IS BSI METHOD EFFECTIVE TO TEACH ENGLISH ARTICLE SYSTEM ?

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• IS BSI METHOD EFFECTIVE TO TEACH ENGLISH ARTICLE
  SYSTEM ?
• Presented by Handegül ALTAN
• English Language Teaching Master
  
• Programme
• Yeditepe University,Istanbul,Turkey

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Aim of the Research

• In this research, my aim is to test efficiency of
  BSI method on a very problematic area for foreign
  language learners that is English Article
  System.At the end of the result, I wish to prove
  efficiency of BSI method in language teaching
  with the help of concrete results and also
  present it as an alternative solution for
  teaching of English Article System.

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• Why acquiring the article system of English
  is difficult for foreign language students?
  
• - L1 Transfer
• Ellis defines that the influence that the
  learners L1 exerts over the acquisition of an
  L2. ( Ellis,1997 51)

• Yükseler defines Turkish ELT learners article
  system errors through two factors
• 1-The difficulty of articles to master
• 2- The inefficiency of the teaching method
  (Yükseler,1975 6)

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• How can handle with these problems as foreing
  language teachers?
• Yükseler claims that we ,as language teachers,
  should create some situations that the learner
  realize the relations among syntactic processes
  and syntactic relation instead of memorization .
  ( Yükseler,1975 10)

• The Input Hypothesis
• We acquire language that is a little beyond our
  current level of competence (i1)
• Krashen claims that according to input hypothesis
  we acquire by going for meaning first and as
  a result we acquire structure .This done with
  the help of context or extra-linguistic
  information.
• (Krashen ,1982 21)

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• Here and now principle
• Indeed, it is imposible to provide a language for
  a children that is based on grammatical syllabus
  but still children can acquire the language of up
  levels with the help of here and now princible
  that is during the speech caretakers talk mostly
  about what the child see his immediate
  environment.( Krashen ,198222)
• That is what BSI aims to create in language
  classroom.It deals with the students as if the
  students learn second language like first
  language.
• The teacher acts as a caretaker and supplies lots
  of comprehensible input successively as much as
  possible based on here and now princible.

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• The teaching of the article system under the
  BSI method
• Avoiding to give any explicit information that
  focuses on form.
• (context based learning)
• Acquiring even the specific elements
• of langauge (articles,auxilary verbs,etc.)
• without being aware of it.
• (Since BSI method is not a syllabus based
  method)
• Exposing the language through a meaningful
  context.
• Simplifying the target context by divided it
  into short sentences and make the students repeat
  them through various ways for the sake of
  automatic use of language
• Enabling to acquire the language through creating
  many opportuinities to make students repeat the
  sentence patterns of the text while focussing on
  meaning of them

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• THE RESEARCH
• Method
• Definitive Article the
• Indefinitive articles a,an
• Zero Article
• Usage errors of articles were coded as
• overusage and underusage.
• - Overusage refers the excessive usage of
  articles,whileUnderusage refers the lack of the
  articles where they are necessary.
• Determining the usage frequency of the article
  types on tests, correct usage rates and correct
  usage percentages of each type were assessed for
  both BSI and Non-BSI group of students.

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Participants The participants in this study will
comprise of a group including 20 students at
Göztepe Anatolia High School. 8 of the students
are female and 12 of the students are male.
Group A ,the experimental group (BSI group),
contained 10 students from 10th grade and
Group B,the control group(Non-BSI),contained 10
students from 11th grade. There are
mixed-ability students with lower, middle and
upper English levels from two different classes.
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At the first year of the students of each group
school have 10 hours of English in a week.The
following years they have only 4 hours of English
in a week. BSI method has been implemented in
English classes of the experimental group (BSI
group) since beginning of the second term of last
academic year(2008 spring term). The Control
group has never been taught through BSI method.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the
method subjects of two different groups were
chosen from different grades
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Material and Instrument

• A general text concerning education was
  adapted and transformed into two tests
• Gap Filling Test
• Test 1 was a gap filling test where subject were
  required to fill the missing articles as
  definitive, ,indefinitive and zero article.
• There were 25 blanks for three types of article ,
  unnecessary gaps werent created .
• The text included 13 blanks for definite article
  , 7 blanks for indefinite articles,
• 5 blanks for zero articles.
• The purpose of this test was to lead the students
  to potential errors of syntax where articles are
  plausible ,so that by consciousness raising I
  could observe how they could recall the omitted
  articles.

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• Picture Free writing test
• The second test was a picture free writing
  test ,in which the subjects tried to create a
  meaningful story just by looking at some pictures
  .
• The purpose of this test was to test students
  article usage manners out of an obligatory
  context such as gap filling.

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• 3.2 Procedure
• Gap Filling Test
• Testing was conducted in participants regular
  classrooms by the researchers. The researchers
  administered the inventories and the test in the
  English classrooms with the English teacher
  present.
• First of all, the researchers gave students a
  reading text (Lougheed, 2006, p.5). Both group
  were given the same test .
• In both groups the texts were read with the whole
  class and then they were asked for filling the
  blanks with appropriate article or leave empty
  (definitive,indefinitive and zero articles) .
• Each true answer is 4 points.It is totally 100
  points.
• Each group was given 20 minutes to complete the
  test.

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Picture Free writing test

• As a second task, students were asked to create a
  meaninful story with the help of 6 set of
  pictures which were printed in black and white.
  words,phrases usage to better evaluation.
• In order to get more specific result and better
  evaluation for article usage they were given
  some words and phares to use during the test.

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Usage of Indefinitive Article in the Gap Filling
Test (a ,an)
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Usage of Definitive Article in the Gap Filling
Test (the)
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Usage of Zero Article in the Gap Filling
Test
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Usage of Article in the Free Writing Test
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Conclusion It appears that two groups
performed differently with respect to different
classes of articles and error types. To put it
another way some articles were more difficult
than the others for subjects as zero
article. But what is more clear at the end of
this research is BSI group show better
performance in both gap filling and free writing
test. Turkish learners of L2 English have always
difficulty to acquire English Article System and
It is apparent that the existing language
teaching methods which tries to overcome the
problem with helping of mechanical drills are
useless. .
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• Since many learners still have problems with
  articles .It can not be denied that they are
  unsuccessful to provide long lasting learning
  for the students.
• On the otherside, creating a class athmosphere
  for the students to experience the language
  itself with all their senses can be useful than
  forcing the learners to do any grammatical
  drills or giving explicit information for the
  language elements.
• In this context,BSI method can be a solution for
  both teaching and learning of the article system.