探索台灣學生在英文閱讀課中的談話內容
摘 要
第一與第二外語的研究學者發現，在以教師為中心的傳統課堂中，教 師傾向於操控大部分的交談，而課堂上談話內容大多局限於背誦交談的類 型。在這種情況下，學生的聲音經常被忽視了。為使學生學習更有意義，本 研究將台灣中學生在英文閱讀課中，以文學討論小組探討五篇短文內容做仔 細檢視與探討。透過有系統的對談分析，顯示出學生能夠合力找出英文單字 的含意，把他們的生活和故事內容融合起來，熱烈地討論故事內容，並且對 故事作評論。本研究提出之文學討論小組教學法，可供目前從事以英語為外 語教學的老師有另一種選擇。
關鍵詞：以教師為中心、文學討論小組、教學法 周利華
國立台灣海洋大㈻外語教㈻研究㆗心助理教授
Abstract
First language (L1) and second language (L2) researchers discovered that in traditional teacher-centered classrooms, teachers tend to do most of the talking, and classroom discourse in most classrooms is limited to recitation type of talk. Under such circumstances, students’ voices are ignored. To make learning meaningful, this study documents and examines the patterns of students’ talk in response to five short stories through literature-based discussion groups among Taiwanese secondary high school students in an English reading class. Students’ spoken data including report group discussions and reading response discussions were studied in detail. Through systematic discourse analysis, the result shows that students worked collaboratively to construct simple meaning, connect their lives to the stories, engage in the discussions, and comment on the stories. The study has implications for an alternative pedagogy for English teachers in contemporary English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms.
Keywords: teacher-centered, literature-based discussion groups, pedagogy
Li-hua Chou
Assistant Professor, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Center, National Taiwan Ocean University
Exploring Student Talk in a Taiwanese English Reading Class
Traditional teacher-centered pedagogy prevails in contemporary literacy classrooms, both in first language (L1) and in second language (L2) classrooms (Ernst, 1994).
Especially in the last decade researchers started to question the effectiveness of this method in literacy classrooms (Alvermann, Dillon, & O’Brien, 1987). Researchers confirmed that in traditional teacher-centered classrooms, teachers tend to do most of the talking (Boyd&Rubin, 2002; Wollman-Bonilla, 1994; Worthy & Beck, 1995; Cazden, 1988). They ask the questions, decide which students will answer, and evaluate students’ abilities on the basis of students’ answers (Addington, 2001). In addition, they usually initiate text-based questions (Cazden, 1988), which often elicit short answers and local information in the texts (Eeds and Wells, 1989; Alvermann et al., 1987; Owens, 1995). These answers seldom consist of students’ own thoughts or reflect the richness of the content. Under such circumstances, students are placed in a passive stance for learning literacy (McMahon & Goatley, 1995).
In the case of teaching literature, this pedagogical practice reflects what Rosenblatt (1978) claims. Students take an efferent stance, in that they only "carry away" the concepts or information of the reading text, but ignore the "aesthetic reading" which concentrates a student’s attention on "what he is living through" (p. 25). Given the fact that "aesthetic reading" is neglected by literature teachers, students’ own voices and interpretations of the texts are often impeded and constrained. Thus, what Eeds and Wells (1989) call "grand conversations" are rarely heard in classrooms.
In Taiwan, literature-based teaching has been largely overlooked in Taiwanese English classrooms because both teachers and students have long been accustomed to teaching and learning English through a skills-based approach (Chang, 1997). Thus, the teaching of English literature in the senior high schools in Taiwan has focused on vocabulary teaching and explaining grammar rules. It has also neglected the element of aesthetic reading. Reading English literature for Chinese students means memorizing a long list of vocabulary, studying lots of grammar rules and encountering unfamiliar cultural differences.
Chinese students in Taiwan have been learning English under this type of traditional teacher-centered method for several decades. This method places students in a passive stance in learning the foreign language. Students do not have ownership of their learning. Therefore, learning English is not meaningful to Chinese students. Thus, the application of the traditional teacher-centered pedagogy in Chinese English classrooms has transmitted nothing but "dead knowledge" to the Chinese students.
In the past, much research has been conducted to investigate the interaction between the teachers and the students; nevertheless, classroom talk among students has been overlooked (Wintergerst, 1994). In the case of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading class, little research has been conducted to investigate the interaction among
foreign language learners in learning English as a foreign language (Chang, 1997).
Research in this field is still in its infancy and it needs to be explored.
Given the English literacy learning situation in Taiwan, the primary goal of this research is to document the Chinese 11th grade high school students’ talk in response to five short stories in an English program. The research question for this study was: what was the content of the students’ discussions in response to the stories?
THE RELATED LITERATURE
Researchers discovered that in traditional teacher-centered classrooms, teachers tend to do most of the talking (Wollman-Bonilla, 1994; Worthy & Beck, 1995; Ernst, 1994), and classroom discourse in most classrooms is limited to recitation type of talk (Cazden, 1988). Under such circumstances, students’ voices are ignored. The effectiveness of this type of teaching has been questioned because it does not focus on the social aspect of literacy development (Boyd, 1997).
