DEVELOPING TEXTS FOR AN ENGLISH FOR TOURISM COURSE: THE EFFECT OF USING TASK-CYCLING, SPACED RETRIEVAL AND HIGH-FREQUENCY WORDS ON STUDENTS' SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF ABILITY AND LEVELS OF CONFIDENCE

James Bury

DOI Number
-
First page
181
Last page
194

Abstract


Texts used in traditional reading courses often contain complicated grammatical structures and academic lexical items. Exposing students to high level texts can aid language acquisition, but if the text is too complex, students can become overwhelmed and demotivated. To address this, texts and activities used in an undergraduate English for Tourism course were developed based on frequency lists and applying the principles of the modified natural approach (Byrnes 2006), task-cycling (Skehan 1998; Levy and Kennedy 2004) and spaced retrieval (Karpicke and Roediger 2007). This article reports on enrolled students’ perceptions of ability and levels of confidence.


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References


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