This chapter contains a description of the background of the participants, the activity, the procedures, the instruments, and data analysis process.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

This chapter contains a description of the background of the participants, the activity, the procedures, the instruments, and data analysis process.

3.1 Participants

3.1.1 Initial Participants

About 913 learners (639 females and 274 males, respectively) from 34 classes of Freshmen English course participated in the study during the 2004-5 academic year.

The sample was composed of 72% females and 28% males. Each class consists of

25-35 students. 34 classes are from the 21 departments under the six colleges: The

College of Liberal Arts, Education, Technology, Fine and Applied Arts, Science, and

Sports & Recreation. Based on their listening and speaking scores on

GEPT-intermediate level, the upper 25% accounted for the High-level, the lower 25%,

the Low-level, and the rest 50%, the Mid-level. There are 5 High-level classes

conducted by 3 English teachers, 22 Mid-level classes by 16 teachers, and 7 Low-

level classes by 4 teachers during the 2004-5 academic year. Students attend two

hours of English a week (Friday 8:00 to 10:00 or 10:00 to 12:00). Of the participants,

913 students in the first semester and 752 in the second semester completed the

on-line 8-item questionnaire. Information concerning participants’ age, gender, class,

starting and finishing time of using the learning programs and educational background

were collected. Table 3.1 demonstrates the background information of the

participating teachers and students. For detailed information, see Appendix E.

Table 3.1

Background Information of Participating Teachers and Freshmen

Year Fall Spring

Level Class Teacher Students Visits Students Visits

N N N % N % N % N %

High 5 3 172 18.84 2,028 25.68 153 20.35 1,605 26.06 Mid 22 16 527 57.72 3,988 50.49 406 53.99 2,873 46.65 Low 7 4 214 23.44 1,882 23.83 193 25.67 1,680 27.28 Total 34 23 913 100.00 7,898 100.00 752 100.00 6,158 100.00

Table 3.2 displays details about the background information of the focused 151 (17% of the 931 students; 18 males, 12% and 133 females, 88%, respectively) participants. The 151 students are the freshmen who have met the research criteria of having viewed four designated films, Old Movies-Roman Holiday and Little Women and Shakespeare Animation-Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. Most of them (62.49 %) are from the College of Education.

Table 3.2

Background Information of Qualified Freshmen

Departments High Mid Low N %

Human Development and Family Studies 5 5 8 18 11.84

Civil Education and Leadership 1 9 7 17 11.18

Chinese 5 9 2 16 10.53

Education 9 5 1 15 9.87

Geography 5 8 0 13 8.55

Educational Psychology and Counseling 3 10 0 13 8.55

Adult and Continuing Education 2 8 1 11 7.89

Special Education 1 6 2 9 5.92

Health Education 1 2 6 9 5.92

Music 5 2 0 7 4.61

Industrial Education 0 5 1 6 3.95

Fine Arts 1 3 1 5 3.29

Industrial technology education 0 2 1 3 1.97

History 1 2 0 3 1.97

Information & Computer Education 0 1 1 2 1.32

Mechatronic technology 0 1 1 2 1.32

Physical education 0 1 1 2 1.32

For the sake of convenience, the data of the 151 students are listed according to their proficiency levels and the strokes of their Chinese characters of the first names.

That is, S1 to S39 are high-level students, S40 to S118 are mid-level students and S119 to S151 are low-level students.

3.1.2 Interviewees

Those who utilize the center for more than forty times a semester will be rewarded a prize provided by the center. All the learning records are recorded in Freshmen English website database. If students do not log into the system or log in

wrongly, the learning records will not be adopted. Those who meet the criterion of the top ten going to the self-learning center as well as the top ten using Old movies and Shakespeare Animation as learning programs in the first and second semesters are

chosen. Furthermore, among these ten candidates, those who have viewed four designated films are selected. There are six students in total meeting the criteria.

These six focus-group interviewees are 2 from the Departments of Civic Education and Leadership (S131 and S66) and 1 of Education (S99), 2 of Geography (S5 and S17) and 1 of Health Education (S18).

3.2 Activities

This study aims to explore what students think of culture-enriched software and

what they have learned in terms of culture aspects and language skill. “Roman

Holiday”, “Hamlet” and “Romeo & Juliet” in the first semester and “Little Women” in

the second semester are designated films with quizzes for students to appreciate and

do exercise (see Appendices B1 to B4). There are still more than 300 films for students to watch as self-learning.

