國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
CHAPTER THREE METHOD
Drawing on Vygotskian sociocultural perspectives, this study aims to explore aspects of a dyad of tutor-tutee interactions and to understand how their interactions scaffold and contribute to the tutee’s performance in an English remedial class. This chapter is comprised of three sections. Section one describes background of the participants. Section two illustrates the designed materials and tasks employed in the peer interaction. Section three presents the procedure, data collection and analysis of the study.
Context of the Study
The elementary school of this study is located in Shu-lin city, Taipei county, which is a central school in charge of administratrative affairs in San-xia and Ying-ge school districts. It is a large-size school with a total of seventy-two classes and thirty-five students in each class. This elementary school is similar to most of other Taipei county elementary schools. First, each class is of academically normal distribution. English is a required subject with two hours of English class for all students from 3rd to 6th grades and one hour for 1st and 2nd grades in every week.
Second, two county-wide formal English proficiency tests are administered in the 4th and 6th grades every year to make sure that students have attained the required basic English proficiency of their grades. Third, English remedial classes are subsidized by the government and conducted in extra time for slow learners whose English proficiency falls behind their peers. However, this elementary school is dissimilar from many others in that it is located in the center of San-xia and Ying-ge schools district, in which houses a number of families of high socioeconomic status. Therefore, the students in this school are normally considered good students who receive more attention as well as better familial education at home from parents who are usually of
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
high socioeconomic status in the conventional sense.
In this school, there are 10 classes in each grade. Each class is comprised of approximate 35 English mixed ability students (high, moderate, and low levels).
Because students’ in-class English proficiency levels are getting polarized, English teachers of this school spend extra 3-4 hours per month conducting remedial classes in order to help slow learners catch up with the progress of their grades. Each English teacher has his/her own unique ways of conducting remedial classes. The remedial class conducted by the researcher was comprised of 15 dyads of tutor-tutee during data collection. Each dyad had a tutor assisting a tutee to complete basic, graded learning tasks. According to the researcher’s past successful experience of grouping remedial class students, each dyad was composed by one high and one low level of English proficiency, with the high-level students assisting the low-level students to complete collaborative tasks which gradually led to the low-level students’ language development. According to Pugh (2005), besides considering the tutor’s academic performance, the researcher would match the tutee with the one whom the tutee was acquainted with as his/her tutor. During data collection, the researcher conducted the remedial class by following the same method of matching tutor-tutee dyads: That is, according to their English academic performance in the previous year, their willingness to learn/help and their acquaintanceship with each other.
The tutees were learners whose English performance was far behind the normal learning progress according to his/her English academic scores /performance over the past year, having difficulties in learning current 5th-grade contents and need to improve in basic letter and sound correspondence. Their overall English academic scores were below the average scores of their grade. They expressed needs and willingness to attend the remedial class to improve their basic English ability when
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The tutors were of high level of English proficiency based on his/her English academic scores /performance over the past year. Their overall English academic scores were above the average scores of their grade. They volunteered to help their peers when inquired by the researcher/their English teacher. Not only was their English academic performance the reason why they were involved in the selection but also the strong willingness that both the tutee and the tutor demonstrated to learn/help before they were admitted in the remedial sessions. Therefore, in the beginning of this semester, according to the new 5th graders’ overall scores/performance of the previous year (i.e., 4th grade), there were fifteen students being selected as needing to attend the English remedial class to improve their basic ability. Fifteen high-level proficiency students were also selected to tutor the 15 lower peers in the remedial class. The tutor and the tutee matched in each dyad were of the same class, gender and were familiar with each other. Materials used were basic spelling reinforcement tasks based on the textbook progress. Tasks were of gradation and designed to strengthen the tutees’
basic letter/sound correspondence and spelling ability which assist them in keeping up with reading ability of normal progress of their grade. The tutees were required to complete each graded task and the tutors accompanied them, offering assistance throughout the whole tasks. The tutees were given two proficiency tests in the middle and end of the peer tutoring sessions to examine whether or not the tutees made progress and how much progress the tutees have made. Before the start of tutorial sessions, the tutors received a week or two tutor training programs to help equip themselves with some basic coaching hints on how to deal with matters in the tutorial sessions.
In order to provide detailed, in-depth observation and accounts of the one-semester long tutor-tutee interaction, one dyad was selected among the 15 dyads for this study. The selection of the case was primarily based on opportunistic
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
convenience sampling. The chosen dyad was much closer to the researcher in terms of teacher-student relationship. According to Duff (2008), the advantage of studying people with whom the researcher was already familiar with is that access and informed consent are easier to obtain. In addition, it may be possible to observe or interact with familiar participants for a more extended or intensive period, and as a result, the researcher may obtain more useful data about the case.
