Can Wikis Aid University EFL Students in Building Vocabulary Intuition?
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Every EFL student wants to become more fluent in English. In the past, great emphasis was placed on spoken fluency. In recent years, however, an increasing emphasis has been given to fluency in the other skills. What can teachers do to improve fluency in reading? This paper reports on research using a PBwiki to help students integrate student-centered reading, Web 2.0, and authentic English to improve their vocabulary intuition. Roughly forty junior and senior level English majors from three different countries participated in the intervention. Students were assigned to four groups: high and low English levels of both experimental and control. A pre-test and post-test of idiomatic expressions was administered to all groups; however, because of the small sample size, non-parametric statistics were used to evaluate the significance of their performance on the pre-tests and post-tests. In addition, the experimental group was surveyed regarding their impressions of the intervention. Results indicate that willingness to express their intuitions—that is, to attempt an answer—increases over time for both control and experimental groups, while accuracy increases only for the wiki/experimental group. Finally, the results of data analysis suggest that accuracy increases may have a skill level threshold, as the increase in risk taking was seen primarily in the high level groups, and importantly, increases intuition accuracy is seen only in the high level experimental group.
Abstract
Every EFL student wants to become more fluent in English. In the past, great emphasis was placed on spoken fluency. In recent years, however, an increasing emphasis has been given to fluency in the other skills. What can teachers do to improve fluency in reading? This paper reports on research using a PBwiki to help students integrate student-centered reading, Web 2.0, and authentic English to improve their vocabulary intuition. Roughly forty junior and senior level English majors from three different countries participated in the intervention. Students were assigned to four groups: high and low English levels of both experimental and control. A pre-test and post-test of idiomatic expressions was administered to all groups; however, because of the small sample size, non-parametric statistics were used to evaluate the significance of their performance on the pre-tests and post-tests. In addition, the experimental group was surveyed regarding their impressions of the intervention. Results indicate that willingness to express their intuitions—that is, to attempt an answer—increases over time for both control and experimental groups, while accuracy increases only for the wiki/experimental group. Finally, the results of data analysis suggest that accuracy increases may have a skill level threshold, as the increase in risk taking was seen primarily in the high level groups, and importantly, increases intuition accuracy is seen only in the high level experimental group.
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