Browsing by Author "Kang, Shuo"

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    Exploring L2 English Learners’ Articulatory Problems Using a Read-Aloud Task
    (2020-11-19) Kang, Shuo
    Although the irregular pause in oral production is a common problem in the speech of language learners, it is unclear what factors cause the pauses and to what extent learners’ native language affects the oral fluency of their target language. This study investigated the anomalous pauses made by English learners who speak Mandarin Chinese as their mother tongue, with attempts of finding out why these pauses occur in the articulation process of their speech productions. 36 learners and 36 native English speakers participated in a read-aloud task (124 English texts with 26081 words for each participant), which was recorded for further analysis. Based on previous research into oral fluency, the anomalous pause in this study is operationalized to have a long duration (over 1s) and occur in the formulaic sequences or in a single sentence. That is, any pauses that conform to both long silent intervals in formulaic sequence and long silent intervals in a sentence where there is no formulaic sequence, count as anomalous pauses in this study. The results demonstrated that L2 learners made significantly more anomalous pauses when reading aloud English texts and they had difficulty articulating the phonemes /b/, /d/, /g/, /dʒ/, /z/ and /ð/. More importantly, no difference was found in the frequency of anomalous pauses between advanced and less advanced learners, indicating that even proficient learners have difficulties in L2 pronunciation. The reasons why these articulatory problems cause irregular pauses and related pedagogical implications are discussed.
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    Incidental Learning of Chinese Idioms through Academic Listening
    (2023-03-30) Kang, Shuo; Cai, Wei; Carroll, Susanne; O'Brien, Mary; Koh, Kim Hong
    The present study adopted a pre-test/post-test between-groups design to examine whether Chinese as a foreign language learners could incidentally acquire and retain unfamiliar idioms through listening to a lecture on medical science. Moreover, it investigated the effect of different types of idioms on the incidental learning gains. It also employed a retrospective interview to explore the cognitive processes involved in idiom learning and the listening strategies used for idiom interpretation. Finally, it investigated the relationship between lecture comprehension and idiom learning. 159 medical students participated in the study. Six weeks after the pre-test that measured their prior knowledge of 18 target idioms, students in the experimental group one (n = 53) listened to a lecture where 18 target idioms were embedded; the experimental group two (n = 53) listened to 18 short paragraphs extracted from the same lecture, with each paragraph including one target idiom; the control group (n = 53) did not receive any input. Then, all participants wrote a post-test to show their learning outcomes. Five participants in each group were interviewed to determine what listening strategies were used for idiom comprehension. Twelve weeks after the post-test, all participants wrote a delayed post-test to measure their retention of target idioms. The results demonstrated that 1) the mean score of the post-test in the experimental group one was significantly higher than that of other groups, indicating the positive effect of lecture on idiom learning; 2) The mean score of the delayed post-test in the experimental group one was significantly higher than other groups, suggesting that academic listening could facilitate idiom retention; 3) Chinese idioms having translation equivalents in English were the easiest to learn, followed by Chinese idioms with some and no components in common with English counterparts. This indicates that cross-language similarity between Chinese and English has a significant effect on incidental idiom learning; 4) Proficient listeners could use their metacognitive knowledge to monitor the listening process and direct the deployment of various cognitive strategies; 5) There was a strong and positive relationship between lecture comprehension and incidental idiom learning. The results have important practical and theoretical implications.
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    Practice-Relevant Research in the Canadian L2 Classroom: A Summary
    (2019-01) Peltekov, Peter; Bhatia, Neha; Cancino, Berenice; Carron, Samantha; Daigle, M. Caroline; Das, Joty; Kang, Shuo; Li, Qing; O'Brien, Mary
    In direct response to questions raised by classroom language teachers, eight students enrolled in a second language pedagogy course reviewed recent literature on a range of topics. These include the Common European Framework of Referencer (CEFR) and the action-oriented approach, approachesrto grammar teaching, the effectiveness of dictation, the role of images and types of dictionaries in vocabulary learning, language learning by students with autism spectrum disorder as well as by adults who are not fully literate, and attrition in immersion programs. The results of the reviewed research have the potential to affect classroom practice.