Cheung, Yin Ling

Guided by the sociocognitive theory, this study investigated how teachers used gestures in cooperation with other multimodal resources to improve the learning outcomes of students. Two teachers and their students in Grade 4 writing classes at a local elementary school in Singapore participated in the study. Data were collected over a seven month period using classroom observations. Multimodal interaction analysis and conversation analysis conventions were employed to analyze the lessons. The results show that teachers and students adapted multimodal resources in the writing classrooms, such as teacher’s gestures, body movements, eye gazes, and drawings, to negotiate meaning. The study has yielded insights into practical application of the participation framework in elementary-school writing lessons. The study also confirms that teachers’ symbiotic gestures do serve the pedagogical function of drawing students into a desirable participation framework, thereby enhancing their understanding of target learning points. The interplay between mind (speech) – body (gesture) – world (ecosocial elements such as classroom environment) ecologies and the participation framework is important in that it fosters positive teaching and learning experiences in elementary-school classrooms. A pedagogical implication is that teachers should carefully design their lessons to incorporate gesture and an array of multimodal teaching resources for effective instruction including inducing active participation by the students.

Most of the existing studies on academic writing were conducted in ESL/EFL university settings. Further research targeted at other educational settings such as primary schools, which are quite different from the university settings previously studied, for students in different stages of their studies, will advance our understanding of student writing broadly. In 2016, the Journal of Second Language Writing will devote an entire issue to English language writing in elementary classrooms across contexts, calling for studies to address the difficulties that young students face in their learning, as well as the kind of support they do or should receive during classes. Therefore, research that investigates how English language writing is taught in primary school classrooms, outside of EFL/ESL contexts, is of much current interest, but sufficient existing knowledge is still lacking. The present study will fill this research gap identified. A further rationale for understanding the teaching of English language writing at the primary school level is that existing studies in Singapore do not explicate the effect of explicit writing instruction on primary school students in genres other than argumentative essays. To the best of our knowledge, there have been only two studies (Koh, 2002; Neo, 2004) that yielded empirical data on the English language writing of primary school children in Singapore. The proposed research will contribute to addressing these observations raised specifically for the weaker learners. A starting point of the proposed research is to analyse and document how primary English language teachers in Singapore teach writing in traditional writing classes. In particular, we seek to understand how different genres of writing are taught in English language writing classes in a Singapore primary school. Extensive classroom observation data will be collected to support this analysis. Another goal of the proposed research is to design and implement a writing programme based on a socio-cognitive approach. We will test the advantages of this approach relative to the traditional teaching methods, by identifying and understanding how it may impact the quality of writing produced by underachievers in the primary school. Based on the classroom observation data collected about the traditional teaching methods, we will design and implement writing tasks for the intervention programme that are relevant to the students' lives and socio-cultural environment. The results will yield findings that are likely generalizable across English language writing classrooms, thereby helping students who are struggling generally with the learning of writing and compositions.

While the last two decades have witnessed a growing body of research on the quality of student writing, research on the impact of the socio-cognitive approach on young learners’ writing has remained scarce. To fill this gap, this study investigates the effects of the socio-cognitive approach on the writing quality of 98 fourth graders in Singapore. The study addresses the question on whether there are any differences (in terms of macro-organization, complexity, productivity, and accuracy) in the compositions produced under the traditional methods and the socio-cognitive approach to writing program. Data sources include fourth graders’ pre- and post-test written documents over two years. Using the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer, the written documents were analyzed in terms of macro-organization, fluency, lexical diversity, and complexity. Results showed that post-test writings of low-achieving students in the experimental group exhibited more development in story elements, use of different words, lengthier texts, and improvement in accuracy in terms of reduction of errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. This study contributes to the field by suggesting the effectiveness of teaching writing to low proficiency learners through the use of a socio-cognitive approach.

Little published research has investigated how students interact with authentic audiences. By conducting a two-year classroom-based research intervention with 617 students from three government-aided primary schools in Singapore, this study examined the effect of the socio-cognitive and motivation-and-learning (SCML) approach on students’ writing with a real audience in the classroom context. Data included student compositions and peer feedback via Padlet, a web app that enables users to post notes on a digital wall. Findings showed that there was a significant difference between pre- and post-tests in students’ writing with a real audience after the implementation of SCML writing programmes. Findings also indicated that students were able to provide quality peer feedback on classmates’ compositions. This study contributes to research on students’ writing with a real audience in a school context. The SCML approach encourages peer feedback through the use of Padlet, which is conducive to improving audience awareness in writing.