Participants
The tutee. Since the tutee’s basic English ability needed to be improved in order to catch up with the normal learning progress, fifteen students of approximately the same level of low English proficiency were selected to attend the remedial class in this semester. The fifteen students were those who had difficulties in learning current 5th-grade contents and need to improve the basic skill of letter and sound correspondence. Each tutee was assigned to a familiar tutor. The tutee informant of the study, Mary (a pseudonym), who the researcher was acquainted with was selected for this study and was assigned to be in the dyad assisted by her familiar classmate, Kate. Kate and Mary spent a lot of time together at school. Since the homeroom teacher sometimes designed in-class collaboration tasks in order to encourage students to learn from each other, Kate and Mary usually teamed themselves up for group projects. Most of the time, Kate was ready and willing to provide solutions in group projects when Mary turned to her for help. In the English class, Kate also actively helped Mary in some spelling or reading problems. Mary and Kate were good friends, so Mary felt very comfortable about grouping in the same dyad. Mary thus agreed to participate in this study.
Mary was a 5th-grade girl from a middle-class, aboriginal family with two younger sisters and a younger brother. Both of her parents worked in factories. Her
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Mary had to take care of her sisters and brother right after school. Looking after her siblings usually took up most of the evening so that little time was spared for her studying and doing homework. Sometimes Mary would even be late for school. At school, Mary got along well with her classmates and she liked to be helpful in class.
However, in terms of academic performance, she didn’t show very high motivation for learning. Her overall academic performance was below the average level according to her previous two years’ grades. She felt inferior to others in terms of academic learning which results in her tendency to get nervous and frustrated in learning. However, in English class, due to the relaxing learning atmosphere and the English teacher’s extra individual instructions and concerns for her difficulties, Mary showed interest. She has been attending the English remedial class since the fourth grade and did make improvement in basic letter and sound correspondence (according to her 4th-grade overall academic performance). Since there was still a lot for Mary to improve, including basic spelling and reading skills which a normal 5th grader should obtain before starting her 5th grade, Mary was arranged to be in the remedial class again this year. She did not have any outside-school English learning experience and was willing to participate in this study.
The tutor. The fifteen tutors were approximately of the same level of high English proficiency according to their overall past-year English academic scores/performance. 10 of them had experiences of tutoring peers in English remedial class; the rest of 5 had none. Whether or not the tutor had the experience of tutoring peers, they showed willingness to help and receive tutor training before the remedial class. They were all very friendly with their assigned tutees. Among the 15 tutors, Kate (a pseudonym), who was teamed with Mary, was selected as the tutor informant for this study. The researcher/teacher also had a good relationship with Kate. Kate had the experiences of peer tutoring other students in the English remedial class in the
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
previous year when she was a 4th grader and has won reputation among her peers for being very helpful. According to the students she tutored, Kate really had her ways of teaching and assisting them in basic spelling and reading. Kate was patient with slow learners in clearly guiding them every word spelling. In order to create relax learning atmosphere, she liked to crack jokes in the beginning of the tutoring. Kate liked to make friends with the tutees. By doing so, Kate thought it would be much easier for the tutee to be open to learning. They liked her very much. Apart from their personal viewpoints towards Kate, based on the final proficiency tests of these tutees administered at the end of the remedial class, those ways that Kate used to help seemed effective and might have worked in improving the tutees’ language development. In this semester, Kate volunteered to assist other fellow students in the remedial class as in the past. Kate’s ways of tutoring peers won her good reputation of effectively assisting low level peers in language learning and problem solving. The study was highly interested in exploring how and in what ways such a high English proficiency level student help a low English proficiency level peer attain basic language development in the tutor-tutee communicative interaction.
Kate came from a well-fixed family according to her personal information from her homeroom teacher. She was an outgoing girl. She has learnt English ahead of formal elementary English education for five years. She went to a private language school for extra 4-6 hours of English language per week. Her overall academic performance was above the average level in her class. Her English proficiency was as good as an 8th graders’ level in junior high according to Kate’s junior-high English mock exams taken in school. Though Kate’s English proficiency was far above her class’ level, she still actively participated in her English class activities.
Apart from Kate’s English academic performance and strong willingness to help,
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
assist Mary in the English remedial class. Kate agreed to participate.
Materials
As a qualitative study, this study’s sources of data are the pre-tutoring training program and peer tutoring materials.
The pre-tutoring training program was provided by the researcher as supplementary materials based on the school textbooks to guide the tutors how to assist the tutees, while the peer tutoring materials were designed based on the school textbooks by the researcher (see Appendix A). Structure of the peer tutoring materials was of gradation from fundamental phonemic awareness, CVC spelling to basic word recognition, synthetic word spelling and reading. Basic letter/sound correspondence, letters writing, CVC spelling, basic readings were the key elements designed in the teaching materials. There were two phases of peer tutoring: first, from week 3 to 11, the emphasis was placed on building up the tutee’s ability of basic word recognition and reading. The review order was according to the textbook’s designed arrangement: CVC spelling with the five short vowels (a,e,i,o,u) and five long vowels spelling (a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e). Second, from week 12 to18, focus was on helping the tutee to generalize her acquired rules to more varied words reading. The review order was from systematic words to synthetic words. Those words were varied and more difficult. Sources came from: Basic & Intermediate Phonics by Melody publisher and East & West publisher, and self-developed worksheets; multimedia-based materials such as tutorial websites, computer software were also employed; reading materials were mainly selected from basic Scholastic Readers.
