The implementation phases of the present study lasted approximately for two months, from September 9th to October 29th of 2018, including five situational writing activities. From week one, the participants had a pre-test of writing and questionnaire.
From week three to week seven, the participants conducted five situational writing tasks. After two weeks in week nine, the participants had a post-test and finished the post-questionnaire.
On week one, the participants wrote a short paragraph as the pre-test of their writing ability while finishing the pre-questionnaire. Two weeks later, the participants started to implement series of situational writing activities from week three to week seven. Another two weeks later on week nine, the participants wrote another short paragraph in the same topic as the post-test in English writing. They also finished the
23
post-questionnaire about social participation and preferences of course design. Figure 2 shows the time schedule of the study.
Figure2
The Time Schedule of the Procedure of the Study
Pre-test
The goal of the pre-test was to investigate students’ background knowledge of their own neighborhood community. The pre-test matched the goal of the study, which was to arouse participants’ awareness of the community and society. Students were asked to search for something that they were interested in about the neighborhood community. The students created a short paragraph about their feelings and thoughts toward the community. In addition, the participants answered the pre-questionnaire to show their awareness of social participation toward the school community.
Intervention
Two weeks after the pre-test, the during-writing activities were conducted for about five weeks. The teacher-researcher designed series of writing activities about the participants’ neighborhood community. The designed writing activities followed the steps of the situational writing model by Patton (2004). For each situational
Picture Pre-test of Writing and
Pre-questionnaire
Post-test of writing and Post-questionnaire
Week1
Week9
Week3 Week4 Week5 Week6 Week7
24
writing activity, the teacher-researcher applied these principles to guide students. The steps were as follows. (1) Identify certain writing or editing principle. (2) Give a few examples. (3) Specify a context: when it applies, when it doesn’t apply. (4) Provide a rationale: why it matters (and when it doesn’t). (5) Apply to a list of sentences culled from student papers. (6) Keep it short and focused. For instance, the
teacher-researcher led the students to go to the community and asked them to take some interesting pictures. The teacher-researcher used one of the pictures took by the students to guide the students to create sentences with the whole class. After the discussion, the students gather plenty of sample sentences to have a clearer idea how to compose their own work.
Following the steps of Patton’s situational writing model, the teacher-researcher designed series of writing activities based on the school neighborhood community.
The participants cooperated with each other in groups of five or six with multi-levels.
The details of the five situational writing tasks are described below. Table 2 shows the brief introduction of each of the writing activities.
Table 2
The Introduction of the Series of Writing Activities Schedule Activity Writing
Genre Aim
Week3 Picture Describing Sentences
The participants will be able to create a short paragraph to introduce the
neighborhood community.
Week4 Poster Designing Slogans
The participants will be able to design posters with slogans to keep the environment clean.
Week5 Article Writing Paragraphs
The participants will be able to describe the food and write a short paragraph after they enjoy food in the certain store.
Week6 Dialogue Creating Dialogues
The participants will be able to discuss and create dialogues to show the route from our school to the store they
25
choose. After they finish composing the dialogue, they will use tablets to take videos.
Week7 Interviewing
Questions Sentences Notes
The participants will be able to
interview the owner of the store in order to know the history of the store further.
First, the participants gained general picture of the neighborhood community.
Therefore, in the first writing activity, the students had to go to the community in person and took some photos in groups. The students were asked to use sentences to describe the scenarios and features of the photos. For instance, the students found a beautiful restaurant when they were walking on the streets in this community. They took photos and made sentences based on the photos.
In the second writing activity, besides the simple-sentence making, the
participants were required to use another genre to practice writing under the situations of community. After the students walked around the community, they might spot something that needed to be improved. For example, the students observed that some residents threw trash on the ground and decided to create slogans and design posters to remind other pedestrians to tidy up the environment.
After general understanding of the environment of the neighborhood community, the participants moved on to do surveys on specific aspect of the community. For instance, the students focused on a certain restaurant and introduced its special dishes in short paragraphs. The students went to the restaurant in person and taste the food there. After they finished the dish, they were required to write a short paragraph to describe the taste, the smell, the look, and the reasons why they wanted to introduce the restaurant.
In addition, the participants created a short dialogue to show the direction and
26
location of the restaurant. The students could show their creativity to design interesting dialogues and a short script for a role play. The topic focused on the direction and location of the restaurant. The students also took videos with tablets and showed the videos to the class.
Last, in week 7, the participants had further investigation in the certain store. The students developed questions to interview the restaurant owner. The
teacher-researcher facilitated students with some tips of interviewing others. For instance, “Think what the interviewee would answer and what could be good
follow-up questions”. This was what students had to prepare before the interview. The teacher-researcher also asked the students to show empathy toward the interviewees and to create a comfortable environment. After designing proper interview questions, the students made an appointment with the restaurant owner and had an interview in person. Because the students were in lack of experience of interviewing, they conducted this activity as a group.
Post-test
After the five situational writing activities, the participants were required to write another short paragraph about the community. Asking the participants to write in different topics would be a better way to examine their improvement in writing.
However, because of the tight learning schedule with only five entries, pre- and post-tests were both in the same topic about the community. After finishing the
writing activities and the posttest, the participants shared their work to the whole class.
The content consisted of all the work they had finished during the intervention and some suggestions and feedback given from teachers and other classmates.
After the post-test and the follow-up sharing event, the participants were required to finish the post-questionnaire.
27