Word Count

The total word count of their pretest and six story writings were presented in Table 4.1 to see whether the use of wordless picture books helped the participants to

produce a longer writing. The participants are coded by the first letter of their names as in other data analyses in the following study.

Table 4.1. The Length and Mean of the Pretest and the Six Story Writings

A B C D E H K V W Mean

Pretest 90 43 66 75 76 95 42 37 52 64

Writing 1 281 254 218 339 294 257 352 205 160 262.22

Writing 2 319 263 212 318 215 264 294 235 171 254.55

Writing 3 291 253 285 393 214 225 281 251 229 269.22

Writing 4 192 221 272 463 258 228 261 259 215 263.22

Writing 5 289 222 248 284 237 237 278 295 194 253.77

Writing 6 265 257 302 539 285 272 229 440 268 317.44

In Table 4.1, the results showed that the participants wrote a much longer story with the use of the wordless picture books. Before the implementation of the program, the mean score of their story word count was only 64. The participants generally produced very short story writings. However, the average length of their first story writings significantly increased by 198.22 words (Pretest: 64; Story 1: 262.22) right after the first four sessions. This number roughly sustained from the second story writings to the fifth. Besides, the mean score of the word count in their sixth story writings reached the highest of 317.44 words, which was amazingly long especially for Taiwanese young EFL learners with little writing experience compared to the English composition test in the College Entrance Exam in Taiwan, which generally requires a writing containing 120 to 150 words. Averagely speaking, the participants

were able to produce story writings four to five times longer than the pretest.

4.1.1.1.2 Content Development

The adapted “”ESL Composition Profile” (Jacobs et al, 1981) was used to examine the depth of the participants’ content development in the pretest and the six story writings in terms of the level of inclusion of the information, knowledge, elaboration,

and personal opinions. (See Appendix F)

In Table 4.2, it is shown that the content of the participants’ story writing in the pretest was generally graded as fair to poor or very poor. That means before the writing program they were only able to produce a story of very limited knowledge of the topic or even too little to evaluate. However, in their first story writing, the content of their story writing was generally graded as good to average or fair to poor, which means that all of them were able to produce adequate or some information of the topic. Interestingly, it was found that all of the participants improved their content by one level in the first story writing. This improvement continued throughout the whole writing program. In their fourth story writing, the content levels of all the participants were graded as good to average till the end of the program. This means that at the end of the writing program, the participants were able to provide an adequate content development, more substantive knowledge and elaboration of the topic or even express personal opinions in their story writings.

Table 4.2. The Distribution of the Levels of Content in the Story Writings writing with very poor content. Although some were able to establish a topic, they only included very little knowledge, elaboration or opinions pertinent to the topic or there was not enough information to evaluate as shown in the excerpt below by

Vincent.

Today is a Danny elephant and Judy elephant 生 the there Qut Sun. The flan elephant、ox、ches man ator go to the 慶祝 . 有的帶 cake、fleser、pear 每個人都 play Va R happy. At night the man atmor is go to my 自己的 home. (Vincent, pretest)

In the first story writing with the use of the wordless picture book, the participants, Vincent included, began to give more information about the topic. However as can be seen in the following excerpt, the development of the topic was still limited and lack

of details. In addition, elaboration on the setting and the action or personal opinions

on the occurring events were still rarely included at the stage.

Once upon a time, there a bear in the Forest. One day The bear sees a old house and go in. The bear sees three chair and three bowl. And eats the Father’s and Mother’s soup. It’s to salty. So he eats the girl soup, oh! It’s Yummy. The bear is full, and sit on father’s and mother’s chair, It’s to big…. Soon the family go home and the bear hides in baby’s bed.... And the bear run away. And tells his father there is a very big house. But there is a ghost in the house. He doesn’t want to come back to the house again. (Vincent, first story writing)

Gradually with more experience of writing about the wordless picture books, the participants were more able to produce story writings with richer content as shown in the third writing sample from Vincent’s sixth story writing (See Appendix J). In the story, the topic of the story was clearly established and fully developed. The actions were closely described in detail. The causal relations between events were clearly stated with the use of conjunctions like because or so. Also, the participants gave a more detailed description of the setting, actions and feelings of the characters.

Moreover, the twists between events and changes in emotional reactions were more

vividly articulated to the readers.

In addition, the participants were also aware of the benefit of the use of wordless picture books on their content development. As illustrated in the following excerpts, the participants self-reported that the wordless picture books contained a set of pictures that conveyed more information for them to decode and interpret.

W: For example, when I wrote a story, the pictures in the wordless picture books

help me add some content or gave me some ideas so that I could write a story based on the book.

﹝就是例如當我寫的時候，無字書裡面有些圖片可以幫助我加一些內容，或 是給我一些想法，讓我去寫出那一本故事。﹞

R: So you mean that the wordless picture books provide you with the content of the story?

