Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Self-explanation is a common and an indispensable activity taking place both indaily life and in students’ study. One may “examine a bus on the street, and wonderwhy some buses (the connected ones) have an accordion midsection”, as Chi once sawher young son thought aloud to himself (Chi, 2000: 169). You may not feel strangeabout the following situations. When you fall behind someone in a certain subject, youmay make a deep reflection and determine to try your best to surpass him. If you arerequired to read a scientific article about A Chinese Prescription on Earth Cancer, thefirst thought, by only looking at the title, may be your inference on its theme and youmay ponder on the question of what is, exactly, the prescription. All these activitiesabove, the wondering, reflecting, making inferences, etc. are all forms ofself-explanation and they aim in helping you construct your own understanding of theobject or material concerned. Though some of them may be in question types, you donot expect any answers from others. You may speak out what you think, or you mayjust keep it to yourself without any outward expressions. In most cases, people doself-explanation unconsciously. Since the 1980s, self-explanation is investigated as aspecial learning activity. This thesis tries to study whether self-explanation helpslearners answer proofreading and error correction questions.Proofreading and error correction is such a question type as relates, to a largeextent, to reading and writing in that it involves similar mental and cognitive processeslike reading and writing and that it calls for a profound and thorough appreciationconcerning main ideas, connecting devices such as cohesive and coherence, attitudesof author, specific wording of learning materials and that it requires a correct andproper application of grammatical rules. Researches, abroad or at home, concerningthe effect of self-explanations on reading and writing have shown positive results.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
In this thesis, we aim to explore the following three aspects: the existence ofself-explanation on both higher and lower level English major students’ ability inanswering proofreading and error correction questions, the similarities and differencesof higher level and lower level English major students in using strategies to answerproofreading and error correction questions, the similarities and differences of higherlevel and lower level English major students in using strategies to dispel incorrectself-explanations.Since the concept “self-explanation” was put forward, a lot of researchers inChina and other countries have performed various kinds of experiments in many fieldssuch as physics, mathematics, medical field etc. They focused on different aspects ofself-explanation such as individual differences, cognitive mechanism ofself-explanation, self-explanation training etc. With too many researches investigatingself-explanation effect on well-structured domains, only a few studies pioneered toconcentrate on ill-structured domains like reading, writing, debating skills, etc.Besides, researches on self-explanation focused mainly on problem-solving. Studiesinto self-explanation effect on language were rare to find, let alone studies on foreignlanguage. So far, few researches regarding self-explanation are to be found in thecontext of foreign language learning.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Researches on Self-explanation
This section reviews the researches on self-explanation in terms of two aspects:definition of self-explanation and previous studies of self-explanation, which arefurther divided into four aspects. So far, many researchers have defined the notion of self-explanation according totheir own understanding or for the sake of their own research. Some influential ideasare: “self-explanation is the essential ideas in physics perceived by learners whenlearning worked-out examples”; “it is a kind of inference beyond the text of learningmaterials”; “it refers not only to inferring but also to monitoring duringproblem-solving process” (quoted in Wang Jieyu, 2006: 1). Although there is no set orfixed definition of self-explanation, we can extract some common elements fromprevious definitions: on the one hand, it is a mental process relating to each individuallearner; on the other hand, it occurs for the purpose of understanding certain learningmaterials or to-be-solved problems. Maintaining those two essential points ofself-explanation mentioned above, this study defines self-explanation as whateversentences or fragment sentences students produce and explain to them regarding theirunderstanding of the proofreading and error correction text and the rationale of theiranswers to the questions. Taking students’ English proficiency into account, it is oftenthe case that both correct and incorrect self-explanations may be generated during theprocess, as can be seen from Renkl (2002: 535) that “self-explanations were often onlypartially correct or even incorrect”.
