Dissertation / Doctoral Thesis

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Dissertation / Doctoral Thesis DISSERTATION / DOCTORAL THESIS Titel der Dissertation /Title of the Doctoral Thesis „The effect of different teaching methods on the acquisition and integration of tense forms into spontaneous speech“ A comparison between the ‘Traditional’, ‘Five-Stage’ and ‘Learning through Teaching’ (Lehren durch Lernen-LdL) method verfasst von / submitted by Jasmina Mirtoska MPhil. angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doktorin der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) Wien, 2017 / Vienna, 2017 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 792 343 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Dissertationsgebiet lt. Studienblatt / Anglistik und Amerikanistik field of study as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Univ. Prof. Dr. Christiane Dalton-Puffer “Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.” Friedrich Nietzsche To the SEEU/English Department Students Abstract This study investigates the effect of teaching methodology on the acquisition and integration of tense forms into speech by tertiary level learners of English whose first language is Albanian. The study has been inspired by three issues present in the context of the English major program at the South East European University-SEEU, Tetovo, Macedonia; first, high failure rates in the compulsory course “Morphology 1” which is dedicated to the English tenses; second: students’ considerably poorer spoken than written competence and performance of tense forms; third: the need to investigate the effect of and the attitudes toward previous and new teaching methodology used at SEEU on the acquisition of tense forms into speech. In order to explore the scope of these issues, previous literature that has dealt with teaching methodology and as well as the reasons causing difficulty in learning grammar in second languages was addressed. It has been discovered that the challenges that SLA learners have when learning grammar and tense-aspect are crosslinguistic (Lim, 2007; Niemeier and Reif, 2008; DeKeyser, 2005), intralinguistic (Vijaya and Viswanath, 2010; Larsen-Freeman et al., 2001; Collins, 2007) and instructional (Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, 1999; Cowan, 2008; Vaezi and Alizadeh, 2011). In order to account for the crosslinguistic and intralinguistic interference when L1 Albanian students learn tense-aspect combinations in English, the tense-aspect systems of both languages (Albanian and English) are discussed in depth from a linguistic and pedagogical point of view, followed by a one-on-one comparison of target tense-aspect combinations in both languages. In order to account for the potential impact of instructional settings, a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen teaching methods (‘Traditional’, ‘Five-Stage’ and ‘Learning through Teaching’ (Lernen durch Lehren-LdL)) and their adaptation for this study’s experimental setting is provided. The study employs a pre-post test design in the comparison of three instructional methods. Three groups of randomly assigned Albanian first and second year undergraduate students (N=108) at SEEU were tested in spoken and written form before and after an experimental instructional period that lasted 15 weeks. The study’s main hypothesis is that the students taught in the Five-Stage method will perform better in both post-tests (written and spoken) since according to the teaching method, they will have retained most of the information and will have integrated it into their active written and spoken competence. The hypothesis predicts that the Five-Stage group will perform better than the Traditional and LdL group in both contextualized and decontextualized exercises. The tests in this study include: a proficiency test, a tense-aspect competence written and spoken pre- and post-test, and a WIHIC (What Is Happening In This Class) questionnaire exploring students’ perceptions of the instructional setting they experienced. One-way ANOVA is used to investigate if there are significant differences in the spoken and the written test prior to the training and after the training, while a correlation test is used in order to find out if there are any among-groups differences in performance. Some of the results are unexpected since the Five-Stage group was not the best in all tests as was predicted in the main hypothesis. Rather, the findings indicate that all three groups performed significantly better in the written and spoken post-test when compared to the written and spoken pre-tests. While the Five-Stage group was better (but without statistical significance) than the other two groups in the spoken pre-test, the Traditional group had a statistically significant advantage over the other groups in