{"id":725,"date":"2017-05-12T00:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T08:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/?p=725"},"modified":"2017-06-25T16:04:34","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T00:04:34","slug":"this-week-in-language-education-may-12-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/backseatlinguist.com\/blog\/this-week-in-language-education-may-12-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week In Language Education (May 12, 2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can Talking\u00a0to Your iPad Improve Your German?<\/a><\/h3>\n

Schenker and Kraemer\u00a0(2017) (Open Access)<\/em> compared\u00a0the speaking proficiency on the SOPI<\/a>\u00a0of two groups of\u00a0college students studying second-semester German (N=52). Students in one group were given iPads for 13\u00a0weeks, and assigned three short (average: 75 seconds) speaking assignments each week which\u00a0they had to record on their iPad. Assignments talking on topics such as\u00a0“Describe your room at college” and “Tell us about your favorite restaurant.”<\/p>\n

At the end of the semester, the iPad group had a higher SOPI score (Cohen’s\u00a0d<\/em> = 0.68) than the non-iPad group, although neither the fluency nor accuracy subscales\u00a0of the exam showed any differences between groups.<\/p>\n

There are a few things wrong here. First, the iPad students also had to watch at least four other student-created\u00a0videos each week, meaning they got somewhat more language input\u00a0than the non-iPad group. Second, the iPad group almost certainly got more German\u00a0input than the controls by virtue of having to research and prepare their 36 speaking assignments. The control group’s online assignments consisted of textbook “vocabulary and grammar” activities (p. 4).<\/p>\n

More input outside of the classroom is just as likely an explanation for the group differences as any added output, which in any case was minimal: students spoke to their iPads an average of only 41 minutes during\u00a0the entire semester.<\/p>\n

Schenker, T., & Kraemer, A. (2017). Maximizing L2 Speaking Practice through iPads. Languages<\/i>, 2<\/i>(2), 6.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An Early Start in English as a Foreign Language Doesn’t Help<\/a><\/h3>\n

Jeaekel and his colleagues (in press, paywall) followed two large cohorts of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in German schools for a period of seven years. One “Early Starter” group (N=3,340) got\u00a0EFL instruction beginning at age 6-7 (Year 1), while the “Later Starter” group (N=2,632) didn’t begin receiving instruction\u00a0until two years later (Year 3). Both groups were tested in English again at Year 5 and Year 7.<\/p>\n

The Early Starter group got a total of 549\u00a0hours of instruction by the time they reached Year 7, compared to only 444 hours for the Later Starters. In Year 5, the Early Starters were clearly better in English than the Late Starters, but by Year 7, the situation had reversed: Late Starters did significantly better than Early Starters, although the effect was smaller for listening (d = .17) than reading (d = .35) (Table 2, p. 16). The researchers concluded that starting English early was actually worse<\/strong> for students.<\/p>\n

This is not a new finding (see Krashen, Long, and Scarcella, 1979<\/a>). Older children (and adults) acquire languages faster than younger children, contrary to all of the misinformation found in the popular media.<\/p>\n

The researchers also looked at the effect of sex, parental income, nonverbal IQ, and the number of books in the home on the students’ English scores. Interestingly, controlling for other factors, books in the home was a positive predictor of English scores.<\/p>\n

This make sense: children who read more in their L1\u00a0have more background knowledge to help make the L2 instruction more comprehensible, and more developed L1 literacy skills to transfer to the new language – in other words, they get the benefits of\u00a0bilingual education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jaekel, N., Schurig, M., Florian, M., & Ritter, M. From Early Starters to Late Finishers? A Longitudinal Study of Early Foreign Language Learning in School. Language Learning<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another Massive Vocabulary Study Finds No Gains, Massive or Otherwise<\/a><\/h3>\n

Jayanthi\u00a0and colleagues (in press; paywall) conducted a study – in what seems like an endless series<\/a> of massive<\/a>, federally-funded studies<\/a> of this sort – to determine the efficacy of vocabulary instruction. The “pilot” study (Gerstner et al., 2010<\/a>) (PDF<\/em>) was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 81 teachers and 468 first graders, bigger than most full-scale studies of any sort in education. That\u00a0project included\u00a020 hours of teacher training over the course of the school year on the intervention, which consisted of “rich” vocabulary instruction and comprehension strategies. Students were tested at the end of\u00a0both first and second grade.<\/p>\n

