The Effect of Teaching Vocabulary through Microblogs on EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension

CHAPTER 1-INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Reading is an essential skill in learning a foreign language. By reading, a learner gets to know the other language’s structure and culture in a better way and improves his writing and speaking. The learners’ reading comprehension ability has to be taken into the foreign language teachers’ account. A great attention has to be given to reading comprehension and teachers have to find the best ways to improve this skill in their students. One of the ways to improve reading comprehension is by vocabulary teaching and learning. Vocabulary has an effective role in improving one’s reading comprehension. There is an important relationship between these two regarding second language learning which should be considered when teaching.

Comprehension is a consuming, continuous and complex process that can be satisfying and productive (McLaughlin, 2011). Learning is a process that normally takes place through integration of new information with what is already known. If students are aware of certain knowledge it is easier to connect between what they are learning and what they know. Therefore, through microblogs students can be able to refine their understanding by negotiating meaning with others. The platform is important because, the students have the opportunity to discuss new vocabulary or words they have learned as they learn new ones.

To enhance reading comprehension, teachers are also required to use various strategies to help students in their reading comprehension. Students have goals and objective that they want to achieve and these objectives can only be achieved if teachers understand the needs of the students. The strategies to be used to provide instruction and learning should factor in the needs and the interests of the readers (McLaughlin, 2011). These will impact positively on the second language acquisition. Teachers should also be influential in their teaching process of second language students. This will foster student reading comprehension. Therefore, teachers should create environment that is friendly and at the same time engage their students with the texts through using explicit instructions that includes facilitating, modeling, scaffolding and participation. Teachers can use microblogs to ensure that they engage their students in the learning process (McLaughlin, 2011). The availability of computers and mobile phones has made it easy for teachers to teach EFL reading comprehension. Students can be given different words and vocabularies to read to foster their understanding.

Teachers have the responsibility to motivate their students in class to ensure that they understand what they are being taught. Motivation strategies that teachers can use in teaching second language students are many. Furthermore, students should be provided with variety of types and levels of text as this will increase their text driven processing; the use of microblogs can help teachers to achieve this as they can be able to send their students different words and texts every day which will impact on their reading comprehension. It also creates a positive learning experiences students are able to learn quickly and comprehend different type of readings (McLaughlin, 2011).

Formative assessments are important in second language students learning of reading comprehension. Teachers have the responsibility to provide frequent tests and assessment to determine whether the students they teach are progressing well or not. When using microblogs, the teacher engages with the students through discussions of the various tasks given to them to find out whether there was any improvement or not. In this literature review, I address this relationship’s role in improving students’ reading comprehension and the effectiveness of integrating microblogs into the teaching of vocabulary on the student’s reading comprehension

Purpose of this study

Learning is a very important process that requires that students concentrate for them to achieve or to get skills and knowledge for their life application. In the learning process, reading comprehension is key and must be emphasized more. It is also important to be aware of how individual can apply these skills in enhancing understanding and promoting high achievement among the EFL students.

This study therefore, seeks to find out some of the implications that arise due to use of microblogs in EFL students reading and comprehension. Microblogs is one of the current technological advancement that has been adopted by many people.

The study further seeks to provide valuable strategies that the teachers and the students can adopt to enhance their EFL reading comprehension. Students learning second language will be in a better position to study and understand the concepts easily. Therefore this study is central in ensuring that students from different background are able to advance their learning through sharing and discussion to foster their reading comprehension initiatives.

This study aims to answer the following questions:

Does teaching vocabulary by the use of microblogs have any effect on EFL students’ reading comprehension?
What are the students’ attitudes towards using microblogs in teaching vocabulary

Research questions

How often do you use microblogs in your ELF student reading comprehension?
What strategies have you employed to enhance your second language learning?

What are some of the challenges you encounter in using microblogs?

Would you recommend other teachers and students to use this platform?

Significance of the study

This study is important and applicable to the current modern second language acquisition learning. The study will provide some insight to how challenges in second language learning can be alleviated. Many of the students that have phones as well as computers are in position to interact in sharing of ideas as well as learning material. This study has come at an opportune time. Furthermore, through the relationship, many of these students learning second language will be obliged to know the language.

