Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College/School

School of Education

Department

Learning and Instruction

Program

Learning & Instruction EdD

First Advisor

Xornam Apedoe

Second Advisor

Sedique Popal

Third Advisor

Patricia Busk

Abstract

Fluency development is critical in language learning; however, the teacher’s role as a mediator in a learner’s fluency development rarely has been explored in Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) classrooms. This study investigated how a teacher, as the human mediator who can be certain that stimuli in the learning environment will be available and benefit the learners, implemented mediation under the guidance of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) theory in aiding learners’ speaking cognitive and utterance fluency development in one AP Chinese high-school TBLT classroom in the Bay Area. MLE theory, developed by psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, provided a mediation framework for this study. This study used action research and mixed methods. Its design followed the test-intervention-test procedure and collected data from 10 days of mediation interaction audio-recording transcripts, teacher’s observation and reflection log, lesson plans, unit plans, MLE teacher self-rating checklists, and pre- and posttest speaking samples from 21 participants. The study's results first suggest what types of mediation might influence fluency development after finding mediation of intentionality and mediation of feeling of competence were practiced most and much more frequently than other mediation types during the whole mediation period. Second, this study indicated that questioning could be used as a mediation technique across different types of mediations. Finally, the study highlighted two possible factors ii 3 that affect mediation implementation. One is if the mediator can modify lesson plans to meet mediation needs; the other is that the mediator’s personality can affect their mediation strategy choices. To investigate whether mediation is effective, this study measured three utterance fluency variables that correlate to cognitive fluency development: the number of silent pauses, the number of self-corrections, and mean syllable duration (MSD). The pre- and posttests data showed that both the learners’ number of silent pauses and MSD statistically significantly decreased in the posttests, which suggests that meditation intervention improved learners’ utterance and cognitive fluency development. Although the decrease in the number of self-corrections on the posttest was not statistically significant in this study, it does not invalidate the research findings because self-correction is a variable that may require a much longer time to change.

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