Methodology
The current study was experimental in nature which adopted the quantitative
approach to analyze research data. This chapter described the research design, participants, instrument, data analysis, and procedures.
Research Design
The present study was an experimental study which was to explore the effects of task-based instruction on vocabulary learning in vocational high school students.
The independent variable in the present study was type of vocabulary teaching and the dependent variable was the learners’ performance on receptive and productive word knowledge.
Concerning the research design, first of all, there were two classes of students who were allocated to a control group and an experimental group respectively. Before the intervention of task-based instruction, the two groups of students completed an English vocabulary pretest. Next, in the control group, the participants learned English by using traditional lecture instruction method. Namely, during classes, they didn’t need to engage in English learning activities but listening to what the teacher taught them, including the teacher stating sentential and contextual grammar concepts and vocabulary meanings, explaining texts for participants, translating sentential and
contextual meanings for them, and requesting the participants to repeat words and sentences after the teacher. By contrast, the participants in the experimental group learned English by using task-based instruction method. Students were taught English concepts with group interaction tasks to help them learn vocabulary. After the
intervention of task-based instruction, there was a posttest for the two groups of students and the test questions were as same as the former pretest ones but the order of the test questions in the posttest was changed. The flowchart of the design was depicted in Figure 1.
Participants
There were two classes of students selected to participate in the experimental study in a vocational high school in Pingtung City. The two classes were randomly assigned into two groups: One class with 37 students was the control group; the other with 30 students, the experimental group. The participants included 32 males and 35 females. These participants were all the 12-grade students in the vocational high school and they were 18-19 years old. The participants had very similar English learning backgrounds that they have studied English at least 5 years since they studied English in junior high schools.
Figure 1. The Flowchart of the Experimental Study Design
Experimental Group (Class B)
Control Group (Class A)
Allocate participants into 2 groups randomly.
Traditional Lecture Instruction
Task-based Instruction
Posttest (English Vocabulary Test) Pretest (English
Vocabulary Test)
Data Analyses:
(1) Descriptive Statistics
(2) Independent-Samples & Paired-Samples t-tests
Instrument
There were four instruments included in this study, including (1) two
vocabulary tests, (2) role-allocation sheets, (3) task worksheets, and (4) supplement handouts.
English Vocabulary Tests
There were two English vocabulary tests served as pretest and posttest in this study. Both of the questions of the pretest and posttest were the same but the
questions’ order in the posttest was altered. There were three parts in the tests which were categorized into two major sections: Receptive and productive word knowledge.
The former section contained 15 multiple-choice questions, and the latter, part of speech (7 questions) and cloze test (8 questions). Each test was composed of 30 vocabulary questions and every question was calculated as one point. Hence, the full point in pretest or posttest was 30 points. The test questions were selected from the previous Entrance Examination of Four-Year Technological Colleges (EEFTC) and were what participants should have learned from their textbooks. Concerning the two English vocabulary tests, it included pretest English and Chinese versions (Appendix A) as well as posttest English and Chinese versions (Appendix B).
Validity. As to the validity of the two test questions, the researcher consulted and
asked two of the vocational high school English teachers whether the questions design
for the pretest was proper or not; the researcher also asked the two classes’ students if their school English examinations contained those items what their school English teachers said such as the tests of multiple-choice vocabulary, cloze reading text, and part of speech reading text items. Besides, the pretest was viewed by two college professors to make sure the questions of the tests which were appropriate to test the participants. After consulting and viewed by the aforementioned school English teachers and college professors, the researcher has revised the questions’ design to ascertain the content validity which was consistent and conformed to the students’
school learning materials and assessments.
Reliability. As to the reliability, the pretest’s reliability coefficient of KR21
was .83. According to Fraenkel and Wallen (2003), for the research purpose, the coefficient of the reliability of tests had to achieve at least above .7 and the higher coefficient of the reliability would be better. Since questions in the posttest were as same as those in the pretest except the questions’ order of the posttest which was changed, the reliability coefficient was not examined.