Understanding various vocabularies is one of the key steps towards realizing the individual desire to achieve reading comprehension (McLaughlin, 2011). For this reason, the stage or process where by an individual to learn another language, it requires that multiple source of learning strategies are adopted to ensure that the process of teaching goes on smoothly. This paper highlights on the benefits of allowing students achieve their goal and dreams. For instance it helps to ensure that they proceed on well with their studies and successful learn second language.

This project will also be important to teachers. Teachers have the responsibilities of ensuring that their student’s understand what they are teaching. Therefore, through this project, teachers will use the findings to apply some of their teaching practice. They will either approve or disapprove the use of microblogs in teaching EFL student reading comprehension or not. This will help to add value to students that are learning second language acquisition.

The study is also important to the students as it will help them to use this microblogs appropriately for enhancing their reading comprehension. Therefore the study is important to all the stakeholders in the teaching of EFL students reading compression. It helps them to enhance and add value to reading comprehension.

Statement of the problem

First and second language researchers have put emphasis is on adoption of various strategies to help in EFL students reading comprehension. For example Paris et al (1983) stated that adapting to effective teaching of students can promote reading comprehension. Furthermore, reading comprehension is important in helping students to enhance their retention capacity of the text which helps them to avoid comprehension failure. Furthermore comprehension reading helps to horn critical thinking among students as they engage with the various texts and vocabulary. Therefore, it is on this backdrop that, it is appropriate for teachers to use teaching strategies that can impact on the EFL students reading comprehension.

Many of the EFL students take time to read comprehensions and therefore it is imperative that teachers use appropriate strategies. Many of them may face challenges of remembering and reflection of what is taught. This problem can be solved through employment of microblogs such as tweets. These tweets can help to connect between the teachers and the students hence foster positive learning outcomes.

Most of the teaching programs of EFL student reading comprehension do not involve their students and yet they are the target audience. Therefore adopting to a strategy such as microbloging ensures students participation in the learning process and this is geared at ensuring that the learning and teaching of the second language students is achieved.

CHAPTER 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

Vocabulary knowledge is a very important element for the English as Foreign Language students reading comprehension. Through learning of new words, these students are in position to listen, speak and read and write vocabularies and at the same time improve their vocabulary. Teachers have the responsibility of using appropriate strategies in their teaching to ensure that they enhance students understanding. Second language students required different strategies in their learning of reading comprehension. These students have no idea of the new language and therefore, they require appropriate teaching strategies. There are various instructions strategies that teachers can use in second language acquisition, some of these strategies includes, teaching words origin, structural analysis, using semantic mapping, showing students how to attack analogies, dramatizing, reading words aloud, using computer programs, teaching students how to use dictionary and using close sentence among many others(Lervaa et al 2010). The magnitude or the impact each method has varies and most of the teachers would prefer to combine many methods to enhance teaching impact.

One of the current technologically methods that can be used to teach EFL students reading comprehension is through microblogs. Microblogs have become a central instrument in communicating as well as in the learning process. Microblogs are different from the traditional blogs in terms of its content and aggregate file size. Microblogs allows typing of 140 characters and it is equivalent to SMS. Therefore, users can exchange small elements of information such as videos, individual images as well as short sentences. According to Lervaa et al (2010) microblogging in a web 2.0 tool that works in similar way as SMS as it is only permitted to send specific number of characters. It is a form of expression which has cropped in the few past years. One of the most popularly version of microblogs is the tweet. These microblogs are engaging and are nowadays adopted Ii various areas such as politics, arts, technology and even in education. Various researches have examined the use of microblogging in collaborating learning (Holotescu & Grosseck 2009).

The studies have reveled that microblogs have promoted the learning process in schools as teachers are able to track the learning processes of their students in distance parts. Students can post their tweets via mobile phones and share on various aspects of their learning process. This strategy can be productive among the EFL students that want to learn reading comprehension. Microbloggs provides learners with the ability or opportunity to update and time anywhere on what they have learned. They are not restricted to specific period of time. Therefore, through the platform learners are better placed to keep on learning new vocabularies amongst themselves in absence of a teacher (Yen-Ch, 2010). For instance, the students that are learning reading comprehension, they can post various words on the microblogs and then discuss amongst themselves. This strategy is important as it can enable them to learn quickly and comprehended various words easily. Understanding vocabularies for a second language acquisition is essential in ensuring that such are able to read and comprehend what they are reading.

