Research & Publications

Research Summary

In spite of the substantial studies on second language acquisition, studies on the speaking skills have been relegated to a ‘minor skill’ and remains under-explored. In response, my research examines the effects of different procesing approaches on speaking skills acquisition of a second language. A mobile phone – the smart phone – installed with the messaging app ‘WeChat’ was brought into the classroom instructions for the benefits mobile technologies can offer to the language learning. Results from the Analysis of Covariate (ANCOVA) show that learners who underwent the auditory processing (AP) strategy outperformed learners who underwent the visual-auditory processing (VAP) strategy. this study argues for a new understanding of how the VAP processing which includes words (visual and auditory processing) and pictures (visual processing) are important for deep learning, but not as effective as the AP, when the purpose of learning is to ‘acquire’ the speaking skills of a second language. Instead, AP processing is believed to have encouraged mental effort and psychological readiness for language articulation. In the future, studies on psycholinguistics and neuroscience,which examine the psychological factors and human memory coding using thebrainwave analyses, will be useful to further explain the findings of this study

Interests

  • Second Language Acquisition
  • Multimedia Learning
  • Mobile-Assisted Language Learning
  • Computer-Assisted Language Learning
  • Chinese as a Second Language

Publications