Results of the Pretest. From Levene’s Test, between control and experimental
groups they didn’t reach the specified .05 significance level, F(2, 65) = .06, p = .81 (see Table 2). That is, the two groups were homogeneity so the English level of the two groups was similar. And the Results of the pretest on the English vocabulary test
between the two groups showed that the mean score in the control group was 7.65 and the experimental group one was 6.47, indicating there was no significant difference, t (65) = -1.99, p > .05, between two groups. Table 3 revealed the results of the
descriptive statistics at the pretest by two groups.
Table 2 Levene’s Test Between Control and Experimental Groups
Groups n F p df
Control 37 .06 .81 65
Experiment 30
Table 3 Descriptive Statistics of the Pretest By Two Groups
Groups n M SD t df Sig.
Control 37 7.65 2.50 -1.99 65 .05
Experiment 30 6.47 2.33
Role-Allocation Sheets
The purpose of role-allocation was to create more chances for learners to interact with their group members. Accordingly, tasks placed great emphasis on interaction; the more interactions learners had, the better English performance they had. During the task-based instruction, the participants in the experimental group
were allocated into six groups by the English teacher and had to accept the training of task roles. In the regular activities, there were five roles in a sheet including leader, facilitator, translator, summarizer, and reporter. The English teacher allocated tasks to every group member and members in each group had to sign in the sheet of each task before they started to discuss their group activities. The role-allocation including English and Chinese versions (Appendix C) listed responsibility that participants in the experimental group had to fulfill. As for the teacher’s role, she had to take care of every group’s needs if group members had any task problems that they needed
teacher’s help and directions. The following five roles described every group member in their group with responsibility he or she had to be at the helm when they were undertaking their tasks.
Leader: The “leader” in a small group should be responsible for filling in worksheets,
taking care of the whole group members, allocating the even speaking opportunities to each member, and supervising members’ group discussion, learning rate, as well as learning efficiency.
Facilitator: The “facilitator” should be in charge of recording vital points for the
group tasks, looking up in the dictionary for jargons or confusing words, correcting mistakes or errors, making sure group members understanding activities’ problems by asking them questions, and checking if group learning is on the right track.
Translator: The responsibility of the “translator” should translate English into
Mandarin Chinese for group members if group members couldn’t understand sentences or articles.
Summarizer: The “summarizer” should be in charge of summarizing sentences or
article meanings for group members.
Reporter: The responsibility of the “reporter”, he or she should be responsible for
reporting the group’s schedule or progress and the reporter should inform the instructor while each activity is finished.
Task Worksheets
Each worksheet for tasks contains three parts that the participants in the experimental group had to complete. The first part was multiple-choice vocabulary learning with 5 questions; the second one, a reading article with 5 cloze questions; and the third one was a reading text with five parts of speech questions. All of the three parts of tasks needed group members to cooperate to complete. A sample task worksheet was provided (Appendix D). Students had to discuss firstly and decided what the correct answers were. Then, they had to look up in the dictionary for difficult words and tried to translate L2 sentences into L1 in every task. Hence, to find out correct answers and negotiate meanings in every task was the major purpose for them to complete their tasks. After every group finished their task, the teacher would give every group a
positive feedback in their worksheet. For instance, the teacher would write down the feedback “you all, the first group, translate well in multiple-choice task and please keep going for the unfinished parts.”
Concerning teaching activities, there were no any activities in the control group but in the experimental group there were tasks that the participants in every group had to conduct on interaction and cooperation with their group members to complete their tasks. Each task took two periods of classes to finish.
Supplement Handouts
With regard to the supplement handouts, they included 2000-word level lists from MOE (2006) and those participants in both groups had to repeat words after the English teacher but only demonstrated several pages for them. Due to the limitation of teaching time, participants had to read most of the word lists by themselves. Besides, materials containing 62 pages in syntax and sentence structure were provided. During the English classes, handouts were provided to make participants could memorize more words and the teacher explain important syntax and sentence structure notions for students to bridge their gaps of grammar and vocabulary storage. In fact, the two groups’ participants in school had the same English textbooks and they were only allocated two hours in their English curriculum per week, experiment teaching not included. A sample handout regarding the five phrases with English and Chinese
versions (Appendix E) was provided. Another sample handout (Appendix F) related to part of speech and suffix words which were also provided in teaching for both groups.