Microbloging also presents an opportunity to students to self reflects about what they are learning (Holotescu & Grosseck 2009). This opportunity gives them time to reflect on the things or vocabulary that they have learned in the course of the learning process. Students listen to people and know boundaries. Teachers need to set boundaries for the students to engage them in any discussions. Even with these boundaries students can still share and discuss with other students in their free time. Micro bloggers such as twitter helps to reduce isolation and supports students as a community in their endeavors to achieve their objectives. EFL students that learn reading comprehension, has a tendency to feel isolated especially in situations where majority of colleagues are from dominant region and speak similar language. Therefore, to manage this sense of isolation caused by language barriers, such students can engage through the tweet or learn basic vocabularies (Holotescu & Grosseck 2009). This medium of learning will enable them to remember and at the same time seek clarification. They will then be able to catch up with others quickly and continue with their learning process.

Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary plays an important role in learning a language. One of the reasons that makes vocabulary to have a great importance in EFL is the improvement vocabulary makes in students’ reading comprehension. Moreover, embedding vocabulary in class activities will be affective (Samir, 2007). Reading helps in building new vocabulary and the improvement of vocabulary and background knowledge contributes to the improvement of students’ reading comprehension. On the contrary to Samir’s study, Chou suggested that explicit vocabulary instruction and extensive reading will help in promote learners’ reading comprehension (Chou, 2011). One study suggested that vocabulary size can be an effective factor in reading comprehension (Baleghizadeh, 2010). More than 1000 words have a great effect on how one comprehends a reading passage. Vocabulary size should be considered by teachers when teaching L2 students since the size of vocabulary have an impact on their reading comprehension.

Reading comprehension is a cognitive process that involves the minds. An individual is required to engage the mental capability to be able to find the meaning of the words. It is also important that the reader understands the vocabulary used to be in a position to find out the meaning (McLaughlin, 2011). The use of microblogs in teaching EFL students reading comprehensions therefore must be able to foster development and use of vocabulary. Vocabulary development and instruction has strong or close ties to comprehension. According to McLaughlin (2011), reading comprehension is a complex, cognitive process that cannot be understood without a clear understanding of the role that vocabulary development and instruction play in the understanding of what has been read. This definition and view was supported by Snow, Burns & Griffin (1998) as they postulated that learning of new terms and concepts that encode is paramount in comprehension development.

On the other hand, according to Haris and Hodges (1995), the ever growing knowledge among students in terms of words and their meaning is a sign of vocabulary development. This therefore means that the process of learning new vocabulary amongst student is progressive and takes quite some time as the students get accustomed and familiar to such terms. The availability of microblogs can really impact positively on this process of vocabulary development and eventually on the reading comprehension. The students must devote themselves and yearn to learn these new concepts to be able to understand the concept use. This platform can be used to enforce teaching process (Wright, 2010). Teachers can assist second language acquisitions students through continued support and corrections. Students can use microblogs such as tweeter or SMS to communicate with the teachers about various vocabularies they do not understand. This therefore, can help to improve the learning /teaching process of students as they are always in contact with their teachers and other colleagues for support and guidance.

In their definition Haris and Hodges (2005) further noted that vocabulary development was a teaching –learning processes which contributed to the growth in knowledge of various words. Furthermore, this vocabulary developed in normally influenced or it depend on the texts that the students read (Baumann & Kameenue, 19910). This therefore, means that the knowledge of the student and the texts that students are exposed to contributes to their level of understanding of vocabularies. A student that has been exposed to wide reading will be better placed to comprehend the text as opposed to those students that may not be having this exposure. This therefore, is still the same when it comes to teaching of EFL reading comprehension. The teachers should be able to factor in such things in training the students in these vocabularies. People have different abilities and therefore, they must be used as a point of guidance when teaching the students new vocabularies.

