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Chapter Three Methodology

The study includes both qualitative and quantitative research to investigate the

effects of story-mapping instruction on picture writing. In this chapter, the researcher

first presents the background information of the participants, along with the research

instruments, including the ESL Version of Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test,

questionnaires and interviews. The raters and training session, the treatment, teaching

procedures of the present study, and data analysis are also presented. The main parts

of methodology are as follows.

3.1 Participants

The participants in the study were 76 sophomores, consisting of 53 female and 23

male students, in Ping-Jeng Senior High School in Taoyuan County. Originally, there

were 85 participants, with 42 in Class 303 and 43 in Class 304. Nine of them failed to

take part in the whole experiment; thus, the total number of the participants was 76.

These participants were social sciences majors between 16 and 17 years of age. They

have 6 English classes per week, including 2 hours of writing classes. The majority of

them had received 4 years of formal English instruction, inclusive of three years in

junior high school and one year in senior high school. Prior to participating in the

present study, none of them had been exposed to any type of story-mapping

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instruction.

3.2 Study Design

The study was originally planned to have a control group (Class 303) and an

experimental group (Class 304) for the purpose of making a comparison between the

improvement of the two groups. However, it turned out that this design did not work

out. The two classes were at the next door. If they shared the handouts or discussed

what they had learned in class, the results of the study might not be reliable. As a

result, the researcher decided to compare the performance of the pretest and posttest

of all the 76 participants. To compensate the limitation of having no control group, the

researcher did qualitative research to support the results of the quantitative research.

3.3 Instruments

The instruments applied in the present study were comprised of the Daly-Miller

Writing Apprehension Test of ESL Version, questionnaires and interviews by the

researcher on attitude toward story-mapping instruction and writing. Daly-Miller

Writing Apprehension Test of ESL Version was applied to investigate if there was any

change in the participants’ degrees of writing apprehension pretest and posttest. The

final questionnaire and interviews collected at the end of the study were to elicit the

participants’ opinions on the story mapping instruction.

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3.3.1 The Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test of ESL Version

The Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test of ESL Version was employed to

rate the participants’ apprehension of writing. Daly and Miller’s second revision of

their Writing Apprehension Scale had an internal consistency and test-retest reliability

coefficients of greater than .90 (See Appendix A & B).

3.3.2 The Questionnaire and Interviews

The questionnaire and interviews on the attitude toward story-mapping

instruction and writing were employed to elicit more opinions of the participants over

the issue. There were two parts to the questionnaire. The first part included 9 items on

the Likert-type scale, ranging from “strongly agree,” “agree,” “neutral,” ”disagree,”

to ”strongly disagree.” The other part consisted of 6 open-ended questions (See

Appendix C).

3.4 Treatment

The story-mapping instruction in the study was made up of four components:

introduction of the story grammar and mapping, modeling, story-mapping cloze test,

and story writing. The components of the instruction echoed Harris and Graham

(1992), who held that only when the students were familiar with all the story grammar

units could they compose a well-constructed story. The following are the details of the

treatment.

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3.4.1 Introduction of Story Mapping

During the phase, the teacher and students discussed the common story elements,

the goal of story grammar strategy instruction, and how inclusion and expansion of

story grammar elements could improve a story. The teacher outlined and explained the

instructional procedures, strategy steps, and the story grammar mnemonic. This gave

the students a simple description or definition of the story-mapping strategy and how

acquiring it would help them become better story writers.

3.4.2 Modeling

In the modeling phase, the teacher showed the participants how to do story

mapping from one of the selected stories, i.e., The Last Leaf . The teacher explained

and identified story grammars in the selected story. Elements of Harris & Graham’s

(1992) Story Rating Scale were used as the basis for modifying a story-mapping guide

as a tool for teaching the text structure associated with the story form (See Appendix

D). The story elements used in the study included (1) character(s), (2) locale, (3) time,

(4) starter, (5) goal, (6) action(s), (7) ending, and (8) reaction.

2

Then the teacher

demonstrated graphing of story grammar elements in the selected story. Table 1

2

It is difficult to find stories which met the demands of the story grammar perfectly. Many of the

modern short stories and novels do not include the basic story grammar or their story grammar units

randomly set, especially the genre of stream of consciousness. Bukowiecki & McMackin. (1999)

pointed out that only a limited set of short, simple stories, such as those derived from a fairy tale or

folktale tradition, followed the traditional story grammar format. Therefore, we found that the process

of applying the traditional story grammar structure to a wide variety of narratives may be questionable.

