to use the relevant linguistic knowledge when performing different tasks (Ellis 1994:720). In research question I the relevant task is „inferring‟. The cognitive process known as inferring according to Haastrup (1991) „involves making informed guesses as to the meaning of a word in light of all available linguistic cues in combination with the learner‟s general knowledge of the world, awareness of context and relevant linguistic knowledge.‟ In research question III the relevant task is the ability to identify the correct L1 translation to difficult English words when referring to a bilingual dictionary. Based on the above assumptions the study conducted pre research task II, a needs analysis to identify the learners who were in need of „judicious integration of L1‟ from the undergraduate population of the University of Kelaniya. The participants for the research (n=180) were selected through stratified random sampling procedures from the short listed population and they were grouped into three proficiency levels high, intermediate and low. They were divided into 9 groups consisting of 30 participants each, which fulfilled the statistical requirements of the study. Stage II – The pilot studies The objective of the pilot studies was to justify the use of judicious integration of L1 through analysis of data. They aimed to obtain statistical data to provide answers to the research questions formulated in pre research task I. The pilot studies followed the natural path learners would follow when confronted with difficult lexical items in written formats: infer, consult a dictionary. The studies aimed to evaluate the success rates at inferring, and dictionary consultation. Pilot study I tested inferring skills of the participant population and aimed to collect data for research question I. The test battery contained MCQs. The data was given representations through a histogram, and means analysis procedures
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compared mean scores on measures of English inferring skills across three proficiency groups. Pilot study II collected data on the dictionary preference across three variables: monolingual English dictionary, bilingual English – Sinhala dictionary, both kinds of dictionaries. Preference in the target population was obtained through research question II. Histograms provide representation of data and their patterns of association. Pilot study III tested the dictionary skills of the participant population through a test battery which required identifying the meaning of a word given in context from a dictionary extract. The data collected aimed to answer research question III. Mean scores on measures of English dictionary skills compared the performance of the three proficiency groups. Pilot study IV investigated the preference of the participants for the provision of L1 translations in the language classroom and the preferred mode of provision. The study identifies three modes for provision of glosses in an ESL classroom: on material, on the board, verbally. A needs analysis across the three proficiency groups will gauge whether the preferred mode of provision differs across the three proficiency levels. A discussion of pedagogical issues arising from the pre research tasks and pilot studies related the findings to the main research and lead to the formation of its research questions.
The Research Review Firstly the research review argues to place lexis over grammar in the main research and then proceeds to survey theory and empirical research on how learners process a written text during cross linguistic reading, and define the constituents of lexical knowledge. Reviewing literature on vocabulary acquisition through reading and provision of glosses will provide the necessary theoretical background for the main study.
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The main research This chapter empirically tested the effects of independent variables- the provision of three gloss conditions L1, L2, and No glosses, on reading comprehension across participants (n = 180) belonging to three proficiency groups: high, intermediate, low. The dependant variable was performance at a test battery which contained the constant – a 200 word reading text. The results were analyzed through gauging of patterns of association between the variables through histograms, followed by a means analysis for constructing assumptions. Evaluation of causal relationships was conducted through the Chi square tests which obtained statistical evidence for dependency of performance on gloss conditions across three proficiency groups. Estimation of relationships utilized the Mann Whitney test for comparison of medians which statistically evaluated whether one gloss condition generated better comprehension than other across the proficiency groups.
Pedagogical implications Through a brief contrastive analysis of the phonology of the two languages relevant to the current study English and Sinhala, the component pedagogical implications, will record evidence to indicate that the dominant influence on English as it is used in Sri Lanka is Sinhala. This influence creates pronunciation difficulties for low level learners as they transfer phonological practices in their LI to L2. Thus the study argues that the judicious integration of L1 in the ESL classroom should not be limited to the provision of glosses to lexical items. It should extend to the provision of correct pronunciation specifically in areas which identify learners as users of „not pot English‟.
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Chapter 2 Target Situation Analysis
This chapter comprises a comprehensive target situation analysis which was mandatory under the complex nature of the teaching/learning environment and the multifarious sociolinguistic dynamics, discussed in chapter one, which manipulate the success or failure of ELT. It consisted of a compilation of forerunners to the main research which provided research based justification for „judicious integration of L1‟. Observing and evaluating current pedagogical practices to identify a systemic, rational mode of integrating L1 to the ELT environment under discussion Pre research task I, a classroom observation, identified the pragmatism of restricting the area of integration to vocabulary enhancement.
Pre research task II selected the participants for the main research through classifying three L2 proficiency groups: low, intermediate and high, through prior performance data and selected participants using stratified random sampling procedures. The Pilot Studies conducted research and analyzed contrasting descriptive statistics to ascertain whether the ability to infer lexical meaning, dictionary skills vary across the three proficiency groups. Findings were examined to ascertain whether „judicious integration of L1‟ is viable and pragmatic across all three proficiency groups. In sum this chapter identified the impetus for „judicious integration of L1‟ through classroom observation, shortlisted participants for the main research and the research based components of the target situation analysis identified and formulated the foreground for the main research which examines, across the three identified proficiency groups, the effects of the provision of two gloss conditions, English, and Sinhala glosses, which are independent variables in contrast with the control „No gloss‟ condition on text comprehension.
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2.1 Stage I - Pre research tasks 2.1.1 Pre research task I- Is there a need for L1 translations in an ESL classroom Research method - Classroom observation Objective - to identify whether there is a need for L1 translations in an ESL classroom and whether adequate resources to obtain the right meaning of difficult English words are available outside the classroom. Research questions1. Do teachers use L1in an ESL classroom? 2. How often do learners check the English-Sinhala dictionary by Malalasekara, or any other English-Sinhalese dictionary for the Sinhala meaning of a difficult English word? 3. If vocabulary items go uncomprehended are the resources available outside the classroom adequate to obtain the right meaning? Research method: classroom observation and short interviews Participants – 50 intermediate proficiency learners Procedure – the researcher observed a classroom teaching session and collected data from the participants through interviews. Results Research questions1. Do teachers use L1 to accelerate vocabulary comprehension? Observation – The researcher followed the research procedure classroom observation to identify techniques used by facilitators to integrate L1 into the ESL classroom. According to the researcher‟s contention the observed practice is one of the most suitable methods which can be used at undergraduate level. This method was defined as „judicious integration of L1 in the ESL classroom‟. During the lesson prior to testing presentations the facilitator19, stated, „If you do not prepare beforehand for the presentations the examiners will know that you are bluffing‟. Realizing that some of the weaker students would not understand „bluffing‟, the L1 translation in Sinhala was immediately provided, 19
Professor Manique Gunesekera
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„Do you know what bluffing is? It‟s /pacha gahanawa/’ It was observed that a facilitator who possessed high exposure to teaching English to the students of the Department of English, where English is L1, used a different judicious approach when required to teach ESL. Though colloquial in usage /pacha gahanawa/ provided an effective definition which was clear, short and familiar. This usage activated the necessary schemata and accelerated comprehension, the symptomatic result being the shy, embarrassed expressions on the faces of the students. 2. How often do learners check the English-Sinhala dictionary by Malalasekara, or any other English-Sinhalese dictionary for the Sinhala meaning of a difficult English word?
Table 12: Frequency of consulting a bilingual dictionary
Response
# of respondents / 50
Almost always
33
Often
9
Not very often
8
Almost never
0
Statistics collected through short interviews bear evidence that the majority of learners consulted English-Sinhala dictionaries. 3. If vocabulary items go uncomprehended, are there adequate resources to obtain the right meaning outside the locale of the classroom?
The researcher referred to the English-Sinhalese dictionary (Malalasekara, 1958, revised version 2001) and the Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary for the meaning of bluff. bluff - Talking in a rough, kind manner. Innocent, rough behaviour. False threats. Showing false cleverness. A steep incline/ hill.* 20 20
Translations which retains the linguistic quality of the Sinhala glosses.
50
(Malalasekara, 1958)
bluff – False pretension to obtain favours. Deceiving through falsehood. bluff – A very steep incline. Telling something to the face. A precipice. An abyss* (Malalasekara, Revised version 2001). The Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary – bluff a.
Making believe that you will do something when you really have no intention
of doing it. b.
You show that you know something when, in fact, you do not know it.
Analysis – 84% of the interviewees often or almost always refer to an English-Sinhalese dictionary for the meaning of a difficult English word. The most popular source used was a bilingual dictionary by Malalasekara (1958, Revised version 2001).The Malalasekara dictionary contained only the probable meanings to the word bluff. It did not provide contexts as in the Oxford dictionary. The contrasting meanings provided are assumed to result in confusion and lead to selecting the wrong meaning. Whereas /pacha gahanawa/ used by the facilitator not only activated the associating schemata immediately, it also provided a concise Sinhala equivalent to the glosses provided in the Oxford dictionary. Analyzing the findings of pre research task I the researcher assumes the following: The majority of ESL learners does not possess good inferring abilities and seeks the help of a bilingual dictionary instead of a monolingual one.
The multi meanings provided would hinder identification of the appropriate meaning in context.
The selection of the wrong meaning will result in Erroneous input
erroneous intake
fossilization of wrong schemata
Based on these assumptions this research identifies the natural order of self meaning identification the learners would follow if the meaning of „bluff‟ was not
51
provided by the facilitator: infer, refer to the dictionary for clarification of inferred meaning or to obtain the meaning. This order of self meaning identification is supported by Koren (1999) who states that in order for the learners to understand the meaning of a word they have to either infer it from context or from its structure, or look up the word in a dictionary. Thus the study conceptualizes the following model to illustrate „natural order of self meaning identification followed by ESL learners when encountering difficult English words. Figure 2: Natural order of self meaning identification followed by ESL learners when encountering difficult English words. Learner encounters difficult English word
Step 1
Attempts to infer the meaning
Success
Step 2
Clarifies as correct
Success
Arrives at a meaning but is in doubt
Refers to dictionary for clarification
Confusion due to multiple meanings
Failure to identify the correct meaning
Failure
Refers to dictionary for meaning
Failure to identify the correct meaning
Fossilization of wrong meaning
52
Success
2.1.2 Pre research task II: Needs analysis and group divisions Objective - to short list the participants through needs analysis procedures and group divisions through stratified random sampling procedures for the research components. .Research questions(1) Does the undergraduate population reflect a need for vocabulary enhancement through judicious integration of L1? (2) Is there a relationship between their lexical knowledge and a) Ability to produce a body of written text in the form of an essay? b) ESL proficiency? (3) Which population (Arts/Science) is more in need of vocabulary enhancement?
Research method: Proficiency identification test in the form of a needs analysis. Participants: a random sample of 100 final year students ( Arts-50, Science 50) who applied for the „English for final years‟ programme conducted under the IRQUE project at the ELTU, University of Kelaniya, 2005. Instrument – a question paper consisting of the following: 1) A comprehension passage Target question – Write the meanings of the 5 given words (tested the meaning inferring skills of the participants) 2) Composition – Write a short essay Procedure – a random sample of 100 answer scripts was taken from the total population who sat the test. The papers were marked by 6 staff members (the researcher excluded) of the ELTU. The final mark obtained represented overall proficiency, the marks obtained for the composition represented the ability to produce a short essay on a given topic and the mark obtained for the meaning guessing task represented the inferring skills of the participants. Results: Performance statistics –
53
Table 13: Descriptive statistics: inferring skills, composition and overall performance at the test and their contrastive % mean. (n = 100)
% Mean Faculty
Inferring skills composition Overall performance
Arts (n=50)
4.6
44.4
40.8
Science (n=50)
12
56.3
48.26667
Graph 2: Graphical representation for Contrastive % mean for inferring skills, essay and overall proficiency
Descriptive statistics: inferring meanings, essay and overall proficiency 60 50 40 % mean obtained
Arts % Mean
30
science % Mean
20 10 0 Inferring meaning
Essay
54
Overall
Analysis
(1) Does the sample population reflect a need for vocabulary enhancement through judicious integration of L1? Yes. Compared with the % means obtained for essay writing (Arts- 44.4, Science- 56.3) the target question which was a meaning inference test had a very low % mean. (Arts- 4.6, Science- 12)
(2) Is there a relationship between lexical knowledge and (a) The production of a body of written text in the form of an essay? Within the limited lexical knowledge the sample population could produce a body of text which obtained a fairly high % mean (Arts 44.4, Science 56.3). (b) ESL proficiency? The % mean of the overall performance (Arts 40.8, Science 48.27) was affected by the low % mean obtained for the target question which reflected the poor vocabulary knowledge and the low inferring skills of the sample group. This caused the overall performance to fall below the %mean obtained for essay writing.
(3) Which population (Arts/Science) has very low inferring skills and is more in need of vocabulary enhancement through judicious integration of L1 ? The sample population from the Faculty of Arts was short listed as the target population for the study as they statistically reflected a dire need (% mean 4.6) for vocabulary enhancement through judicious integration of L1.
Analyzing the findings of pre research task II the study short lists its target population, undergraduates of the faculty of Arts of the University of Kelaniya who follow ESL courses at the English Language Teaching Unit, as the participants for the research component of the study
55
Group division of participants The group divisions were conducted according to the statistical procedurestratified random sampling. The participants were stratified into distinct sub groups based on their proficiency in English and then a random sample was taken from each stratum. Table 14: The participant population
Grade
# of students
participants
W (weak= fail)
281
60
S (ordinary pass)
213
60
C (credit pass)
84
B (very good pass)
33
A (distinction pass)
10
Total
60
621
180
Table 15: Categorization of participants
Group categorized according to
Low
Intermediate high
proficiency Grade obtained for A/L General
W
S,C
A,B
English = Group title Group divisions # of participants obtained
W1 30
through stratified random sample selection
56
W2
SC1
SC2
30
30
30
AB1
AB2
30
30
Two groups W1 (n=30) and W2 (n=30) were selected through stratified random sampling procedures from the undergraduates who had obtained a W grade at the G.C.E. Advanced level examination and they represented the low proficiency learner category. The undergraduates who had obtained S (ordinary pass) and C (credit pass) were identified as the intermediate proficiency level and two groups SC1 (n=30) and SC2 (n=30) were obtained through random sampling procedures. Undergraduates who had obtained B (very good pass) and A (distinction pass) totaled 43. Thus 17 undergraduates who had not registered for ELTU courses were included as participants for the high proficiency group. Two parallel groups from each proficiency level were obtained as the two instruments (Appendix D and Appendix E) used for collecting data for inferring skills and dictionary skills used the same ten target words as instrument components. Thus when participants have been exposed to one instrument the exposure to the same target words at a second test where another skill is tested creates difficulties in qualitative analysis. This is due to the fact that retention of details from the first exposure might affect the processing skills of the second instrument. Thus groups W1, SC1 and AB1were the participants for testing inferring skills (pilot study I) and groups W2, SC2 and AB2 were the participants for testing dictionary skills (pilot study II).