Giving written feedback to students is an important part of writing instruction. However, few studies have been conducted to investigate current trends of written corrective feedback in the secondary and university contexts. To identify and evaluate the current state of empirical evidence, we conducted a qualitative synthesis of published research that examined written corrective feedback in both English-as-the-first-language and English-as-the second/foreign-language settings. Four claims emerged in our analyses of 68 empirical studies published in journals from 2006-2016. Each claim is supported by empirical evidence. The claims are: (1) Individual differences play a part in the effectiveness of written corrective feedback; (2) Students’ and teachers’ perceptions affect the effectiveness of written corrective feedback; (3) Giving corrective feedback through technology is beneficial to students; and (4) Written corrective feedback is more effective when it is used concurrently with collaborative tasks. This meta-synthesis study sheds light on the written corrective practice of English Language teachers across different pedagogical settings and the factors that may affect student engagement in teacher written feedback.

Extant research from various perspectives has provided valuable insights into what news values are more frequently foregrounded across news types, topics, and outlets; and how they are constructed through verbal and visual resources. However, no research so far has examined how specific news values may be frequently co-constructed to package an individual news story and make it more appealing to potential readers. This research adopts the discursive news values analysis (DNVA) approach to examine the co-construction of news values in the multimodal discourse of TIME magazine covers (n = 300). To identify such co-construction, this study adopts cluster analysis, which has yet been deployed to study news values. The use of cluster analysis has identified six different combinations of news values repeatedly been observed together in clusters of covers. These combinations may represent what the magazine perceives as most attractive to the target audience. This study has also revealed intersemiotic relations in news values construction. While some news values are often reinforced across the verbal (i.e., cover line) and visual (i.e., cover image) semiotic modes, others rely more on the verbal mode. This study crosses disciplinary boundaries by bringing corpus linguistics techniques into journalism studies to understand a previously under-explored news genre.

In the past decade, research has yielded mixed results regarding the relationship between task complexity and writing quality. Some studies have suggested that an increase in task complexity results in the improvement of syntactic complexity, accuracy and fluency. Other studies have demonstrated partial improvement in fluency, accuracy, syntactic complexity, or lexical complexity. This study examines the impact of task structure on writing quality among English-as-a-second-language (ESL) young learners. The analysis is based on 236 ESL fourth-grade pupils’ narrative compositions. Using the Limited Attention Capacity Model and the Cognitive Hypothesis, the analysis revealed that Primary Four pupils wrote significantly longer and syntactically more complex texts in structured tasks, and they scored higher in lexical variety in unstructured tasks. The accuracy of writing did not vary significantly based on task structure. The study provides new empirical evidence for the argument that task structure affects ESL young learners’ writing performance in terms of syntactic complexity, fluency, and lexical variety. The findings contribute new knowledge to the field of second language writing. In particular, how task structures influence writing quality and how such knowledge can inform writing pedagogy and the evaluation of students’ written work.

Research has shown that peer tutoring at the university level could improve students’ performance and, enhance their motivation and learning, increase self-determination and learner autonomy, and reinforce conceptual knowledge by providing opportunities for reapplication of concepts. This paper describes the development of a mobile peer tutoring application – Mobile Education Networked Tutoring On Request (MENTOR). We start with a review of the literature to identify the relevant affordances that this mobile app should possess. In addition, questionnaires were administered with students studying in higher education to understand the needs of peer tutoring with tutors and tutees. The findings of the survey data showed that a majority of the students are receptive to peer tutoring and found it to be a user-friendly and intuitive method of mobile peer tutoring. One feature of MENTOR is the tutor-tutee matching – tutees are individually paired with tutors by using predictive modeling based on student data. Tutor-tutee matching can be efficiently accomplished via MENTOR mobile application by granting tutees the choice of tutors based on mutual tutor-tutee availabilities, students' background and tutor ratings. The other main features of the mobile peer tutoring application, such as online peer tutoring are presented in this study. The study contributes to the application of learning sciences and learning technologies to provide a holistic design for supporting student peer tutoring at the university level.