University Students’ Endeavors in Oral Midterm and Final Examinations (Published)
Oral exams are oftentimes a dilemma for some students despite enough training. In this paper, student participants were asked how they performed in weekly speaking-based activities and oral exams, what specific difficulties they encountered, and what ways they could develop fluency by using a Likert-based survey method with quantitative and qualitative results. It was found that the students performed moderately well. However, the professor’s 1) class activity management and 2. feedback and students’ 3) self-awareness, 4) oral exam challenges, and 5) speaking fluency improvement need a revisit for quality teaching and learning. The results would provide the vehicle for understanding some issues in teaching and learning which require compensatory techniques to increase their oral exam performances to an excellent rating among these factors. This paper also offers insights to guide professors or teachers in developing materials and teaching techniques so that students can further improve their fluency in the target language.
Keywords: Speech, incidental learning, intentionality, test
The Effect of Reading Comic Strips on Incidental Vocabulary Learning of Young Language Learners (Published)
Knowing vocabulary has an essential and determining role in learning of foreign language. The usages of correct method concerning this essential problem can consolation vocabulary learning. This research studied the effect of reading comic strips on incidental learning and retention on young language learners. To do this research, the researcher conducted an experimental research in which 39 young language learners aged between5 to 10 took part. They were pretested in order to determine their proficiency level. And 40 unfamiliar words as the treatment were selected. Afterwards, the new words in texts through comic strips were read in the classroom without any focus and emphasis on them. After finishing the course, all the learners took part in immediate posttest; about two weeks later participants took part in a delayed-posttest and the overall score were measured. Inferential statistics through a paired sample t-test were employed to analyze the data to find out whether using comic strips was effective in in learning vocabularies or not. The findings revealed that young learners could extend their vocabulary knowledge through the treatments, and there was no significant difference between the mean scores of the two posttests which implied that learned lexical items were not decayed over two-week time.
Keywords: Iran, Young Learners, comic strips, incidental learning, vocabulary learning and retention