2.2 Stage II: Pilot studies The pilot studies followed the natural order of self meaning identification (Figure 2) the ESL learners would proceed through when trying to obtain meanings for difficult English words. In has to be stated that progress in this order necessitates a high motivation towards obtaining the meaning of a difficult English word which is not provided in the classroom. If such motivation is lacking this process will not be followed and the lexical items go uncomprehended by the learners. The progress of the learners along the natural order of self meaning identification is empirically tested to collect data at two levels. Step 1 tested the inferring skills
57
of the learners through pilot study I and Step II tested the dictionary skills of the learners through pilot study II.
Pilot study I Research question I: Is the ability to infer the meanings of difficult English words dependant on the proficiency in English, and if dependant, how does this dependency vary across proficiency levels?
Pilot study II Research question II: What is the dictionary preference (bilingual /monolingual) of ESL learners when required to obtain meanings or clarify an inferred meaning? Research question III: Do the participants consult a dictionary for pronunciation? Pilot study III Research question IV: Are the bilingual dictionary skills of ESL learners dependant on their proficiency in English and does this dependency vary across proficiency levels?
2.2.1 Pilot study I: Testing inferring skills across three proficiency levels Objective - to collect performance data on research question I: Is the ability to infer the meanings of difficult English words dependant on the proficiency in English, and if dependant, how does this dependency vary across proficiency levels? Research method: Meaning inferring test. Instrument: 10 meaning inferring tasks where the target words were given in context. The target words were selected at random, their main requisite feature being the multi meanings provided in the Malasekara dictionary, of which only one would suit the context (Appendix D).
58
Table 16: Descriptive information of research instruments- inferring skills
Instrument
Allocation conditions
Participants
Appendix D 10 meaning identification tasks were given as W1, n= 30 Inferring
multiple
skills
choice
questions.
Three
probable SC1, n= 30
meanings in English were given for each target AB1 n= 30 word to test participants‟ ability to infer the correct meaning
Participants: 30 low proficiency participants (W1) and two groups SC1 (n=30) and AB1 (n=30) from the intermediate and high proficiency groups from Table15: Categorization of participants. Results Histogram representing results on measures of English inferring skills across three proficiency groups: low, intermediate, high.
Graph 3: Graphical representation for contrastive performance at inferring skills: low (n=30), intermediate (n=30), high (n=30) 12
frequency
10 8
low proficiency
6
intermediate proficiency
4
high proficiency
2 0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
# of corect answ ers
59
9
10
Table 17: Mean scores on measures of English inferring skills Group
W1
SC1
AB1
Proficiency
Low
Intermediate
High
Instrument
Test 1
Test 2
Test 1
30
30
30
2.633
3.1
7
26.33%
31%
70%
2
4
8
0.912
1.47
1.653
Minimum
1
1
4
Maximum
6
6
10
# of participants Mean Percentage mean Median S. D.
Data analysis for the success rate at obtaining the right meaning for the lexical item „bluff‟ (classroom observation, pre research task I). Question 2 - If you don‟t prepare for the presentation the examiners will know that you are bluffing. (Appendix D) Multiple choice category
.
# of choices / 90
a. going to demand for a re-examination
49
b. trying to deceive by pretending to
21
have prepared
% of choice 54.44
23.33
c. going to fail as you have not prepared
60
30
33.33
Analysis Table 17 summarizes the performance levels of the three proficiency groups low, intermediate and high. Mean scores on measures of inferring skills indicate that a significant difference exists between the performance levels of the three proficiency groups. While the resulting mean of the high proficiency group (70% success rate) indicates a fairly developed ability to infer while the ability of the low proficiency learners to infer the meaning of the target words resulted in a very poor success rate (26.33%). Data analysis for success rate at identifying the meaning of the lexical item „bluff‟ indicates that 87.77 % of the participants failed to infer the right meaning.
2.2.2 Pilot study II: Evaluating dictionary usage patterns of the target population. 0bjective: to collect data for research questions II and III Participants: the total population in Table15: Categorization of participants 2.2.2.1: Research question II - What is the dictionary preference (bilingual /monolingual) of ESL learners when required to obtain meanings or clarify an inferred meaning? Instrument: Question 6 (Appendix C) - What dictionary would you check for meanings of difficult English words? Results Table 18: Dictionary preference of participants Group allocations and percentages of preference Dictionary type
W
%
SC
%
AB
%
English-Sinhala - Malasekara
58
96.67
32
53.33
0
0
English-English
0
0
3
5.00
18
30
Both
2
3.33
25
41.67
42
70
# of participants
60
60
61
60
Graph 4: Graphical representation of dictionary preference of participants
dictionary preference
frequency
80 60
Malasekara
40
English dictionary
20
Both
0 W
SC
AB
Group title
Analysis – Recalling literature on prior research (Laufer & Hardar, 1997; Luppescu & Day, 1993; Schmitt, 2000) which restricts bilingual dictionary consultation to low level learners the study illustrates through statistical analysis of data that bilingual dictionary consultation cannot be restricted to the low proficiency learners of this study. A high percentage of intermediate and high proficiency groups consulted bilingual and monolingual dictionaries.
The analysis of data indicates that the majority (96.67%) of low proficiency learners (W) are heavily dependant on bilingual dictionaries when attempting to find meanings of difficult English words. Only a very low percentage (3.33%) referred to both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries and their usage of only monolingual dictionaries was zero. 53.33% of the intermediate proficiency learners (SC) too depended only on bilingual dictionaries but a very close 41.67% used both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries. Though the study expected the high proficiency learners to claim a higher usage of monolingual dictionaries the
62
statistics indicate that 70% of them use both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries. 2.2.2.2 Research question III: Do the participants consult a dictionary for pronunciation? Instrument: Question 7 (Appendix C) - Do you consult a dictionary for pronunciation?
Table 19: Results- Dictionary consultation for pronunciation
Response
Group allocations and percentages of preference W
%
SC
%
AB
%
Yes
0
0
0
0
2
3.3
No
60
100
60
100
58
96.7
Total
60
100
60
100
60
100.0
Analysis: Through high exposure to dictionary consultation practices of the learners it was assumed that the majority of them do not consult dictionaries for pronunciation. This research component confirms what experience judged to be true: Almost all learners across all three proficiency groups do not consult a dictionary for pronunciation. 2.2.3 – Pilot study III: Testing dictionary skills Objective - to collect performance data for research question IV: Are the bilingual dictionary skills of ESL learners dependant on their proficiency in English and does this dependency vary across proficiency levels? Instrument-
63
Table 20: Descriptive information of research instruments- dictionary skills Instrument
Content
Participants
(Appendix E) The same ten target words in Group W2, n=30 Dictionary
context
in
Appendix
B
with Group SC2, n=30
skills
authentic dictionary extracts of the Group AB2, n=30 Sinhala meaning were provided from Malasekara(2001).
Participants: The participants were obtained from the populations in Table15: Categorization of participants. Procedure: Data were collected from 10 given items in the instrument (Appendix E). The number of correct answers out of 10 was utilized for evaluating performance. Results Histogram representing results -Test for bilingual dictionary skills
Graph 5: Graphical representation for contrastive performance at dictionary skills: low (n=30), intermediate (n=30), high (n=30)
14 12
frequency
10 low proficiency
8
intermediate proficiency 6
high proficiency
4 2 0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
# of correct answ ers
64
8
9
10
Table 21: Descriptive statistics for performance - Mean scores on measures of bilingual dictionary skills Group
W2
SC2
AB2
Proficiency
Low
Intermediate
High
Instrument
Test 2
Test 2
Test 2
30
30
30
Mean
2.67
5.5
6.37
% Mean
26.7
55.0
63.7
Median
2.00
5
6
S. D.
1.193
1.43
1.66
Minimum
1
3
2
Maximum
6
9
9
# of participants
Data analysis for the success rate at obtaining the right meaning for the lexical item „bluff‟ (classroom observation, pre research task I) Question 2 - Test for dictionary skills (Appendix E) Q 2 - If you don‟t prepare for the presentation the examiners will know that you are bluffing.
(The following are English translations of the multiple choices available in the bilingual dictionary) a)
going to talk in a rough, kind manner
b)
going to make false threats
c)
making false pretensions to obtain favours
d)
going to tell it to the face
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Table 22: Success rate at obtaining the right meaning for the lexical item „bluff‟ Multiple choice category
# of choices / 90
% of choices
a
28
31.11
b
11
12.22
c
19
21.11
d
32
35.55
Analysis Table 21 summarizes the performance levels of the three proficiency groups low, intermediate and high. Mean scores on measures of dictionary skills indicate that a significant difference exists between the performance levels of the three proficiency groups. While the resulting mean of the high proficiency group (63.70% success rate) indicates a fairly developed ability to obtain the right meaning of a difficult English word from a bilingual dictionary extract, the ability of the low proficiency learners to identify the meaning of the target words resulted in a very poor success rate (26.70%). Data analysis for success rate at identifying the meaning of the lexical item „bluff‟ from the bilingual extract indicates that 78.88 % of the participants failed to identify the right meaning.
2.2.4 - Pilot study IV: Preference for L1 glosses Objective- to identify the preference to the use of L1 and the method of providing the Sinhala translations for difficult English words in the classroom, Research method: needs analysis (Appendix C) Participants: The total number of participants (n =180) in Table15: Categorization of participants. Instruments: Question numbers 4 and 5 (Appendix C). Q. 4 - Do you think the Sinhala translations for difficult English words should be provided within the ESL classroom? Q. 5 - If your answer is ‘yes’ how should they be presented? 66
Tabulation procedureFor both Q. 4 and Q. 5 the data were tabulated according to the three proficiency levels and percentage preferences were calculated to identify whether preference differed across proficiency levels. Results – Table 23: Tabulated results for Q-4 - % preference for L1 translations
W
SC
AB
Row Total
%
„Yes‟
55
53
46
154
85.56
„No‟
5
7
14
26
14.44
60
60
60
180
100.00
Column total
Table 24: Tabulated results for Q. 5 - % preference for the mode of provision of L1 translations Mode
W
In the material provided
.
%
SC
%
54
98.2
39
73.6
3
6.52
On the board
1
1.82
9
17
8
17.4
Verbally
0
0
5
9.43
35
76.1
Total
55
100
53
100
AB
46
%
100
Analysis Across all proficiencies a high percentage of the participants (85.56%) declared a preference for the provision of L1 translations for difficult English words in the ESL classroom. When asked to decide on the mode of provision, the proficiency levels differed in their choice of the preferred method. 98.2% of the low proficiency group (W) wanted the L1 meanings on the material provided while 73.6% of the intermediate (SC) students preferred the same method of provision. 76.1% of the high proficiency (AB) learners wanted their meanings verbally.
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Thus the study recognizes that the low and intermediate proficiency groups identify a need for more a concrete form of L1 meanings for difficult English words they come across in the classroom. This need reflects their preference for a permanent, recorded resource which could be reviewed when necessary. Distributed repetition, the controllable time factor and self checks on recalled meanings can accelerate the learning of the new lexical items. The final outcome would be learner autonomy in and an increase of their breadth of vocabulary. On the other hand the 76.1% of the high proficiency group (AB) preferred to have the meaning verbally. For this population once the schemata are activated their better lexical processing capabilities make the process towards learner autonomy quicker. The low percentage (16%) obtained for the provision of meanings on the board is an indication that its time consuming nature is a drawback
2.3 Discussion 2.3.1 Findings of the pre research tasks Pre research task I provided evidence for the utilization of „judicious integration‟ of L1 in an ESL classroom. The main research of this study wishes to empirically test how beneficial this integration is to text comprehension and to vocabulary acquisition. Thus the key words „judicious integration‟ are analyzed to arrive at a broad definition through the classroom observation. Firstly „judicious integration‟ negates arbitrary, extensive usage of L1 which spells pedagogical disaster as the learners need to gain proficiency in English their second language. The study vehemently argues that word to word translation of sentences should not be provided as the ESL classroom should not be converted into a locale which practices translation. Neither does „judicious integration‟ resort to the pedagogical practices of Grammar Translation Method which is a classical approach to the integration of L1 into ESL pedagogical practices. Grammar Translation Method uses L1 not only to translate vocabulary but also in contrasting the syntactic patterns of L1 with L2 to the detriment of acquiring the L2 syntactic order. Many theorists consider this as a violation of the basic
68
psychological principles of language learning (Goodman, 1975; Nation, 2001, 2005; Stanovich, 1998) Secondly „judicious integration‟ of L1 requires sensitivity towards the linguistic needs of the learners. To generalize that all undergraduates who register for ESL courses need „judicious integration‟ of L1 is pedagogically not feasible. Thus „judicious integration‟ should identify the different proficiency levels of the learners and advocate the integration of L1 judiciously through a needs analysis. Pre-research task I identified the natural path the learners would follow if they encounter a difficult English word in the absence of outside language support. This is given the title „the natural order of self meaning identification‟ (Figure 2). There were two main steps in this process – inferring and referring to a dictionary for clarification or meaning identification. This led to the discovery that bilingual dictionaries that many of the learners refer have multiple, contrary meanings to most difficult words. This generated a need for empirical evaluation of the extent of misidentifications which would justify the need for „judicious integration‟ of L1 within the ESL classroom.