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summaries the length, readability and sources of the selected articles. The selected

stories were chosen based on consideration of the story structure, readability level,

and length suitable for the participants and the story-mapping instruction. The

selected texts included the simplified version of The Last Leaf by O’Henry, the

simplified version of The Phantom of the Opera in the Sunming textbook, The

Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber and Just a Taxi Ride in the Lungtung

textbook. The story maps of selected articles are in Appendix E. The readability of the

selected articles was a little low for senior high school students since the researcher

would like the participants to find out the story elements in the selected articles. If the

readability was too high for them, it would take them more time to comprehend than

to analyze the stories. The following is the length and readability level of the selected

articles.

Table 1

Summary of Length and Readability of Selected Articles for Story-mapping Instruction

Selected Articles Length Readability Source

The Last Leaf 688 3.0 American Writers & Their Works

The Phantom of the Opera 426 4.5 Sanming Textbook

The Unicorn in the Garden 536 4.7 http://btflatt.tripod.com/stories/thu rb1.htm

Just a Taxi Ride 703 5.4 Lungteng Textbook

(6)

3.4.3 Story-Mapping Cloze Test

The students identified and discussed with the teacher about the story grammar

elements in each story and did story mapping for each selected story. The process of

reading and completing a story map lasted for an hour.

3.4.4 Story Writing

During this phase, the teacher investigated how well students could transfer the

knowledge of story-mapping strategy to their story writing.

For one hour of the writing course, the students were given a set of sequential

pictures (See Appendix F) and a blank form of story map (See Appendix G). The

students were asked to finish the story map based on the given sequential pictures.

Then, they wrote their stories according to the map. In the next writing class, the

teacher gave the students feedbacks on their writing and showed them samples of

good writing done in this writing assignment, including both well-constructed and

poorly-constructed stories. The teacher would also explain why some stories were

better than others, hoping that the students could learn from their peers and compose

better stories.

3.5 Procedure of the Study

Table 2 summaries the procedure of the study. The study lasted for 10 weeks,

proceeding in the following steps:

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Step 1: Writing Apprehension Questionnaire

At the beginning of the experiment, all the participants took the Daly-Miller

Writing Apprehension Test of ESL Version, which contained 26 items on

writing apprehension. The test took about 15 minutes.

Step 2: Pretest

The pretest was conducted prior to the treatment. All the participants were

asked to write a story based on the three given pictures. The pretest took about

one hour.

Step 3: Story-Mapping Instruction

The participants received the story-mapping instruction two hours a week,

with one hour of the teacher’s modeling and one hour of the students’ practice.

The whole instruction lasted for four weeks.

Step 4: Posttest

The posttest was conducted after the whole treatment. The participants were

informed that the purpose of the test was to measure the effects of the

instruction. The posttest took about one hour.

Step 5: Writing Apprehension Questionnaire and Questionnaire on the

Responses

Writing Apprehension Questionnaire was conducted again after the treatment

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in order to compare the change of the participants’ writing anxiety. Another

questionnaire was also conducted after the posttest to elicit the participants’

responses to the story-mapping instruction. The questionnaires took about 15

minutes respectively.

Step 6: Interview

The researcher interviewed certain participants who had specific response to

the open-ended questions to elicit more responses of the participants to the

story-mapping instruction.

Step 7: Data Analysis

All the data from the tests, questionnaires and interviews were collected to be

analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. (See in 3.6)

Table 2

Summary of the Procedure of the Study Week Procedure

Week 1 (15mins) All the participants responded to SLWAT

Week 2 (1hr) All the participants did a piece of picture writing as the pretest.

Week3-6 (8hrs) All the participants underwent story-mapping instruction, practiced story-mapping skills, and did a piece of picture writing two hours per week.

(1hr for instruction and 1 hr for picture-writing) Week 3: The Last Leaf

Week 4: The Phantom of the Opera

Week 5: The Unicorn in the Garden

Week 6: Just a Taxi Ride

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Week 7 (1hr) All the participants did a piece of picture writing in the posttest.

Week 8 (30mins) All the participants responded to the SLWAT (15mins) and a questionnaire about the story mapping instruction (15mins).

Week 9-10 The researcher interviewed the participants to elicit more responses to the story-mapping instruction.

3.6 Data Analysis

The data collected were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

3.6.1 Quantitative Analysis

A quantitative analysis was computed applying the SPSS statistic package for

Windows 12.0. A t-test was applied to the SLWAT to investigate if there were any

significant differences that occurred in the participants’ English writing apprehension

in the pretest and posttest. The answers to Items 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 16, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25,

26, were given 5 points for “strongly agree,” 4 point for “agree,” 3 points for

“neutral,” 2 points for “disagree,” and 1 point for “ strongly disagree.” On the other

hand, the answers to Items 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 23, were given 1

point for “strongly agree,” 2 point for “agree,” 3 points for “neutral,” 4 points for

“disagree,” and 5 points for “ strongly disagree.” Additionally, a t-test was applied to

compute the number of words of pretest and posttest to see if the participants

composed longer narratives.