Vygotsky (1978) claims that knowledge is socially constructed and children gain this knowledge through social interaction with knowledgeable others. This sociocognitive theory highlights the importance of social learning process and emphasizes dialogue and language as mediating cognitive growth. Langer (1987) elaborates Vygotsky’s theory and states that " all learning is socially based, literacy learning is an interactive process, and cognitive behaviors are influenced by context, and affect the meanings the learners produce" (p.11). When literacy learning is viewed in this manner, literacy activity has become a sociocognitive activity (Langer, 1987).
The sociocognitive activity of learning literacy could be found in many second language and some foreign language group work activities. However, studies on group work in second language and foreign language have their limitations in the task performances and findings because they did not offer promising instructional practices or the experiments used were only marginal to regular classrooms. For example, Gass and Varonis (1985) used information gap and picture drawing to see the difference of meaning negotiation of the non-English speakers in these two experiments. Pica and Doughty (1985) discovered that there was a relationship between the participation patterns and the types of task. Other empirical studies also limit their tasks and findings by having students do the decision-making task (Pica & Doughty, 1985), problem-solving tasks (Porter, 1983), or by investigating the degree of involvement in the negotiation for message meaning (Gass & Varonis, 1985), testing students’ acquisition of different language skills (Bejarano, 1987), focusing on second language learners’ input, output, and feedback from each other (Pica, Porter, Paninos & Linnell, 1996), and examining students’ feelings about participating in group work as well as the impact on
the students (Liang, 1995).
Unlike such group work activities, literature discussion groups engage students in aesthetic reading and provide students with the opportunity to transform words into meaning (Galda, 1996). This approach, which incorporates the sociocognitive aspect of learning, has started to gain popularity in first language environment (Evans, 1996).
Rosenblatt (1978) claims that in doing aesthetic reading, students’ attention is not on the information being acquired, the problem being solved or the actions being taken.
Instead, student’s primary attention is on "what happens during the actual reading event", and on "what he is living through during his relationship with that particular text" (p.
25). Through transaction with the text and interaction with knowledgeable others about their experience with the text, literature discussion groups provide a conducive learning environment and they help promote students’ literacy learning.
Literature Discussion Groups in a Variety of Learning Situations
Literature discussion groups have been utilized successfully in different educational settings and across different populations. Researchers have investigated several characteristics of literature discussion groups. For example, what happened in the discussion, the comparison between teacher-led and student-led discussions, and how children learn to participate. They have also examined literature discussion groups across different populations including what young children did, the differences among students in discussion groups, high school at-risk students, middle and high school students’ perceptions of the discussion groups, and students in English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings.
Characteristics of Literature Discussion Groups What Happens in the Discussion
During the literature discussion groups, the student and the teacher (leader) are actively engaged in the process. For example, in Eeds and Wells (1989) study, they investigated fifth and sixth graders formed into groups of four to eight heterogeneous members. One college student served as a group leader in each of the discussion groups.
Children were free to choose their group members in this study. The results indicated that children and teachers (i.e., the college students) constructed meaning by interacting with each other. Children were able to construct simple meaning from the text, and were also able to relate their personal experience to the stories that they read. Students made predictions and became active readers in the discussion process and they were also trained to be critical readers and evaluators. The study shows that the students were capable of doing aesthetic reading and it shows the positive side of implementing literature discussion groups in elementary classrooms.
Comparison of Literature Discussion Groups
Worthy and Beck (1995) investigated fourth graders’ classroom contexts by looking at the quantity and quality of children’s participation, the structures of lessons, the teacher and students’ changes of behavior, the teachers’ and students’ orientations toward text. These variables were examined in both teacher-centered classroom and the student-centered, large group literature discussion classroom. In the former setting, each student took turns to read the text from basal readers and the teacher controlled most of the talk. In contrast, in the student-directed context, the same teacher designed an intervention and changed her teaching strategy. Two major differences were that students sat in a large circle and there was a reduction in teacher talk. This helped students gain the floor, provided for more wait time for students to ask questions and make comments, and let students talk without raising hands. Results show that in teacher-dominated classroom setting, the teacher initiated 90% of the episodes while the students initiated only 10%. Conversely, the students in the latter setting initiated 85% of the episodes compared to 15% by the teacher. Results also show that the intervention episodes were fashioned as discussion, unlike the non-intervention episodes, in which the teacher seldom encouraged students to express their points of view.
Learning to Participate
McMahon and Goatley (1995) looked at how fifth graders with prior experience with book clubs served as "knowledgeable others" and helped lead their peers who did not have the same experience in the small group discussion. The teacher deliberately grouped the students according to their cultural diversity, different reading and writing abilities and experiences with Book Clubs. The result shows that given the opportunity to work together, they were able to adopt leadership roles, and they also helped each other to talk. It also shows the effectiveness of using heterogeneous groups in literature-based discussion groups.
