Monday, April 27, 2015

Action Research: Reading While Listening - Post 4 - session 2 +3

Second session
In this session, I used two chapters for my experiment. Both chapters were read at home. One was for reading while listening, and one for only reading. I had skimmed through the two chapters before reading, and took the main points that were highlighted in bold to build my comprehension test.
And I took a point for every unrecognized word, sentence, or phrase in a chapter and subtracted it from 100 to calculate my recognizing grade.
The next table shows the data I had collected for this session

Chapter Type
Recognizing grade (A)
Assessment test score
 (B)
Comprehension (depends on columns A & B)
Reading Chapter
70 out of 100
55%
From A& B columns, R/L improved my comprehension more than R
Reading/Listening Chapter
89 out of 100
77%









From the table, I could tell that my R/L comprehension was better than my R comprehension

Third session
To measure my improvement for this session, I did the same thing that I had in the second session. I also did something new, which was increasing the speed of the reader on my player by .25 to see what would happen. I also had another new chapter for reading and listening, and another new one for reading only.

I was really excited to see what kind of results that I would find.

After I read both chapters, I recorded my findings on the assessment tests scores and on the
recognizing grade section. I started to compare between the reading while listening chapter and the reading alone chapter. The next table shows the data I had collected for this session

Chapter Type
Recognizing grade (A)
Assessment test score (B)
Comprehension (depends on columns A & B)
Reading Chapter
56 out of 100
52%
From A& B columns, R/L improved my comprehension more than R
Reading/Listening Chapter with increasing speed by 0.25
82 out of 100
60%

Friday, April 24, 2015

Highlighting

Highlighting is a method that I have been using for a long time to help me in understanding text. Since I came here to the US to learn English two years ago, I have started to noted the benefits of using Highlighting on my improvement in understanding new words to me. I think that it is a great tool for ESL teachers to teach their students about. 
One might ask, what about highlighting on e-books? And for me I found that it is really helpful when I was reading on my IPad.  I could understand and comprehend many things from my e-books by doing so.
According to So and Chan (2009), highlighting on LED surfaces caused to have a good comprehension performance for the subjects that they have tried it in their study.
Therefore, I encourage people to read on a tablet that has a LED technology such as IPads with Retina display. By doing so, people would most likely increase their comprehension on their e-books, which is a great thing.

One application that I recommend for everyone, and that I have been using for
highlighting my e-books is Notability. You can find more about it on this link


Reference:
So, J. Y., & Chan, A. S. (2009). Validity of Highlighting on Text Comprehension. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1177(1), 217-224. doi:10.1063/1.3256250

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Action Research: Reading While Listening - Post 3 - session 1

In this post I'm going to talk about my experience reading while listening I'm chapter 1 and 5.
As I mentioned I can I use the book Growing Up Digital for my action research. I got the audiobook on audible application on my iPhone, and I decided to read from a paper copy rather than an e-copy. And for the first time in my life I started reading while listening

During my first chapter ab my second chapter the book I notice some good things
I felt that my comprehension has increased while I go reading and listening. I noticed that I recognized some words by listening to them, although I would not have been able to do so if I only had depended on reading. I also noticed that in I was able to pronounce new words when I was seeing and listening to them at the same time, which was different than seeing new words while reading alone.

The downside of my first experience was when a new word come up and I have to see the meaning of it, but then I noticed the audio has been going and I lost the track of it. It happens to me several times.


Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Action Research: Reading While Listening - Post 2 - Research


In this post, I wanted to present research that supported my action research.
While doing my action research, I found this amazing article in the UNF library database that talked about reading while listening to an audiobook effects. Therefore, I decided to share it with you here.
The article title is “The Effect of Reading While Listening to Audiobooks: Listening Fluency and Vocabulary Gain” by Anna Ching-Shyang Chang. According to Chang (2011), ” This study investigates the effects of reading while listening (RWL) to audiobooks on EFL learners’ listening fluency and its by-product, vocabulary gain”.
I am going to write more about this study in my final report, so that my action research become more valid.


Reference:
Chang, A. C. (2011). The Effect of Reading While Listening to Audiobooks: Listening Fluency and Vocabulary Gain.Asian Journal Of English Language Teaching2143-64.






Saturday, April 18, 2015

Etextbooks collection

Since I want to work as lecturer, I am going to focus more on etextbooks that addresses college students.
Here are my five etextbooks that I suggest, which I took from The Orange Grove.

1. The first etextbook I suggest to be use is USA Elections in Brief
Intended class: Introduction to Politics.

2. The second etextbook I suggest to be use is Concepts in Calculus I
Intended class: Calculus.
Level: college student.

3. The third etextbook I suggest to be use is Introduction to Computer Science II
Intended class: Introduction to Computer Science.
Level: college student.


4. The fourth etextbook I suggest to be use is Principles of Object-Oriented Programming.
Intended class: Programming Class.
Level: college student.


5. The fifth etextbook I suggest to be use is Introduction to Politics
Intended class: Introduction to Politics.
Level: college student.
http://www.saylor.org/courses/polsc101/