According to Graves and Watts-taffe (2002) it is important for the teaching of EFL students reading comprehension to use vocabularies. This teaching requires to be carried out in a conducive environment that fosters consciousness. The parties in the learning and teaching process must connect by being aware and having the interest in learning by using new words to become precise in word use. Use of microblogs is one of the best ways that the teacher and student can connect with each other to impact positively on the process of learning. For example, a teacher can use this platform to teach his/her students new vocabularies by connecting with them and exchanging SMS (Lervaa et al 2010). The students will be able to learn these concepts without any disturbance and will be therefore better placed to understand them and this will impact on their second language learning endeavors.

In this modern day, technology is becoming part of the people lives and therefore, most of the activities and tasks are transacted through this platform. People communicate and even learn online in their virtual locations. This trend can also be extended to the teaching process of EFL students reading and comprehension. In these modern days, students are equipped with various technological, platforms available to facilitate this learning process (Wright, 2010). Therefore, use of microblogs will be highly embraced by students actively participate in the process. This is therefore likely to foster EFL students reading comprehension. Most of the students will be able to learn through this platform quickly impacting on their level of acquisition of vocabulary knowledge.

Teachers are also able to provide multiple exposures to the words in their teaching process. One of the ways of providing this exposure is through use of alternative teaching strategies. One of the strategies that a teacher can employ to teaching and triggering acquisition of vocabulary is through microblogs (Yen-Ch, 2010). This platform is simple and easy to engage and connect with the teachers. Therefore, teachers can continue updating and teaching their students through this arrangement to enhance understanding of the vocabulary hence uplift the understanding of the learners.

The use of microblogs requires use of words. This is an important medium as it will always ensure that students and teachers communicate through words. This will therefore, help to contribute to the understanding of the various vocabularies of a given country. This is therefore, one of the advantages or rather benefits of using this kind of medium to communicate and to teach EFL students reading comprehension.

Even though, this platform is important in impacting on the learning process. Baumann & Kameenui (1991) recommend balancing of the instruction of vocabulary and the learning. The instructions given by teachers should be meaningful and the students and at the same time should be able to use different strategies. Therefore, some of the strategies that teacher can use are microblogs and tweets to ensure that they enhance learning of the EFL students reading comprehension. Students of this nature, requires intensive training to ensure that they capture what they are being taught. The strategy such as microblogs is one of the best strategies that can enable the students to recall the information that may not have been attained in the class. Students can seek clarification, can comment and also answer questions posed by their teacher online through this method.

In ensuring that students gain knowledge on vocabulary, teachers have the responsibility of teaching individual words. This means that they should concentrate on their teaching to ensure that the students do not deviate from the mind framework of the teaching. Microblogging is one of the important and strategic options that teachers can use to teach second language. This is because; this platform ensures or allows communication through written form. Therefore, the students are actively involved in the process and this affects or triggers their level of performance at various training centers.

The teachers have the responsibilities of building and strengthening student’s word learning strategies and understanding their generative word element. Therefore, through this platform the teacher can use these roots and fixes to teach the students about these and this is likely to impact positively on the outcome (Yen-Ch, 2010). Word relationship can also help the teacher in teaching EFL students reading completion. Reading is an art that involves words. Therefore, the teacher should endeavor to formulate these swords in a certain manner that arouses and motivated acquisition of knowledge. In this case, the use of the microblog can help to teach these words hence impacting positively on them second language acquisition among such students.

Technology is also important in word investigations and reading and is one strategy that fosters reading comprehension. Technology has become entrenched in the educating systems and this is aimed at promoting the level of understanding of the words among students.

Students’ attitudes towards using microblogs in teaching vocabulary (Microblogs and Education)

Microblogs is a technical tool that has educational purposes and which can be used during and after class time. Many studies and articles showed that the integration of microblogs into teaching is effective and improves students’ performance (e.g., Badge, Johnson, Moseley, & Cann, 2011, Crosseck & Holotesco, 2008, Ebner, Lienhardt, Rohs, & Meyer, 2009, R. Junco & E. Loken, 2010).

Other studies have been done concerning using microblogs in language teaching. One study found that using microblogs in language teaching is suitable, encouraging for students, and improves their communicative and cultural competence (Borau, Ullrich, Feng, & Shen, 2009). An article showed that using twitter in EFL education affects the students’ analytical and collaborative skills in a good way (Mork, 2009). Another study showed that using microblogs enhances the students’ participation and improves their practice in basic language skills (Perifanou, 2009). One more article found that microblogging makes the students active and discuss the course even after the entire course is over (Castro, 2009).