Differences across Populations
What Young Children Do in the Group Discussion
McCormack (1997) examined how 27 second graders used their turns and investigated what they said during the nine peer-led literature discussion groups that lasted for five weeks in the classroom. These young children discussed an African folk tale without the teacher’s presence and they were given tape recorders to tape the discussion. The teacher circulated around the heterogeneous discussion groups and acted as a facilitator. Results showed that first, these second graders usually took turns to offer retellings or introduced a new topic but each new topic was seldom sustained by the rest of the students or was talked about by the one who initiated the topic. Apart from summarizing the story, sometimes these young students did not know what to say even though they were given the opportunities to speak. However, the author states that after practice, these children
were able to sustain a topic or theme and they also improved their discussion. The second finding showed that these children were able to use "authoritative discourse" and
"internally persuasive discourse". The language that children used in the discussion was greatly influenced by the language in the books they read. The study shows that given opportunities to talk about the literature, even the younger children can benefit from the discussion. Not only do they reach the maturity to compose their own language by learning from the text, but they can learn how to build community and construct the text meaning without the teacher’s presence.
Literature Discussion Groups and Ability Grouping
Wollman-Bonilla (1994) investigated ability grouping in a sixth grade literature discussion classroom to see how the children conducted discussion and to see what type of discussion took place in the classroom. The teacher encouraged students to engage in informal discussion by having students share their reading. The group, which consisted of more able readers, read more sophisticated literature while the less able reader group read the literature which was two grade levels lower than their actual grade.
Findings revealed that in the more able reader group, students eagerly participated in the discussion and valued the contribution from each group member. Students also tended to appreciate the opportunity to exchange their thoughts, and they helped each other develop more understanding about the text. They also revealed positive affect during literature discussions than when reading by themselves. In contrast, students in the less able group, tended to show lower self-esteem and they viewed each other as poor readers. Under such circumstances, they did not show much enthusiasm for the literature discussion. Their conversation tended to be short and without much critical thinking in the process. This study raises the possibility that ability grouping did not seem to work well in this classroom. The teacher thought that the less able students would not be able to discuss the text unless they understood the text and were able to comprehend the text.
This study echoes McMahon and Goatley‘s (1995) study that less able readers need "the knowledgeable others" to assist them to discuss the text, and help them develop their understanding of the text. It showed that heterogeneous grouping appears to be a more effective instructional setting for this type of intervention.
High School at-risk Students
Boyd (1997) and Boyd and Galda (1997) looked at how four at-risk high school students who were placed in the alternative Cross-Aged Literacy Program participated in their own literacy learning. This program encompassed social and cognitive aspects as opposed to the traditional literacy instruction in the classroom setting. These low-achieving adolescents coming from culturally diverse backgrounds had the opportunity to gather together and practice reading, writing and literature-discussion under the guidance of the teacher. In this program, students were instructed to read,
write, conduct discussion and debrief what they read. Thus, they were given the chance to engage in meaningful learning, to be responsible for their own learning, stimulate each other to talk and share their own ideas. The results showed that this program allowed these adolescents who were not able to read or write well the opportunity to construct knowledge together. They regained their self-confidence through talk and interacting with each other.
Middle and High School Students’ Perceptions of Literature-based Discussion Groups Alvermann et al., (1996) looked at literature-based discussion groups from middle and high school students‘perspectives. They conducted a multi-case study to investigate how these students experienced the text-based discussions. They looked at five different cultural diverse settings across the United States to evaluate this discussion activity with the hope of improving teacher instruction. Results show that there were three assertions which were generated from the students in the study. First, students were aware of the conditions that they believe to be conducive to discussion. Second, students thought that both tasks and topics are two key factors that influence their participation in class discussion. Third, these students thought that classroom discussion is helpful for them to understand what they read. This multi-case study looking at different sites across different classrooms, provided us the opportunity to be aware of middle and high school students’ perspectives on the discussion groups.
Literature Discussion Groups in ESL and EFL Settings
The ESL study using discussion groups was conducted by Brock (1997) in an American setting. In order for second-language learners to learn English in a meaningful context, Brock (1997) utilized the discussion groups with second language learners in mainstream classrooms. Grounded in the theory that discussion groups will help provide a context for guided literacy learning, provide opportunities to experiment with language-in-use, and provide a context for second language acquisition, she found that her ESL students were able to participate in classroom discourse and experienced meaningful opportunities to learn to use school talk to discuss the texts. This challenged the view that second language learners were the ones who were always being "helped" by native speakers in the classroom. In fact, given the chance to incorporate their life experiences to explore the texts, they were able to make valuable contributions to their group and become "helpers" in the group.
In an EFL setting, Chi (1995) conducted a study in Taiwan to examine whether the interaction between teacher-student and among students in the typical Taiwanese classroom environment could be increased. The study looked at twenty English major college freshmen and sophomores’ meaning-constructing process in five small groups in informal settings. The results show that the discussants engaged in diverse ways when they interacted with each other to talk about the literature. During the process,
students were immersed in the discussion to construct meaning. Five discussion patterns were found in the discussion groups. They were negotiating meaning, evaluating meaning, savoring meaning, converging meaning, and avoiding meaning. Findings also revealed that three groups expressed that literature discussion groups help them promote their reading comprehension. In a more recent study conducted by Lin (2006) investigated the effect of literature circles on EFL instruction in primary school in Taiwan. Her findings showed that through literature circles, the 25 fifth-graders made improvement in the reading comprehension. The study also showed that literature circles had positive effect on the students’ attitudes toward the books they read and the students favored this type of instruction. Finally, literature circles also helped promote their creativity for writing and drawing.