Pre-research task II bears evidence to the fact that the students who graduate after following ESL courses have obtained an adequate overall proficiency level in English. It also bears evidence to the fact that they graduate with low inferring skills in English and a very limited exposure to vocabulary but are able to perform, on average, at a satisfactory level when required to produce a short written text. The low inferring skills and the narrow vocabulary will affect their receptive skills as well as their productive skills. These features are strongly evidenced in the graduates of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Thus the target population of the study was short listed to undergraduates of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences who register for ESL courses at the English Language Teaching Unit. On average they are assumed to possess a very narrow register with low inferring capabilities. Thus the study identified that the feasibility and the benefits of „judicious integration‟ of L1 should be empirically
69
tested on the short listed population - undergraduates of the Faculty who registered for the first year ESL course „English for Communication‟ in 2007. Furthermore the researcher recognizes that L1 is used by many facilitators but considers that they should acknowledge the following in the undergraduate population they facilitate.
The high L1 literacy rate and IQ level21
The fact that they differ in proficiency levels in English.
They are at the threshold of entering a job market which requires good
communicative skills in English, a good breadth of word knowledge (knowing many words) and a well developed depth of word knowledge, i.e. knowing many things about a word- its literal meaning, various connotations, the sorts of syntactic constructions into which it enters, the morphological options it offers, semantic associations such as synonyms and antonyms (see Nagy and Scott, 2000 for a review).
The time limitation (3 or 4 years) which necessitates an accelerated gain in
vocabulary knowledge with strategies which minimize the time used and maximize the breadth and depth of vocabulary. Thus through the methodology followed in pilot studies the researcher builds an argument that „judicious integration‟ of L1 will recognize the intelligence of the undergraduate population by not resorting to extensive usage of L1, will satisfy their diverse linguistic needs through proficiency level groupings and make maximum use of the narrow time frame available for lexical enhancement.
2.3.2 Findings of the pilot studies The pilot studies followed the natural order of self meaning identification the learners would proceed through when trying to obtain meanings for difficult English words (Figure 2). This natural order is mostly followed by learners who posses a high motivation towards enhancing lexical knowledge. It is ironical to acknowledge that in real learner situations low proficiency learners are less inclined to attempt following this natural order. According to many theorists 21
Based on the results of the IQ test conducted at the A/L examination.
70
(Gass & Selinker, 1994; Paribakt & Wesche, 1999; Pulido, 2004) when confronted with difficult lexical items in texts most learners ignore them. The pilot studies I and II collected statistical data for the success and failure rates at two levels of the natural order: a) Step I where the learner attempts to infer the meaning of a target word. b)
Step II where the learner attempts to obtain the meaning of a target word From a bilingual dictionary The analyzed data of pilot study I indicated the magnitude of success at inferring skills. According to analyzed findings, success rates not only of the low proficiency learners (% mean = 27.33) but also the intermediate proficiency learners (% mean = 31.00) illustrated that they possessed poor inferring skills. Many theorists have attributed these poor inferring skills to the lack of sight vocabulary. Haynes and Baker (1993) state that in order to guess the meanings of unknown words in context the learner must be able to recognize, on sight, most of the surrounding words. Nation and Hwang (1995) are not only more numerically specific they upgrade „words‟ to „word families‟. They state that sight recognition knowledge of the 2000 most frequent word families is needed for successful inferring. These word families consist of a base form and all its derived and inflected forms. But Laufer (1997a) has upgraded the sight vocabulary requirements further by stating that for successful inferring learners should know 98% or more of the surrounding vocabulary, which in many cases, amounts to knowledge of at least 5000 word families. Thus the lack of sight vocabulary in low level learners would result in either failure to infer the right meaning or being at doubt whether the inferred meaning is correct.
The next step of the natural order in meaning identification (figure 2) is to refer to a dictionary. The analyzed results of pilot study II indicated that the low proficiency learners with very poor inferring skills heavily and exclusively depended on bilingual dictionaries (96.67 %) when required to obtain meanings of difficult English words while intermediate proficiency learners‟ dependency was middling (53.33%). But an almost equal 41.67 % of this group and 70% of the
71
high proficiency learners referred to both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries. This indicated that across all proficiency groups the bilingual dictionary was a popular source for finding the meaning of a difficult English word. Thus the study could generalize that „most learners refer to bilingual dictionaries‟.
This is supported by surveys of dictionary preferences which provide statistical evidence to indicate that ESL learners strongly favour bilingual or bilingualized dictionaries. According to Hulstjn, Hollander& Griedanus, (1996) and Knight, (1994) learners value bilingual dictionaries as they assist vocabulary development at all levels of proficiency and the reading proficiency, especially of low level learners, can be greatly improved through the consultation. But Tang (1997) states that with the exception of comprehensive bilingual dictionaries they contribute to over reliance on one-to-one word translation and have little information in their entries. This is applicable to bilingual dictionaries in Sri Lanka and furthermore as evidenced in pre research task I they are devoid of usage information and very often contain multiple contradictory meanings. Very many of them are archaic Sinhala usages which are unnecessary distracters. bilingualized English – Sinhala dictionaries
which contain the advantages of the bilingual and monolingual
dictionaries combined together are yet to be created in Sri Lanka. A bilingualized entry typically includes: L2 definitions, L2 sentence examples, and either full L1 translations of the L2 information or L1 synonyms of the headword. Furthermore, according to Laufer & Hadar, (1997), and Laufer & Kimmel, (1997) using a bilingualized dictionary is more efficient than using separate bilingual and monolingual dictionaries. Monolingual dictionaries, on the other hand, contain a wealth of information, and provide up to date reliable sentence examples drawn from corpus data that provide information about meanings, grammar and usage (Harvey & Yuill, 1997), and their definitions are often within a controlled vocabulary. But according to Tang (1997), the definition vocabulary usually consists of about 2000 words. Thus to use a monolingual dictionary effectively, learners need to have at least a receptive vocabulary of 2000 words and they need to interpret definitions which
72
are more difficult than L1 synonyms. This makes the low level learners who possess very narrow vocabulary knowledge prefer to enter the comfort zone of L1 synonyms provided in the monolingual dictionaries. Further difficulties await the learners who consult monolingual dictionaries. Amritavalli (1999) provides evidence for the presence of overly difficult and culturally bound examples drawn from corpus data. These difficulties contribute to the reluctance of even the high proficiency learners to be exclusively dependent (18%) on monolingual dictionaries. This plethora of deficiencies and difficulties in dictionaries results in the poor success rate evidenced in pilot study III which tested step 2 of the natural order of self meaning identification- dictionary skills. The results bore evidence to the fact that the success rate of this dependency on bilingual dictionaries to obtain the correct meaning differed according to the proficiency group of the learners. The percentage mean obtained by the proficiency groups: low - 26.7%, intermediate - 55%, high – 63.7% indicate that the low proficiency learners had little success and intermediate proficiency learners had middling success in obtaining the right meaning from the bilingual dictionary extracts provided in the instrument. It is my contention that not only the linguistic proficiency of the learners but also the inherent drawbacks in bilingual dictionaries and the high linguistic demands of the monolingual dictionaries available for them contribute towards the poor performance in dictionary skills.
Statistics bore evidence to the fact that only 3.3% of the learner population refer to a dictionary for pronunciation of a word. Pronunciation of English words, though available in bilingual dictionaries, is complex to uncipher and it is a time consuming task. The phonetic transliterations available in monolingual dictionaries are not accessed as the learners have had no exposure to the phonetic alphabet, not even the one provided in a dictionary, and thus do not possess the ability to obtain the pronunciation of a word from a dictioary. The study finds this a drawback to its aim of vocabulary enhancement within the learner population. Thus the pedagogical implementations of the study gives recognition to the area
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of pronunciation and discusses a L1 integrating strategy, utilization of loan words, to provide the learners the necessary exposure to the phonetic alphabet of English. Thus the three forerunners to the main study pilot studies I, II and III identified that a high percentage of low and intermediate learners did not perform successfully in inferring skills and identified wrong meanings at the test for dictionary skills. As indicated by the natural order of self meaning identification the corollary would be the fossilization of the wrong meaning. Focusing on the high proficiency learners, though their inferring skills are fairly developed most of them too refer to bilingual dictionaries and face difficulties. Thus the resultant probability of identifying the right meaning is middling. The study argues that there is a pedagogical requirement to intervene at step 1 through „judicious integration‟ of L1 where meanings are provided for words judged as difficult to infer and would result in the time consuming and very often unsuccessful procedure of dictionary consultation. Given the intelligence of the learners, the provision of the L1 equivalent will immediately activate the relevant linguistic associations within the given context. The non provision will activate a multitude of associations creating a web of misconceptions. Evidence for this comes from the analysis of success levels at inferring and dictionary skills tested on the following statement (pre research task I, classroom observation). „If you don‟t practice for the presentation the examiners will know that you are bluffing.’ The learners immediately comprehend the lexical items „practice‟, „presentations‟ as these occur in the form of borrowings from English in the code repertoire of their L1- Sinhala. „Examiners‟ on the other hand can be guessed in context as a derivative of „exam‟ which is again a borrowed from English to Sinhala. This is possible as lexical comprehension according to Goodman (1975) is a „psycholinguistic guessing game‟ The negative form „don‟t‟ is again within their inferring level due to its high frequency of occurrence. Thus though the context is
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understood the failure rate was a high 87.77% at inferring the meaning and an equally high 78.88% at identifying the right meaning from a dictionary extract. This according to my contention is the result of the psychological affinity the learners, especially the low and intermediate, feel towards the distracters. The possibility of „demanding a reexamination‟ or „talking in a rough, kind manner‟ (this is one meaning given in the bilingual dictionary though an interlocutor might find the combination of two antonyms difficult to produce in short discourse) explaining that you have not prepared for the presentation are very attractive associations activated by the context. More evidence comes from the low preference (12.22%) given to „going to make false threats‟ as the possible meaning for bluffing. This is rendered as impossible as the learners cognize that an examiner- examinee relationship cannot evolve into the generation of „threats‟. On the other hand the immediate provision of the L1 equivalent „pacha gahanawa’ resulted in the immediate activation of the right schema for comprehension.
Thus at the end of pilot study III the study has justified the need for and clinched the argument towards „judicious integration‟ of L1 in the ESL context targeted in this study. But as further justification, pilot study IV, was conducted to obtain the preference of the learners towards the „judicious integration‟ of L1 in the ESL classroom and the preferred mode of provision. The high percentage (85.6%) of preference to „judicious integration‟ of L1 bore evidence for the feasibility of its introduction into pedagogical practices. It is to be noted that 76.66% of the high proficiency learners too preferred such integration. But the preference of the mode of provision differed indicating that the high proficiency learners preference (76%), was for verbal provision while the intermediate and low proficiency groups wanted a more concrete form of the meanings to difficult English words provided. This identifies a pedagogical need for two different modes of providing meanings through „judicious integration‟ of L1 in the ESL classroom.
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The pilot studies tested lexical comprehension at sentence level and obtained data which statistically validated that most low and intermediate proficiency learners have poor inferring and dictionary skills which hindered their process of arriving at the meaning of difficult English words. Based on these findings the study wishes to upgrade the area of research of the main study from sentence comprehension to text comprehension. The main research will continue to retain the priority given to lexis over grammar in the forerunners. „Judicious integration‟ in this context will be identified as the provision of L1 glosses to difficult English words which occur in the given text. In conclusion this study forms the following hypothesis which will be the statistically tested for validity in the main research.
Hypothesis I: Provision of Sinhala glosses for difficult English words which occur in comprehension passages will accelerate and increase comprehension in low and intermediate proficiency groups.
The following review of literature will explore theories and review empirical studies relevant to placing lexis over grammar, how learners process and comprehend a text during cross linguistic reading and research on the effects of provision of glosses on cross linguistic reading.
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Chapter 3 – Research Review
3.1 Introduction This chapter contains a review of the literature relevant to the main research (chapter 4). The main area of review is cross linguistic reading with particular emphasis placed on effects of judicious integration of L1, in the form of provision of L1 meanings to lexis, on text comprehension. When reviewing literature the study will pay more attention to theories and empirical research which examine difficulties faced by learners, especially the low and intermediate proficiency ESL learners, during text comprehension. I will begin with a survey of premises and empirical studies related to clinching an argument on placing lexis over grammar. The next relevant topic included in this review is text processing and its relationship to lexical knowledge. As the main research examines cross linguistic reading and lexical comprehension I will peruse research in these areas before surveying research on the provision of L1 and L2 glosses, which are the variables tested in the main research, and their effectiveness on text comprehension.. A summary statement will conclude this review.