3.2.1 Types of materials

As autonomous learners have known, with the right approach, any text in the target language can become a source of information about the structure and appropriate usage of that language. In addition, when selecting resources, enjoyment and interest are two important criteria (Ryan, 1997). The chosen culture-related materials at the center are Old Movies and Shakespeare Animation which can manifest both daily life culture and literature. Old Movies series, Roman Holiday and Little Women are rewritten from Classic Literature. They are chosen as the designated films

in the learning schedule. With the requirement of the curriculum, learners in mid-and-low level classes need to watch Shakespeare Animation, because one lesson in the textbooks discusses Shakespeare’s background. Therefore, teachers referred students to particular sections in the Shakespeare Animation software program and assign them as homework, such as revising the plot and acting it out. That is why they need to carefully read and watch simplified Shakespeare Animation.

3.2.2 Schedule for Designated films

The Pu 101 serves as a regularly scheduled CALL Center. There are two

respective schedules in an academic year upon which learners can go for self learning

(see Appendices A-1 and A-2). The schedule of the designated films can be seen in

Table 3.3. After seeing each film, students are requested to fill out an on-line

questionnaire and quizzes as well (see Appendices B-1, B-2, B-3, and B-4). For those

selected six focused-group students, they are interviewed after the year-long project.

Table 3.3

Schedules of the Designated Films for the First and Second Semester

3.3 Procedures

In the fourth year of the project “Construction and Implementation of College English Language Curriculum”, the Multimedia Resource Center for Language Teaching and Learning at National Taiwan Normal University added Old Movies and Shakespeare Animation into existent language learning programs. Four films of these

two content-based culture-oriented language programs are chosen to be included in the syllabi, that is, Roman Holiday, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet and Little Women. The researcher aimed to find out what students think they have learned from viewing films in terms of language and cultural aspects. In addition to having recreational effect, there is also learning effect when viewing this kind of movies.

Freshmen are encouraged to visit the CALL center at least for forty minutes once a week. They need to do the exercises given to them after viewing assigned films. The assistant guides the students to other films by giving them a list of the classic films. At the beginning of each session, learners need to log in on the site and at the end of each session, they also need to log in to fill in an on-line version questionnaire and to reflect what they have learned. The computer system will keep the record of the learning progress for the learners.

1

semester

5 10/18-10/22 Lesson3 Shakespeare animated tales-Hamlet

6 10/25-10/29 Lesson4 Shakespeare animated tales-Romeo & Juliet 12 12/6-12/10 Lesson8 Old movie- Roman Holiday

13 12/13-12/17 Lesson8 Old movie- Roman Holiday 2

semester

11 5/2-5/6 Lesson7 Old Movies-Little Women

12 5/9-5/13 Lesson7 Old Movies-Little Women

3.3.1 Instructional Design of the Project

This research of culture and language learning is the analysis of the fourth year, that is, the 93

school year. It was the third sub-project named “The use of the Multimedia Resource Center for Language Teaching and Learning.” The fourth year is an evaluation stage. Based on the previous two years’ data, participating students’

learning records are investigated as a follow-up survey to better understand what they have learned from the learning programs offtered at the Center.

Teachers agree that students need to go to the self-learning center at least once a week to develop learner autonomy. Students’ learning records at the center are provided by a full-time assistant for teachers to grade students’ language learning each semester. The learning records include ID number, names, teachers, learning programs, and evaluation scores given to each program after use, and time for beginning and leaving. This information can let teachers know their own students’

self-learning situation. And the evaluation survey helps the Center staff know how students think of learning programs. It can determine to what extent and how software programs are integrated into Freshmen English curriculum.

3.3.2 Interaction of the Center and Freshmen English Curriculum

With the benefit of teaching service provided by the center for the participating

classes, the participants came from almost all departments. They have their own

textbooks and schedule in accordance with different levels. The software at the center

is positioned as auxiliary materials. At the beginning of the semester, teachers are

notified with all the learning programs and encouraged to make better use of the

center to conduct their class, which indirectly can make students understand the

importance of the center for English learning. Technology Workshops for teachers are

also promoted in order to make teachers know the latest software and its operation.

Students participating in the present study were enrolled in first and second semester English classes at National Taiwan Normal University. TELL implementation for the first semester course occurred in the summer semester of 2003 and continued throughout the fall semester. TELL implementation for the second semester courses begin in the spring of 2004. In all, 34 sections of courses were offered. In order to encourage students to make better use of the Center, 10% of Freshmen English course grade will be credited based on students’ learning records at the self-learning center.

Students used their own time to use that software and were awarded 10% of credits for them. Each time they finished using a program, they were also requested to fill out an on-line version questionnaire.

This study especially analyzed participating students’ culture learning from their on-line survey as well as interviews. With these students’ perceptions, the center can refer to in order to improve in the next year.