SUMMARY
The studies reviewed demonstrate the advantages and issues of implementing literature-based discussion groups in different classrooms. The review showed what happens in the discussion groups, the comparison between teacher-led and student-led discussions, and how students learn to participate. In addition, the review has also examined literature discussion groups across populations such as what young children did, the differences among students in literature discussion groups, high school at-risk students, middle and high school students’ perceptions of the discussion groups, and the implementation of the discussion groups in ESL and EFL settings. Although literature discussion groups have been successfully implemented in different schools, the area of using literature discussion groups in high school classrooms in an EFL setting is still in its infancy. Furthermore, there is no empirical study that documents EFL students’ talk with response to literature by using literature-based discussion groups, research in this field needs to be explored.
METHODOLOGY
The Context
The setting for this study was a private high school located in a suburban area of National Park in the capital of Taiwan. The population of this school is about 1200. Every summer, students need to take summer courses. I received permission from the principal to implement the intervention that would introduce literature-based discussion groups in the English classroom to help students learn better in the English language. This differed from the regular practice in English education in the summer school. The situation was
appropriate for studying the possibility of change using group work in this one specific English classroom. The mandated summer program, which lasted for six weeks, prepares the students for the second year of their English class.
The class consisted of 20 students in the academic science track. The school would prepare these students to become science majors in college. At the time of the research, these students had just completed their first year (10th grade) of senior high school. These twenty students volunteered to participate in this study. There were 16 males and four females, aged 16 and 17. These students have been learning English for four years.
Students’ social economic statuses varied from middle-class to upper-class. Among these twenty students, five focal students were chosen to represent the various levels of English proficiency in this class.
The Program
Procedure
A total of 39 hours were spent in this intensive summer program. Students met two hours three times each week. I divided the 39-hour classes into five units. Students had to read five short stories. My role in this classroom was teacher-researcher. Since the intervention differed from the routine of the regular instruction, and students had never been exposed to this novel learning environment, at the beginning of this summer program, I spent an hour introducing the philosophy of this new intervention. After the introduction, I grouped the students heterogeneously into four groups based on ability and gender.
In order to motivate students and to keep them on task, I assigned students to different roles by using Daniels’ (1994) sample role sheets to make each student responsible for a specific role. The worksheets include discussion director, connector, literary luminary, summarizer, and vocabulary enricher. In each group, the students who were responsible for the same role first would join together and discuss the content on the worksheets.
After about half an hour, each student went back to his/her original group and started to report what he/she learnt from the worksheet group.
When all these discussion activities were over, on another day I would then spend two hours analyzing the grammar, and explaining the vocabulary, and idioms and phrases, from the whole story. Finally, consistent with the regular curriculum, at the end of each unit, there was an exam to assess students’ learning. Students’ written artifacts, including worksheets, reading response sheets and their reading log were collected and corrected for English. After I read and corrected all the sheets, I gave the copies back to the students.
Data Analysis
In my research, in order to obtain validity and reliability, I collected various sources
of data, which included questionnaires, informal interviews, fieldnotes, videotapes, and audiotapes. The first four sources of data were supplements to the last two types of data. I chose to analyze the data focusing on the five students from the focal group.
The data included four report group discussions and five reading response discussions.
The languages in the nine audiotapes contained both English and Chinese. In the process of transcribing the data, I transcribed what was said in Chinese using square brackets and highlighted what was said in English. In addition, I parenthesized students
’ non-verbal data to demonstrate students’ noise, silence, laughter, movement, gestures, tone change, speaker change, language change, distinction between read and spell, and unintelligible voice. As the result of the analysis, students’ spoken data in response to literature accorded largely with the four major categories from the study of Eeds and Wells (1989). It included constructing simple meaning, personal involvement, inquiry, and critique. However, contrary to Eeds and Wells’ first two categories, in the first category, constructing simple meaning, I created three sub-categories which included word meaning, pronunciation, and grammar. I created these three sub-categories because the subjects were foreign language learners and they repeatedly questioned each other these language components in order to understand the reading texts. The second category, personal involvement, I created four sub-categories which included personal experience, other people’s experience, emotional reaction, and rational reaction.
The four sub-categories emerged from students’ spoken data as they engaged in the discussions. The third category, inquiry, consisted of inference, verification, hypothesis, and interpretation. These four sub-categories demonstrated that students were able to argue, reason, synthesize, and to make sense and talk over the stories. The last category, critique, was comprised of commenting on the story, commenting on authors’ craft, and evaluating the story. These three sub-categories showed that students were able to read the stories with a critical eye and to express their opinions about stories in general.
