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
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.
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.
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.
2Then the teacher
demonstrated graphing of story grammar elements in the selected story. Table 1
2