Microblogs has become part and parcel of the people’s form of communication. Many people are using microblogs such as tweeter to socialize and air out their views. The trend has also found its ways in the education milieu. Many people have already enrolled this mode of communication in their teaching programs. Microblogging is an opportunity that has been created to engage in communication with other members of the society without any problem.

Teaching EFL students reading comprehension requires that students are motivated and have positive attitude towards the learning process. Students must have the passion and the driving force in them that pushes them to work hard to achieve their required results. Therefore, the attitude of the individuals themselves is of key essential value in getting to ensure that they acquire these skills without these herself. Therefore, individual attitude about micro blogs contributes to it adoption in the learning process. It is important to remember that people have different preferences while other need to respect these relationships. For instance, in a study conducted, it was revealed that 53 % of the people that were involved in online activity were active while 47% were found not to be active in the online activities (Wright, 2010). Even though, there are differences, it is easily noted that those people who are active of online services at one point and therefore this ensures that EFL students are able to acquire reading comprehension skills. In the same study many of the students found online learning and vocabulary course useful and fun. This kind of learning increased their motivation and raised their self esteem. It also helped to cultivate a warm relationship between students and their instructors and among students themselves. These platforms enabled students to interact with their teachers directly at the same time students interacted directly with their fellow students. Through this cordial relationship they got to learn and understand each other promoting teamwork and togetherness. Therefore, this research has a clear indication of how the students embrace technology in their learning process (Wright, 2010). Use of microblogs is an example of online services that has found approval by many students. This platform is of great advantage to students because of the many reasons. One of the benefits of embracing this method is that it allows sharing or useful things. They also give the students an opportunity to improve their classroom test scores. It also helps in preparing students to various learning concepts. Students can be able to use this online system any time they wish and the times they want, it also contributes to learning process. Therefore, it is apparent that indeed learning through microblogs can be of interest and full of adventure. The majority of the teacher should aspire to ensure that the learning process goes on smoothly and that all the students are able to understand the various concepts that they are being taught.

Microblogs, Vocabulary Learning, and Reading Comprehension

There are no studies available on the effects of learning vocabulary through microblogs on EFL students’ reading comprehension. But similar studies have been done using the SMS technology. Since both, microblogs and SMS messaging, use short texts, these studies will be valuable to some extent.

In a study by Alemi & Lari (2012), three questions were addressed for guiding the study. First, does the vocabulary learnt via SMS have an effect on EFL learners’ reading comprehension? Second, do the vocabulary items learnt via SMS and the ones learnt by using a dictionary affect EFL learners’ reading comprehension differently? Third, what is the attitude of EFL learners towards SMS vocabulary learning? The first and third questions will be supportive for the current study since they discussed the same research questions. In their study, there were 45 non-English major students who aged between 18 and 21 years. The study used pre- and post-tests which were composed of tow texts, each contains eight multiple-choice items. Both groups were at the same level of reading proficiency. It also used 7 sub-lists of Academic Word List (AWL) and a questionnaire, to see the students’ attitudes towards learning vocabulary by the use of SMS, which was adopted from (Chen & Li, 2010). The control group was taught vocabulary in a traditional way, where the experimental group received 320 head words from the last 7 sub-lists from the AWL by the use of SMS. The study found that the experimental group scored better in the post-test compared to the pre-test (t= -10.43; p= .000). Almost 90% of the students showed positive attitudes towards using SMS vocabulary learning. These results support the current study in that short texts have positive effects on the learners’ vocabulary knowledge which in its turn has a positive effect on increasing the learners’ reading comprehension.