TABLE 1
Categories in Spoken Data Analysis 1.Constructing simple meaning
-word meaning -pronunciation -grammar 2.Personal involvement
-personal experience -other people’s experience -emotional reaction -rational reaction
3.Inquiry -inference -hypothesis -verification -interpretation 4.Critique
-commenting on the story -commenting on author’s craft -evaluating the stories
Category I: Constructing Simple Meaning
Word Meaning
The unintelligibility of word meaning is usually an obstacle that foreign language students will encounter while they read. It is the primary factor in determining students’ understanding of the texts. The example shown below supports this argument.
This example suggests that each member in the group worked collaboratively in Chinese to contribute to the discussion and to find out the meaning of the word "dumb" in the story in Unit 5.
69. Tsaung: [Who’s dumb? Is there anyone in the story dumb?]
70. Lin: [Because he betrayed him.]
71. Ho: [Who’s dumb?]
72. Tsaung: Alberto [is dumb.] [Is Alberto dumb?]
73. Ho: [No!.]
74.Tsaung: [Then, why did the worksheet say dumb means someone who can’t speak?] [What is ] dumb?
75. Wang: [Oh, you’re asking if he is dumb?]
76. Lin: [It means stupid.]
77. Tsaung: [Oh, stupid? Isn’t that mute?]
78. Wang: [It’s right, it means mute.]
79. Tsaung: dumb.
80. Wang: [It means mute.]
81. Yo: [I looked it up in the dictionary. It’s stupid.]
82. Ho: [Which line?]
83. Wang:[This line (pointing…)]
84 .Ho: (looking for it….)
85. Ho: [Do you think I’m stupid? It doesn’t mean mute. It means stupid.]
(Unit 5 report group)
Pronunciation
Pronunciation is an important factor that will influence students’ understanding of the texts, especially when students speak or read to their peers. If words were not pronounced correctly, it would mislead or impede students’ comprehension of the stories. The following segment showed that students were having trouble pronouncing the new word but through the discussion, students learned how to pronounce it. The example reflected students’ risk-taking while trying to pronounce the word "shake".
64. Yo: [And then line 58] shock [means tremble]
65. Ho: [Should be] shake
66. Ho: [I think it should be] shake.
67. Yo: Shake?
68. Ho: Yes. (Unit 1 report group) Grammar
The usage of English words can be very tricky and may sometimes baffle foreign language learners such as those who are at the beginning of learning complex English sentence structures.
In the following example, the students were not familiar with the usage of the English words. Through helping and negotiating with each other, students could learn the function of the words.
94.Lin: [And then… ] Cerita saw the watch on her way out of work had a little…..(unintelligible)
95.Yo: Draw… [the past tense is] drew.
96.Lin: Drew…her atten… attention. [Because she found the watch, and the noise of the watch drew her attention.] (Unit 1 report group)
Category II: Personal Involvement
Personal Experience
I defined personal experience as any experiences the group members had that related to the content of the stories. When students talked about the stories, they might have had similar experiences to what happened in the stories. Any discussions that involved personal experience gave support to this category. In the following example, the group members were drawing from their own experiences and talking about their mothers at home.
2. Ho: [Can we start discussing now? Ok. #1 is] What is your mother like?
[Hurry up! Hurry up! What is your answer? Why did you nod your head? Say something!]
3. Wang: Um….[She is very……]
4. Ho: [Speak English.]
5. Wang: She is a kind… and busy mother. [Or] woman? [Which one is better?]
6. Ho: Woman [is better, I think.]
7. Ho: [What about you, Tsuang?]
8. Tsuang: [I am shy….]
9. Ho: [Hurry up!] So..so simple. Just say it! Only one word!
10. Tsuang: My mother is kind.
11. Ho: Only one word. Your mother is kind…is still the same with…the same….
12. Ho: (to Lin) [What about you?]
13. Lin: My mother is like a tiger…. because he is very… [hot temper] and sometimes he is very…[gentle].and ……of you…
14. Tsuang: (help Lin) Care.
15. Lin: Care.
16. Yo: She is very kind. Sometimes like a tiger…..She take care of me very.
(Unit 2 reading response) Other People’s Experience
When students discussed the texts, sometimes the content reminded the students of other people’s experiences. Other people may refer to students’ families, friends, or relatives. In this example, by relating the story content to other people’s experience, Ho reported to his group how his worksheet group members had lost their wallet and bike before.
134. Ho: [Mine is the connector. To connect the story to our lives.]
135. Ho: Mr. Lai…. said last year he went to play basketball and his wallet was..
gone…was stolen… and he doesn’t get it back.
136. Ho: [#2 is mine] I have a friend in junior high school, he ride a bike to school everyday. One time after school he has found his bike was gone and he is very angry. But one the way home, he found his bike….so he was very happy.
137. Ho: [Next one is from Tsuang...] Last year my CD walkerman in the school…
138. Wang: [You have to say it in Chinese, too.]
139. Ho: [I will say it in English first.] (Unit 3 report group) Emotional Reaction
In this category, I provide an example which represents students’ reactions that were congruent with their emotions. When students responded to the questions that their group members raised, without much thinking, their instant responses expressed their feelings.