﹝所以你意思是無字書可以提供你更多故事內容嗎？﹞

W: Yes. (Winnie, third interview)

﹝對。﹞

Compared to one single picture, they believed that wordless picture books that included plenty of pictures helped more with their content writing, since the former often included very limited information as indicated by Hank “Because only one single picture is boring.” On the contrary, the participants claimed that the pictures in the wordless picture books contained a more complete storyline and were drawn in greater details, which guided them to write a story of a richer content as illustrated by Emma, saying “It’s more complete. The pictures are drawn in more details.” and she also affirmed that the pictures in the wordless picture books helped with the

enrichment of the content.

In summary, the participants were convinced that the multiple visual prompts in the wordless picture books enabled them to come up with more ideas relevant to the topic. Besides, the pictures which contained a more complete storyline and greater details also guided them to write a more complete story of richer information and elaboration.

4.1.1.1.3 Creativity

In the present study, the demonstration of the participants’ creativity in their

writing was also examined in terms of writing the story from various perspectives,

adding fantasy, creating alternative endings, or making text-to-text connection.

The use of wordless picture books was found to stimulate the participants’

creativity and inventiveness to logically connect the whole story more than one single picture. Before the use of wordless picture books for writing, most of the participants only plainly described what the picture was like without adding imagination or

creative ideas while narrating the story as illustrated in the following excerpt.

The three years ago. The elephant family live in the forest. They have a beautiful trees, house, and flowers. One day, they have a party, any anlmose is went to 參 加party. (Hank, pretest)

However, it could be observed that the participants started to take different

perspectives in writing about the wordless picture books after the implementation of the writing program. For example, they began to show their creativity in the logical connection between the starter event and the whole story. As shown in the following excerpt, Hank, like many of the other participants, put inventiveness into the starter event by describing the zookeeper as a man who loved animals and secretly helped them, and then logically connected to the following actions taken and the whole story

plot, which also made the story personal and unique.

A long time ago, a zookeeper liked animals. His name was Joe. And a gorilla was smart and naughty. His name was Jack. Joe liked animals. When he saw

animals in the cage, he was sad. So he lets the Jack took his key chain. And Jack could help the other animals out of the cage. (Hank, second story writing)

Furthermore, the participants tended to pay more attention to details in the pictures and then came up with their ingenious ideas based on them. As illustrated in the first excerpt below, Vincent described the clock as magical rather than ordinary to add an element of magic into the story and also logically explained why many magical things would happen in the story. Similarly, in the second excerpt Emma carefully noticed a photo of a boy in the pictures. She then creatively decided to make the boy in the photo to be the main character’s dead brother, which reasonably explained why the

boy was eager to have a friend and why the story had a sad and touching atmosphere.

At Tuesday night, is in England. There is a big magical clock in the city. Every Tuesday the clock has magical power. (Vincent, fifth story writing)

I’m a cute lonely boy. I have a brother. But he is dead. One snowy morning I wake up and I see it’s snowy outside. I put on my clothes and run outside. I make a snowman and ……I think, “If the snowman is my brother, I don’t lonely.” (Emma, sixth story writing)

Apart from that, the participants’ creativity in writing was also manifested in writing from various points of view. Originally, all of them wrote the story from the third person perspective before the writing program. However, they began to adopt the first person point of view with the use of wordless picture books for writing as

shown below.

I am a little boy. I live in a small house. I am handsome and smart. But no one told me because I had no friends. One weekend in the winter, I got up and saw it’s snowy outside. I decided to make a snowman to be my friend. (Hank, sixth

story writing)

Secondly, some of the participants also made the story into a fantasy by creating an unusual setting or including supernatural figures in the story. As illustrated in the first excerpt below, Angel set the setting of the story in a dream which the main character did not find out until the end of the story. While in the second excerpt, Vincent added

one supernatural figure into the story to make the story even more unreal.

One winter morning in a boy’s dream....The boy is sad because the snowman melts into water. Suddenly, he opens his eyes find it’s a dream. But he not forgets the dream. (Angel, sixth story writing)

Then god sees my sun work hard to make a snowman, so gods makes snowman move. (Vincent, sixth story writing)

Thirdly, it was also found that many of the participants started to come up with an alternative ending of the story, which made the story different from the original

storybook and other participants’ writings.

On Tuesday night at 9:00 pm. In the forest by the pond. There are frogs. They makes magical rugs, thinking at night fly. The clock strikes nine. They fly to a small city....Next Tuesday something strange happens again. At 8:00 pm. Some frogs makes magical chairs. (Winnie, fifth story writing)

Last but not least, they were observed to make text-to-text connections while writing about the wordless picture books. In the excerpt below, it could be found that Claire borrowed the creativeness from the fifth wordless picture book and put it into the sixth story writing by writing that Wednesday was a magical day as the magical Tuesday in the fifth book.

Once upon a time, there is a magical city. And there is a magical thing on

Wednesday. Today is a magical day, and it’s winter morning. (Claire, sixth story writing)

The participants took advantage of these wordless picture books to extract creative ideas from their story writings. They were aware that they could add their own imagination and creativity to make them unique and personal due to the lack of words in the books as indicated by Emma “I can use my imagination to make it different,”﹝我可以自己想像，會和別人不一樣。﹞and by Kevin “ I can create a story of my own. ”﹝可以創造自己的故事。﹞

In the following excerpt, Angel elaborated on the effect of the wordless picture books on the creativity in writing. She claimed that since the wordless picture books contained no words, the writers had the freedom to create the story based on their own

imagination and inventiveness, which also gave them a sense of authorship.

