2017 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The Effect of Extensive Reading on Students' Ability to Predict Following Text and Increase Reading Speed
| Project/Area Number |
16K01140
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| Research Institution | Kyoto Sangyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
ロブ トーマス 京都産業大学, その他(名誉教授), 名誉教授 (30148366)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
神谷 健一 大阪工業大学, 知的財産学部, 准教授 (50388352)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | reading / extensive reading / prediction / cloze / testing / reading level |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The original purpose of this grant is to attempt to show that extensive reading promotes the ability of students to understand the context of what they are reading and to be able to predict what words or idea is coming next in the reading passage. To measure this, we are studying the English majors at Kyoto Sangyo University for which we have pre- and post-tests on their general English ability from the TOEFL PBT version that the 1st year students take in April and then again in December.
In order to measure the students’ change in their ability to predict what is coming next, we have constructed a “scrolling cloze” activity that the students can do on either a PC or on the smartphone. When they do the activity, the see a number of short texts slowly scrolling by with colored blanks. On the top of the screen are colored buttons of the same color as the blank with words for them to choose from. Some of the texts come from “graded readers” of progressive difficulty, while the last two sets are common phrases that they may or may not know, depending on their knowledge of English.
The software tracks both 1) what words the guessed correctly and 2) their reaction time. So far, the results show that reaction time is not a reliable predictor of general ability, but that the words correct is, particularly when each word is assessed individually.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We have learned that rather than a total score for how many the student got correct, some words are easier than others, so lower level students can predictably get some of the words correct but not those of greater difficulty. We therefore plan to weight the scoring system depending on the relative difficult if each clozed word.
During the 2017 academic year, we had the students at Kyoto Sangyo, as well as at some other schools, do the activity multiple times so that we could assess the relative difficulty of each cloze word and adjust the cloze choices to create the best cloze text possible.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
During 2018 we will have the English majors at Kyoto Sangyo take the scrolling cloze test just twice, in April and December, coinciding with their TOEFL tests in order to measure their improvement in word prediction. We will correlate their results on the test with both their TOEFL score improvement, as well their reading word count as measured by the MReader.org software that they are using for the Extensive Reading.
Now, in addition to using the scrolling cloze test for its original purpose, we have realized that it can be used beneficially in two other ways. 1) As a reading level placement test and 2) as a reading practice activity. In the next academic year, we hope to be able to make a suitable interface for the activity so that it can be used by other teachers for these purposes.
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| Causes of Carryover |
We were not able to execute part of our initial plan, so now intend to use the funds as travel expenses to participate in the 5th WorldCALL conference in Chile (November 2018).
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| Remarks |
Login in formation: User -- any name, Password GOKSLL
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Research Products
(4 results)