In this example, while students were discussing how they would feel if their belongings were stolen, they all expressed that they would be upset. From line 29 to line 33, Ho even argued with Wang about the correct form of the sentence.
18. Tsuang: How do you feel when your things was stolen?
19. Yo: was [not happy.]
20. Tsuang: [You can say..] no [happy]
21. Yo: (chuckle) 22. Yo: [Let me think.]
23. Ho: Will be crazy.
24. Tsuang: [What about you?]
25. Wang: Sad.
26. Tsuang: Sad.
27. Tsaung: (to Yo) [What about you?]
28. Yo:… Not feel good.
29. Ho: (correct Yo) Feel not good, not feel good.
30. Wang: Not feel good. [Nothing is wrong with the sentence.]
31. Ho: Feel not good.
32. Wang: Not feel good!
33. Ho: Feel not good.
34. Ho: [They are about the same]
35. Tsuang: (trying to stop them) Hey! Hey! [#3 is when you see someone stealing what will you do?] (Unit 3 report group) Rational Reaction
When students discussed the questions and their answers, they were required to apply their conscious feelings and speculations to the questions. This caused the students to articulate rational responses.
In this excerpt, the students were discussing the topic whether finders might be keepers. Both Yo and Lin thought that it was wrong for the finders to be keepers. Yo’s explanation in line 154 revealed that he had applied his conscience feeling to answer the question.
150. Ho: [Finders may be keepers, is it right or wrong?]
151. Yo: [Of course it’s wrong.]
152. Lin: [It’s wrong.]
153. Ho: Why?
154. Yo: [Because the one who lost things would not want some one to take his stuff.]
155. Wang: [The other answer can be right.]
156. Yo: [There are only 2 answers for the question.]
157. Yo: [How do we write it in English?]
158. Ho: The people who lost it would be very sad. (Unit 1 report group)
Category III: Inquiry
Inference
American Heritage dictionary defines infer as to conclude from evidence or premises.
In this category, whenever students finished reading the texts and gave judgement upon what they read in order to provide their answers gave support to this category.
In this excerpt, the students were trying to answer how the headman had found out the thief. After they finished reading the story, they were able to infer what they read from the story to answer the question.
2. Ho: [Can we discuss the questions now? Questions #1] How did the headman find out the thief?
3. Ho: [I think he found out the thief by using human conscience. How about you?]
4. T: [Louder.]
5. Wang: He used a trick to find out the thief…sticks…about the….
6. Ho: [What kind of] trick? [I think the teacher wants us to say what kind of trick he used. Why? And the process too.]
7. Ho: [The teacher wants us to write our answers first and then discuss them.]
8. Ho: (keeps explaining things to Wang and becomes impatient) 9. Tsuang: [I wrote something but I copied it from the story.]
10. Ho: [It’s Ok.]
11. Tsuang: (reading) He decided to employ a trick to find out the truth. He gave each of them a stick of equal length… He told them to keep the sticks until morning…
12. T: [Louder please….Read it again. (to Ho) Can you hear what he said?]
13. Ho: [Yes… yes..]
14. Tsuang: He told them to keep the sticks until morning…he would measure the lengths of the sticks. So the thief is…. catched.
(Unit 3 reading response) Hypothesis
The stories that the students read and the questions they raised may require them to predict and think about better ways of solving problems in the stories. This may lend support to the category. The following example demonstrated that students used their imagination and figured out alternative ways to help the headman find out the thief. These students were able to hypothesize the situation and provide different solutions.
In this example, Ho predicted and hypothesized that the thief might steal the money for the second time if the farmer kept it as a secret. Wang also hypothesized the situation, stating that by putting ghost in the money the thief might die.
61. Ho: [#2 is] Is there any other way…is there any other way that you can use to find out the thief? My answer is don’t let the others know he has found his
money is gone…was be stolen and gave…. gave the far…mer more money.
That night who come to stole the money away.. that will be the thief.
61. T: [Tell them what you just said.]
62. Ho: [I mean the farmer who lost his money should not tell anyone but the headman. The headman could give more money to the farmer. During thenight the one who stole the money would be the thief.]
63. T: Very good!
64. T: (to Wang) What is your answer?
65. Wang: The money has ghost.. in it who steal it will…
66. T: Will?
67. Wang: be die.
68. T: will die. (Unit 3 reading response) Verification
In this study whenever students had questions that were about the content of the stories and that required students to use the story content to back up their answers, they were using verification. The verification of students’ answers can be found in the following excerpt.
In this transcript, Tsuang asked a question about who Alberto was in the story in Unit 5. His group members tried to guide him bit by bit by providing and verifying information for him from the story that they read.