No statistically significant differences were found on oral vocabulary, reading vocabulary, or “passage” comprehension (actually measured by a cloze test, and thus\u00a0mostly a word recognition test). No differences were found on an oral reading test, either.<\/p>\n

Undaunted, the research group doubled down and\u00a0launched the present study, another RCT focussing this time just on vocabulary instruction. This project involved 212 teachers across 61 schools, with a student sample of 1,680 first-graders. The teachers received 12.5 hours of training over the school year. Similar student assessments were given as in the pilot study, minus the Woodcock-Johnson “passage” comprehension test.<\/p>\n

The results: “[T]here were no significant impacts (sic) on any of the individual measures. Effect sizes were all close to zero<\/strong>” (p. 21-22, in press manuscript version). In fact, on two of the vocabulary tests, the effect sizes were slightly negative, but nonsignificant.<\/p>\n

To be fair, vocabulary studies of this sort typically measure results on “curriculum-based” tests; that is, kids are tested on the words taught, not on a general vocabulary test. Still, the results are not encouraging, but consistent with the mostly dismal results<\/a> this sort of\u00a0instruction has on vocabulary\u00a0acquisition and reading comprehension. (Note: The poor showing of vocabulary instruction\u00a0hasn’t stopped the research team from\u00a0trying\u00a0it once again<\/a>\u00a0– third time’s a charm?)<\/p>\n

Jayanthi, M., Dimino, J., Gersten, R., Taylor, M.J., Haymond, K., Smolkowski, K., & Newman-Gonchar, R. (in press).\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Impact of Teacher Study Groups in Vocabulary on Teaching Practice, Teacher Knowledge, and Student Vocabulary Knowledge: A Large-Scale Replication Study.\u00a0Journal Of Research On Educational Effectiveness<\/span><\/em>\u00a0(in press).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading Tests That Don’t Actually Test Reading<\/a><\/h3>\n

Hua and Keenan (2017, paywall), following up on early work by Keenan and her colleagues<\/a>, examined five popular reading comprehension tests to see how much of the variance in scores could be explained by a reader’s listening comprehension, and how much by his ability to read individual words in isolation (word recognition).<\/p>\n

Hua and Keenan tested a large group of students (N=834) ages 8 to 18. They used everyone’s current favorite for statistical analysis, quantile regression<\/a>, to see how readers of different abilities fared. I report here\u00a0the results for the “average” student:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Woodcock-Johnson Passage Comprehension (WJPC):<\/em>
    \nWord Recognition: 56%
    \nListening Comprehension: 33%<\/li>\n
  2. PIAT:<\/em>
    \nWord Recognition: 61%
    \nListening Comprehension: 25%<\/li>\n
  3. Gray Oral Reading Test:<\/em>
    \nWord Recognition: 23%
    \nListening Comprehension: 41%<\/li>\n
  4. Qualitative Reading Inventory-Questions:<\/em>
    \nWord Recognition: 17%
    \nListening Comprehension: 52%<\/li>\n
  5. Qualitative Reading Inventory-Retells:<\/em>
    \nWord Recognition: 17%
    \nListening Comprehension: 52%<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There’s a clear difference between tests #1 and #2 and #3-5: the PIAT and Woodcock-Johson Passage Comprehension (WJPC) are mostly word recognition tests rather than measures of comprehension.<\/p>\n

    Why the difference? In the PIAT and WJPC, readers read single sentences and\/or complete a “cloze” (fill in the missing word). There is little context to aid the reader, nor is there a very high level of complex comprehension\u00a0required. Tests #3, 4, and 5, however, involve\u00a0reading longer passages and answering questions or retelling the events of the story.<\/p>\n

    In other words, Tests 3-5 measure more of what most people (teachers, the general public) consider “reading comprehension” – understanding what you read.\u00a0Word recognition, on the other hand,\u00a0is often used as a proxy\u00a0for decoding skills (the ability to convert letters into sounds), and not paradoxically is also much more easily influenced by phonics instruction.<\/p>\n

    Why is this important for us to know? At least three reasons:<\/p>\n