The teacher-researcher in this study also worked as a facilitator, an adviser, and most importantly, the designer of the course. Since the course worked as supplemental material of the original textbook, it was worthwhile to investigate students’ attitude
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and feedback toward the course. Therefore, some open-ended questions were designed in the post-questionnaire for the teacher-researcher to have further
understanding of students’ feedback. The open-ended questions included two parts of the questions. Four questions were about the preference of five situational writing activities, and the other four questions were about students’ reflections of the whole course. Table 7 presented the results of the first four questions about numbers of participants’ preferences for the five activities. The reasons for each dimension were also listed below.
For the first question, the students answered the questions about their favorite writing activity of the course. Among 27 participants, 14 students considered Interviewing as their favorite activity. A student wrote, “This is a brand-new
experience. The activity is different from all the other homework before.” (S26, Liu).
Another student also mentioned that “I have learned how to interview others. It’s very interesting to talk to the owner of the restaurant. Now I know more about the
restaurant.” (S6, Chen) Still, 5 people liked Dialogue Creating because “I can create interesting dialogue.” (S12, Tsai). Another student’s reason was, “After writing the dialogue, we used tablets to take videos. We used the tablets to take interesting videos.”
(S23, Hwang)
The second question shows students’ difficulties when conducting these activities.
Interviewing was chosen by most participants as this student answered: “It was hard to think of good and meaningful interview questions.” (S1, Chou) Though most of the students thought that Interviewing was interesting, few of them showed some drawbacks. A participant mentioned a difficulty that “I’m shy, and I didn’t have the experience of talking to strangers.” (S10, Liu) Another even talked about the time-consuming issue that “It took a lot of time.” (S20, Chen)
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Table 7
The Numbers of Participants’ Preferences for the Activities, and the Reasons for Each Dimension
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The third question was for the participants to choose the most interesting activity in the course. Originally, the teacher-researcher assumed that students would choose Interviewing as their top priority since 14 out of 27 (51.9%) students considered Interviewing as their favorite activity. Surprisingly, the results were out of the
expectation. There were 7 people preferring Interviewing, 7 for Article Writing, and 6 people liked Dialogue Creating. The students liked Article Writing for its practicality.
A student who loved to eat claimed that “I can enjoy the food as well as practice English. I can use the grammar I learned at school to describe the dish I like. I think English is useful now.” (S13, Su) Another student said, “I have always wanted to be a news reporter in the future. So, I can act like a news reporter to introduce the food this time. I enjoyed it!” (S5, How) Those who loved Dialogue Creating shared the same reasons for creating interesting dialogues and taking videos with tablets. The students seemed to like the activity which allowed them to use their imagination with more challenges and with less limitation. A student indicated, “I liked to create my own dialogue and take my own video. I created interesting work with my group members.”
(S20, Chen)
Curiosity and empathy were the reasons why the students loved Interviewing. “I can learn more about the restaurant and the community.” (S3, Lin), said a student living near school. After the students finished the interview, they gathered more information toward the restaurant and became more empathetic on other people’s hard work. A student mentioned, “I know the hardship of running a restaurant now. The restaurant owner said it was not easy to adjust the menu to meet the needs of the customers here. After several times of trying, he finally could run this restaurant successfully. I then realized everyone in this neighborhood has overcome some difficulties before success.” (S23, Hwang)
From students’ questionnaires, 14 out of 27 (51.9%) students considered
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Interviewing as their favorite activity, but only 7 students viewed Interviewing the most interesting activity. According to the qualitative data, the teacher-researcher spotted some possible answers to explain this phenomenon. Some of the students said Interviewing was time-consuming, and they were afraid of talking to strangers. They also thought that they were in lack of experience of interviewing others, and they had pressure doing it. The feedback showed that when the students were conducting interesting activities with difficulties; the activities could still be their favorite one. To further investigate the reasons of this condition, the teacher-researcher studied on the feedback from the participants and conducted the semi-structured interviews, and developed the following assumptions: (1) The challenging task would engage students in the task more. Then, they would have greater sense of achievement after finishing the task. (2) Students would have more curiosity in the process when implementing an innovative task. (3) Interviewing, Article Writing, and Dialogue Creating shared the same feature, that is, less limitation on writing form. After the teacher-researcher taught the students how to apply the writing model to the writing activities, the
students could finish the tasks with creativity. With less limitation on writing form, the students would be able to make best use of their creativity and imagination to
complete the writing tasks.
For the fourth question, 11 out of 27 (40.7%) students thought they had improved the most in Interviewing for becoming braver and more confident. A student reported that “I used to be very shy, but I feel less anxious to talk to strangers now.” (S18, Sun) Another also mentioned, “I have learned how to talk to strangers. I am braver now.”
