Although Cristina Garafola '11 (Sparta, N.J.) only started learning Chinese this year, she has a long-standing interest in languages. Garafola studied German and Latin in high school, and continued learning German in her first year of college. Having taken several different languages with different teachers, she noticed that as a student, her mastery of the language depended on the methods of instruction. "The way the teachers taught really affected how much we were able to learn," she says. This summer Garafola is researching how different teaching methods contributed to the acquisition of Chinese as a second language at study abroad programs in Beijing.
Garafola's project is supported by the Emerson Foundation Grant program, which was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest. Garafola is collaborating on her research with Hong Gang Jin, the William R. Kenan Professor of East Asian Languages & Literature and director of the Associated Colleges in China (ACC) program in Beijing. The rising sophomore spent five weeks working with Professor Jin at the program, conducting a controlled study of two styles of foreign language instruction on a single grammatical element.
Using an initial language test, Garafola identified 66 ACC students to participate in her study, as well as 14 at Princeton University's program, Princeton in Beijing. She then divided the students into four groups. Two of these were control groups, while the other two each received four "treatment sessions" with a teacher, using a particular style of instruction to learn the grammatical structure. One group learned through "corrective feedback," where they received handouts that directly explained the grammar rules. The students and teacher then discussed different examples where the structure was used incorrectly. The second group learned by "textual enhancement," where the grammatical concept was taught indirectly through the use of texts. The group studied Powerpoint presentations of stories, where the grammatical structure was highlighted or colored differently so that the students would notice the examples as they read.
Using the results of a post-study test given to all four groups, Garafola will try to determine whether one method is more successful for language acquisition. Having just finished collecting and grading the tests, she still needs to analyze the results, but she says that tentatively both variable groups did better than the controls. The two teaching methods seemed to be fairly similar in their effectiveness, but she has yet to determine how great the difference is.
Garafola says that her research in Beijing was also a boost to her own language learning. Even though she has only studied Chinese for a year, she was surprised at how much she could understand of what was happened around her, to organize her experiment and implement it. Although she did not take lessons in the language while in Beijing, she says her understanding and conversational skills have improved this summer, and the practice will be useful when she returns to formal study in the fall.
Having experienced the Associated Colleges program through her research, Garafola says she intends to return there – as a student. It will be a different experience for her than for most students, however, since she is already familiar both with the program and with the city. Garafola, who comes from a small town, enjoyed the chance to live in Beijing for five weeks, exploring the culture and seeing the iconic CCTV tower every time she left her apartment. Life in Beijing was doubly interesting, she says, since she was able to experience a city and a new country at the same time.
-- by Laura Bramley
Garafola's project is supported by the Emerson Foundation Grant program, which was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest. Garafola is collaborating on her research with Hong Gang Jin, the William R. Kenan Professor of East Asian Languages & Literature and director of the Associated Colleges in China (ACC) program in Beijing. The rising sophomore spent five weeks working with Professor Jin at the program, conducting a controlled study of two styles of foreign language instruction on a single grammatical element.
Using an initial language test, Garafola identified 66 ACC students to participate in her study, as well as 14 at Princeton University's program, Princeton in Beijing. She then divided the students into four groups. Two of these were control groups, while the other two each received four "treatment sessions" with a teacher, using a particular style of instruction to learn the grammatical structure. One group learned through "corrective feedback," where they received handouts that directly explained the grammar rules. The students and teacher then discussed different examples where the structure was used incorrectly. The second group learned by "textual enhancement," where the grammatical concept was taught indirectly through the use of texts. The group studied Powerpoint presentations of stories, where the grammatical structure was highlighted or colored differently so that the students would notice the examples as they read.
Using the results of a post-study test given to all four groups, Garafola will try to determine whether one method is more successful for language acquisition. Having just finished collecting and grading the tests, she still needs to analyze the results, but she says that tentatively both variable groups did better than the controls. The two teaching methods seemed to be fairly similar in their effectiveness, but she has yet to determine how great the difference is.
Garafola says that her research in Beijing was also a boost to her own language learning. Even though she has only studied Chinese for a year, she was surprised at how much she could understand of what was happened around her, to organize her experiment and implement it. Although she did not take lessons in the language while in Beijing, she says her understanding and conversational skills have improved this summer, and the practice will be useful when she returns to formal study in the fall.
Having experienced the Associated Colleges program through her research, Garafola says she intends to return there – as a student. It will be a different experience for her than for most students, however, since she is already familiar both with the program and with the city. Garafola, who comes from a small town, enjoyed the chance to live in Beijing for five weeks, exploring the culture and seeing the iconic CCTV tower every time she left her apartment. Life in Beijing was doubly interesting, she says, since she was able to experience a city and a new country at the same time.
-- by Laura Bramley
