Browsing by Author "Yeh, Shiou-Wen"

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A Scaffolding Support System for English Essay Reading
(2010)
Lo, Jia-Jiunn
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Yeh, Shiou-Wen
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Sung, Chao-Shien
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英語教學研究所
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Institute of Teaching English to speakers of other Languages
This research provides students a three-phased English essay reading scaffolding support system by leading them through a systematic process. By integrating Reading annotator, a web-based annotation system for reading support, the system can help students know how to enhance their reading abilities. Reading annotator helps students visual interactively to analyze basic structure of essays by identifying key elements of each paragraph such as topic sentence, controlling idea, and supporting details. Based on the key elements of each paragraph, a process-oriented structure-based scaffolding support environment is developed to help students know how to read essays with various rhetorical forms step-by-step by analyzing the essay organizations. The system applies not only text structure, visual representations, summarization, and questions reading strategies but also reading to summarize and reading to analyze reading levels. Moreover, the proposed system accommodates the scaffolding strategies such as providing procedural facilitator, guided learning, using external representational scaffolds, helping the student focus thinking on only those items that were important for the task.
Application of online annotations to develop a web-based Error Correction Practice System for English writing instruction
(2014-12-01)
Yeh, Shiou-Wen
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Lo, Jia-Jiunn
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Chu, Ho-Ming
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英語教學研究所
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Institute of Teaching English to speakers of other Languages
Error correction and peer feedback have been recognized as vital in second language writing development. This study developed a web-based error correction practice mechanism which was attached to an online annotation system for EFL writing instruction. In this system, students input new essays with the Essay Editor and the teacher marked students\' errors with the Annotation Editor. Students could read the corrected essay and the results of error analysis through the Viewer. Based on the results of error analysis through the Error Correction Practice Recommender, the system recommended an essay to the student to practice error correction and to implement peer feedback. Following the peer feedback exercise, the student could compare his/her corrections with the teacher\'s corrections on the same essay through the Viewer. A pretest-posttest study was also conducted to evaluate the effects of using the system on 35 EFL students\' writing performance and peer feedback performance. The experiment consisted of four rounds of writing and peer feedback practice. The results of students\' writing error ratios and error correction ratios showed that the system was effective in improving students\' written accuracy and error correction performance in the peer feedback process. A range of recommendations for future research are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Designing an adaptive web-based learning system based on students' cognitive styles identified online
(2012-01-01)
Lo, Jia-Jiunn
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Chan, Ya-Chen
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Yeh, Shiou-Wen
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英語教學研究所
;
Institute of Teaching English to speakers of other Languages
This study developed an adaptive web-based learning system focusing on students' cognitive styles. The system is composed of a student model and an adaptation model. It collected students' browsing behaviors to update the student model for unobtrusively identifying student cognitive styles through a multi-layer feed-forward neural network (MLFF). The MLFF was adopted because of its ability on imprecise or incompletely understood data, ability to generalize and learn from specific examples, ability to be quickly updated with extra parameters, and speed in execution making them ideal for real time applications. The system then adaptively recommended learning content presented with a variety of content and interactive components through the adaptation model based on the student cognitive style identified in the student model. The adaptive web interfaces were designed by investigating the relationships between students' cognitive styles and browsing patterns of content and interactive components. Training of the MLFF and an experiment were conducted to examine the accuracy of identifying students' cognitive styles during browsing with the proposed MLFF and the impact of the proposed adaptive web-based system on students' engagement in learning. The training results of the MLFF showed that the proposed system could identify students' cognitive styles with high accuracy and the temporal effects should be considered while identifying students' cognitive styles during browsing. Two factors, the acknowledgment of students' cognitive styles while browsing and the existence of adaptive web interfaces, were used to assign three classes of college freshmen into three groups. The experimental results revealed that the proposed system could have significant impacts on temporal effects on students' engagement in learning, not only for students with cognitive styles known before browsing, but also for students with cognitive styles identified during browsing. The results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the adaptive web-based learning system with students' cognitive styles dynamically identified during browsing, thus validating the research purposes of this study. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Learning paragraph structure with online annotations: An interactive approach to enhancing EFL reading comprehension
(2013-06-01)
Lo, Jia-Jiunn
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Yeh, Shiou-Wen
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Sung, Chao-Shien
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英語教學研究所
;
Institute of Teaching English to speakers of other Languages
An important element of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) reading instruction is helping students to recognize paragraph elements and to comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. This study proposed an interactive approach and constructed an online annotation system, Paragraph Annotator, to assist EFL students in learning paragraph structure. It allows readers to analyze paragraphs of text on web pages by noting any paragraph element (topic sentence, controlling idea, or supporting details) in the paragraph. In addition, users can use annotation tools to add their personal ideas to the highlighted element. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of Paragraph Annotator on reading comprehension for EFL students. The results reveal that students using Paragraph Annotator had significantly better performance in both the Cued Recall Test and the Free Recall Test. Most notably, the effects of the system were more evident when tested with the Free Recall Test, when students were not provided with any cues. Participants using the system responded positively to Paragraph Annotator, with respect to perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude to use, and intention to use. Limitations and opportunities for future research are also discussed. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Scaffolding collaborative technical writing with procedural facilitation and synchronous discussion
(2011-09-01)
Yeh, Shiou-Wen
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Lo, Jia-Jiunn
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Huang, Jeng-Jia
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英語教學研究所
;
Institute of Teaching English to speakers of other Languages
With the advent of computer technology, researchers and instructors are attempting to devise computer support for effective collaborative technical writing. In this study, a computer-supported environment for collaborative technical writing was developed. This system (Process-Writing Wizard) provides process-oriented scaffolds and a synchronous online chat room to facilitate real-time collaborative writing practice. It allows multiple students to work synchronously on collaborative writing tasks via the Internet. It also helps develop collaborative writing strategies, such as creating team agendas, brainstorming, creating team outlines, and generating team articles. An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of the system on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students' collaborative writing experiences. First, an attitude questionnaire was used to evaluate learners' perceptions, acceptance, attitudes, and continuing motivation toward the functionalities and guidance provided by the system. Second, students' writing products were examined to evaluate the effect of the system on EFL students' collaborative writing quality, especially on content and organization. Finally, this study analyzed and coded students' synchronous chats with three categories (article-related interactions, social interactions, and system operation-related interactions) to evaluate the effect of the system on students' interactions. The results of the experiment showed: (1) the students had positive attitudes toward the system and continuing motivation to use the system in future writing tasks; (2) analysis of writing products suggested that students produced better content and organization with the support of the system; (3) the procedural facilitation provided by the system successfully scaffolded students to converse more in the category of article-related interactions. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.