3.2 Lexis over Grammar Lexicon or vocabulary is the total number of words that make up a language; it forms the biggest part of meaning in any language and is the biggest problem for learners (McCarthy, 2001). Lexis consists of word- meaning patterns while grammar consists of structures and categorizes words according to such structures. A review of the corpora of research on the importance placed on lexis over grammar shows that after decades of neglect, resurgence occurred in the 90s. Vocabulary development became an object of considerable interest and many theorists prioritized lexis over grammar especially within the area of text comprehension. The importance of placing lexis over syntax is clearly expressed by Willis (1990), who points out that it is easier for learners to start an exploration of the language if they start from lexis, which is concrete, rather than from grammatical rules,
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which are abstract. Lewis (1993: 103) argues that „language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar, and further states that „grammar as structure is subordinate to lexis.‟ Little (1994: 106) points out that „words inevitably come before structures‟. „We believe,‟ state Hunt and Beglar (2005) „that the heart of language comprehension and use is the lexicon‟. The above arguments state the case for giving lexis priority over grammar but on the other hand some theorists consider lexis and grammar as inseparable by nature, are two ways of picturing the same linguistic objective and are completely interdependent (Hunston & Francis, 1998; Sinclair, 1991; Willis, 1993,). But if the area of contention is narrowed down to reading and text comprehension, many researchers have separated the two, identified them as two separate variables and provided statistical data through comparative studies on their contribution towards reading. This flurry of research on reading and text comprehension (Bossers, 1992; Brisbois, 1995; Lee & Schallert, 1997; Taillefer, 1996; Yamashita 1999) bear statistical evidence to further the argument that lexis is more important than grammar in reading. Out of the above research this study will review Bossers (1992), Brisbois (1995) and Yamashita (1999) as their research tested the two components vocabulary and grammar separately and as the analyzed results clearly indicate statistical differences in their contribution towards text comprehension. All three studies were based on Alderson‟s (1984) theory on text comprehension. Alderson theorized that two skills contributed towards text comprehension viz. Language Ability (LA) and Reading Ability (RA). LA refers to the knowledge and skills required for processing L2 linguistic properties, i.e. orthographic, phonological, lexical, syntactic, and discourse knowledge specific to L2. RA refers to what is called higher level mental operations such as predicting, analyzing, synthesizing, inferring, and retrieving relevant background knowledge, which are assumed to operate universally across languages. Alderson states that weakness in LA or the knowledge and skills required for processing L2 linguistic properties will lead to weakness in activating
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RA or the higher levels of mental processing and will result in poor text comprehension. Thus it can be construed that LA is the fundamental requirement for text comprehension. I now wish to isolate and examine two estimates for LA skills tested in the research done by Bossers (1992), Brisbois (1995) and Yamashita (1999) - grammar and vocabulary, and summarize the results as accumulated evidence for supporting the argument that knowledge of vocabulary is more important than knowledge of syntax for text comprehension. In the grammar and vocabulary multiple choice tests conducted by Bossers (ibid), 50 Turkish learners of Dutch were tested to obtain data for testing the contribution of these two components towards RA. The contribution of vocabulary resulted in a Beta value of 0.41 while Beta value for grammar was 0.36 for all readers. The data shows that the contribution of vocabulary towards reading is higher than the contribution by grammar. 122 American learners of Spanish participated in the grammar and vocabulary components of the research conducted by Brisbois (1995). The participants were categorized as high (n=38) and low (n=84) proficiency groups. The results are tabulated as follows:
Table 25: Percentage variance indicating the contribution of vocabulary and grammar towards L2 reading ability (Brisbois,1995) Proficiency in L2
Language Ability (LA) vocabulary
grammar
High
7.6%
1.4%
Low
9.3%
1.1%
The percentage variance indicates that participants of all proficiency levels relied more on vocabulary for processing L2 reading. But the dependency on vocabulary knowledge for processing a text was higher in the low proficiency participants. Yamashita (1999) had three proficiency levels represented in the research conducted to identify the contribution of vocabulary and grammar to RA. 241
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Japanese learners of English were divided to high (n=93), middle (n=70), low (n=78) levels. For all readers the contribution of vocabulary was 34% and grammar was 7%. All three studies found that the contribution of grammar was relatively small when compared to the contribution of vocabulary towards reading ability. Though Yamashita does not report stratified results for the three proficiencies Brisbois produces data to indicate that for low proficiency learners, lexical knowledge is more important than grammar during text processing. Thus this study prioritizes lexical knowledge over grammatical knowledge and narrows down its area of research to estimate the influence of lexical knowledge in processing a written text.
3.3 Processing a written text Extending the discussion of the previous section where the study argued to prioritize lexis over grammar during text processing, this section begins with a survey of models for such text processing in existing literature and will attempt to construct, through adaptation, a useful organizational framework, a schematic representation of lexical comprehension for written modalities. This framework is utilized to explore how learners, specifically weak learners, process a written text. Carrel (1988a) identifies two ways of processing a text: Bottom-up processing and Top-down processing. Bottom-up processing was influenced by behaviourist psychology of the 1950s and the emphasis on behaviourism treated reading as a word recognition response to stimuli of the printed words (Samuels & Kamil, 1988). According to Carrel(1988a), Bottom-up processing is decoding individual linguistic units (words, phonemes, graphemes) and building textual meaning from the smallest unit to the largest, and then modifying preexisting background knowledge and current predictions on the basis of information encountered in the text. The top-down processing is the making of predictions about the text based on prior experience or background knowledge, and then checking the text for conformation or refutation.
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The 1970s was a vintage decade for the introduction of this new model for text processing- top down view of reading, where the role of background knowledge in text comprehension was formalized as the schema theory (Bransford, 1979; Minsky, 1977; Rumelhart & Orlony, 1977; Schank & Abelson, 1977; Winograd, 1975; Thorndyke, 1977). Theoretically this indicated a paradigm shift from behaviourism to cognitive psychology. Many cognitive theorists (Carrel & Eisterhold, 1983; Rumelhart, 1980; Taylor & Crocker, 1981; Whitney, 1987) associated reading with schema theoretic applications and advocated the merits of the top-down mode of text processing. According to (Carrel, 1983a) one of the fundamental tenets of the schema theory is that text, any text, does not by itself carry meaning. A text only provides directions as to how readers should retrieve or construct meaning from their own, previously acquired knowledge. Carrel further states that this previously acquired knowledge is called the reader‟s background knowledge or the previous knowledge a reader has about the subject of the text and the previously acquired knowledge structures within such background knowledge are called schemata.
I will now survey literature on these two main premises on which schema theoretic view of text comprehension is based: schemata in the form of artificial intelligence (Minsky, 1977), and background knowledge. My main contention is to produce evidence in current literature which highlights limitations and questions the validity of the above premises and provides theoretical support and empirical evidence that schema theory and its premise that background knowledge is vital for text comprehension are reduced to inconsequentiality. Many theorists since the 80s have identified limitations in the schema theoretic view on knowledge and its suggested association to artificial intelligence. „Schema theory is basically a theory about knowledge. It is a theory about how knowledge is represented and how that representation facilitates the use of knowledge in particular ways. According to schema theorists, all knowledge is packaged into units. These units are schemata (Rumelhart, 1980: 33). The definition of schemata comes from the field of artificial intelligence which is a
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premise in computer science. Artificial intelligence is the capacity of computers to simulate human intelligence which can be accessed whenever needed and are available as frameworks. Applying this premise to human knowledge stores, schema theorists state that schemata are pre-structured, permanent frameworks activated and used during comprehension (Kintsch, 1988). According to Minski (1977) each person has a frame system stored in memory, a host of interrelated frames which represent stereotypical situations. When people meet a new situation they choose the appropriate frame and change it as necessary to fit the situation. This advances the idea that the mind is like a computer containing knowledge in a form that is accessible whenever needed and schema is analogous to a computer programme (Iran-Nejad, 1987; Kintsch & Mannes, 1987). But Kintsch (1998) argued that the idea of schema as posited in artificial intelligence approaches is not applicable in the context of human comprehension. Nassaji (2007) agrees stating that the idea that our knowledge base exists in preexisting formats provides a very static and inflexible view of the role of knowledge, which is at variance with the dynamic nature of knowledge in human cognition.
The other important premise in schema theory which has given rise to much criticism
is
the
contribution
of
background
knowledge
towards
text
comprehension. According to Stott (2001) „schema theory states that readers combine their background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text‟. Carrel (1983a, 1983b, 1988a, 1988b, 1987) one of the main proponents of the schema theory, in a study (1983b) which attempted to provide empirical evidence on the importance of background knowledge on text comprehension recorded results which went against her expectations and were incompatible with the schema theory predictions. Schema theorists believe that L2 readers who have prior knowledge about a passage they read ought to comprehend and recall that passage better than when they do not have much prior knowledge about the passage (Carrel and Eisterhold, 1983). But Carrel‟s (1983b) study which evaluated the role of schemata or background knowledge in second language comprehension recorded contradictory evidence. This made Lee (1986)
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and Roller and Metambo (1992) replicate the experiment using similar materials and procedures. They too found out that readers recalled the unfamiliar text better than the familiar text for which the participants had prior background knowledge. In a review Nassaji (2007) claims that what was more surprising was that the provision of context negatively affected both the native and L2 reader‟s performance when reading the unfamiliar text. Other researchers have argued that premises of the schema theory are not easy to verify empirically and identify many limitations to this theory (Chapham, 1999; Carver, 1992; Sadoski et al., 1991; Stott, 2001), and the correlated top-down processing of a text (Beers, 1987; Mandler, 1984; Mc Namara, Miller & Brandsford, 1991). Emphasizing on the effects of the schema theory based, top-down approach on low level readers, (Swales 1990:33) states that „this process involves identifying genre, formal structure and topic all of which are needed to activate schemata which is difficult to low level readers‟. Such evidence poses serious trouble for schema theory and its top-down mode of processing texts specifically in the context of „bad readers‟. Chapham(1999) discussing the effect of background knowledge on „good‟ and „bad‟ readers cites Perfetti & Lesgold (1977) who state that „whereas good readers can take advantage of background knowledge and content, readers who are slow at decoding symbols and words overburden their short term memory and cannot call up the appropriate schemata‟. Thus it is my contention that the weak learners will fail in their attempts to interpret the text by activating background schemata due to their low proficiency in L2, and will stagnate at the initial level of top-down processing unable to proceed further. A more feasible procedure will be to commence with „word recognition‟ which is the fundamental premise of the bottom-up processing of texts. Koda (1996) despairs that in L2 research, word recognition has attracted far less attention than it deserves. The lack of interest is attributable, in part, to the top-down conceptualization characteristic of L2 reading studies. But many modern researchers and theorists have revived the importance of word recognition. Kintsch (1998) posited that knowledge activation during reading is an uncontrolled bottom-up process. Nassaji (2007) contends that „it is now quite
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established that the comprehension process does not proceed in such a top-down mode‟ and further states that in current L2 research the top-down view of the role of knowledge has not much of its theoretical appeal . Focusing on weak learners, Stott (2001) states that Bottom-up processing must not be ignored and the importance of a lexico-grammatical focus particularly in the early stages of learning has to be recognized. L2 learners require the skill of rapid recognition of large numbers of words and structures in order to accomplish the objective of text comprehension. de Bot et al (1997) provides empirical evidence to support that weak learners very often resort to Bottom-up processing. They used the following schematic representation which is an adaptation of Levelt‟s (1993) Schematic representation of the processing components involved in spoken language use which identifies how written and speech input are processed for comprehension. Figure 3: A schematic representation of lexical comprehension/production model for oral and written modalities (de Bot et al., 1997).
Comprehension
Concepts
Production
Lemmas
Lexemes
Encoding g
Decoding
Written input
Speech input
Written output
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Speech output
Furthermore de Bot et al. identify the following stages in the development of lexical knowledge during comprehension of written input.
The lexical item in the written input is judged by the learner as to be
of interest and learnable.
Decoding begins where strings of letters that are read are attached
to a lexeme which is not a readymade template but consists of a frame into which phonological segments are inserted.
Sufficient match made, this form activates a lemma.
It is matched with a concept.
Comprehension (at word level) is to be succeeded.
Based on the above levels of processing I wish to contract Figure 3 - A schematic representation of lexical comprehension/production model for oral and written modalities (de Bot et al., 1997), to accommodate only the schematic representation of the processing components involved in lexical comprehension in written modalities. The following adaptation of Figure 3 has isolated the written input – comprehension branch of the model by de Bot et al to increase its suitability to the area reviewed in this component of the study: Lexicon and processing a written text. More important in this context is that the model breaks down the task of text comprehension into steps that can be pedagogically defined. Furthermore this model utilizes the modern version of the bottom-up approach which is associated with a teaching methodology known as „phonics‟ (de Debat, 2006). Phonics is the central component in decoding – the process of „sounding out‟ written words (Rice, 2006), which initially requires the learner to match letters with sounds in a defined sequence. According to this view reading is a linear process by which learners decode a text word by word linking the words to phrases and then to
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sentences The pedagogy in phonics is based on creating phonemic awareness which refers to the ability to isolate, identify, and manipulate individual sounds/ phonemes in words during decoding. The suitability of a phonemic model for this study is primarily based on the fact that the L2 of the target population, English, is a morpho-phonemic language and a phonemic approach in pedagogy will benefit the low level learners.
Figure 4: A schematic representation of lexical comprehension for written modalities
Comprehension
Concepts
Lemmas
Lexemes
Decoding
Written input
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Furthermore, the above model is a useful organizational framework to represent how word knowledge can be acquired from contextualized language input such as a reading text when explicit vocabulary instruction is not available. In this model knowledge stores of lexical entries are represented at two different levels; lexeme is the morph- phonological form of a lexical item, and the lemma includes its corresponding semantic and syntactic information. The lexeme includes related inflections which are distinguished from one another by diacritic parameters (tense, number, aspect, mood). But before progressing to the lexeme stage the readers attempt to decode the words they encounter in the text in an attempt to map orthography to phonology. For the weak learners with their narrow vocabulary this process gets jammed as understanding text by applying letter sound correspondences to printed material occurs only if the word read orally is a known word in the learners‟ vocabulary (Rice, 2006). Support for Rice (ibid) comes from empirical evidence accumulated by de Bot et al. (1997). They conducted an introspective study which detailed how university ESL learners (L1- French) reported dealing with unfamiliar words while carrying out L2 (English) reading tasks. Data was collected through think-aloud reports which recorded attempts the learners made to infer the meaning of unknown L2 words through identifying their semantic and syntactic features. They identified that in all the steps between levels, a certain amount of information is needed to activate the next level. Thus the process of inferring the meaning of unknown words is actually one of gathering more information to go from one level to the next in text processing. The data bore evidence to the fact that at the decoding stage where a string of letters should be attached to a lexeme or when a morphphonological form had to be produced, many learners faced difficulties. This resulted in non- activation or insufficient activation at lexeme level. As a result lemma activation was negatively affected.