the spoken post-test. The fact that the Five-Stage group outperformed the LdL group significantly in the spoken post-test was to be anticipated since the purpose in the Five-Stage group was integration of tense-aspect forms into speech. On the other hand, it was unanticipated that the Traditional group would show such significant improvement in the spoken post-test since this was not an element of the teaching model itself. Due to the results of the post-tests and the very positive attitudes at the end of the 15-week training period for all three groups (results of student WIHIC questionnaire), regardless of the method, it can be concluded that the reason for the issues that SEEU students face, could rather lie in the material and temporal organization of the course of Morphology 1 rather than the teaching methodology or the students’ attitudes. Zusammenfassung Diese Studie untersucht den Effekt der Lehrmethodologie auf den Erwerb und die Integration von Zeitformen in den aktiven Sprachgebrauch von EnglischlernerInnen mit Albanisch als Erstsprache. Inspiriert wurde die Studie von drei Problemstellungen, die im Rahmen des englischen Hauptfachstudiums an der Südosteuropäischen Universität (South East European University-SEEU) Tetovo, Mazedonien, vorhanden sind. Erstens, die hohen Ausfallraten im Pflichtkurs ‘Morphologie 1’, die den englischen Zeitformen gewidmet ist. Zweitens, die Tatsache dass die mündliche Kompetenz der Studierenden deutlich schlechter ist als die schriftliche Kompetenz. Drittens, eine Wissenslücke bezüglich des Effekts von traditionellen und neuen Lehrmethoden beim Erwerb von Zeitformen in Englisch als Fremdsprache sowie bezüglich der Einstellungen der Studierenden zu den verschiedenen Lehrmethoden, die an der SEEU verwendet werden. Der empirischen Studie vorangestellt ist ein umfangreicher Literaturüberblick zur kontrastiven Grammatik von Tempus und Aspekt des Albanischen und des Englischen, sowie zu Lehrmethoden und Ansätzen in der Fremdsprachendidaktik. Ein weiteres Theoriekapitel befasst sich mit den Gründen für die Schwierigkeiten beim Erlernen der Grammatik in einer Zweitsprache. Es wurde festgestellt, dass die Herausforderungen, die die Lernenden beim Erwerb von Grammatik und Tempus-Aspekt haben, zwischen-sprachlich (Lim, 2007; Niemeier und Reif; 2008, DeKeyser, 2005), inner-sprachlich (Vijaya und Viswanath, 2010; Larsen-Freeman et al., 2001; Collins, 2007) oder unterrichtsbedingt (Celce- Murcia und Larsen-Freeman, 1999, Cowan, 2008, Vaezi und Alizadeh, 2011) sind. Um zwischen-sprachliche und inner-sprachliche Interferenzen beim Erwerb Englischer Verbformen durch albanische LernerInnen zu berücksichtigen, wurden die Tempus-Aspekt- Systemebeider Sprachen (Albanisch und Englisch) aus sprachlicher und pädagogischer Sicht ausführlich erläutert und ein direkter kontrastiver Vergleich von Zeitformen in beiden Sprachen durchgeführt. Um die potenziellen Auswirkungen von Lehrmethoden auf den Fremdsprachenerwerb empirisch erfassen zu können, wurden drei Lehrmethoden (‘Traditionell’, ‘Fünf-Stufen’ und ‘Lernen durch Lehren’ (LdL)) ausgewählt und in ihren Prinzipien ausführlich vorgestellt. Die empirische Studie beschäftigt sich im Rahmen eines Pre-Test Post-Test Designs mit dem Vergleich dieser drei Lehrmethoden in der Vermittlung des englischen Tempus und Aspekts. Drei Gruppen von zufällig zugewiesenen albanischen Englischstudierenden im ersten und zweiten Studienjahr (N=108) wurden über eine 15- wöchige experimentelle Lehrphase hinweg mit jeweils einer der drei Methoden unterrichtet und davor und danach in gesprochener und schriftlicher Form getestet. Die Haupthypothese der Studie ist, dass die Studenten, die in der Fünf-Stufen Methode gelehrt werden, in beiden Post-Tests (geschrieben und gesprochen) bessere Resultate erzielen werden, da diese Lehrmethode ihnen erlaubt sich die meisten Informationen einzuprägen und diese in ihre geschriebene und gesprochene Kompetenz zu integrieren. Die Hypothese prognostiziert, dass die Fünf-Stufen Gruppe in kontextualisierten und dekontextualisierten Übungen besser sein wird als die traditionelle und die LdL-Gruppe. Zu den Tests in dieser Studie gehören: ein allgemeiner Proficency-Test, ein speziell entworfener Tempus-Aspekt-Test (schriftlich/mündlich), sowie ein Fragebogen zur Wahrnehmung der Studierenden von der Lehrveranstaltung (WIHIC - What Is Happening In This Class). In der Auswertung der Testergebnisse kam eine One-Way Varianzanalyse zur Anwendung, um zu untersuchen, ob es signifikante Unterschiede in den schriftlichen und mündlichen Tests vor und nach der 15- wöchigen Interventionsphase gibt. Um herauszufinden ob es irgendwelche zwischen den Gruppen Unterschiede in der Leistung gibt, wurde ein Korrelationstest verwendet. Einige der Ergebnisse sind unerwartet, da die Fünf-Stufen
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