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2.2 Researches on Proofreading and Error Correction
Proofreading and error correction question is frequently used in a variety ofEnglish tests, such as National Matriculation English Test (NMET), College EnglishTest band 6 (CET-6), Test for English Majors band 8 (TEM-8), etc. to measurestudents’ English proficiency. This section makes a general review of researches onproofreading and error correction questions used in different tests, and reviews thestudies on proofreading and error correction in TEM-8 in particular. Being used in many large-scale English examinations such as NMET, CET-6,TEM-8 etc., proofreading and error correction is a common and familiar type ofquestion to Chinese learners. This type of question was evolved from traditionalproofreading activity. It later developed into three forms which are proofreading, errorcorrection and proofreading and error correction. Despite these different names andtrivial distinctions between the three types, they are, in nature, close to each other, thusthey can be deemed as roughly the same type of question. Studies on this kind ofquestion could be classified according to different examinations containing such aquestion type, such as those studies that examined proofreading and error correction inNMET (Yang Yuping, 1995; Bai Ya, 2005; Tian Zhixiong & Yang Guoyun, 2008; JiangTing, 2007; Li Li, 2008), in CET-6 (Ye Yan, 2011; Wang Liqun, 2008; Jiang Shu &Jiang Guanghui, 2006; Pan Jun, 1996; Luan Xiaohua, 2011), and in TEM-8 (Su Haiyan,2007; Shi Liying, 2007; Han Jingfeng, 2007; Liu Huizhuo, 2010; Liu Limei, 2005; LiYuying, 2007; Zou Zhe, 2012; Lou Xixiang, 2007).
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Chapter 3 Research Methodology.... 13
3.1 Research Questions ....... 13
3.2 Research Design .... 13
3.2.1 Experimenters and Subjects ......... 14
3.2.2 Research Materials ...... 14
3.2.3 Instruments .......... 17
3.2.4 Procedures ........... 19
3.3 Data Collection ..... 22
3.4 Data Analysis ........ 22
3.4.1 Scores of Three Tests ........... 23
3.4.2 Verbal Reports ..... 24
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion ........... 25
4.1 Results .......... 25
4.2 Discussion ..... 40
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 Results
The results of this experiment will be presented following the order below. Firstly,for group A and group B, scores of two posttests are respectively compared to scores oftest without self-explanation to see whether there is self-explanation effect in eachgroup. Secondly, the strategies used by two groups in answering proofreading and errorcorrection questions are compared in an attempt to discover similarities anddifferences of strategy use in two groups. Thirdly, the strategies used to dispelincorrect self-explanations are compared to see whether there are similarities anddifferences in strategies used to dispel incorrect self-explanations. In this section, firstly, scores of test without self-explanation (T1 hereafter) andscores of immediate posttest (PT1 hereafter) in both group A and group B are dealtwith by using paired samples t-tests to see whether self-explanation effect exists.Secondly, scores of T1 and scores of delayed posttest (PT2 hereafter) in both groupsare compared to see whether there is far transfer of self-explanation effect.Before paired samples t-tests, scores of T1, PT1 and PT2 are dealt with by usingone-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and frequencies test to see whether there isnormal distribution. If the distributions of scores in T1, PT1, and PT2 are normal,paired samples t-test analysis can be conducted. Table 4.1 is the results of one-sampleKolmogorov-Smirnov test.
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Conclusion
This part is the conclusion of the experiment. It includes four sections, which aremajor findings and limitations of this experiment, pedagogical implications andsuggestions for future research. This experiment, using think-aloud protocol and stimulated recall, explores theeffect of self-explanation on junior English majors’ ability in answering proofreadingand error correction questions. It tries to answer three research questions that focus onthree different aspects of the experiment, which are the existence of self-explanationeffect in lower level and higher level subjects, incorrect self-explanations made bysubjects, and strategies used to answer questions and to dispel incorrectself-explanations. This experiment has four stages, test without self-explanation,self-explanation training, immediate posttest, delayed posttest, with the two posttestseach consisting of two phases.As to the existence of self-explanation effect on lower level and higher levelsubjects, both groups benefit from self-explanation. But only lower level subjects showfar transfer in delayed posttest. This is a finding that, to some extent, verifies thefindings of previous studies, which state that lower level students benefit more fromself-explanations than higher level counterparts.
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