This phenomenon is further investigated by Meyer & Bock (1992) who provide research evidence to support their Incomplete Activation Hypothesis – „If the information available in a lexeme is not sufficient to activate the corresponding
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lemma then this lemma will not be activated as a whole‟. The incomplete activation of lemma stops the translation of the syntactic information into conceptual information which is required to connect the lemma with one or more concepts. Incomplete Activation Hypothesis further states that the weak learners use semantic bootstrapping (Pinker, 1987) i.e. using knowledge of meanings of words to make conjectures about syntactic structure than Syntactic bootstrapping – using knowledge of syntactic structures derived from linguistic observations to make conjectures about word meaning. This is due to the fact that „syntactic information from surrounding text may be inferred with relative ease by experienced readers of the language‟ (de Bot et al, 1997: 317) who proceed to infer the meaning of the word. But for weaker learners „lexical inference is neither an efficient nor an effective strategy and they fail in their attempts to infer meanings for new words or the meaning determined is inaccurate‟(Fraser, 1999). Furthermore the majority of the weak learners do not even reach the semantic bootstrapping stage as they stagnate at the decoding stage attempting to match orthography to phonology in a slow, text bound manner without the necessary phonological scaffolding to conjecture about word meaning. Cognitive neuroscientists (Deheane, 1999; Tan et al. 2003) attribute this difficulty to the fact that the ESL learners are involved in cross linguistic reading.
3.4 Cross linguistic reading Reading is a dynamic pursuit embedded in two language systems: the language and the writing system that encodes the language (Perfetti, 2003; Perfetti & Liu, 2005).Unlike L1 reading L2 reading involves two languages, is cross linguistic and thus possesses the inherent quality of being more complex. The two languages pertaining to this study are Sinhala the L1 of the target population (undergraduates who register for ELTU courses in the University of Kelaniya) and English their L2. The target population has achieved high competency in L1 reading but the majority consists of weak, low level L2 readers. As discussed in „text processing‟ this is due to the fact that they stagnate at the first stage of processing a text unable to identify the phonological codes of the words. The
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study identifies three factors which negatively affect reading comprehension of the target population: differences in orthographic and phonological systems of English and Sinhala, brain activation which, according to neuro-scientific research, is identified in the regions which map L1 orthography to phonemes during L2 reading, and non volitional and non selective transfer of L1 phonological coding strategies to L2 during this activation.
3.4.1 Differences in orthographic systems of English and Sinhala In an attempt to identify linguistic foundations for stagnation of low level learners during cross linguistic reading, the study identifies the following divergent characteristics in the two languages under discussion. The orthographic and phonological systems of English and Sinhala differ in many distinctive characteristics. Lado as far back as in 1957 under the sub title „Regularity of fit‟ in orthographic and phonological systems languages states, Ideally a writing system should have a one-to-one relation between its symbols and the language units they represent. That is, an alphabetic system should have one letter for each phoneme of the language, and no more. And each symbol should always represent the same phoneme…… We never find the ideal system in any of the systems in use. A symbol may represent various phonemes, the same phoneme might be represented by various symbols; sometimes there are more symbols than phonemes, other times there are more phonemes than symbols. English language is particularly bad as to regularity of fit (p. 96) Modern linguists (Coutsougera, 2000; Koda, 2007; Ladefoged, 2006) classify this dimension, the degree of regularity in sound-symbol correspondence in which orthographic systems differ, as „orthographic depth‟. They identify languages as having
„phonologically
shallow‟
orthographies
wherein
sound
symbol
correspondences are regular and consistent and decoding necessitates little orthographic
information.
In
contrast,
phonologically
deep,
„opaque‟
orthographies „demand far more orthographic information during decoding‟ (Koda, ibid).
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Classifying English according to the orthographic depth, Coutsougera (ibid) states „English is a deep, non transparent orthography since it allows the same letter to represent more than one sound or for the same sound to be represented by more than one letter‟ I provide the following examples for the latter from Lado (1957: 99):
Table 26: Sample English sounds and their representations- Vowels
phoneme Symbol letter/s
Examples
/i:/
e, ee, ea, ei, eo, ey,
be, fee, sea, receive, people, key,
i, ie, ae, ay, oe
machine, belief, algae, quay, phoenix
i, y, ie, e, ee, o,
fit, system, sieve, English, deer, women.
u, ui.
business, building
/i/
Table 27: Sample English sounds and their representations - Consonants
phoneme
Symbol letter/s
Examples
/t/
t, tt, ed, ght, tw.
tea, sitting, walked, bright, two
/k/
k, ck, c, cc, cch, key, back, cut, hiccup, saccharine, ch, cq, que, qu,
chemist, acquisition, queue, liquor
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Many other linguists too have identified the difficulties faced by learners of English Carney (1994: 8) states „The English writing system is not simply concerned with mapping phonemes on to letters. To a large extent it tries to offer the reader a constant spelling for a morpheme in spite of the varying pronunciation of the phoneme in different contexts‟. Table 28: A Sample English letter and its different phonemic representations
morpheme spelling
phoneme
pronunciation
Cat
a
/æ/
/kæt/
Bad
a
/æ: /
/bæ:d/
Law
a
/ɔ/
/lɔw/
Last
a
/a: /
/la:st/
Coutsougera (2000: 34) states that „English orthography is largely based on a morphophonemic principle‟, and provides the following examples for the existence of this morphophonemic characteristic of English, The stem of morphologically related forms, such as „method‟ and „method-ical‟, are spelt identically in both, although pronounced differently as [ˈmeθəd] and [məˈθɒdɪkâl] respectively. The same may apply to alternating consonant or vowel sounds in morphologically related forms: e.g. the letter in „elastic / elasticity‟ corresponds to sounds /k/ and /s/ respectively or the underlined in „divine / divinity‟ corresponds to sounds /aɪ/ and /ɪ/ respectively (p. 118). This morphophonemic nature of English is identified numerically by Paulesu et al (2000) who state „in English there are 1120 ways of representing 40 sounds (phonemes) by different letters or letter combinations (graphemes). The mappings between graphemes, phonemes and whole word sound are essentially ambiguous‟. Thus English is classified as a „deep, opaque and morphophonemic‟ language which is orthographically inconsistent. These characteristics of English complicate the mapping of letters to word sounds. This is especially true in cross
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linguistic reading if the L1 of the learner is categorically a different language from their L2 in phonological and orthographical characteristics. The L1 of the learners‟ in this study, Sinhala, is orthographically consistent, enabling reliable conversion of graphemes to phonemes to yield correct pronunciation of the word. Thus it is shallow and fairly transparent. According to Dissanayaka (1991:20) „the basis of the Sinhala alphabet is basically syllabic. In other words vowels and consonants are not represented as separate units but as syllabic units in which the vowel is always attached to the consonant that precedes unless there is no such consonant‟. These difficulties and differences in mapping orthography to phonology are not the sole raison d'être for the low level learners stagnating at word decoding level. Another reason for the existence of this stagnation comes from the field of neuroscience. According to Tan et al (2003: 158) „For people who speak two languages, understanding tens of thousands of words in either of the two languages is an exceptional accomplishment of their cognitive and neuralanatomical systems‟. This neural-anatomical activation during cross linguistic reading has been investigated through many neuro-scientific studies (Bookheimer, 2002, Booth et al. 2002; Deheane, 1999; Fiez, 2000; Gottardo et al., 2001; Paulesu et. al. 2000; Tan et al., 2003). These neuro-scientists identify that it is not the brain centers for language which are activated during text comprehension. They state that to obtain the phonological codes of a word the brain region for mapping orthography to phonology should be activated. The L2 readers possess such a highly activated cerebral region which is used to efficient handling of L1 word decoding.
3.4.2 Non volitional and non selective transfer of phonological coding strategies Another important process which occurs during cross linguistic L2 reading is „transfer‟. According to research in L2 reading „transfer‟ has been traditionally identified as reliance on L1 linguistic processing knowledge when new knowledge is not sufficiently developed (Krashen, 1983; Gass & Selinker, 1983).
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Oldin (1989) also endorsed that transfer manifests reliance on L1 knowledge. Modern theorists endorse the definitions that „transfer is the ability to learn new skills by drawing on previously acquired resources (Genesee et al., 2006). Koda (1988) has discovered that „phonological coding strategies used in L1 processing are transferred to L2 processing‟. They regard prior language experience as a reservoir of knowledge, skills and abilities when learning a new language. „Typically, learners begin by transferring sounds (phonetic transfer), and then proceed to meaning (semantic transfer) and various rules including word order and pragmatics. As „transfer transpires regardless of learners‟ intent (non volitional) and its occurrence cannot be easily controlled (non selective)‟ (Koda, 2007), and as non-volitional activation of L1 information cannot be suppressed by learners when processing L2 lexical information, phonetic transfer and mapping L2 orthography to phonology which are the initial stages of cross linguistic reading are deemed difficult to low proficiency English learners. Thus the study proves through evidence from scientific anatomical research and theories on „transfer‟ that, 1.
Native readers of shallow orthographies, wherein sound symbol correspondences are regular and consistent, activate brain areas associated with phoneme processing during L1 reading.
2. During L2 reading they will activate the same L1 processing brain regions. 3.. L2 readers will also transfer phonological coding strategies used in L1 processing to L2 processing.
In sum applying this knowledge to the target population (L1- Sinhala, L2English) of this study, it is suggested that the following processes occur during their cross linguistic reading.
The target population being native readers of a shallow, semi transparent
orthography, wherein sound symbol correspondences are regular and consistent, will „activate brain areas associated with phoneme processing‟ (Paulesu et. al., 2000) during L1 reading.
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During L2 reading the „phonological coding strategies used in L1
processing are transferred to L2 processing‟ Koda (1988).
This „transfer transpires regardless of learners‟ intent (non volitional)
and its occurrence cannot be easily controlled (non selective)‟ (Koda, 2007).
As a result the target population, especially the low level learner, will not
utilize the process native readers of English will follow – „activate brain areas associated with word retrieval‟ (Paulesu et. al., 2000). Nor will they activate the brain areas for the fine grained phonemic analysis (Tan et al., 2003) which is required for the „deep non transparent orthography‟ (Coutsougera, 2000) of English.
As a corollary the low level learner of the target population due to their inability to progress in phonemic mapping of the deep, opaque orthography of English will stagnate at the lexeme activation level. Another reason for their inability to proceed through word retrieval is their low exposure to lexical knowledge. Thus given the linguistic and cognitive difficulties faced by learners, especially low level learners, of particular interest to the present study is literature on lexical knowledge.
3.5 Lexical knowledge According to Laufer & Paribakht (1998) no clear and unequivocal consensus exists as to the nature of lexical knowledge. But they further state that „rather than viewing it as an all-or-nothing phenomenon, investigators should construe lexical knowledge as a continuum consisting of several levels and dimensions of knowledge. Traditional views on lexical knowledge as a continuum had two extremes, passive and active, Passive commencing with the vague familiarity of a word form and the end of active being the ability to use the word correctly in free production (Faerch et al, 1984). Palmberg (1989) identifies three components in the continuum- potential vocabulary, passive vocabulary and active vocabulary.
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Palmberg‟s continuum places „potential vocabulary‟ at the beginning of the continuum. According to Palmberg words the learner has never encountered may be known because, once having encountered them, the learner will recognize them on the basis of already existing knowledge of their L1 or other languages. Henrikson‟s continuum (1999) had three divisions which consisted of two knowledge related components and the third, which differed from the knowledge and usage based continuums of Faerch et al and Palmberg, which introduced a control based functional continuum.
1)
Partial precise knowledge continuum
2)
Depth of knowledge continuum
3)
Receptive-productive continuum
The first continuum has levels of knowledge equivalent to different levels of word comprehension. Depth of knowledge includes knowledge of the word‟s syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations with other words. The third reflects how well the learner can access and use a word. Henrikson (1996) further states that the learners‟ inability to use a word correctly or their inability to access it freely does not mean that they do not „know‟ the word. According to Henrikson it means that they have not yet achieved adequate control over word access. Moving away from the lexical knowledge as a continuum theory some researchers have construed it as a taxonomy of components (Nation, 1990; Nation & Hwang, 1995). Nation‟s (1990) taxonomy defines „knowing‟ a word as knowing its
1)
Form (spoken and written)
2)
Position (grammatical pattern, collocations)
3)
Function (frequency and appropriateness)
Laufer (1990, 1993) too proposed a taxonomy of components of word knowledge. Agreeing with Nation, Laufer considered word use as a part of „knowing‟ a word but introduced the following taxonomy. 1)
Form (phonological, graphic, morphological))
2)
Syntactic behaviour (referential, associative, pragmatic)
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3)
Relations with other words (syntagmatic and paradigmatic)
According to August et al. (2005) lexical competence has two components: depth of knowledge and breadth of knowledge. Depth of word knowledge or „knowing‟ a word implies knowing the following things about the word. 1.
its literal meaning
2.
its various connotations
3.
the sort of syntactic constructions into which it enters
4.
the morphological options it offers
5.
a rich array of semantic associates such as synonyms and
antonyms They defined breadth of word knowledge as „knowing‟ many words as possible and concluded that second language learners have been shown to be impaired in depth of knowledge even for frequently occurring words. Whether lexical knowledge is considered as a continuum or as taxonomy of components one common feature identified is that they clearly define the components passive/receptive and active/productive. Laufer (1998) and Laufer and Paribakt (1998) divided the active/ productive component to controlled active and free active categories. According to them, passive (P) vocabulary consisted of words whose most frequent meaning was understood by the learners. Controlled Active Vocabulary (CA) or elicited vocabulary consisted of words learners can use if required or cued recall. Free Active (FA) vocabulary was defined as „spontaneous use of a word in a context generated by the user‟. Reviewing the research of Laufer and Paribakt (1998) who investigated the relationship between the three types of vocabulary knowledge (passive, controlled active and free active), this thesis wishes to identify their research questions (1) and (2) as relevant to the present study and synthesize the findings. Question (1) - What are the relationships among the learners‟ passive, controlled active and free active vocabularies?
Question (2) - Do the relationships among passive, controlled active and free
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active vocabularies change with shifts in the learners‟ passive vocabulary knowledge?
The participants were adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) from Canada (N= 103) and English as foreign language (EFL) learners from Israel (N=79). They used The Levels Test for passive vocabulary size which tested target word knowledge out of context which was based on words from 5 word frequency levels, a controlled Active Vocabulary test where the testees provided a missing word in a sentence and The Lexical Frequency Profile test (for richness in free written expression), where the participants had to write a composition on of about 300-400 word tokens on one of the two given topics. A computer program which matched the 5 vocabulary frequency lists with the learners‟ composition calculated the richness of the composition based on the 5 word frequency levels. The findings of the study can be synthesized as follows:
The results confirmed the general perception that learners‟ P vocabulary was larger than their CA vocabulary.