Data Collection
The procedure and time frame of this research are shown in Figure 1 & 2. The study lasted for the whole semester (twenty weeks). It began with a pre-tutoring
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
preparatory stage, which was a two-week tutor training provided by the researcher using supplementary materials before the peer tutoring sessions started. The tutor was trained with basic teaching knowledge and teaching techniques by the researcher according to the supplementary materials. Then the peer tutoring session was conducted for 18 weeks: thirty minutes per session, two sessions per week. It was conducted in mornings as the tutee’s extra learning hours. All of the sessions were videotaped and tape recorded. Video recording was used so that the participants’
paralinguistic expressions such as gestures and facial expressions during their interaction could be incorporated into the analysis. Since this study examined not only the tutee’s linguistic as well as affective outcomes, close examination of their paralinguistic expressions during their interaction was worthwhile. Every three weeks during the peer tutoring sessions, the researcher and the tutor went through a reflection review to ensure that the tutoring process proceeds without any serious problems. In the last week, interviews were conducted after the peer tutoring sessions.
Figure 1 below depicts the data collection process in this study, while Figure 2 is the timeline.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Figure 1：Procedures and Data Collection of the Study Selection of tutees and tutors
Tutor training (week 1-2)
Peer tutoring (weeks 3-19)
Tutoring reviews &
improvement
Interviews (week 20)
Data analysis
Videotaping & observation
‧
Timeline of the study ---A total of twenty weeks
Stage Week Tutoring Activities Data
Collection Activities Stage 1 1st &
2nd
The tutors received tutor training programs provided by the researcher.
Providing tutor training
Stage 2 3rd Tutorial sessions began: Basic 26 letters
& sounds correspondence review/quiz
Observation 4th Basic CVC spelling task: short vowel a &
e
Session 1, 2 Observation
5th Basic CVC spelling task: short vowel i &
o
Session 3, 4
Tutor reflection reviews
6th Basic CVC spelling task: short vowel u
Session 5, 6 Observation
7th Basic CVC spelling task: long vowel a_e, e_e
Session 7, 8 Observation
8th Basic CVC spelling task: long vowel i_e, o_e
Session 9, 10
Tutor reflection reviews
9th Basic CVC spelling task: long vowel u_e
Session 11, 12 Observation
10th Review & Proficiency Test I
Session 13, 14 Observation
11th Reinforcement: Basic CVC spelling, with blends and diagraphs added.
Session 15, 16
Tutor reflection reviews
12th Synthetic spelling task: letter A-D initial
word set Session 17, 18 Observation 13th Synthetic spelling task: letter E-H initial
word set Session19, 20 Observation
14th Synthetic spelling task: letter I-L initial word set Session 21, 22
Tutor reflection reviews
‧
15th Synthetic spelling task: letter M-P initial
word set Session 23, 24 Observation 16th Synthetic spelling task: letter Q-T initial
word set Session 25, 26 Observation 17th Synthetic spelling task: letter U-Z initial
word set Session 27, 28
Tutor reflection reviews
18th Review
Session 29, 30 Observation
19th Proficiency Test II
Session 31, 32 Observation
Stage 3 20th Individual interviews & group interviews
Figure 2 : Timeline of the study
Stage 1 Pre-tutoring preparatory stage. An English test with basic letters writing, letter/sound correspondence, word matching and spelling was to be conducted in the class. Those who failed to get 70% correct were required to take the remedial class.
Tutors were of high English proficiency according to their past English academic performance and were recommended by their fourth-grade English teachers. These tutors should pass a screening test (see Appendix B) designed by the researcher before the tutoring to make sure they had enough language ability to assist their peers.
A two-week tutor training was then implemented before the peer tutoring sessions during the semester. In the training, the tutors were trained with basic
teaching knowledge and teaching techniques based on the peer tutoring materials. The researcher led the training and the tutors followed the guidance for each different task in the peer tutoring materials. Most of the time, the tutors were given courage and encouragement by the researcher as to how to get along with their peers and how to proceed the tutorial sessions. As to how to proceed the tutorial sessions, a list of rules were given to the tutors. The rules were: first, the tutees did the tasks alone and the tutors observed their tutees’ reaction to the tasks. Second, if their tutees were able to
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
continue the tasks, then the tutors kept on observing their tutees’ learning progress without intervening. Third, if their tutees paused at some sound or word that caused the reading break down, the tutors intervened and offered assistance according to the current language level and needs of the tutees. To help the tutors to understand where their tutees’ current levels were in order to provide suitable assistance, roughly five levels of help (see Table 1) from explicit to implicit kinds listed below were suggested to the tutors as they were to offer proper assistance to suit their tutees’ needs. The number of each help indicated the amount of assistance. The bigger the number was, the more explicit help the tutors offered/the tutees needed. Level 4 and 3 were used when the tutees were still in the basic level of reading words and needed a great amount of other regulation to help them to read. Level 2 and 1 were used when the tutees started being able to read independently and assuming more responsibility.
Level 0 indicated that the tutees did not need the tutors’ help and could do the task
Level 0 indicated that the tutees did not need the tutors’ help and could do the task