A: Because they only contain pictures, without words. So you don’t have to follow the original story. You can create one of your own.

﹝因為無字書只有圖啊，沒有字，所以你不用都照原本的故事，可以自己想 一個新的。﹞

R; So, do you mean that besides describing the pictures, you can also add your own ideas into the story?

﹝所以，你覺得寫無字書除了描述圖片之外，還可以加自己的想法？﹞

A: Yes. I can use my imagination.

﹝恩，可以加入自己的想像。﹞

In conclusion, the nature of these wordless picture books allowed the participants to fill the story with their own ideas. This encouraged the participants to demonstrate their inventiveness and originality while writing a story. They generated creative ideas from the details, logically weaved these ideas into the story, changed the original story

endings, told the story from various perspectives, and also accumulated these creative ideas for future writing materials.

4.1.1.2 Discussion

The results indicate that the participants wrote longer stories with richer content in terms of both quantity and quantity after implementing the wordless picture book writing program. The information conveyed through their writing, both in length and richness, was greatly improved. They were able to produce a story writing of around 250 to 300 words containing adequate development and elaboration of the topic.

Besides, they were able to personalize the story writings by adding creativity into

them.

In the present study, the participants’ story content improves with the aid of the wordless picture books as visual prompts. Similar findings are found in Chiang’s (2003) study, students have a tendency to write a longer story with richer content with the aid of the visual prompts and their creativity is encouraged during reading and writing about the pictures. Similarly, Hugh, Nurss, and Wood (1987) stated that “Busy pictures and wordless picture books are helpful visual props and idea prompts for encouraging use of language. But best of all is encouraging to invent their own original stories (p. 12).” With only one single picture, the participants are more likely

to generate limited ideas of it. However, with more picture provided, it is more likely that they are guided to produce a story of more elaboration and greater details. In addition to that, most of the participants claimed that they were better at interpreting the pictures or familiar with reading a wordless picture book at the end of the writing program, which means that they can generate more ideas from reading the pictures,

thus contributing to a more substantive content.

Moreover, the use of wordless picture books has been widely advocated to enhance learner’s creativity (Carter, Holland, Mladic, Sarbiewski, & Sebastian, 1998; Cassady, 1998; D’Angelo, 1979; Henry, 2003; Ho, 2008; Huang, 2009; Reese, 1996; Salminen, 1998; Whalen, 1994; Williams, 1994). These books, which contain a set of pictures without words, create a desire in the students to fill in their ideas and creativity.

Instead of simply describing the pictures accordingly, they have the responsibility and authority to utilize these books to create the content of the story of their own.

Moreover, since there are no words in these books, it creates a safe and friendly environment for young beginning writers to practice generating creative ideas and

then putting them into their writings with the use of wordless picture books freely.

To sum up, the use of wordless picture books enhances students’ content writing not only in length but also in depth. While writing about wordless picture books, students not only write more, but they also generate more substantive information

from the multiple pictures, elaborate on the greater details portrayed in these pictures and use their inventiveness in creating the story writings, which all contributes to the enhancement in content.

4.1.2 Organization

This category focuses on the participants’ ability to organize the ideas in a logical and cohesive manner, clearly and fully support the ideas, express the ideas fluently and demonstrate a sense of audience in writing.

4.1.2.1 Result

Table 4.3 shows the distribution of the levels of organization in the pretest and the

six story writings of the participants.

The result in Table 4.3 indicates that in the pretest most of the participants’ story writings failed to contain a good organization. The ideas were confused, disconnected or lacked logical sequencing. However, their organization improved significantly in their first story writing by one to two levels. In the later half of the writing program, the participants became more able to produce a story with a better organization.

Table 4.3. The Distribution of the Levels of Organization in the Story Writings Levels Excellent to

Very Good Good to

Average Fair to Poor Very Poor

Pretest A. D. E. H. K. B. C. V. W

In the pretest, the participants’ writings contained a very poor organization. Similar to many other participants, Claire was only able to produce a story writing with poor organization in the beginning as indicated in the following excerpt. There were no main ideas presented; thus, there was no logical sequencing or development of the occurring events. She simply wrote by translating the unorganized and non-cohesive

utterances from L1.

Elephant quen briersday, elephant cow ……, walk elephant quen big house, elephant quen very buetful, He very Love 生 氣 and no love taking a shor, student elephant no love elephant quen, elephant quen have three elephant babys, elephant babys mothr very 可愛 大家 love her, She is homwmaker and very fat and short, father and mother big house 城堡 very 高上, she averday

Elephant quen briersday, elephant cow ……, walk elephant quen big house, elephant quen very buetful, He very Love 生 氣 and no love taking a shor, student elephant no love elephant quen, elephant quen have three elephant babys, elephant babys mothr very 可愛 大家 love her, She is homwmaker and very fat and short, father and mother big house 城堡 very 高上, she averday

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