(S22, Chen) For the participants, Interviewing was an innovative activity which students had no experience in. A student reflected, “I haven’t done this before. I was happy I can learn something new. Someday I can interview others.” (S17, Lin)
Interestingly, many participants have learned different kinds of social skills
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during the course aside from the improvements of English abilities. By discussing and cooperating with group members, the students learned how to communicate with one another. The high achiever who was chosen to be a group leader by group members reported that “As a team leader, I have learned how to assign tasks and make great teamwork. In the past, there were people fooling around doing nothing. But they were involved in the writing activities this time because they liked the activity.” (S7, Chen) A low achiever in a different group also mentioned that “I’m happy that I can help our group finish the poster. Though I am bad at writing English sentences, I can come up with the poster!” (S24, Hwang) The above qualitative data showed that students have sharpened their social skills through cooperating with group members.
After analyzing the data collected from the questionnaires for each situational writing activity, the participants’ feedback of the whole course was also collected. For question five and question eight, students were asked to write down the concrete skills that they have learned from the class. The results were divided into two parts. One was about community, and the other was about English. About community, one reported that “I have learned the special features of our community.” (S5, How) One student claimed that his social participation has been raised that “From now on, I will do something to protect and love my community.” (S20, Chen) Another student even asserted that I think the community is just like my home.” (S25, Chiu). The above feedback suggested that the students were forming their identity of community.
Moreover, the students mentioned these writing tasks showed practicality of English writing. A student reported, “English is actually everywhere in our life.” (S13, Su) The writing activities in the form of group work also lessened the students’ anxiety toward English writing. An intermediate-low achiever said that she felt happy to work in her group because other people helped her. She said, “I don’t know if I got better in English, but I am not afraid of using English now.” (S13, Su)
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The sixth question was about students’ preference of the materials designed by the teacher-researcher. 25 out of 27 (92.5%) students said that they liked the teaching materials such as worksheet. Many students stated that “The worksheet was more interesting and practical compared with the boring textbook.” (S17, Lin) Another said,
“The questions in the worksheet were more open-ended, and we can think freely.” (S3, Lin) Another mentioned, “Compared with the textbook, the situational writing
activities were connected to our real life. We visited some places that we have never been to in the community. We have learned the community and environment more deeply.” (S7, Chen) The feedback showed that students would be motivated by authentic materials which were closely related to their daily-life experience. Teachers could provide students with guided questions for them to think and apply what they have learned in real life scenarios instead of standard answers. Additionally, the students thought the content of the material was very authentic because the topic was close to their experience. “Through this course, I could discover this community deeply. Also, I have learned about the feelings of the local residents such as the owner of the local stationery.” (S12, Tsai) Another mentioned that “This course made me know that learning was not only limited to the textbooks. We could learn in our daily life. There were some difficulties while doing the tasks. Many restaurants turned down our request for interviewing. But we kept on looking for other restaurants and tried to persuade the owner. Finally, we had an interviewee! ” (S17, Lin) These results showed that the way how the teacher-researcher designed the course was helpful for students to apply their writing ability to every situation in real life and to cultivate their problem-solving ability.
However, two students showed that they didn’t have special feeling for the material. One student was low motivated and the other didn’t live in the school neighborhood. The teacher-researcher interviewed the one lived outside the school
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neighborhood community and observed that she gained a sense of belongingness to her own community. “After I learned more about this school community and made a comparison with my own community, I found that I liked my community more than before.” (S10, Liu) Though this course hasn’t developed her sense of belongingness to the school community, she gained a sense of belongingness to her own community.
Besides the learning material, the last question was about the learning method.
26 out of 27 (96.3%) students declared that they liked the teaching method, while one student had negative feedback for spending too much time completing the additional writing activities. 96.3% were fond of the teaching method for the task types. A participant said that “I prefer doing these tasks rather than the drills on the textbook.”
(S19, Chang) Another showed, “Besides traditional paper work, this time we had interesting homework such as video taking, interviewing, and poster making. We can even use tablets to make videos. I liked the activity a lot.” (S23, Hwang) The multiple task types such as interviewing, video taking, and poster making have raised the students’ motivation in learning English.
To sum up, most of the students enjoyed the situational writing activities. It was not challenging for the teacher-researcher to design the teaching materials and situational writing activities due to the teacher’s familiarity with the students. The intention was to combine the content of the textbook with authentic context, which met the course designing principles of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines (2016).
At the same time, the teacher-researcher should design the course on proper levels to build up students’ confidence in learning English.
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CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
The present study investigated the effectiveness of conducting situational writing activities in junior high school students. The results of the study showed mostly positive feedback toward the situational writing activities. This chapter was divided into four sections. First, conclusions of the study were discussed and displayed in the order of three research questions. Second, the pedagogical implications were
developed based on the results of the study. Third, the limitations of the study were revealed. Though the limitations influenced the study, the teacher-researcher
attempted to fix the problems of the study. Last, as the teacher-researcher of the study, the teacher’s role and the reflections were worthy of discussing further.