PROCEDIMIENTO PARA LA REALIZACIÓN DE DIAGNÓSTICOS

Part of the focus group was dedicated to exploring the participants’ reading behaviour. This involved examining whether inferencing strategies were employed and whether these were subject to change according to the reading condition. It was first necessary to establish how participants go about deducing meaning of unknown words from regular texts. This was to provide a starting point for the investigation into how annotations may alter learners’ current behaviour. When questioned, participants stated that they establish meaning by asking an adult or parent (T1, 31; T2, 69), obtaining an online translation (T2, 73), and using dictionaries (T1, 40). It was interesting to discover that the young learners consult adults or dictionaries because the literature promoted the use of annotations to encourage learner independency and as a replacement for dictionaries. One can assume that long term exposure to annotations may well change the way in

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which learners extrapolate meaning. Participants were also asked about the way they approached the un-annotated texts in the experiment. The purpose of this was to probe further into the type of strategies they use, particularly when no external sources of input are available (adults/dictionaries). Participants reported using a number of techniques to understand both the vocabulary and events of the stories. Some participants looked at the main picture on each page to decode meaning (T1, 136; T2, 176), while others tried to derive meaning from the text itself (T2, 179) or remember clues from the pre-test (T2, 177).

One participant who had first read in the two treatment conditions said that she had exerted extra effort in the control condition since no aid was available. Her comment is presented below along with the reaction of other participants’ to reading un-annotated texts (control condition).

“Ko: Teacher those others [annotations] helped me in the two stories but in this one now, I mean I had to read it all properly because it might come in the test and I don’t know it or haven’t memorised it, so I have to

remember it” (T1, 246)

“M: The hardest thing was the third story, the tiger, because it was without words [annotated words] and it was difficult to remember all the

words because they might come in the test and we won’t know them. So we had to think hard and focus on it so we know and get it right” (T1,

251)

“L: Teacher I focused more when there weren’t blue because it doesn’t show that this word is there and that word is there” (T2, 268)

These comments demonstrate that when no peripheral help was available in the experiment, participants made a conscious effort to decode meaning through focusing on the text. This gives credence to the assumption laid out in section 5.2 regarding the reason for this similarity in reading comprehension performance either with or without annotations. It appears that participants actively compensated for the lack of annotations by paying extra attention to the text and words. In contrast, one participant reported using a different approach:

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“Sg: Teacher like the words I don’t know or understand I just skip them... I don’t have to read them” (T2, 230)

This participant sacrificed word meaning for general understanding. This in itself is considered a strategy since it is common for L2 readers to focus too closely on single words in a text. Martinez-Lage (1997) describes such learners as those who "perceive the text as a series of isolated words, each of which has to be deciphered individually in order to move on with reading" (Martinez-Lage 1997: 122). The issue with this type of reading is that it can lead to a cognitive overload and loss of overall sense of meaning (Abraham, 2007).

The comments above show that participants adapted their strategies according to the reading condition. It is important to note, however, that these participants had first read in a treatment condition. The counterbalancing method used in the experiment meant that the order of the three reading conditions was alternated over the three week period (see section 3.5). It was thus thought that participants’ resourcefulness may have been sparked by the removal of annotations. This speculation prompted a statistical investigation into participants’ weekly performances (see section 4.3.2) to establish whether the order of reading is indeed a determining factor in strategy use. The statistical analysis revealed that with the first story (Platypus) in week 1, the group who read in the control condition did not perform significantly better on the post-test. This finding was crucial because it does not match that of the groups who read in the control condition in weeks 2 or 3, i.e. after being exposed to one or two treatment conditions. The later groups produced significantly improved performances on the post-tests, indicating that the order of reading may indeed have altered the participants’ reading behaviour. In addition to provoking alternative strategies, the order of reading may have simply familiarised participants with the reading procedure and the pre and post-tests. This possibly reduced the extraneous load of the task and ‘freed up’ some working memory capacity allowing learners to employ other strategies during the consecutive weeks.

In addition to examining participants’ strategies in un-annotated texts, it was also important to check whether any strategies were used when help was available via annotations. This is because the readily available help may cause participants to abandon their inferencing strategies and rely solely on annotations for constructing meaning. The focus group discussion was, therefore, designed to explore when and how

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participants consult annotations. One of the questions posed was whether participants consulted annotations for words they already knew. In theory, clicking on unnecessary information (annotations for familiar words) may have a distracting effect and it would, therefore, be ideal if learners used annotations selectively. A number of participants reported that they had only clicked on unknown words. Examples of their responses are as follows:

“If I know it [the annotated word] I don’t click on it” (T2, 130)

“aaah I clicked on the words I didn’t know and didn’t click on the ones I knew” (T2, 134)

“L: teacher me only the ones I don’t know L: teacher me too

L: the same” (T2, 143-145)

Although participants thought they had only used annotations for unknown words, their log files showed that all annotations were accessed. Familiar words such as ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ were annotated intentionally for purposes of examining this type of clicking behaviour. Log files showed that these words were indeed accessed. Participants’ perception in this case was at odds with their actual behaviour. Other participants acknowledged that they had consulted annotations for words they already knew. Their explanation for this is as follows:

“L: Teacher I mean I might know a word before I click on it because I know the words that come before it and after it.

T: Aha so you clicked on words which you knew? L: Yes and we clicked on the words we didn’t know

T: Ok if you knew a word why did you click on it? L: To see if it’s right or wrong

T: Ah Ok.

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“L: Teacher I clicked on the ones I know and the ones I don’t know T: and why did you do that?

L: Teacher to find out if I’d understood it correctly or not”

(T2, 136-139)

“Teacher I clicked the ones I knew and the ones I didn’t know to be sure” (T2, 146)

The statements above indicate that clicking on familiar words can be a purposeful act of providing reassurance about word meaning. This reiterates the advantage of using annotations as a means of reducing incorrect guessing (Lenders, 2008). From a theoretical perspective, the Involvement Load Hypothesis emphasises that the increased mental effort from inferring meaning is more beneficial for retention (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001) and development (Ellis, 1995). It was thus debated that readily available meaning in annotations may reduce these desirable effects. The findings here, however, demonstrate that the presence of annotations does not necessarily equate with reduced mental effort. The findings agree with the argument that annotations are needed, particularly for beginners, to minimise incorrect inferences (Paribakht and Wesche, 1997; Peters et al., 2009 and Lenders, 2008). Further evidence of this is apparent from the following excerpts:

“Teacher I kinda thought about it then clicked” (T2, 124) “Teacher I tried to read it I couldn’t then I clicked” (T2, 126)

The above statements offer some insight into how annotations were used in the experiment. To expand on this, participants were also asked about the number of times they clicked on a single annotation. This question, however, did not yield a wealth of responses but two participants explained their clicking behaviour as follows:

“If it’s difficult I click repetitively and if not just once” (T2, 150)

“Teacher but sometimes you click on it because you don’t know it you click on it a lot” (T2, 156)

It was thought that participants might compensate for a low mark on the pre-tests by consulting annotations more frequently. Likewise, it was speculated that a higher rate of

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consulting may lead to a higher score on the post-tests. Using quantitative data, an attempt was thus made to determine whether a correlation exists between frequency of clicking on annotations and results on the pre-tests and post-test (see section 4.3.3). No correlations were observed between these variables. These findings are in accordance with other research showing no significant relationship between number of look-up times per word and post-test results (Abraham, 2007). One possible explanation for this behaviour is the novelty effect of seeing annotations appear and re-appear with repetitive clicking. A longitudinal study would provide insight into whether young learners’ clicking behaviour changes over time.