VALORS HUMANS DE LA PEL·LÍCULA ENSENYAR I APRENDRE LA COMPRENSIÓ

This process is discussed at two stages. The first stage was how the target words were selected and next was how these target words were glossed. The study heeded the call of Schmitt (2010) and Yoshii (2006) that working with only one word class would not confound the results of a study. Therefore, only verbs were used as target words and glossed. Thirteen verbs were selected. They were initially selected by two senior lecturers who taught semester one learners who agreed that the words were words that the learners were not familiar with. Then, these words were subjected to two other means of establishing that the words were not familiar to the sample of learners in the study.

The text with the target words was given to a similar group of learners as those in the experiment. It was found that the target words were also not familiar to these learners. Another approach to determine the target words was through their frequency as advocated by Schmitt (2010).

Input Criteria Method of Selection Expert agreement Based on BEL 120 syllabus Online narrative text Suitability Surface structure

Scary Night Readability Lexical density

Using the British National (BNC) BNC 20,000 as a reference for the frequency of words, the profile revealed that the target words were from different frequency levels. The BNC-20 was used as the frequency information as it was a better representation of current English as found in other word lists (Schmitt, 2010). The BNC – 20 can be accessed in the Internet at http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/bnc/. The target words and their frequency bands range are shown in Appendix E.

A Frequency Band gives an indication of how frequent a word is used in the language. Words in the higher bands indicate that the words do not occur frequently, while the lower bands indicate otherwise. In this study, it can be observed that the frequency bands for the targeted word ranged from Bands 3 to 9. The Frequency band also showed that the words were not clustered in any particular band and it was dispersed, thus the target words were better represented in the text. Table 3.8 provides a summary of how the target words in the text were selected.

Table 3.8: Summary of selection criteria for target words Input which had been modified Selection criteria

Expert agreement Target verbs which have been

glossed

Testing of familiarity of words with a similar group of learners as those in the study

The British National Corpus (Frequency Band)

3.8.1.4 The gloss

The target verbs were glossed in four different formats. They were word definition in Bahasa Melayu in L1 (WBM) and English L2 (WEN); sentence level definition in Bahasa Melayu (SBM) and English (SEN).

The word definitions in Malay were as given in Hornby (2000) Learner’s English- Malay dictionary, while the English word definitions were provided by Hornby (2005), Oxford Dictionary. Dictionaries were used as a source for word meanings as Schmitt (2010) contends that they are good sources as lexicographers have taken great measures to make the meanings as easy and transparent as possible.

The design of the gloss kept to Robb's (1999) taxonomy of gloss design for L2 reading. (Please see Appendix F for the taxonomy). Robb’s taxonomy included authorship of glosses, their purpose, focus form and language (L1/L2) that was used for the gloss. The design of the gloss in this study was guided by this taxonomy. Although Robb stated that the taxonomy was not definite, it did provide a useful and starting framework for the design of a gloss.

Next is to explain the framework as used in this study. The gloss was authored by the researcher, and it was presented to the learners when they clicked on a word which they were not sure of or wanted more information on while reading the online text. The function of the gloss was to clarify lexical information. Its focus was textual and the languages used were English and Bahasa Melayu. The gloss in this study took on only verbal forms with no multimedia or non-textual elements.

The learners were assigned into different gloss conditions which provided word meanings at word and sentence levels. The gloss was definitional when it provided the learners with word meanings in either the L1 or L2 and it was elaborative when it contextualized the meanings of the words at sentence level.

The opportunities for obtaining modified input were made possible when learners clicked on the highlighted target words, hence presenting the learners with the different types of meaning at word or sentence level and in either the L1 or L2.

The clicking is then operationalised as the precursor to the interactions with the modified input. The clicks signal the start of the interaction with the modified input. The sequence of the learners’ interactions with the gloss is shown in the Figure 3.1

Figure 3.1: The sequence of the learners’ interactions with the gloss

An example of this glossing process is shown below with the word “ponder”

The word in the text I cannot pass the test. What do I do? Shall I keep studying? Can I take the test some other time? Shall I give up? I am pondering * many things.

The Gloss for the word ponder

The Gloss Ponder

Definitive Word meaning in English: To think carefully about something, especially for a noticeable length of time

Contextual Sentence level meaning in English: You need to ponder on what is the next step you should take in your life

Definitive Word meaning in BM: Memikirkan sesuatu dengan teliti dan ia

mengambil masa.