This paper moves away from reminiscent mechanical repetition and drills, which were in vogue when teaching vocabulary before the rise of technology. With the support of technology, innovative methodologies that are more effective and enjoyable can be implemented into vocabulary teaching. In this particular context, there seems to be a lack of technology integration in vocabulary teaching because of teachers being untrained and/or not provided with the necessary technology. The aim of this study was to foster vocabulary development through the implementation of Vine vocabulary videos in English vocabulary learning. An embedded mixed methods design was employed to collect necessary data for analysis. The results of the post‐test revealed that the practice of Vine vocabulary videos was effective and improved participants' vocabulary. The content analysis of the semi‐structured interviews carried out with participants indicated that they had enjoyed the whole process and found it very motivating and effective. This study claims that adopting smartphones into a vocabulary course will enable English as a foreign language learners to expand and consolidate their vocabulary learning outside the classroom, engage them in a collaborative learning environment, practice and use the language being learnt and share their knowledge and experiences with their peers.
The main aim of this study was to investigate and discover whether going through the process of reflection by keeping reflective design journals (RDJ) enhances architecture students’ metacognition and whether this enhanced metacognition improves their design understandings and skills. The study was a mixed‐methods design and utilised content analysis method to identify the metacognitive actions of the participants. The study also investigated participants’ attitudes towards RDJs and their views regarding the effect of enhanced metacognition on their design understandings and skills. Twenty college students registered to an undergraduate course offered by the department of Architecture participated in the research. The findings of the study revealed that by writing in their RDJs, participants were able to progressively enhance their metacognitive skills and performed several metacognitive actions by using the four main metacognitive strategies: awareness, organisation and planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The results also disclosed that participants found RDJ keeping exceptionally effective and stated that their enhanced metacognition improved their design understanding and abilities.
Although many studies have investigated writing apprehension among students of different education levels during the last decades, several of its aspects have remained uninvestigated in different contexts. One of these contexts is North Cyprus. For this reason, this study aimed to measure the level of writing apprehension experienced by English as a foreign language (EFL) postgraduate students at this particular context when writing in English. The study also tried to explain whether variables such as age, gender, academic level, and socioeconomic status were correlated with writing apprehension. To achieve these aims, the researchers adopted Daly and Miller’s questionnaire called Writing Apprehension Test. A total of 37 EFL postgraduate students belonging to different ages, genders, academic levels, and socioeconomic statuses took part in the study. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS program to reveal whether there was a significant correlation between the aforementioned variables. Mean scores, standard deviations, Pearson correlation, frequencies, and percentages were employed to reveal the results. The study demonstrated that, though almost nearly half of the students were highly apprehensive, the majority of them experienced a moderate level of apprehension when writing in English and the relationship between writing apprehension levels and the variables was not statistically significant, that is, the results showed that age, gender, academic level, and socioeconomic status did not have any influence on writing apprehension.
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