3.4.1 Preparation for the Study
Some preparations were made two weeks before the study formally started. The participants took Vocabulary Size Test in a computer lab. The test was not timed, and it took about 30 minutes for the participants to finish 140 items. The results of the test were recorded by the researcher. Based on the participants’ vocabulary size, the target words were selected through the process that has been described above.
The WF pretest was also taken during the preparation phase. The participants in both EG and CG spent 15 minutes on the WF pretest.
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3.4.2 The Intervention
Table 1 shows the schedule of the intervention and the tests.
Table 1
Schedule of the Conduct of the Intervention and the Tests Time assigned chapter WF immediate
posttests
As shown in Table 1, the intervention took ten class periods (about eleven weeks, with one class period, or 50 minutes, per week) to enable possible learning outcomes produced by the treatments to occur. The participants were assigned one chapter from The Green Room every week. Both EG and CG participants did silent reading individually for seven minutes and then received their treatments, which will be elaborated in the following.
No reading was assigned in the last week, when the participants took the last delayed WF posttest of words they had learned in the previous week.
Treatments of the experimental group (EG)
The EG participants did online discussion, so their treatment was implemented in a computer lab. After reading the assigned chapter for seven minutes, the participants
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spent 30 minutes having discussions online on questions related to the assigned reading. Discussion on one series of questions centering on the same target word took ten minutes. During the online discussion time, the EG participants were required to answer directly to the questions, respond to their group members at least once, and read all the others’ responses.
Online discussion brings benefits that help to solve some problems in traditional discussions, one of which is that learners’ anxiety can be alleviated (Carico & Logan, 2004; Tower, Latimer, & Hewitt, 2013) through new language identities and more time flexibility to get prepared for idea sharing, as mentioned in Chapter One. To benefit the EG participants in this regard, their treatment of online discussion was designed as follows. First, the EG participants were encouraged to use names they like during the online discussion instead of being required to use their real names.
Using another name is like creating a new identity, helping learners to feel safe and comfortable in idea sharing. Second, the EG participants could take their time reading questions and all the responses of others before giving responses on the platform.
After reading a question or a response, they gave a “Plus One” to it.
Teachers serve as a facilitator in FonF online discussion. Instead of leading the discussion, they can devote more time and energies to directing and monitoring learners’ use of language forms. In this study, the researcher did so through skillful use of different types of text-based questions to elicit the participants’ use of the target words. Figure 1 shows the process.
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Figure 1. The Process of the Teacher’s Elicitation of Target Word Forms from the EG Participants
For the purpose of guiding the participants’ attention to a target word form, the two different kinds of questions were posed according to the responses given by the participants. As illustrated in Figure 1, a display question was asked first. If it succeeded in eliciting the target word (c), a referential question that provided opportunities for more exposure to the target word forms were asked. As in case (b) when the target word was not elicited but the participants’ responses showed comprehension of the first question, another display question was asked to help the participants notice the word form they previously neglected and linked it with the meanings. The other case (a) happened when the participants did not use the target word form, and neither did their responses show their comprehension of the first display question. The display question was rephrased to help the participants elicit the target word form.
All the questions were posted one by one. A discussion thread, led by one display question, took ten minutes, after which the next display question for another target word was posted to start a new topic thread. During the online discussion, the
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participants could ask questions on the platform in L2 if they had problems producing language forms, but no interactions in other forms (e.g. oral) were allowed. More detailed instructions on the online discussion have been included in Appendix C.
Besides giving text-based questions to elicit the target words, the researcher occasionally participated in the EG participants’ discussion, but only when necessary.
While the EG participants were having online discussion, the researcher monitored their discussion and gave occasional responses to help the participants keep on the right track. To create a FonF environment, the researcher made sure that most of her responses were meaning-oriented and that only few of them were reminders of the word spelling. The approximate proportion of meaning- and form-focused responses was 70 to 30 percent.
Treatments of the control group (CG)
The treatment of CG was given in a traditional classroom. After doing the seven-minute silent reading on the same reading texts, the CG participants were given the same discussion questions as those the EG participants received one by one. The CG participants were asked to write down their answers to the questions in L2 individually. The treatment of individual work in CG took 30 minutes every week, with ten minutes spent on each series of questions dealing with one target word. No interactions in any forms should happen among students or between the teacher and the students. During the ten-minute session for each series of questions, however, the CG participants were asked to pass their responses to their peers and also read others’
responses. They put a star beside others’ responses as a sign of finishing reading.
Appendix C involves more detailed instructions for CG treatments.
3.4.3 The Posttests
After the 30-minute treatments, both CG and EG took a three-minute immediate WF posttest and a five-minute comprehension check. To avoid extra exposure to the
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forms of the target words, the immediate WF posttests preceded the comprehension check. A three-minute delayed WF posttest was given one week later.
The whole procedure of the study is summarized in Table 2:
Table 2
The Procedure of the Study
Phase Activity Time
(mins)
Preparation
participants’ vocabulary size measured 30
target words selected NA
WF pretest 15
Intervention (ten times)
silent reading 7
EG: online discussion on text-based questions 30 CG: individual work on text-based questions 30 Posttest
(each time after the intervention)
WF immediate posttest 3
comprehension check 5
WF delayed posttest (one week later) 3