3.4 Research Instruments

Two types of instruments were used in the study: one on-line questionnaire and focused interviews. An eight-item survey (See Appendix C) was designed to elicit learners’ views on main aspects: how the students think about the learning activities, learning methods, learning materials provided and done at the self-learning center and for knowing whether they improved their language and culture skills. The semi-structured interview (see Appendix D) was designed to elicit interviewees’

opinions of the film-based learning programs about culture and language. First, an on-line questionnaire was designed to investigate students’ individualized learning.

Vivid linguistic context and the process of learning are recorded at the Pu 101, the

CALL self-learning center. Besides the on-line questionnaire, focused interviews were

designed for the study.

Two research questions were proposed. The data from the on-line questionnaire questions 1 to 7 and some data from Question 8 of the on-line questionnaire were used to answer the research question 1 (What are the students’ perceptions of culture-related software offered at a CALL center? Furthermore, do students of different proficiency levels perceive it differently?). The other data from Question 8 of the on-line questionniare were used to answer the research questions 2 (What are the students’ reactions to language learning in the process of viewing films in terms of language skills and culture at the center?) in order to investigate some factors influencing their use. Finally, the data from the interviews were used to answer both the research questions 1 and 2.

3.5 Data Analysis

At the analytic stage, it is important to find when and how to integrate technology into teaching appropriately by investigating the instructional setting, including the analysis of learners’ behaviors and of content. The former means the analysis of general characteristics of learners, learning attitudes, styles toward English.

Those who had viewed the four films (i.e., Rome Holiday, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet and Little Women) are chosen as the valid sample for analysis.

The analysis of content mainly comes from the feedback of the 8

item for each

film according to three main aspects: Culture learning, Language skill learning and

Opinion. Based on the literature reviewed, culture learning has three main

subcategories, level 1-factutal knowledge, level 2- description, explanation of

experiences or phenomenon, and level 3-cultural identity or empathy. And for the skill

learning, such as vocabulary, pronunciation, accent, grammar, listening, expression,

conversation, reading and the like are coded thematically. Besides, when

distinguishing the three proficiency levels (i.e., Low, Mid, and High), the order of

three aspects (i.e., Culture learning, Language skill learning, and Opinion) needs to be arranged.

3.5.1 The On-line Questionnaire

The on-line questionnaire adopted a two-pronged approach, including both a 5-likert scale answer option as well as space for on open-ended response. Students need to complete the on-line questionnaire each time after they use learning programs, or their learning record won’t be recorded. The advantages of closed-ended response is readily quantified and easily analyzed, and the advantages of open-ended response is to provide more useful and insightful data (Nunun, 1992, cited by Stapleton, 2000, p. 294). The following are the 8 questions in the study, and for the process of collecting the students’ responses, see Appendix C.

1. In general, I like this learning program.

2. I think this learning program is well designed.

3. The content of this learning program is difficult for me.

4. I think the content of this learning program is practical.

5. The operation of this learning program is complicated to me.

6. This learning program can improve my English very much.

7. I will use this learning program again.

8. What have I learned?

The seven closed items of this questionnaire were developed for examining how the students think about the learning activities, learning methods, learning materials provided and done at the self-learning center and for knowing whether they improved their language skills. Each of which was rated from 1 to 5 on a Likert scale (5=Strongly Agree, 4= Agree, 3=Mederate, 2=Disagree, and 1=Strongly Disagree).

The Microsoft Excel Program was used to analyze the answers to the closed questions.

The analysis was performed mainly by studying average points given. The open

question inquires what they learn from this learning approach in terms of language and culture. The answers to the open questions were studied for their content. All the answers were examined, classified with frequency and thematic coding and further grouped into the aforementioned three categories.

3.5.2 Focused Interviews

The researcher conducted semi-structure focused interviews with the six chosen participants to gather their reflections on viewing films. The development of their language learning and culture learning was researched by a qualitative analysis. In order to facilitate their presentation of ideas, the interviews were conducted in Chinese (see Appendix D) and face to face with one participant at a time. The results were then transcribed and analyzed in English. The time period is from October, 2005 to January, 2006. Each interview lasted for at least one hour.

Table 3.4

The Background Information of the Six Interviewees

No. Level Gender Department Interview Date

S131 Low F Civic Education and Leadership 10/10, 2005

S17 High F Geography 12/02, 2005

S66 Mid F Civic Education and Leadership 12/02, 2005

S99 Mid F Education 01/04, 2006

S18 High F Health Education 01/16, 2006

S5 High F Geography 01/19, 2006

The six interviewees are all females. There are three High-level students, two

Mid-level students, and one Low-level student. Two of them major in Geography, two

major in Civic Education and Leadership, one majors in Health Education and the

other one majors in Education. Since Department of Geography is under College of

Liberal Arts, and Departments of Health Education, Education and Civic Education

and Leadership are under College of Education, it can be seen that the approach of

learning English through viewing films can appeal to more students from these two

Colleges (see also Appendix F).