The P/CA differed within the learners‟ lexicon for words at different frequency levels.
Frequent words are more likely to pass from passive to active lexicon because they are indispensable for communication and must be activated.
Learners encounter less frequent words, on the other hand, less frequently and use them less in communication than the frequent words.
(p. 384)
In both the ESL and EFL populations the levels of CA and FA vocabularies increased as the learners‟ P vocabulary knowledge grew. (p. 379) Laufer and Paribakht(1998) state that learners may need to learn a lot of Passive vocabulary before they show a growth in the Controlled Active vocabulary which they can use during cued recall. Furthermore frequent words are easily up-graded from passive to active while less frequent words are elusive, more difficult to learn and are very often ignored.
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In summation, and in a juxtaposed attempt to apply the gist of above literature on lexical knowledge to the main area in discussion– text comprehension, this study wishes to theorize that vocabulary knowledge commences at a passive level where the learner‟s knowledge of the lexical item is at a given point of the partial – precise knowledge continuum. The positioning is dependent on the success in decoding written form into its phonological, morphological and semantic components. In this process the learner either activates potential vocabulary or tries to map orthography to phonology and infer lexeme information through inference. It is then and only then, the learner is able to reach Controlled Active level. At this level the leaner should be able to use the lexical item in cued recall, for example, during comprehension tasks. To attain this, the learner should be at a certain point of the depth of knowledge continuum where syntactic behaviour or the lemma information of the lexical item is successfully inferred. Achieving this, the learners will be able to proceed to the Free Active level where they can function in a receptive-productive mode. I theorize that low level learners when they encounter difficult words during reading will stagnate at the lower stages of partial- precise continuum with non activation of passive vocabulary. Unable to reach the Controlled Active stage of many difficult words which occur in reading texts, their cued recall performance will categorize them as low level readers with poor comprehension. Additionally none of the above theorists discuss how the lexical item moves from the controlled Active level to reach the Free Active level or how the learners attain full depth of knowledge of a lexical item which is needed for lexical acquisition. Should this lexical acquisition be left to incidental learning alone for all learners? Or do the low level learners need input modification such as L1 translations and then explicit pedagogic instruction for a lexical item to reach spontaneous use in production and attain full comprehension of the word in reception i.e. the optimal point of the receptive- productive continuum? Incidental vocabulary acquisition is defined as „occurring naturally when learners attempt to understand new words they hear or read in context. Such acquisition is called incidental as learners are focused on something other than word meaning
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itself‟. It is a by-.product of reading for comprehension (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999). This states the case for its unsuitability for low level readers. In-put modifications such as provision of L1 meanings to difficult lexical items, on the other hand, are intentional pedagogic strategies and „a skilled teacher‟s intuitive feel for what makes input simple or complex for a given group of learners can lead to increased comprehension (Ellis,1992;174). The form of such in-put modification which can be used to accelerate comprehension and lead to vocabulary acquisition, especially in the low level readers, discussed in this thesis is the provision of glosses.
3.6 Vocabulary acquisition through reading and provision of glosses Krashen and Terrral (1983:155) assert that vocabulary is acquired through comprehensible input, and its development is very important to the acquisition process. Krashen (1989: 440) further states, „competence in spelling and vocabulary is efficiently attained by comprehensible input in the form of reading‟. One method of making input in the form of reading comprehensible is to provide glosses for judiciously selected difficult words which appear in a reading text. These glosses can be in the L1 or the L2 of the learners. Such provision will not only allow the learners access the lexeme level of these difficult words directly, it also will leave more time for the low level learners to process the less difficult words and as a result the input will be more comprehensible. Furthermore drawing on findings from cognitive psychology Fender, (2001: 320) states that „nearly every word is focused on and processed when reading sentences for comprehension‟. But according to Paribakt and Wesche (1997) some words which are focused on are judged to be unfamiliar words which are difficult to process and thus are ignored. They state, „if L2 readers are left on their own, they generally ignore unfamiliar words‟, and „because attention to unknown words is a perquisite for any learning to occur, high rates of ignoring would severely limit a learners potential to comprehend the text (Schmidt, 1994). Thus the provision of glosses to words that are judged to be unfamiliar to the learners will prevent them
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from being ignored and will contribute towards the processing of other words in the sentences. In an effort to identify the effects of the provision of glosses on reading comprehension this study wishes to review research by Jacobs et al. (1994); Chen (2002); Miyasako (2002); Ko (1995); and Yoshii (2006). The first study under review was conducted by Jacobs et al. (1994) on L1 and L2 vocabulary glosses in L2 reading passages and their effectiveness for increasing comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. They examined the extent to which immediate text recall scores were correlated with vocabulary gain scores. The participants were intermediate learners of Spanish and their L1 was English. The instrument was an expository passage in Spanish their target language with 613 words. The participants were assigned three conditions. The first condition contained one variable- glosses in Spanish (L2) for target words in the passage. The second contained glosses in English (L1) while the control group received no glosses. After reading the text with 32 words or phrases glossed and presented in boldface, the participants had to recall the passage in their L1 which was followed by providing translations for the target words. This was done immediately after a limited time exposure to the conditions. Results indicated that the gloss conditions (either L1 or L2) were better than no gloss. However, the results did not indicate any significant difference between L1 and L2 glosses. This is supported by Chen (2002) who examined the effects of the provision of L1 and L2 glosses with 85 college freshmen in Taiwan who were studying English as a second language. They were given a passage of 193 words where 20 target words were glossed. The participants were divided into 3 groups. Group 1 was given L1 (Chinese) glosses and group 2, L2 (English) glosses. Group 3 did not receive glosses. The results showed that
Both L1 and L2 groups outperformed the no gloss group.
The difference between group 1 (L1) and group2 (L2) was not significant.
The L2 gloss group took a longer time for reading the text than the L1 gloss group did.
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Though the two studies above showed no difference between L1 and L2 glosses, Chen‟s study indicates that the provision of L1 glosses had reduced the time utilized for processing a text. Miyasako (2002) adds further information by suggesting that there is an advantage in L1 over L2 glosses, especially for low proficiency learners. Miyasako empirically tested two gloss conditions- multiple choice and single glosses in an attempt to reveal the advantage of one gloss over the other. In the multiple choice glosses students saw each target word in context which had 4 possible meanings from which they had to infer the most appropriate definition .The participants were 187 Japanese high school students who read a 504 word text with 20 target words. The instruments had 4 different gloss conditions – L1 (Japanese) multiple choice gloss, L2 (English) multiple choice gloss, L1 (Japanese) single choice gloss, L2 (English) single choice gloss, and a no gloss condition. The students took two vocabulary tests, one immediately after reading and the other 18 days later. The tests consisted of multiple-choice questions. Students saw each target word in context and had to find the most appropriate definition written in English out of four choices. Findings bore evidence „that the L2 gloss groups (multiple-choice or single) outperformed the L1 gloss groups (multiple-choice or single) significantly for the immediate test. But in the other test given 18 days later which tested retention the researcher found that „L2 glosses tended to be more effective for higher-proficiency level learners, whereas L1 glosses were more effective for lower-proficiency learners‟. This is supported by Ko (1995) who extended the research area to retention of glossed words and observed that not only the gloss conditions out performed the no gloss condition but also that learners receiving L1 glosses gained significantly more words than learners receiving L2 glosses. Word retention was measured after one week. This finding on word retention is supported by Yoshii (2006) who provides evidence that L1-glosses-only group remembered the words better. Yoshii had 195 participants from two universities in Japan and checked the effectiveness of gloss types in a reading programme on internet with 195 intermediate learners. The instrument was a 390 word story which contained 14
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target words. The gloss types included: (1) L1 text only; (2) L2 text only; (3) L1 text plus picture; and (4) L2 text plus picture. As the participants clicked on a target word the gloss appeared on the right side of the screen and for text plus picture glosses they saw both glosses at the same time on the screen. A log file compiled the record of look up behaviour. There were two post tests, one immediately after the treatment and the other two weeks later. The results found no difference between in the effectiveness of L1 and L2 glosses. This result corresponded with those of previous studies (Chen, 2002; Jacobs et al., 1994). But Yoshii (2006) found that the groups displayed different forgetting rates. The L1 glosses only group remembered the words better than the L2 glosses only group and the L2 glosses plus picture group in the post test recognition task given after two weeks. The present review identifies the main limitation in the above researches - they either investigated only one level of proficiency - the intermediate level (Yoshii, 2006; Jacobs et al, 1994) or tested on non-stratified mixed proficiency levels (Chen, 2002) which prevented generalization of their findings across a broader range of proficiencies. Miyasako (2002) findings differentiated between high and low proficiency groups stating that L1 glosses were more effective for low proficiency learners, but the study blanked out on the intermediate proficiency learners. These interesting but troublesome findings make Yoshii (2006) conclude, „therefore we need to further compare the effectiveness of L1 and L2 glosses to investigate their effectiveness on text comprehension‟
3.7 Summary statement It is a moot point whether lexis or grammar is more important in learning a language. This review began with an examination of literature which theorized on behalf of prioritizing lexis over grammar. Then the study narrowed down the focus of this review to the area of research in the main study- reading. First this review surveyed research which provides statistical data to confirm that vocabulary knowledge contributed more towards the reading ability of a learner
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than syntactic knowledge. Then it highlights the paradoxical nature of the relationship between reading ability and vocabulary knowledge: reading is credited with as the causal factor for much of the growth of vocabulary. On the other hand greater the vocabulary knowledge better is the reading ability. Based upon these findings I rest the case stating that within the genre of reading comprehension the knowledge of vocabulary plays a more important role than the knowledge of syntax. The review then described the two main models for text processing: top-down and bottom-up. Surveying literature on these models the study contends that many modern theorists and researchers view reading as a bottom-up process which commences with word decoding. This study then reviewed literature on the limitations of the two fundamental premises in the schema theory on which the other mode, top-down processing, is based. Once the importance of word decoding in bottom-up processing of a text is established the review moved to surveying the causal factors which make decoding difficult for second language learners. The neuroscientists reviewed state that the non volitional and non selective activation of the L1 brain centers for mapping orthography to phonology prevent successful decoding of the L2 lexical items. Thus this review argues that the weak learners stagnate at the decoding level of lexical processing due to their deficiency in word knowledge. Studies which investigate lexical knowledge diversify as continuum based theories and taxonomy based theories. But both views agree that lexical knowledge posses passive and active components. Surveying empirical research this review identifies that frequent words have a better probability of moving from passive to active level while unfamiliar difficult words stagnate at the passive level. The lower the proficiency of the learner these difficult words do not even reach the passive level in which the learner needs to identify the meaning of the word. One pedagogic practice investigated by researchers to prevent input from going uncomprehended is input modification. The review identifies modifying lexical input through the provision of L1 glosses for judiciously selected difficult and
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unfamiliar target lexical items as relevant to this study as its vision is to upgrade vocabulary knowledge in low level learners. Reviewing literature on provision of glosses and its effect on text comprehension, this study identifies that the provision of glosses benefits text comprehension in ESL learners. But surveying comparative studies on the benefits of L1 and L2 glosses on text comprehension the review shows that the existing studies offer mixed findings. The surveyed researches conclude that there was no significant difference between the contribution of L1 and L2 glosses. But it is stated that the retention factor of L1 glosses is higher than in the L2 glosses. Through analysis, this review identified one weakness in all the studies reviewed. They do not encompass all three main stratifications of proficiency levels: high, intermediate and low. Furthermore the better retention ability of L1 glosses recognized by researchers generates hope as retention opens the path to vocabulary reaching the Free Active level. In summation I wish to justify the empirical need for the main research component (Chapter 4) of this study through Yoshiis‟ (2006) statement „future studies need to examine the effect of L1 and L2 glosses, taking the learners‟ proficiency level into consideration. Such studies need to investigate whether the effect of L1 and L2 glosses changes when we include learners‟ proficiency levels. We need to investigate whether higher level learners learn words better with L2 glosses than lower level learners and, conversely, whether lower level learners pick up words better with L1 glosses than higher level learners‟. Making note of this vacuum, the present study in the main research component attempts to address the problematic void in current literature through empirically testing the effect of the variables, L1 and L2 glosses, across high, intermediate and low proficiency levels by employing reading comprehension tasks.
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Chapter 4 Main research- The correlation between provision of glosses and text comprehension across high, intermediate, and low proficiency levels. 4.1 Introduction The main research investigates the third and the pedagogically vital delineated area
identified
for
judicious
integration
of
L1,
accelerating
reading
comprehension. It has two chief aims. Firstly to explore the value of provision of glosses in cross linguistic reading, and secondly to statistically evaluate the effects of the provision of glosses across the three proficiency levels high, intermediate, and low during text comprehension through statistical assumptions, causal relationships and estimates. Of primary importance in this exploration are the effects of the provision of glosses on the low and the intermediate ESL learners whereas the inclusion of the high proficiency learners provided a norm. Chapter two of this thesis the pilot studies I and III bear empirical evidence to validate the provision of glosses in the ESL classroom. The analyzed results signify that high proficiency learners possess good inferring skills(means % = 80%, percentage score of standard deviation = 16.53) but middling Sinhala dictionary skills (means % = 60%, percentage score of standard deviation = 16.6), intermediate proficiency learners possess middling inferring skills(means % = 40%, percentage score of standard deviation = 14.7) and middling Sinhala dictionary skills(means % = 55%, percentage score of standard deviation = 1.43), and low proficiency learners possess low inferring skills(means % = 26.33%, percentage score of standard deviation = 9.12) and
an equally low Sinhala
dictionary skills (means % = 26.7%, percentage score of standard deviation = 11.93). Pilot study IV revealed that across all proficiencies 85.56% of the ESL learner participants declared a preference for the provision of Sinhala glosses. The inclusion of the high proficiency learners is validated by the 76.66% who stated that they need Sinhala glosses. This resulted in the formation of the following research questions.
