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CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

This chapter aims to present a detailed design of the study. The first part

introduces the background of the participants. The project design of the cross-cultural e-mail exchange project is described in the second part. The third part deals with the methods used to collect the data. The methods of data analysis are included in the last section.

3.1 Subjects

78 non-native English speakers from two schools -Chun Shan Senior High School (CSHS) in Taiwan and Prezentki School (PS) in Poland.

(http://www.prezentek.edu.pl/) - participated in this e-mail exchange project.

Taiwanese participants

CSHS students (N=39) were in their second grade (11

th

grade) from the same class, including 11 males and 28 females.

In Taiwan, before admitted to senior high schools, junior high school students are required to take the Basic Competency Test, in which English is included.

Basically, senior high schools in Taiwan are ranked based on the admission grades.

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CSHS is ranked as the 6

th

among the 14 public senior high schools in Kaohsiung city in southern Taiwan. Thus, compared to other students in the same grade, the students recruited in CSHS are assumed to have average academic abilities.

English education in Taiwan has set its root into elementary schools, starting from the 5

th

grade since 1998. As a result, most of the CSHSs had learned the subject at least for 6 years, before they were involved in the study. There are 6 hours for English class per week in CSHS. Students are evaluated on writing and reading by the quizzes in class and the monthly exams, and the latter take place three times in a semester. However, the diversities of English proficiency levels still exist among the students with respect to their academic performances in school.

In the study, the second-graders were selected for two reasons. First, they had accumulated quite a lot of writing skills for the past year in senior high school.

However, they had spent most of the time on mechanical sentence pattern drills, but

seldom had chances to practice their writing in the authentic context. Second, half a

year later the students would become third-graders, so such free communicative

writings as e-mail exchange were expected to help students express their thoughts in

English, which could prepare them for the future composition class.

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Polish e-pals

39 Polish counterparts were in their third year (9

th

grade) in junior high school, consisting of 23 males and 16 females.

English is a compulsory subject in Polish education system. Polish participants had learned the language since 4th grade in elementary school, which means those who graduate from junior high school have learnt English for seven years. Thus there was a one-year gap in English learning between CSHSs and PSs. Besides, English is also included in Polish entrance exam to senior high school. The difficulty level of the exam is similar to that of Cambridge exams. All language skills in the exam are equally important - speaking, reading, listening and writing, which leads the curriculum to be exam-oriented - it concentrates on four skills.

PSs had four hours of English class each week. Instead of regular monthly exams, in-class quizzes and the follow-up summative tests are set for PSs. The assessments were not built into the school syllabus, but were decided by the teachers or the schedule set by the coursebook.

Two things are worth noticing here. One is that schools in Polish tend to place

students into different classes based on the grades of the entrance exam. PSs are

divided into 4 classes of different levels (3a, 3b, 3c, 3d) according to their English

scores. Another interesting finding is that English learning is highly emphasized both

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in Taiwan and Poland. Some Polish students are forced to learn English at early age, and later even take private lessons or go to language schools, as long as their parents can afford it. Unfortunately, some weak students lose motivation when they realize English is too difficult for them to learn.

Due to the different class design, the researcher divideded Taiwan students into 4 groups based on their English proficiencies, which were judged from their performances on regular English testing, so that they could be paired up with the Polish students.

3.2 Project design

. The idea of the e-mail exchange project was initiated by the researcher, who was a member of TESL-L and TESLCA-L mailing list. The researcher sent a letter asking for good websites to find key-pals. The Polish teacher Anna responded to the request and also mentioned the fact she was interested in cooperation. At the beginning of the semester, each student will get a handout (see Appendix A) elaborating the procedures and guidelines of the project, which was also built into the syllabus. Accompanied with handout was an e-mail checklist (see Appendix B) created by the researcher, where participants had to keep a weekly record of their

“number of correspondences,” “the content/topic of e-mail,” and “scores/comments

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assigned by the researcher.” Both the content of the e-mail and the checklist had to be turned in every Friday as a way to track students’ correspondence. The e-mail topics were generated by the researcher and Polish teacher Anna per week, and some guided questions were attached to each topic. Since the project was regarded as a way to explore a foreign culture, the topics were related to culture aspects. On the other hand, considering the needs of the small number of participants favor self-selected topics, and such approach of forcing on topics may deprive them of creativity and autonomy in the e-mail writing. Thus, participants were also allowed for the freedom to choose their topics. The scores were assigned based on the participants’ performance and involvement. For example, students would gain extra points for writing extra mails besides the ones with assigned topics.

