Stage
TBLT course
2013.9~ 2013.12
Collect data
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3.4.2 Course Plan
The content of the course plan referred to the Grades 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines of English (including the versions of Ministry of Education and New Taipei City), and there were 6 tasks in total, including food mind map, creative menu, ordering food, clothing mind map, fashion design, and shopping for clothes. The courses were implemented in Alternative Learning Class, and each class was forty minutes. There were two classes in a week, and ten weeks in total.
The TBLT courses were designed based on the characteristic and the framework of TBLT, and the instructor also followed the seven principles of TBLT when teaching. In other words, the lesson plan for each class was divided into three parts (i.e. the pre-task phase, the task cycle phase, and the language focus phase), and the course design in this study was related to the learners’ life experience. Moreover, the teacher made the students in heterogeneous grouping, and the tasks required students to interact with their partners or group members. The syllabus of the action plan was illustrated in Table 3.2 and the lesson plans are listed in Appendix I.
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Table 3.2: Syllabus of the Action Plan!
Lesson Topic Task Contents
1
Food
Food mind map
Pre-task phase and task phase (task stage)
2 Task phase (planning and report stage)
3 Language focus phase
4
Creative menu
Pre-task phase and task phase (task stage)
5 Task phase (planning and report stage)
6 Language focus phase
7
Ordering food
Pre-task phase and task phase (task stage)
8 Task phase (planning and report stage)
9 Language focus phase
10 Review-food
(1) Review the food tasks students had done and the linguistic items.
Pre-task phase and task phase (task stage)
12 Task phase (planning and report stage)
13 Language focus phase
14
Fashion designer
Pre-task phase and task phase (task stage)
15 Task phase (planning and report stage)
16 Language focus phase
17
Shopping for clothes
Pre-task phase and task phase (task stage)
18 Task phase (planning and report stage)
19 Language focus phase
20 Review-clothing
(1) Review the clothing tasks students had done and the linguistic items.
(2) Finish the course feedback sheet
3.5 Instruments
In order to get the correct data, the researcher would keep neutral and decrease the interference in the data collection process. Therefore, the researcher would record the event truly and display the authenticity happening in the research process. The data would be collected from learning motivation questionnaire, course feedback sheets, classroom observation, semi-structured interview, and reflective journals.
3.5.1 Learning Motivation Questionnaire
Because the topic of this study was to improve students’ English motivation, it’s vital to know students’ attitudes towards English learning before and after the TBLT action plan.
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Therefore, the learning motivation questionnaire (Wu, 2006) was used as an instrument to measure the variety of students’ attitudes.
The learning motivation questionnaire (Wu, 2006) (Appendix II) collected students’
responds from 28 items using 4-point likert scale, i.e. strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree, to compile students’ learning motivation. The sum of the scores for each item was the result of the student’s attitude towards English learning, and the score system as follows, 4 stands for strongly agree, 3 stands for agree, 2 stands for disagree, and 1 is for strongly disagree; besides, the score for reverse items is opposite, 1 was for strongly agree, 2 was for agree, 3 was for disagree, and 4 was for strongly disagree.
The validity of this learning motivation questionnaire was demonstrated in content validity, i.e. the correctness and suitability of the questionnaire was examined by professors and professional English teachers. Moreover, the reliability (Cronbach α=.8962) was high, standing for it’s a good questionnaire and could be used as the instrument to collect students’
learning motivation.
3.5.2 Course Feedback Sheet
It’s essential to make students reflect on the course because it could not only offer some information related to students’ attitudes toward TBLT but help the researcher amend the course design. This study intended to focus on the difference that TBLT had any impact on students’ learning motivation, so the course feedback sheet in Appendix III was designed to explore the students’ perception and attitudes toward English learning and TBLT. The course feedback sheet included two parts, which Part One attempted to invite students’ to self-evaluate their attitudes toward TBLT and to explore changes in their learning motivation.
Part Two attempted to explore students’ attitudes towards the topic course and collect the specific teaching parts that appeal to or repel them.
In order to make the data collection more complete, the course feedback sheet included closed and open questions, i.e. students were provided the degree options to choose and could also make some comments or add the extra event. Besides, the course feedback sheets were disputed to students in the end of each topic.
3.5.3 Classroom Observation Checklist
Nonparticipant observers could provide the researcher other viewpoints towards students’ performance during the class; therefore, the researcher invited peer teachers to do the classroom observation. Their observation work was to assess students’ learning
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motivation toward the TBLT activities, and the classroom observation checklists (Appendix IV) were provided to them at each observation. In order to make the classroom observation effectively, the researcher followed the observation criteria: arranging a pre-observation orientation session, identifying the observation focus, developing procedures for observers, and arranging a post-observation session (Richards & Lockhart, 1994).
Because the main goal of the present study was to improve students’ learning motivation through TBLT, the observation focus would be students’ learning engagement which could be observed through teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, and their performance on tasks. Accordingly, the classroom observation checklist would be divided into four parts: students’ task performance, teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, and supplementary (other events occurred in the class, comments, or suggestions). Besides, the researcher used the video recorder to record the general learning situation, and it could help researcher revisit the recorded data for double checking and clear understanding.
3.5.4 Semi-Structured Interview
The researcher conducted the semi-structured interview to get teachers’ perception, students’ attitudes, learning difficulties, and learning motivation toward TBLT. Compared with the questionnaire, interview was more flexible and could obtain clear response and extra information (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000; Wallace, 1998). In other words, the interview provided more in-depth information. Moreover, the advantage of semi-structured interview provided more flexibility than structured interview and well-organized than unstructured interview, because it not only could offer the researcher some structure interview questions to follow but also could explore more in-depth information according to interviewees’ responses.
Moreover, in order to make the interviewees express their real thoughts and remove the language barriers, the interview was conducted in Chinese but transcribed in English.