One more study relevant to the topic of this paper is a study by Motallebzadeh &Ganjali (2011) and was addressing the same question addressed in (Alemi & Lari, 2012). The study aimed to answer the question: does short message service (SMS) have any effect on vocabulary retention and reading comprehension ability of Iranian lower-intermediate EFL learners? The study was done only on female participants. There were 40 lower-intermediate EFL students aged between 19 and 25 divided into two groups, control and experimental group. Both groups were given a pre and post-test to see their level of reading proficiency. There was no significant difference in the levels of both groups, where the control group’s result is (M = 22.72, SD = 1.72) and the experimental (M = 1.91, SD = 1.54). The control group was taught in the class and was given 3 to 4 vocabulary items provided in a piece of paper. The experimental group received SMS messages with 3 to 4 new words supported by example sentences three times a week. The results revealed that the experimental group scored higher grades in the post-test than the control group. Yet, the participants were only female students; the results of this study are reliable since they used the same amount of words for both groups. And the higher scores which were achieved by the experimental group in the pre-test showed that vocabulary learning via SMS messaging can enhance students’ reading comprehension.

CHAPTER 3- METHODOLOGY

Design

The study uses a test-retest design which involves two reading comprehension tests. Each text of the reading test consists of 10 multiple-choice items, containing vocabulary test from the 60 words chosen from Academic Word List (AWL). These pre- and post-tests will be given to the participants before and after the experiment. The participants will be divided into the experimental group and the control group. The participants of the experimental group will receive tweets from the teacher containing the words to be taught. The control group will use a paper dictionary. There will be a comparison between the two groups in both the pre- and post-test scores. The comparison of the post-test score will reveal if the experimental group is affected by the use of twitter in teaching vocabulary.

Participants

The participants are 20 Saudi female students from the twelfth grade in Al-tarbya Al-namoutheagea high school. They are aged between 17 to 19. They take an English course five times a week and each class lasts for 50 minutes. The participants are randomly assigned to one of the two groups, to the control or the experimental group. Before the experiment begins, both groups are going to have a pre-test before to ensure that there is no significant difference in their reading proficiency.

Materials

The study uses a reading comprehension test which will be used as a pre- and a post-test. There are two texts taken from previous TOEFL tests. Each text contains 10 multiple-choice items. The study also uses AWL. The study uses 60 words to be taught to both groups and which consist of 20 head words, 20 most common words, and 20 more words which are chosen in a random way. Since the participants are getting ready to join the academic world, the study makes use of the AWL which contains academic words that they might face in any academic text (Coxhead, 2000 as cited in Alemi & Lari, 2012). One more instrument is a questionnaire which will be used to consider the participants’ attitude towards using twitter in learning vocabulary. It consists of 12 items asking about their background in using the social media and their experience in learning vocabulary via twitter. The items are based on a 5-point LiKert’s scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The questionnaire and the tests are adopted from Alemi and Lari’s study (Alemi & Lari, 2012).

Procedure

The first test session involves the pre-test to evaluate the participants’ reading proficiency. The test consists of 10 multiple-choice items. The reading comprehension test includes a vocabulary test form the AWL in order to measure the participants’ vocabulary knowledge. After giving the pre-test, a video on how to sign up in twitter and how to use it will be shown to students as well as distributing handouts on how to use twitter. During the experiment which will last for three weeks, the experimental group will be taught 60 words through twitter, where the control group will be asked to learn the same words using a paper dictionary. Following the teacher in twitter, the experimental group will read the tweets posted by the teacher. Every day, the teacher will post 4 words along with their meaning and a sentence. Following each other, the participants have to post tweets with sentences written by them using the posted words. On the other hand, the participants of the control group will be asked to write sentences with the same words and bring them the day after to the teacher. After the last post in twitter, both groups will be given the post reading comprehension test to measure their performance after the experiment is over. Finally, the experimental group will be asked to fill a questionnaire to collect data on their reflections on using twitter in teaching vocabulary.

Data analysis

The pre and post tests will be conducted and the raw scores will be converted into percentage. These scores will be aimed at finding out whether students made any progress in the exercise they were given by their teachers. To achieve this within t –test, this will be computed using the pre and post mean scores. Furthermore, the researcher will find out whether any relationships between students posttest scores and frequency of using tweeter in their learning process. This will help the researcher to find whether the microblogs helped the students to enhance their reading comprehension or not. In this analysis independent t-test will also be used to compare the mean scores of both active and inactive students that participated in the study. The results will be of significant in helping the researcher to find out whether indeed teaching using microblogs has any significant implication to the EFL student reading comprehension.

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