A Case Study in the Application of Authentic Material Texts: Findings after Using the New York Times Monday Weekly on the United Daily News/ETUDE DE CAS DE LA APPLICATION DES MATERIELS AUTHENTIQUES : DÉCOUVERTE APRÈS L'UTILISATION DE NEW YORK TIME MONDAY WEEKLY CHEZ UNITED DAILY NEWS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: It is easy to have access to satellite or cable TV programs in Taiwan, and thus ordinary learners have ample opportunities to immerse themselves in an English-rich environment if they want. However, military cadets do not have enough English input because their time is limited on campus. In this study, the writer strives to figure out the best way to increases their interest in the language and relate English instruction to their real world. She used the New York Limes Monday Weekly (NYLMW) in the United Daily News as a supplementary reading material during the 2005-2006 school year, and tried to analyze the mixed results. She finds that retention is increased if the selected material is relevant to learners' lives. Key words: NYLMW, New York Limes, reading assessment, authentic material texts Resume: Il est facile d'acceder aux programmes de satellite ou de televison par câble a Taiwai, et ainsi les apprenants disposent de nombreuses opportunites pour s'immigrer dans un environnement anglais s'ils en ont envie. Cependant, les eleves des ecoles militaires n'ont pas assez de contact avec l'anglais parce qu'ils passent leur temps au campus. Dans cette etude, l'auteur essaie de trouver le meilleur moyen de soulever leur interet et relier l'instruction anglaise a leur vie reelle. De plus, elle trouve que la retention est augmentee si le materiel selectionne concerne la vie des apprenants. Mots-Cles: JNYTMW, New York Time, evaluation de lecture, materiel authentique INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE This project was designed for two different classes meeting once a week for 36 weeks, from September 2005 to May 2006. The process used two semesters in order to allow enough time for the result to be reliable. As Lumsden (1995) said students' interest or motivation is affected by how they approach their learning, the amount of time they will invest, the participation in class and their achievement from their efforts. Many researchers point out that materials correlate with learner motivation and that authentic materials motivate learners. They claim that authentic materials are more interesting, vivid and stimulating than artificial, non-authentic materials. However, contrary to the findings of these researchers, some studies have indicated a different view and maintained that authentic materials reduce learner motivation because they are difficult. In this study, NYTMW articles were used as authentic supplementary reading material to see what the effect would be. The research attempted to choose the right items to motivate the cadets in her classes. She chose the articles that she though were of interest to them and suitable for their level of English ability. Research has illustrated that reading comprehension is related to listening comprehension (Adams, 1990). This is understandable because reading and listening share many of the same basic cognitive processes. If a reader fails to recognize words accurately and automatically (that is, if he fails to develop fluency), reading comprehension will be severely disrupted (Perfetti, 1985). Indeed, word recognition has a strong relation to reading speed. If a reader encounters many unknown words in an article, complete comprehension is extremely different. That is why the news articles from the NYTMW, the authentic material, were only used as a supplement to the main textbook, Interactions II- Integrated Skilled Edition for Intermediate, which is specifically produced for ESL learners. Other materials used in the one year course included Master GEPT (General English Proficiency Test) Vocabulary, ECL (English Comprehension Level), and a questionnaire survey done at the end of second semester. There is another issue that needed to be dealt with. Over the years, one of the greatest challenges for a language teacher has been to explain test results, both the information they provide and their limitations, to the school authorities. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".