The correspondence schedule roughly followed the academic schedule of CSHS. The semester, except for the three weeks for the monthly exams, had 16 weeks left. Considering that CSHSs would be devoted to preparing for the exam, and thus they may have little time and energy to engage in the e-mail activity. The researcher did not arrange any e-mail activity during the exam week. Therefore, during the semester basically there were 16 times of e-mail exchange in all.

At the end of the semester, students were scheduled to make final in-class

presentations in the form of PowerPoint, which should include the brief introduction

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of the e-pal, one of the most impressive e-mail from their e-pals and their reflections on the project (See Appendix C). The presentation session was implemented in the English class. In order not to delay the regular teaching schedule too much, each class was only filled in 3-5 presenters, each of whom had to finish his/her part in 5-7 minutes.

There were three reasons for adopting the PowerPoint, rather than traditional paper format, as the medium for presentation. First, the works of each student could be shared and watched with the whole class, with the assistance of the technology equipment in the classroom. Second, it was possible for students to demonstrate their correspondence through various types of media, such as pictures and sounds, which altogether could make the presentation more vividly. Third, the electronic files were easily saved and submitted to the researchers. Therefore, the teachers could further copy and compressed the files into CD-Rom for convenience of the exchange. The questionnaire was conducted later.

After the closure of required e-mail exchange project, the researcher would

check on the CSHSs’ progress of correspondence five months later. During the

period, they would not be reminded of the previous project. The aim of the surprise

investigation was to see if any students would voluntarily continue the e-mail

exchange without teacher’s interference. Those who sustained the follow-up

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correspondence would be interviewed.

During the project, the students were active participants, learners, writers, while the teacher acted as director, organizer, and counselor. The project was learner-centered because strong emphasis was placed upon individualized writing.

The students had freedom to decide which topics to write (if they prefer not to follow the given topics) and what to share with their e-pals in their mails. Autonomy was thus initiated and learners were empowered to be masters of their own work.

3.3 Methods

Four types of research methods were employed as data collection in the study:

(1) reflections on the final in-class presentations (2) questionnaire (3) teachers’

observations (4) the follow-up interview.

3.3.1 Reflections in the final class presentations

A final in-class presentation was held for participants to express their thoughts

and share their experiences on the e-mail activity. The reflections were presented

orally and in the form of text in PowerPoint. To have CSHS be well-prepared for the

presentation, the researcher gave each participant a copy of handout clearly listing

out the guidelines, grading policy, contents and procedure of the presentation (See

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Appendix C). CSHSs’ PowerPoints were collected and copied to a CD-Rom for the exchange with PSs. CSHSs and PSs’ reflections were both qualitatively analyzed.

3.3.2 Questionnaire

The questionnaire was co-constructed by the researcher and Anna and made into two language versions - Chinese version was for CSHSs, while English version was for PSs. It was administrated at the end of the semester after the presentation was finished. PSs’ questionnaires were sent in package by air-mail to the researcher once they were filled up by PSs.

The format

The questionnaire was composed of multiple - choice questions and open-ended questions (see Appendix D). The 22 multiple-choice questions further fell into two categories: the ones requiring a single response and those allowing a multiple response, which were indicated in the description of such questions.

Though multiple-choice questions were easy to be coded and compared, and

time –saving for implementations, they did have certain shortcomings. One was that

it was unlikely for a researcher to give an exhaustive list of options to each question

except for the yes/no questions, and thus the researcher might run the risk of drawing

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misleading conclusions because of limited range of options. Another was the respondents might not be able to freely express themselves in such multiple-choice questions, for which were developed based on researchers’ needs. To overcome the limitations and make the questionnaire more comprehensive, the open-ended questions were adopted as a way to elicit additional information and various range of articulation from the respondents.

In the study, there were two types of open-ended questions. One was totally independent requiring unlimited text answers and the other was only asking for brief answers from the respondent. As for the latter types, some questions were simply asking the respondents for more details about the option they have chosen, such as the time for composing a mail and the specification of the solutions to deal with the writing problems. Others were constructed based on the assumption that the options listed to the specific questions may not be satisfactory to the respondent, the researcher thus used a catch-all type option “other” and an extra blank was provided for the extra input from the respondent.

Two independent open-ended questions appeared at the end of the questionnaire

to obtain participants overall impression and comments on the e-mail activity.

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The content

Except from the first one that investigated the participants’ background, basically questions were designed based on the framework of the research inquiries, and categorized into four sections, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1

The categories of questions in students' questionnaire

Categories Question numbers

Participants’ attitudes Q. 2-6

Interactions Q. 7-10

Language learning / Cultural understating Q.11-16 Difficulties and solutions Q. 17-19

Suggestions Q. 20-23

The first three categories were to answer the first research question, and the last dealt with the second research question. Below were detailed descriptions for each of them.