Data Analysis
Firstly, toward answering research questions, Independent-Samples t-test and Paired-Samples t-test were performed to analyze data to explore whether there were significant differences in vocabulary learning between control and experimental groups. Besides, theses two t-tests were used to examine whether vocational high school students in vocabulary learning by using task-based instruction could facilitate learners learning vocabulary. Moreover, whether task-based instruction could help students’ receptive and productive word knowledge was also explored.
Procedures
After designing this current study, the researcher contacted with a vocational high school in Pingtung City and asked for the permission from the teacher head who was in charge of the teaching affairs to allow the researcher going to do the
experimental study for two semesters. After the researcher getting the permission, the study began on September 27, 2006. At the beginning, the researcher gave groups’
allocation; in the second week, she gave students the pretest and the test time for the pretest took about 40 minutes. After the pretest, the teacher chose the teaching materials according to the two groups’ performance. Two groups’ participants
received the same teaching materials and supplement handouts. For example, in order to elicit participants’ learning interests, the teaching materials were related to the English examination questions of the EEFTC. Also, supplement handouts included those concepts like pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary lists to improve their English reading comprehension and all of them in the end of the second semester would participate in the Entrance Examination of Four Year Technological Colleges.
The teaching started from the third week in both control and experimental groups who were respectively allocated 50 minutes for experimental teaching per week except the first two classes for assigning group and pretest as well as four weeks which were scheduled for school monthly exams, with a total of 10 weeks. In fact, in the first semester, the teacher in the two groups spent a lot of time on building up the important English concepts like vocabulary knowledge, grammar, and reading strategies; she also taught them task-based notions such as group work, cooperation, and interaction with group members. In the second semester, the class began on March 1st, 2007. Each class also contained 50 minutes with a total of 10 weeks. As to the tasks classroom teaching, in the first 10 minutes of class time, the teacher
demonstrated how to perform their task for the experimental group participants; then, they were left 40 minutes to complete their tasks during the last six periods of classes.
In contrast, in the control group, the participants were listening to the teacher’s
teaching without doing any particular activities during the classes.
In order to make sure every group member in the experimental group knew what they were about to involve in and outperformed themselves efficiently, the teacher requested every group to use a stapler to fasten the role-allocation sheets and task worksheets together. Each group had to hand in the paper when the class was over. Although the control group didn’t proceed task-based activities during classes, the teacher would impart important concepts like those in the task-based instruction to the participants. In order to have a better understanding, the following Table 4
depicted teaching for the two groups.
Table 4 The Allocation of Teaching Time in English Class Between Two Groups
Time Control Group Experiment Group
The first 10 mins
Review last week’s class teaching. Review last week’s class teaching;
then, demonstrate how to engage each group member has to be in charge of their own task scopes and cooperate with their group
Remind each group to seize the time for their task; remind them to staple their worksheets together and hand in their paper when the class was over. Also, announce schedule for the next class.
In the experimental group, in order to resolve problems in the tasks, every group member had to communicate with one another, so they had to discuss and negotiate meaning by using languages like target language or Mandarin Chinese.
Although the participants were allowed to use their mother tongue to conduct tasks, the teacher still hoped and encouraged them that they could often use target language to communicate with their group members during the tasks, if possible. During the tasks, the teacher would step into every group to ask whether they needed any help or to observe every group’s discussion conditions. Every task should find and write down their answers in the worksheets. During doing their tasks, each group member not only had to handle their own duty scope in every task but also had to collaborate with their group members. They had to utilize learning strategies like guessing, translation, and dictionary strategies to help themselves complete their group tasks.
For example, group members could use guessing strategies to guess target words or unknown words in contexts no matter in which task they have proceeded; the major purpose was to help them to find the correct answers as soon as possible. And they had to translate L2 into L1 to make sure every group has understood every sentence’s meaning in each task, so they could use dictionary to aid them finish their tasks.
Finally, the experiment ended on May 7th, 2007, and the posttest was conducted on May 9th, 2007. Table 5 depicted the procedure of the study.
Table 5