30. Tsuang: [Let me ask you a question. Who is Alberto? Is he a killer?]
31. Wang, Yo and Ho (together) : [He is a person.]
32. Tsuang: [Is he an ordinary man?]
33. Yo; [He is an ordinary person.]
34. Ho: [He is a person, he is an enemy.]
35. Tsuang: [Then he is trying to kill his enemy for his country.]
36. Ho: [This means that you did not read the whole story.]
37. Wang: [Because he betrayed him.]
38. Ho: [Yes, he betrayed him. He cheated him.]
39. Wang:[He wanted to kill him.]
40. Ho: [So he wanted to kill him.]
41. Tsuang: [Oh, he betrayed Luigi….]
42. Wang: Umm..
43. Ho: Yes. (Unit 5 resport group) Interpretation
When students questioned each others’ answers, which required students to elaborate and explain their own answers, they were going through the process of interpretation. In this excerpt, the discussion between Wang and Ho showed that both students interpreted
their own answers by stating the reasons. Wang thought that if he were Luigi, he had to die because he was found killing people. Ho claimed that if he did not say anything, he would not die right away.
214. Wang: [Yes.]
215. Ho: [Why?]
216. Wang: Umm…..[Can I change?]
217. Ho: [Ok, you can change.]
218. Wang: No. [Because you got to die.] I must to die.
219. Ho: [Because you are caught.]
220. Wang: [Right.]
221. Ho: [If you don’t say anything, you are not going to die.]
222. Wang: Uh?
223. Ho: [If you don’t confess, you won’t die.]
224. Wang: [Even if you don’t confess, you must die. Because they caught you killing people.]
225. Ho: [If you didn’t say " I killed people."]
226. Wang: [But you were caught. You…]
227. Ho: [But it depends. You can’t be caught and then sentenced to death immediately.]
228. Wang: [I said it depends.]
229. Ho: [Yes, it depends.] (Unit 5 report group)
Category IV: Critique
Commenting on the Story
Students’ expression of their feelings about the texts, any comments, reasons, or opinions that were stated to criticize the stories are placed in this category.
In this example, students each pointed out what they thought about the story. Tsuang commented on the story by stating his own reason. Lin also expressed how she felt about the headman in the story.
89. Tsuang: The story is very perfect but it has a [drawback]. The thi…thief is stupid so he was catched. [(explaining it in Chinese)]
90. Lin: I feel the headman (read it as hardman) is very wise because they can think to catch the steal.
91. Yo: (to someone) [How to you say "way"?]
92. Ho: (to Lin) [Explain it in Chinese.]
93. Lin: [I mean the headman was very smart because he figured out the way to catch the thief.]
94. Yo: (to someone again) [How to say ‘way’?]
95. (no one answered)
96. Yo: The headman was very wise. But his….[how to say ‘way’?]
97. Ho: his way….
98. Yo: But his way is…
99. Ho: stupid, no use, useless…
100. Yo: is stupid…. (Unit 3 reading response) Commenting on Author’s Craft
Students’ opinions about authors’ craft, such as critiquing the ending of the story, and the language used by the authors are included in this category.
In this excerpt, in addition to appreciating the stories, the students were discussing the authors’ crafts by commenting on the ending, syntax, and the word choice used by the authors.
154. Ho: [#4..] What do you think of the story? [My answer is..] The end is not very good.
155. Yo: [How do you spell ‘strange’?]
156. Ho: Strange.
157. Wang: It is so hard…
158. Ho: Ur?
159. Wang: It is so hard [difficult].
160. Ho: So hard…[And?]
161. Wang: I have a lot of vo..vocabulary.
162. Ho: I have a lot of vocabulary. (Unit 2 reading response) Evaluation
Any discussions that involved students’ evaluating and assessing the stories in general or the questions that students raised are placed in this category.
In this transcript, Ho’s question generated a heated debate about the issue of conscience versus education. Everyone in the group objected to Ho’s point of view. In the end, Yo determined that the question was bad.
17. Ho: My answer is yes because we have studied so we have conscience. [We are educated so we have conscience. We are educated so we have conscience.]
18. Yo: [What did you say? Say it again.]
19. Ho: [We are educated so we have conscience.] Have more conscience.
20. Yo: Oh….. (I see.)
21. Lin:[ People who are not educated have conscience too.]
22. Ho: [They have less conscience.]
15.Tsuang:[Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Then you mean people who have elementary degree have no conscience? If they found the money, they would call the police.]
24. Wang: [People who are educated have less conscience.]
25. Ho: [Do you have conscience? (facing everyone) Do you? Do you?]
26. Wang: [Don’t do that….]
27. Yo: [Basically, he has no conscience. This question sucks!]
(Unit 5 report group)
CONCLUSION
Overall, the discussions presented above reveal that by using literature-based discussion groups, these students talked about the five short stories in both English and Chinese interchangeably. The transcripts illustrate that students were actively engaged in discussing the stories, which went beyond the "efferent reading" in that students did not only take away the factual information of the stories. These students experienced the
"aesthetic reading" in that they were able to construct simple meaning, became involved in the discussions, made inquiry about the stories, and even criticized the stories.
By examining students’ utterances in constructing simple meaning, students questioned each other regarding the pronunciation, word meaning, and grammar in order to be able to comprehend the stories. These students took risks to teach and share their knowledge with each other. Together they were able to understand the meaning of the story without the teacher’s presence.
In respect to personal involvement, while discussing the stories, students could connect the contents of the stories to their own lives. They talked about their personal experiences as well as the experiences of their acquaintances. Additionally, they expressed their emotional and rational reactions after they heard their peers’ utterances.
