The Think-Aloud Method in EFL Writing: A Study with Two Bulgarian Students (Published)
Writing today has become an important medium of interpersonal interaction and an essential competence in the field of work and studies. This fact gives grounds for reconsidering the significance of this skill and highlights the need of improvement in its instruction. The work presents a study exploring two Bulgarian students’ writing through the use of the think-aloud method in EFL instruction for developing their writing skills by focusing on their approach to a foreign language writing task. The goal was to examine both students’ writing processes and strategy use and stimulate them to reflect on their writing. The think-aloud protocol analyses provide insight on the influence of various factors on students’ writing processes such as their individual characteristics and writing habits, the role of L1 use in composing in a foreign language, the choice of a writing medium.
Citation: Gergana Gerova (2022) The Think-Aloud Method in EFL Writing: A Study with Two Bulgarian Students, British Journal of Education, Vol.10, Issue 12, pp 47-59
Keywords: EFL writing, protocol analysis, students’ writing processes, think-aloud method, verbalization
A Comparison Study of English Vocabulary Learning Strategy Use (Published)
The paper adopts the think-aloud method to research the vocabulary learning strategy use of the excellent learner and the average learner, and tries to solve the questions: (1) What is the learning strategy tendency of the good English learner? (2) What is the learning strategy tendency of the average English learner? The research finding is that the key strategies adopted by the good learner is the simple use of context while the average English learner would tend to frequently use the repetition and translation strategies. The research also verifies an important view that the main difference of learning strategy use between the excellent learner and the average one does not lie in the number of strategy but in the proper choice of strategy in line with the different tasks.
Keywords: the average learner, the excellent learner, the vocabulary learning strategy, think-aloud method