Research questions
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1. Is there an association between the provision of glosses and the performance at text comprehension of low, intermediate and high proficiency learners? 2. If associations are designated do they demonstrate causal relations? 3. How is performance at text comprehension affected by the three independent variables given below? (a) English glosses (EG) (b) Sinhala glosses (SG) (c) No glosses
(NG)
Discussing the theoretical framework, recall that the study through reviewed literature, argued to place lexis over grammar. Thus devoid of syntactic estimations the affects of lexical knowledge on text comprehension is tested and analyzed throughout the study. Recall literature on neuroscientific studies on cross linguistic reading (Dehane, 1999; Tan et al, 2003) which provided laboratory evidence for activation of the L1 decoding centers during L2 lexical processing. Related literature on „transfer‟ which state that non volitional, non selective transfer of L1 decoding skills occurs in the weak learners during lexical processing (Koda, 2007). As a result of this activation the weaker learners stagnate at the decoding and the lexeme levels of lexical comprehension during cross linguistic reading (Figure 4: A schematic representation of lexical comprehension for written modalities). According to literature the differing orthographic depth of the two languages English and Sinhala too negatively affects mapping orthography to phonology. Further evidence in the form of a short circuit theory comes from Clark (1980) who states that „the ability of elementary learners to decode words may be so weak that their comprehension is short circuited‟. The procedure followed in this research theorizes that this short circuiting of the text comprehension process can be eradicated through the provision of glosses. The provision of glosses to difficult lexical items will bypass the complex decoding and lexeme stages and detour to the lemma stage (Figure 4). This framework is restricted at this stage to empirical research purposes and does not undermine the importance of the decoding and lexeme stages of lexical
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processing. If the provision of glosses improves text comprehension (supporting literature state that participant intermediate learners under L1 and L2 conditions out performed the no gloss group) the study will address the bypassed decoding and lexeme stages under the pedagogical strategy – explicit lexical instruction. Collection of data was done through a cross sectional study where data was gathered at a single point of time based on the independent variables and from the learners‟ performance at text comprehension tasks. These tasks at macro level involved reading for information on the given process while the set of micro level reading purposes involved scanning the text to understand how the process works and identifying the sequence of events. The evaluation procedure was in two stages where the participants were required to identify the sequence of events through lexical identification of the specific organs at the given stages of the digestive process. A paraphrase gauged the level of text comprehension. A self evaluation of the % comprehension level of the passage too was obtained through a scale. 4.1.1 Utilization of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis for test battery selection In 1980 Krashen proposed the Input Hypothesis which states that in order for comprehension to take place learners need to have comprehensible input. In the Monitor Model he advanced the concept that this input must be at a stage slightly beyond the current competence of the learner. If the current competence of the learner is „i‟ the input should be at an „i +1‟. Though Krashen‟s Input Hypothesis has been subject to many a criticism and many limitations identified (Baker & McCarthy, 1981; Gregg, 1984; Kunnan, 1995; McLaughin, 1987) many others (Eskey, 2005; Lightbown & Spada, 1999; Long, 1985) have found empathy with the hypothesis. Eskey (2005) suggests that, „an appropriate text needs to be slightly difficult for the learners‟ reading ability. In other words, it should meet Krashen‟s „i +1‟ standard of comprehensibility. Long (1985) states that in theorythen-research strategy hypothetical constructs such as „i‟ and „i +1‟ are permitted. While the statement containing such a construct is unoperationalized and so is untestable in the real world, a related statement can be tested‟. The concept „i +1‟
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has been quantified by Nation (2000) who states that about 98% of the words in running text should be previously known in order for reading to be effective‟. Thus this thesis assumes a representation for „i‟: in the 179 words from the 2000 most frequent word list as previously known words (89.5%) and records it as reflecting the current competency level of the intermediate proficiency learners. The „one stage above the competency level‟ comes from the 10 (5%) words which are not in the frequent word list and are either not glossed or glossed in English or Sinhala. The other 7 words which denote organs of the digestive system consist of the words which again are non frequent words. These words denote output along with the paraphrasing component. 4.1.2 Application of a ‘related statement’ of the hypothesis to the current research If „i‟ is the present competence of the intermediate learners denoted by the 179 frequent words in the passage, then „+1‟ or one stage above current competence is denoted by the 10 words not in the frequent list. It is hypothesized that the out put or the performance at the evaluation specific vocabulary test and the paraphrasing will depend on the comprehension of „+1‟. The thesis wishes to ascertain the effect of the provision of glosses for the 10 lexical items not in the frequent list which denote „+1‟ or one stage above current competence on the out put of not only the intermediate proficiency learners but also the high and low proficiency groups.. 4.2 – Methodology 4.2.1 Participants - 270 participants selected from the target population – undergraduates of the Faculty of Arts, University of Kelaniya
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Table 29: Categorization of participants
Group categorized according to
Low
Intermediate
High
proficiency Grade obtained for A/L General English =
W
SC
AB
Group title Group divisions # of participants
W1 W2 W3 SC1 30
30
30
30
SC2 30
SC3 AB1 AB2 AB3 30
30
30
30
obtained through stratified random sample selection Total # of participants
270
4.2.2 The test battery and its suitability indices 4.2.2.1 Flesch Reading Ease Test. The selected passage describes „The digestive process‟ in a human body. Though the content area is specific (Science) it has been covered by the Sinhala text used by the participant population during their course work in preparation for the G.C.E. Ordinary Level (2002). Science is a compulsory paper at this examination. Thus it is assumed that the content area is within the world knowledge genre of the participant population. The rhetorical function is identified as the „Description of a process‟. This is considered a positive feature as one component of the evaluating procedure seeks to test the comprehension of the sequence digestive process through eliciting evaluation specific lexical items devoid of syntactic interference. This is desired, as lexical comprehension could be evaluated in isolation. The test battery was first analyzed for readability and then underwent a
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test for Rater Agreement Proportions on reader indices. The test battery suitability was targeted at the intermediate proficiency level of the participant undergraduate population. The test battery word count equals 200, and reading ease was gauged by the Flesch Reading Ease test. In the Flesch Reading Ease test, higher scores indicate material that is easier to read; lower numbers mark harder-to-read passages. The formula for the calculation is,
Readability index = 206.835 -1.015
– 84.6 [total syllables]
[total words] [total sentences]
[total words]
Source - Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FleschKincaid_Readability_Test (last modified on 10 April 2008).
According to the above equation the Reader's Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, and the Harvard Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30s. The highest (easiest) readability score possible is 121 (every sentence consisting of a one-syllable word).Applying the Flesch Reading Ease Test to the test battery of this thesis the readability rate is calculated as following: Readability index = 206.835 -1.015 [200] – [13]
84.6 [285] = 70.685 [200]
Thus the passage falls 5 digits above the readability rate of the Reader's Digest magazine and is assumed to belong to a competence level most suited for intermediate proficiency learners. As the Flesch-Kincaid Readability index depended only on number of words, sentences and syllables the Rater Agreement Proportion statistic on reader indices was used to further ascertain the suitability level of the passage and to identify the ten words which are to be glossed and the seven evaluation specific vocabulary items which were the required to fill the organization chart.
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4.2.2.2 Rater Agreement Proportion statistic on reader indices The Rater Agreement Proportion (RAP) statistic was calculated for the passage using 5 raters (ESL facilitators from University of Kelaniya). This statistic was used by Bachman, Davidson & Milanovic (1991) to measure the following facets in a comprehension passage to gauge the suitability of a comprehension passage to a testee population. 1.
Complexity of language
2.
Rhetorical organization
3.
Test topic
4.
Cultural references
The RAP was 1.0 (5/5) if all raters agreed, 0.8 if 4 did. If two agreed it was 0.2 and no agreement was 0. During Complexity of vocabulary assessment ten words were picked for glossing and seven words which represented the order of sequence of the digestive process were identified by the raters as evaluation specific vocabulary. 1. Complexity of language Complexity of language was divided into complexity of vocabulary and complexity of syntax. The former was gauged by the number of words in the passage which came from the list of 2000 most frequently used English words from the Brown Corpus (1,015,945), Virtual Language Centre.com and the latter was gauged through the analysis of the % of passive vs. active verbs in the passage. According to Namukwai & Williams (1988) heavy use of passivity is sometimes considered to add to the malreadability of a passage. 179 words of the passage were represented in the list of 2000 most frequently used English words. But 0.8 rater agreement considered three words: energy, blood, system, to be fairly difficult for the participant intermediate proficiency groups. The latter words were representative of a stage in the process sequence thus was entered into the evaluation specific word list while the former was included in the glossed word list. Three words were familiar English loan words in Sinhala discourse: glucose, Amino acids, and enzymes. The latter two come
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from the genre of Science and a RAP of 1.0 needed „enzymes‟ to be included under the glossed word category as its meaning was considered a requirement for comprehension of the evaluation process and as it occurs twice in the passage. In comparison „Amino acids‟ played a lesser role and obtained a RAP of 0.6 for non inclusion in the glossed list of words. „Glucose‟ was considered a familiar loan word obtaining a 0.8 RAP non inclusion in the glossed category.
Table 30: Complexity of vocabulary gauged through the availability of the word in the list of 2000 most frequently used English words
Number of words in the most frequent list Not in the list
179 14
Nutrients, chewed, salivary glands*, chemicals, digest, swallowed, fats, excess, esophagus, stomach, liver, intestine, anus
Not in the list but loan
04
Glucose, enzymes, amino acid*
03
Energy, blood system *
words in Sinhala In the list but considered by the raters as difficult Total
200
* Taken as two words for word counting
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Thus the RAP indices selected the following vocabulary items to be glossed as evaluation specific lexis.
Table 31: Final selection based on RAP indices # of sets
Glossed sets
Evaluation specific sets
1
Energy
Esophagus
2
Nutrients
Stomach
3
Chewed
Liver
4
Salivary glands* Chemicals
Small Intestine*
5
Enzymes
Blood system*
6
Digest
Large Intestine*
7
Swallowed
Anus
8
Fats
9
Excess
Total # of words
11
10
* taken as one set for testing purposes
Table 32: Complexity of syntax gauged through the # of passive verbs vs. active verbs
Verb composition # of passive verbs
11
# of active verbs
20
Thus 32.2% of the verbs were passive which indicated a middling syntactic complexity. The RAP was 0.8 for the syntactic suitability of the test battery for intermediate level of proficiency. 113
Though it is acknowledged that the gauge for syntactic complexity has its limitations it is assumed that when combined with the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test and the RAP indices the resultant test battery evaluation would authenticate the suitability of the passage as the instrument for the research. 1.Rhetorical organization - The rhetorical function of the test battery which was identified as „Description of a process‟. RAP index for suitability was 0.8. 2.Test topic – RAP index for suitability was 1.0 3.Cultural references- the absence of any cultural references resulted in a RAP index of 1.0 which rated the test battery as culturally neutral.
4.3 Instrument allocations and evaluation process 4.3.1- The instruments The suitability indices finally arrived at the three following test instruments which represented three conditions: 1.
No gloss condition ( NG)- Instrument 1
2.
English gloss condition (EG) - Instrument 2
3.
Sinhala gloss condition (SG)- Instrument 3
Instrument 1 - a control passage: no glosses (Appendix F)
179 Frequent words + 4 loan words +10 difficult word sets (11 words) + 7 evaluation specific word sets (10 words)
+ No glossed words
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Tools for self proclaimed /evaluated comprehension
Instrument 2 - variable 1: English glosses (Appendix G)
179 Frequent words + 4 loan words + 7 evaluation specific word sets (10 words)
10 difficult + word sets (11 words) English glosses
Tools for self proclaimed /evaluated comprehension
Instrument 3 - variable 2: Sinhala glosses (Appendix H)
179 Frequent words+4 loan words + 7 evaluation specific word sets (10 words)
10 difficult + word sets (11 words) Sinhala glosses
Tools for self proclaimed /evaluated comprehension tools
4.3.2 Allocations –
Table 33: Allocations and participating groups
Allocations
Group
W1
# of participants
30
Instrument 1
Instrument 2
Instrument 3
No meanings
English meanings
Sinhala meanings
SC1
AB2
W2
SC2
AB2
W3
SC3
AB3
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
30
The total number of participants equaled 270. Each participant was exposed to one instrument for the cross sectional study. One statistical analysis procedure used in the study is the Mann--Whitney test. According to Zimmerman (1996) and Zimmerman & Zumbo (1993) nonparametric tests, such as the Mann--
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Whitney test are biased when sample sizes are unequal. Thus the sample size for each allocation was controlled at a participant total of 30.
4.3.3 Evaluation process Three tools were used in the evaluation procedure. Before exposure to the passage the participants were oriented to the task of reading for the purpose of subsequently completing an organization chart and paraphrasing which is limited to the content of the given passage. All instructions were explained in Sinhala for the intermediate and the low level proficiency groups. The first tool was for self assessed comprehension % level which did not have a mark allocation. The second was in the form of an organization chart where the participants were required to identify various stages of the digestive process. The chart required 7 lexical items and each item was allotted one mark. A paraphrasing tool tested the overall comprehension of the passage and the participants could opt to use Sinhala to produce the required answer which was allotted marks out of 3. The marking for this component was done by 2 raters and the average mark was obtained. During marking attention was given to inclusion of information from outside the passage (which the testees were instructed not to include) and such inclusions were not rated.
4.4 The inquiry system and procedures for statistical analysis 4.4.1 The inquiry system The inquiry system commenced with a hypothesized relationship between three independent variables and the dependent variable performance at text comprehension. The inquiry system consisted of the following stages. 1. Intuitive gauging of pattern of association between the variables through histograms. 2. Means analysis for constructing assumptions 3. Evaluation of causal relationships 4. Estimation of relationships
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The histograms sought to determine whether the variables exhibit any kind of systematic pattern of association which could only be intuitively suggested at this stage. The patterns of association were statistically analyzed and though the relations revealed by a means analysis is not exact it allows each independent variable across three proficiency groups to construct assumptions based on associations intuitively suggested by the histogram representation of data. Simply measuring the statistical associations and construction of assumptions does not say anything about the causal relationships between variables. The study seeking to obtain a standard of validity for the causal relationships uses the Chi square test for Goodness of Fit. Through this statistical procedure the study seeks to answer the following research question 1.