For example, being able to articulate those experiences that they had, each student had the opportunity to hear different stories from his/her peers. They exchanged their personal stories to each other, which created sense of community in the group. In Unit 2 the reading response discussion, each one in the group described what his/her mother was like. Agreeing that although their mothers were all different, they were the same in their devotion and love toward their children. Furthermore, in Unit 5, the report group discussion, Wang was able to describe how young people in modern society had lost their conscience and therefore had committed all kinds of crimes. This indicated Wang’s concern about the society. In Unit 3 while students were discussing about how they would feel if they lost something, Yo’s sentence "Not feel good" caused a big argument between Wang and Ho. Their voices became louder as they tried so hard to convince each other that "not feel good" or "feel not good" was the correct form of the sentence. In the end, Tsuang took the role of moderator and calmed Wang and Ho by
stopping their conversation. Despite the disagreement, this showed that Ho and Wang listened attentively to their peers and they could give judgement on the answers.
With regard to inquiry, students used the contents of the stories to infer and verify the questions that they had about the stories. They could even use their imagination and intelligence to hypothesize and interpret their own answers. For example, in Unit 3, the reading response, Ho inferred that by using human conscience, the headman was able to find out the thief. This indicates that Ho was able to make judgement upon the story.
Tsuang, though not using his own language but could still locate the passage from the story to infer the trick employed by the headman to catch the thief. In Unit 5 the report group discussion, Tsuang apparently did not read the whole story and asked his group members who Alberto was. All but Lin verified and answered Tsuang’s question by giving him all sorts of hints from the text. This not only showed that most of the group members had independently read the story at home but also demonstrated the value of collaborative work from the group. In Unit 3 the reading response discussion, Ho suggested that the farmer who lost his money should keep it as a secret and put more money in the room because he hypothesized that the real thief might steal the money for the second time.
Wang also thought that if there were a ghost in the money, no one would ever try to steal it because he believed that everybody was afraid of ghosts. The two students were using their imagination to predict what might happen in the story world, which showed that they actually "live through" the literature. In Unit 5 the report group discussion, Wang and Lin both made efforts to interpret their answers in order to convince Ho about the issue of confession. All these discussions indicated that students were moving from constructing simple meaning, involving themselves in the conversations, to actively and independently confirming, questioning, predicting, and reasoning with each other about the literature.
With reference to critique, these students not only commented on the stories, but also commented on the authors’ craft. In addition, they were able to evaluate the stories by stating their own points of view. For example, in Unit 3 the reading response discussion, Tsuang revealed that he thought the story was perfect except for one drawback- that the thief was too stupid to be caught. Lin voiced that the headman was wise to catch the thief.
In Unit 5 the reading response discussion, each member of the group literally commented on the story. They were able to use English sentences to criticize Luigi’s conduct and discuss the issues of betrayal, conscience, and killing. In Unit 2 the reading response discussion, Ho, Yo and Wang each commented on the story and stated that the ending of the story was not very good, strange, and that the story had a lot of vocabulary. In Unit 5 the report group, Ho believed that those who were educated had more conscience. His remark stimulated a heated discussion and was later judged to be a bad question. All these comments showed that apart from appreciating the stories, students could also express and exchange their opinions about the characters, events, the language, styles, and
the stories as a whole with their group members.
The findings of this study demonstrated that despite the fact that these students had low-intermediate English language proficiency and they expressed that they did not like to read English in their answers to the questionnaires in the beginning of the summer, having read a considerable amount of stories within the six weeks, every member of the focal group endeavored to use a substantial amount of English and contributed to the discussion. As students were working collaboratively to construct simple meaning, connect their lives to the stories, engage in the discussions, and comment on the stories, not only were students motivated to learn to use the language in the discussions, but they were empowered by this type of meaningful interaction. The teacher here was no longer an authoritative figure but a participant facilitator.
Limitations and Future Research
The results of this study demonstrated that by using literature-based discussion groups in the English program, the 11th grade high school students were able to “live through”
while reading the literature. In their response to literature, students were able to construct simple meaning, engage in personal involvement, inquire and critique their reading. The study offered an alternative pedagogy for English teachers in contemporary secondary school English classrooms in Taiwan.
However, this study was conducted in the summer and it lasted for only six weeks.
There were only 20 students who were in the science track in this class. The small class size made this research feasible. Given the nature of the short length of time, students have made considerable improvements in their spoken English, although the accuracy of their language still needed to be improved. Future research should incorporate larger class size and should consider longer duration of the study.
The language proficiency of the students in this study was low-intermediate. For the purpose of detecting whether the variety of student will perform differently, future research should be conducted by using subjects with high language proficiency level.
The students in the study were grouped heterogeneously and students were found to provide help for each other. Future research could be conducted by using ability grouping to see the students’ learning outcomes. Future research should also take into consideration of “social drama” in grouping the students so that each student in the group will have a chance to shine.
Finally, the teacher was a researcher in this classroom. Future research should also be conducted to see if classroom teachers could implement this teaching strategy in the classroom and replicate the findings.
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