2014 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The Effect of Visual Syntactic Text Format on Reading Comprehension and Proficiency
| Project/Area Number |
26770189
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| Research Institution | Saitama University |
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Principal Investigator |
ヒューズ リアンダー 埼玉大学, 英語教育開発センター, 准教授 (80513861)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
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| Keywords | ｅ－ラーニング・コンピュータ支援学習（ＣＡＬＬ） / text formatting / reading |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
I have successfully developed an online reading system for displaying texts to participants in visual syntactic text format (VSTF) or block format and checking whether or not students have sufficiently read those texts. Approximately 400 students are currently using this system.
In addition, I presented at the 2014 Tokyo ELT Expo on the theory and pilot study results supporting the hypothesis that VSTF improves Japanese learners' comprehension of English texts and, over time, accelerates their English reading proficiency development.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
I had planned to have my online reading system operational by May, 2014. However, I was only able to develop a basic version of the system by that time, which was unable to display texts in visual syntactic text format (VSTF). By October, 2014, I had successfully added the VSTF display component, but it took another month to resolve other technical difficulties introduced when that component was added. Because of this delay, the data I collected in the 2014 academic year was insufficient for investigating my hypotheses. The delay was ultimately due to my underestimating the time and difficulty involved in setting up the online reading system.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
As mentioned above, approximately 400 students are currently using the online reading system. Their goal is to read a total of 80,000 words via the system by the end of the 2015 academic year. The system will display texts mostly in visual syntactic text format (VSTF) for half of the students and mostly in regular block text format for the other half. Changes in English reading proficiency will be measured using TOEIC tests, a pretest which students took before they began using the system and a post-test to be taken at the end of the academic year. TOEIC reading score changes (including sub-scores for individual reading skills) will be compared between students who read mostly in VSTF and students who read mostly in block format. I hypothesize that students who read more in VSTF will experience significantly higher proficiency gains than students who read more in block format. I plan present the results of my research at an international conference on applied linguistics.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Last fiscal year, I expected to use more funds for completing the online reading system. However, it turned out that less funds were needed for the completion of that system.
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| Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
Although the system for gathering data is now complete (the online reading system previously described), I still need to develop a program and purchase necessary electronics/software for analyzing that data. I will also require funds to cover travel costs when I present the results of my research. The remaining funds will be used for these purposes.
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Research Products
(1 results)