(1) Participants’ attitudes: These questions explored participants’ attitudes toward the

activity, and to see whether any change occurs pre and after the implementation

of the activity. Besides, their perceptions of the teacher’s role and favorite writing

topic were also included in the category.

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(2) Interactions: To help the researcher get a clear picture about their interactions with the e-pals, participants were especially offered three options each of which gave different ranges of the number of correspondence- more than 6 times, between 4-6 times, less than 4 times.

(3) Language learning and cultural understanding: It was assumed that the participants would make gains more or less in language and culture. Participants’

English proficiencies were not measured by any formal test pre and after the activity but by self-assessment to find the difference. That is, participants needed to describe their personal perceptions as to whether the e-mail writing contributes to any language gains. And they had to specify the improved skills if any. As for the cultural awareness, participants were asked to decide on which writing topics that mostly helped them understand the other’s culture.

(4) Difficulties and solutions: Due to the lack of experience of cross-cultural e-mail

exchanging and the uncertainties brought along with the technology, the

difficulties were expected to occur during the process of current project. The

difficulties were subcategorized into several causes with regard to the language,

correspondence, and computer skills. Considering the difficulties the participants

encountered may not be limited to one, the questions allowed for multiple

answers. The follow-up were participants’ solutions to the difficulties

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investigated above.

(5) Suggestions: the section aimed to extract participants’ opinions on the design of the study in terms of the matching, the writing topics, and the grading.

3.3.3 Interview and the researchers’ observations

Five months after the required e-mail writing was finished, the students still making the correspondence voluntarily received an informal follow-up interview, which was to understand the causes that made them sustain the correspondence. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. Last, there were a number of data contributing to the researcher’s observation, such as the field notes on class and two teachers’ record of e-mail correspondence.

To sum up, four types of methods were used in the study to investigate

participants’ reactions to the project. The procedure of implementation was as

follows: (1) in-class final presentation (2) questionnaire (3) a personal interview for

those sustaining the correspondence (4) researchers’ observations. Both CSHSs and

PSs received the same treatments as (1) and (2). (3) was exclusive to CSHS. And

researchers’ observations went through all the procedure.

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3.4 Data analysis

In this case study, quantitative analysis mainly focused on the multiple-choice items on the questionnaire. Since the multiple-choice questions were subcategorized into two types of questions – those requiring one single response and those allowing multiple answers, different methods of analysis were adopted. As for the former, Chi-square was used to find if there was any significant difference across CSHSs and PSs, while for the latter, frequencies of each item were compared. On the other hand, students’ answers to the open-ended questions in the questionnaire, their reflections, and responses in the follow-up interview and the teacher’s observations were organized and interpreted with content analysis, a procedure for studying the content and themes of written or transcribe the qualitative data.

3.5 Procedures

The cross-cultural e-mail exchange project started in February, 2006, lasting for

a semester. In the original plan, students were supposed to make 16 exchanges on a

weekly basis, except for the 3 weeks when monthly exams were held. However,

students failed to attain the number, and ended up making merely 14 exchanges in

total, with 9 assigned topics and 5 free topics. The reasons that resulted in this will be

discussed in the later section “Topics.”

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Based on the guidelines in their handouts, students were required to turn in their e-mail checklists together with their writing every Friday. However, when CSHSs did so for the first time, some problems arose. Due to the uncertainties of the e-mail, students’ correspondence progresses were not in consistency. That is, some students failed to get the replies from their e-pals, while some were ahead of the e-mail schedule. Thus collecting the checklists of the class at a time seemed to be a challenging task, which also became an extra workload to the regular teaching for the researcher.

3.5.1 AJET Digital School

To have a better control of each CSHS’s correspondence progress, the researcher decided to replace the checklist with a more flexible on-line mechanism - AJET Digital School (http://ajds.nsysu.edu.tw). The website is a virtual school dedicated to offering an online platform for English teaching-learning interaction and cultural exchange project. Every English teacher can apply to offer an online course, and students, once registered as a member, can attend any course they are interested in only with admission of the instructor. Thus, the researcher opened a course

“Terri’s English Workshop,” which provided a virtual space for the asynchronous

class interaction related to the e-mail project. More impressively, once students

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registered in an online course, the system would automatically add them to the class mailing list, which could keep the students informed of all the latest news related to the course without logging in the course. Also, teachers could make online announcements (Figure 2) and students could post their questions or responses for the teacher on the discussion board (Figure 3). It is believed that a better interaction would be created between the teacher and students than in the regular class, because of the virtual environment provided by the AJET digital school. Most important of all, each student was provided with a personal space where they could submit their e-mail entries at their own pace afterwards.