The data collected to examine the effects of story mapping instruction included

(10)

performance in the pretest and posttest. A t-test was used to compare and analyzed the

results of the research.

The criteria of the story elements in the present study were based on the story

elements in the Story Elements Rating Scale by Harris and Graham (1992), with a

slight modification. The story elements consisted of eight units, inclusive of main

character(s), locale, time, starter event, goal, action(s), ending, and reaction. The total

score was 19, with 0 to 3 in characters, 0-2 in locale, time, starter event, goal, ending

and reaction, and 0-4 in actions, respectively. If the students wanted to get higher

scores, they had to elaborate on the item by providing more than one fact or detail, or

by discussing it at length (See Appendix D).

Additionally, the JCEE Rating Scale by Chen et al. (1992) was slightly modified

to be the criteria of the writing performance. The measured components included

content (5 points), organization (5 points), grammar (4 points), vocabulary (4 points),

and mechanics (2 points). The total score of each composition is 20 points (See

Appendix H).

The scoring sheet of the story grammar unit and writing performance can be seen

in Appendix I.

An acceptable significant level was set at .05 (*) and .01 (**) for all the

above-mentioned data analysis.

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Finally, the percentage of the participants’ answers to each item on the

questionnaire was presented to show the participants’ opinions and attitude toward the

story mapping instruction.

3.6.2 Qualitative Analysis

Based on the participants’ answers to 6 open-ended questions on the

questionnaire and their feedback in the interview regarding the attitude toward

story-mapping instruction and writing, a descriptive analysis was employed to elicit

more opinions of the participants over the issue. (See Appendix C)

3.7 Raters and the Training Session

Two types of raters were involved in the present research, the raters for the story

elements and the raters for the performance of the compositions. First, the raters

responsible for the writing performance of the participants’ compositions were Huang

Chiu-Yu (Rater 1), the researcher, and Huang Huei-Jeng (Rater 2), the colleague of

the researcher. Huang Huei-Jeng, an English teacher with 16 years of teaching

experience, had adequate experience of rating English compositions and was familiar

with the standards of the writing proficiency test. Second, the raters for the story

elements were Huang Chiu-Yu (Rater 1), the researcher, and Lu Li-Shu (Rater 3), a

colleague of the researcher. They were both English teachers with 15 years of English

teaching experience, had the same major in the same college and graduate school, and

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were conducting researches related to the mapping field. Therefore, both of them had

a clear concept of story mapping and were familiar with the criteria for assessing a

story.

Before the raters began to rate the participants’ writing, a training session was

held to ensure the reliability in the raters. They were informed to evaluate the

subjects’ picture writing and the rating scales were provided. The raters of the story

grammar studied, identified, and discussed the content of the Story Elements Rating

Scale and the raters of the writing proficiency the JCEE Rating Scale so that the raters

all agreed on the standard of grading. The scoring sheet of story grammar units and

writing performance can be found in Appendix I.

To avoid bias, the researcher coded each pretest and posttest composition and

made the evaluation blind. During the rating procedure, each composition was scored

for story elements twice, with different raters respectively. If the score differed up to

more than 3 points, the raters would discuss on the difference and give an agreeable

score.

Two Spearman rank order correlation rho tests were applied to test if the raters

reached inter-reliability in the pretest and the posttest. Table 3, 4, 5, and 6 revealed the

results of the inter-reliability in the pretest and posttest. The correlation was

significant (p<.01) in the story grammar and writing performance tests.

(13)

Table 3 Inter-reliability of Writing Performance on Pretest (N=76)

Rater 1 Rater 2 Spearman rho Rater 1 Correlation Coefficient

Sig. (2-tailed)

1.00 .94**

.00

Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01, M=Mean, SD=Standard Deviation

Table 4 Inter-reliability of Writing Performance on Posttest (N=76)

Rater 1 Rater 2 Spearman rho Rater 1 Correlation Coefficient

Sig. (2-tailed)

1.00 .96**

.00

Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01, M=Mean, SD=Standard Deviation

Table 5 Inter-reliability of Story Grammar on Pretest (N=76)

Rater 1 Rater 3 Spearman rho Rater 1 Correlation Coefficient

Sig. (2-tailed)

1.00 .91**

.00

Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01, M=Mean, SD=Standard Deviation

Table 6 Inter-reliability of Story Grammar on Posttest (N=76)

Rater 1 Rater 3 Spearman rho Rater 1 Correlation Coefficient

Sig. (2-tailed)

1.00 .94**

.00

Note. * p<.05, ** p<.01, M=Mean, SD=Standard Deviation

3.8 Summary

In this chapter, the methodology of the study were presented, including the

background information of the participants, study design, research instruments which

consisted of the Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test of ESL Version,

(14)

Additionally, the details of the statistic analysis and procedure were thoroughly

described in order to explore the effects of story mapping on picture writing.

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