Does the performance of low, intermediate and high proficiency learners at text comprehension depend on the provision of meanings? Though the Chi square test identifies causal relationships between variables it does not allow estimation of values which is needed to provide analyses to satisfy the statistical requirements of research question 2:
How is performance at text comprehension affected by the three independent variables: (a) English Glosses, (b) Sinhala Glosses, (c) No Glosses? Thus the Mann Whitney test for comparison of medians is used to satisfy the statistical estimation requirements needed to identify the influence of the three gloss conditions on performance at text comprehension.
4.4.2 Procedures for statistical analysis The hypothesis was statistically tested through two nonparametric statistical hypothesis testing procedures at two stages, null hypothesis (H0) and alternative hypotheses (H1), for each proficiency level. This is deemed necessary due the requirement of validating hypotheses on dependency and the evaluation of rate of increase in performance through statistical procedures.
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(1) Chi square test to evaluate whether performance of students at text comprehension was dependant on provision of glosses.
The calculation of the Goodness of Fit statistic utilized the following equation:
Equation I 2
The Chi square test for goodness of fit calculates the deviation of the observed frequency from the expected frequency of a population. This procedure provided an overall measure to specify how the observation deviates from the null hypothesis (H0) through the X2 statistic. It also measures the discrepancy from the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis and the alternative hypotheses (H1) applied to the Chi square test relevant to this study are: H0
–
performance of students at text comprehension is independent of the
provision of glosses to difficult lexical items. H1 - performance of students at text comprehension is dependent on the provision of glosses to difficult lexical items. These hypotheses are applied to the three gloss conditions separately. (2)The Mann Whitney test for comparison of medians to identify the rate of increase in performance in low and intermediate and high proficiency groups when no glosses, English, and Sinhala glosses were provided. The sample data used for the Chi square test was used for the Mann--Whitney test. The objective of this statistical analysis is to detect whether two sets of underlying populations are centered differently. At each stage of the Mann-Whitney analysis the null hypothesis (H0) and the alternative hypothesis (H1) will undergo analysis as follows:
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H0 is that the two underlying populations are identical in their performance at text comprehension.
H1 is that the performance of one underlying population is greater than the other population. The calculation of the statistic utilized the following equation: Equation II2.1
Data for the above statistical analyses were collected from 10 marks given to items in the instruments 1, 2 and 3. „x‟ represents the number of correct answers out of 10.The scale in Table 34. (Description of level formation according to scale based on performance) was utilized to accommodate the requirements of the Chi square test and the Mann--Whitney test for statistical analysis. It divided the results into three levels. The scale was based on the performance where the mark obtained out of 10 was used for level identification.
Table 34: Description of level formation according to scale based on performance x=
Level division
1, 2, 3
Below average
4, 5, 6
Average
7, 8, 9, 10
Above average
4.5. Results and analysis – The self assessed evaluation of the passage comprehended was indicated by a percentage allotment by the participants. The analyzed results (Table 35) indicate that the comprehension rate of the high proficiency learners was not affected by
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the provision of glosses. On the other hand low proficiency learners indicated that their comprehension improved with the provision Sinhala glosses (%mean = 51.00) while the no gloss condition and the English gloss condition were considered equally difficult to comprehend (%mean = 28.66 and 28.33 respectively). The intermediate proficiency group declared a high increase in comprehension (%mean = 70.67) when provided Sinhala glosses when compared with the almost equal comprehension rate (%mean = 46.00 and 46.00) allotted to the no gloss and English gloss conditions.
Table 35: Self assessed % of the passage comprehended
Measurement
No meanings Inter
High
English meanings
Sinhala meanings
Low Inter
Low
Proficiency
Low
High
Inter
High
Mean
28.66 46.00 71.66
28.3
46.00 72.33 51.00 70.67 74.00
s.d.
11.18 13.06 16.74
14.6
14.16 16.26 12.74 15.90 12.80
Maximum
50
70
50
50
70
50
70
90
60
Minimum
10
20
100
10
20
100
30
30
100
4.5.1 Histogram, Means Analysis and the Chi Square Tests
4.5.1.1 Low proficiency learners The following histogram reveals the general performance of the low proficiency learners at text comprehension. IT reveals a significant increase in the performance under the Sinhala gloss conditions. On the other hand the two conditions no gloss and English glosses revealed a significant similarity in performance.
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Graph 6: Graphical representation for contrast in performance- low proficiency learners: Test for reading comprehension - No meanings - W1, English meanings - W2, Sinhala meanings – W3
Performance statistics low proficiency learners 12
frequency
10 8
no meanings
6
English meanings
4
Sinhala meanings
2 0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
marks / 10
Table 36 illustrates the means analysis for the underlying population which provides a clearer statistical picture of the results. The very slight differences in the mean values for the first two conditions (m = 2.56, 2.63 respectively) are not statistically significant. Thus the performance of low proficiency learners was equally low at the NG and SG conditions. But the statistically significant increase in the mean (m= 5.52) indicates the benefit of the provision of Sinhala glosses to low proficiency learners.
Table 36: Tabulated results of performance - low proficiency learners containing means analysis Measurement
No glosses
Mean
2.56
% Mean
25.6
English glosses 2.63 26.3
Sinhala glosses 5.52 55.2
s.d.
1.146
1.14
1.335
Maximum
5
5
8
121
Minimum
1
1
3
Mode
3
3
6
Chi square test results of performance – low proficiency learners Analysis – This procedure for hypothesis testing obtained statistical evidence to validate/ reject the following hypotheses.
H0
-performance of low proficiency learners at text comprehension is not
dependant on the provision of glosses to difficult lexical items
H1 - performance of low proficiency ESL learners at text comprehension is dependant on the provision of glosses to difficult lexical items (The computation of the Contingency tables of frequencies for the Chi square test – low proficiency learners are contained in appendix I). Analyzing the results the final value yields χ2 0.01,4 =35.36 The final value obtained is higher than the χ2 0.01,4 tabulated value which is 13.277. As the calculated value is greater than the tabulated value the null hypothesis is (H0) is rejected. Thus if the null hypothesis is rejected, H1 is validated at a 95% non parametric confidence interval.
4.5.1.2 Intermediate proficiency learners The histogram representation of the intermediate proficiency learners at text comprehension reveals a general performance which is almost equivalent to the general performance of the low proficiency learners. As in the underlying population of low proficiency learners, they too reveal a significant increase in the performance under the Sinhala gloss conditions. On the other hand the histogram
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for the two conditions no gloss and English glosses reveal a significant similarity in performance.
Graph 7: Graphical representation for performance - intermediate proficiency learners: Test for reading comprehension- No meanings - SC1, English meaningsSC2, Sinhala meanings – SC3
frequency
Performance statistics for intermediate learners 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
no meanings English meanings Sinhala meanings
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 10
marks/ 10
Table 37 given below confirms the trend in the histograms with statistical data. The mean values improved slightly for the NG and EG conditions (m = 3.63, 4.13 respectively)
but a statistically significant improvement is shown for the SG
condition. Thus the performance of intermediate proficiency learners slightly improved through the NG and EG conditions. But the statistically significant increase in the mean at the SG condition (m= 5.52) indicates the benefit of the provision of Sinhala glosses to low proficiency learners. Table 37: Tabulated results of performance - intermediate proficiency learners containing means analysis Measurement
No glosses
English glosses
Sinhala glosses
Mean
3.63
4.13
6.9
%Mean
36.3
41.3
69.0
123
s.d.
1.68
1.59
1.27
Maximum
7
7
10
Minimum
1
1
4
Median
4
4
7.5
Chi square test results of performance - Intermediate proficiency learners This procedure for hypothesis testing obtained statistical evidence to validate/ reject the following hypotheses
H0 -performance of intermediate proficiency learners at text comprehension is not dependant on the provision of meanings to difficult lexical items.
H1 - performance of intermediate proficiency learners at text comprehension is dependant on the provision of glosses to difficult lexical items. (The computation of the contingency tables of frequencies for chi square test – intermediate proficiency learners are contained in appendix J). Analysis - The final value yields χ2 0.01,4 = 37.42. The final value obtained is higher than the tabulated value which is χ2
0.01,4 =13.277.
As the calculated value is
greater than the tabulated value the null hypothesis is (H0) is rejected. Thus if the null hypothesis is rejected the alternative hypothesis H1 is validated at a 95% non parametric confidence interval.
4.5.1.3 High proficiency learners The histogram representation of the high proficiency learners at text comprehension reveals a general performance which shows a different trend from the representations of the other two proficiency groups.
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Unlike in the underlying populations of low proficiency and intermediate proficiency learners they revealed a significant and fairly static high performance under NG, EG and SG conditions.
Graph 8: Graphical representation for performance- high proficiency learners: Test for reading comprehension- AB1 -no meanings, AB2 - English meanings, AB3 - Sinhala meanings.
frequency
Performance statistics for high proficiency learners 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
no meanings English meanings Sinhala meanings
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
marks/10
Table 38 given below confirms that the mean values remains a static high for the NG EG and SG conditions (m = 7.26, 8.26, 8.26 respectively) but a slightly significant improvement is shown for the EG and SG conditions. Thus the performance of high proficiency learners slightly improve from the NG condition through the EG and SG conditions. The slightly significant increase (10%) in the % mean at the EG and SG conditions indicates that the high proficiency learners too benefit from the provision of glosses. But it is significant that EG and SG revealed similar statistical results. Table 38: Comparison of means - High proficiency learners Measurement
No glosses
English glosses
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Sinhala glosses
Mean % Mean s.d.
7.26
8.26
72.6
8.26
82.6
1.54
82.6
1.28
1.33
Maximum
10
10
10
Minimum
4
5
5
Median
7.5
9
9
The above numerical quantifiers form the proposition given below: The high proficiency learners perform at a static mean level under all three gloss conditions.
Analysis for causal relationships The Chi square test attempts to identify the causal relation which generates statistical data to indicate that „The high proficiency learners perform at a static mean level under all three gloss conditions‟ (The computation of the contingency tables of frequencies for Chi square test – high proficiency learners are contained in appendix K). The final value yields χ2 0.014 = 5.37 Thus the final value obtained is lower than the χ2
0.014
tabulated value which
is13.277.As the calculated value is less than the tabulated value 13.277, the null hypothesis is (H0) Is not rejected. Thus if the null hypothesis H0 - is not rejected, performance of students at high proficiency levels in text comprehension is not dependant on the provision of glosses to difficult lexical items. Thus as claimed in hypothesis II providing Sinhala glosses for difficult English words which occur in comprehension passages within the lesson material will affect the comprehension only in low and intermediate proficiency groups. As shown by the above results the text comprehension skills of the high proficiency learners will slightly improve when English meanings are provided but the provision of Sinhala glosses will produce the same mean performance. Thus the Mann Whitney test will be conducted only for the intermediate and low proficiency groups.
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4.5.2 Mann Whitney tests for comparison of medians to identify the rate of increase in performance at text comprehension in low proficiency learners. 4.5.2.1(a) Performance comparison of text comprehension - low proficiency learners no meanings/ English meanings.
µ1 – median of performance low proficiency learners at text comprehension when no meanings are provided.
µ2 - median of performance low proficiency learners at comprehension when English meanings are provided. H0 – null hypothesis- µ1= µ2 H1 – alternative hypothesis µ1 < µ2
Z ratio was calculated using the equation II Values for calculating Z value for performance comparison of text comprehension - low proficiency learners (W) (The computation tables for the Mann Whitney test for low proficiency learners at NG and EG conditions are contained in appendix L).
U1 -∑ final rank for W – performance at text comprehension - low proficiency learners- no glosses provided..
U2-∑ final rank for W – performance at text comprehension - low proficiency learners- English glosses provided. Analyzed data - comparison of performance at comprehension - low proficiency learners- no meanings- English glosses provided.
Variable
∑U1
∑U2
U
T
N
m
n
Calculated values
907
923
907
1123
60
30
30
Z = 907– 915 = - 0.11565 65
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Tabulated one tailed value is – 1.64 where the null hypothesis is rejected if the calculated value is less than the tabulated value – 1.64 As the calculated value - 0.11565 is more than the tabulated value, the null hypothesis µ1= µ2 is not rejected. Thus the analysis indicates that the provision of English glosses results in a median equivalent to the provision of no meanings in low proficiency learners. 4.5.2.1(b)- Performance comparison of text comprehension – low proficiency learners English meanings/ Sinhala meanings. (The computation tables for the Mann Whitney test for low proficiency learners at EG and SG conditions are contained in appendix M).
µ1 – median of performance- intermediate proficiency learners at text comprehension when English glosses are provided.
µ2 - median of performance intermediate proficiency learners at text comprehension when Sinhala glosses are provided. H0 – null hypothesis- µ1= µ2 H1 – alternative hypothesis µ1 < µ2
Z ratio was calculated using the following equation: Values for calculating Z value for performance comparison of text comprehension - intermediate proficiency learners (W)
U1 -∑ final rank for W – performance at text comprehension low proficiency learners- English glosses provided..
U2-∑ final rank for W – performance at text comprehension – low proficiency learners- Sinhala glosses provided. Analyzed data - comparison of performance at text comprehension – low proficiency learners- English meanings- Sinhala glosses provided.
Variable
∑U1
∑U2
U
Calculated values 524.5 1305.5 524.5
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T
N
m
n
457
60
30
30
Z = 524.5– 915 = - 5.9126 66 Tabulated one tailed value is – 1.64 where the null hypothesis is rejected if the calculated value is less than the tabulated value – 1.64. As the calculated value - 5.9126 is less than the tabulated value, the null hypothesis (H0) µ1= µ2 is rejected at 95% confidence level. Thus the alternative hypothesis (H1) µ1