Figure 2 AJET Announcement Board

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Figure 3 AJET discussion board

However, none of CSHSs had accessed to the website before, so two orientation sessions were arranged. Students were instructed to register in AJDS and be admitted to the on-line course. To make sure all the CSHS were well familiar with the procedures, they were required to post a test message on the discussion board and submit a test document to the system.

3.5.2 Assessment

Since the main focus of the study was communication, the researcher did not intend to examine the quality and quantity of the CSHSs’ e-mail writing. Students’

submission of the e-mail is only to ensure their progress. The role the teacher played

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collaborative CMC project, or a distant learning course, the teacher’s role shifts from that of an authoritative disseminator of knowledge to that of a guiding

‘e-moderator.’” Polish teacher Anna also insisted that Polish students (PSs) should send her every copy of their writing. She checked on students’ schedule at least every two weeks so as to give each a grade every four mails, and the scores were based on the following grading criteria, as presented in table 2. Besides, she held workshops related to the writing, such as discussions on the topics and error-correction tasks. In fact, according to Anna, instead of picking on every single mistake in the mails, she raised students’ attention to the typical and repeated ones.

Table 2

PS teacher’s grading policy for e-mail writing Contents

Is the letter relevant to the topic?

Points 3 Layout

Is the letter divided into introduction, main body, letter ending; is the main body long enough; is the letter written in a logical way?

2

Vocabulary and grammar (level of English)

Does a student use vocabulary and grammar structures I teach him during the lesson?

3

Mistakes

The student can get 2 points if he doesn’t make any mistakes or there are some mistakes but they don’t interfere with understanding and communication

2

maximum: 10

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3.5.3 Topics

With regard to the weekly topics, we had hoped that students could write one e-mail per week, and then they would end up writing 16 e-mails in all except in weeks of monthly exams. The schedule of the e-mail exchange and the topics are summarized in Table 3. Apparently, most of the exchanges followed the schedule, with the exceptions of those in the weeks of 4/30-29 and 5/7-13, when PSs and CSHSs were out of town for the school trips. Thus, no exchanges were arranged for these two weeks, and that accounted for the 14 exchanges in the end. Since traveling is a common experience, “my trip” was set as one of the writing topic. Each topic was generated by the researcher and the Polish teacher Anna and was supplemented with several guiding questions for students’ reference. For example, we had following questions for “sports”:

What sports do you play/watch on TV?

What sports would you like to play but can't?

What team do you support?

Who's your idol?

Who do you regard as an international sports star?

What sports are popular in your country?

Besides, students were suggested to attach pictures to their mail as in “my

favorite food” and “my place”, which would not only make the writing more

impressive but load the e-mail with more vivid cultural information as well. It was

worth noticing that the topics were not compulsory. Students were encouraged to

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write on their own topics rather than on the assigned ones. Considering that the students were getting acquainted with their partners after weeks of exchanges and they may need the autonomy in the writing, no topics were assigned in the weeks after 5/21.

Table 3

E-mail writing schedule and topics Week E-mail Writing Topics 2/19-2/25 1. Self introduction

2/26-3/4 2. Read and talk about my family 3/5-3/11 3. My school life

3/12-3/18 4. Information technology.

3/19-3/25 Monthly Exam

3/26-4/1 5. My Favorite Food *Food exchange by air-mail package 4/2-4/8 6. Sports

4/9-4/15 7. My hometown / place

4/16-4/22 8. City Tour *Sending post cards 4/23-4/29

4/30-5-6 Monthly Exam 5/7-5/13

5/14-5/20 9. My trip 5/21-5/27

5/28-6/3 6/4-6/10 6/11-6/17 6/18-6/24

10 11

12 13 14

6/25-7/1 Monthly Exam

Free topics

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3.5.4 Presentations and questionnaire implementation

The final presentation was held at the end of May, when students just finished their last assigned topic e-mail. With limited class time to cover course materials, the researcher found it hard to devote 15-20 minutes of English class to students’

presentation. Besides, PS graduates were leaving the school in June. It was very likely all the students may not get a chance or enough time to give their presentations.

Therefore, students’ presentation was held a month earlier before the project /

semester ended. On the other hand, the questionnaire survey was implemented on

6/22, the last week of the project.

數據

Figure 2   AJET Announcement Board
Figure 3    AJET discussion board

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