Encouraging news (:

this afternoon received an email from 张豫峰师 and i was told our article, 《以元认知为主导信息科技为辅的口语教学模式探索》 (A Metacognitive and Information Technology Integrated Approach to Teaching Speaking in Chinese Language), was selected and republished in the prestigious 中国人民大学书报资料中心《语言文字学》, aka 人大复印资料《语言文字学》。


期刊简介 (source: http://ipub.zlzx.org/ )
这是一座精挑细选的文献资料宝库。它以涵盖面广,信息量大,筛选严谨,突出学科热点焦点问题而成为国内同类期刊中具有权威性专题文献资料宝库,也成为国内外了解中国语言文字学研究最新成果的最集中、最权威、最精华的信息出版园地和专题文献资料库。在这里您能将看到编者以敏锐、独特的视角为您精心挑选的有关语言学、语言文字规划、语言文字规范、推广普通话、社会语言学、语言教学、对外汉语教学、计算机多媒体辅助教学、计算语言学、面向中文信息处理的现代汉语基础研究等等多方面的前沿研究成果。

这是一片属于语言学文字的精神家园。是一本面向所有语言文字研究与教学工作者的重要刊物。不论您是语言文字研究部门、信息处理部门、文秘系统的专业人员,还是高校中文系、计算机系、外语系和对外汉语教学专业的师生,或是中等师范和中学的语文教师、各级语委的业务干部以及其他语文爱好者,您都会重视它,需要它。

while it felt good for a while, i was asking myself when can i possibly work towards another such publication? it’s nowhere in sight 😐

graduation, ma thesis, AUDIOblogs

nearly 1 month ago, 20th june marks the day that i’m officially graduated from my (1st) MA course and this is the envelope that flew all the way from singapore:

besides sharing the joy, here’s my research for sharing:
Title:
An Exploratory Study on a Metacognitive Approach to Teaching and Learning of Spontaneous Speaking in Chinese Language with Audioblogs
Keywords:
chinese language, speaking, audioblogs, metacognition, language learning, language teaching, educational technology, weblog, edublog, 华文, 口语教学,元认知,博客,信息科技,有声博客
Summary:

Language learning involves four areas, namely listening, speaking, reading
and writing. This study focuses on speaking, an area that is often neglected by
teachers for various reasons. In many Chinese Language classrooms, which are
teacher-centered by tradition, students have minimal opportunities to actively
participate in the negotiation of meaning during lesson. To develop students to
become independent learners of speaking in Chinese Language, a metacognitive
framework developed by Goh and Zhang (2002) was adopted in this study. Twenty-five
Secondary Two Express stream Chinese Language students, aged 13 to 14,
participated in this eight weeks study. Audioblogs was used as the mediating
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tool through which the students
interacted as they developed their metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
awareness. Through the use of scaffolding questions, the students carried out self-appraisals to evaluate and monitor their oral performances and planned for their
future speaking tasks. The students were also tasked to provide comments for peers’ oral performances. Seven usable sets of data were analysed and based on inferential
statistics, the treatment may have led the students to improve significantly in their
pretest-posttest oral performance scores. Through peer commenting and self-appraisal
activities in the audioblogs, the students developed greater metacognitive
knowledge and metacognitive awareness.

and here’s the thesis in PDF format. you may need to grab acrobat reader 8 or above to read the content.
and last but not least, i would like to thank the following friends once again, as without their help and encouragement, this research would not have been possible:
Dr Tan Seng Chee (my sup), Dr Christine Goh C.M., Mr. Lim Sing Gee, Mdm. Tan Hiok Keng, Mdm. Ho Fui Ling, Ms. Hoe Joe Hwee and Mr. Amos Goh Yoong Shin, Mr. Darren Anthonio Marino Nonis, Mr. John Ow Eu Gene, Ms. Jeanne Marie Ho Pau Yuen and Dr. Chua Guat Kheng. and last but not least yh2, yh3 and yh4 🙂