Session Information
31 SES 04 A JS, Developing Students' Literacy Skills - Joint Session NW11, NW 24 and NW 31
Joint Paper Session NW11, NW 24 and NW 31
Contribution
In today's fast-paced world, a teacher must prepare pupils for a variety of writing assignments, including essays, official and informal letters, announcements, advertising, directions, motivational letters, and more.
According to J. Harmer, writing is the mental activity of generating ideas, deciding how to convey them, and structuring them into statements and paragraphs that are understandable to a reader (J. Harmer, 2004).
In pursuance of our survey, most students have issues recognizing genres and styles, creating, and organizing ideas at the right level, having insufficient vocabulary, and having difficulty applying grammar structures when studying writing skills.
As J. Scrivener says, some teachers believe that writing is largely a solitary activity and that no effective in-class work can be done on it. Notwithstanding with this fact, there are many possible steps between assigning the writing task and collecting it, such as actively encouraging and assisting students in completing a series of preparatory steps before producing the final text, and students becoming more aware of that process so that it can be done more independently and transparently in the future (J. Scrivener, 2015).
Having regard to the above, we made up our mind to develop an approach which can be appropriate in teaching writing as Flipped Writing which follows the Flipped Classroom approach. From the point of view of N. Peachey, flipped learning is a type of blended learning that incorporates both synchronous and asynchronous individual study, which forms the relationship between the independent study that students do alone and the work they do together. Prior to group study time, individual study is utilized in a flipped learning approach to input basic ideas, concepts, or language. Students focus on practical work during group study time to gain a better comprehension of their new information and to broaden their abilities. (N. Peachey, 2020). According to A. Sams, the flipped classroom fosters an atmosphere in which students and teachers interact more often, therefore engaging students in learning through application and practice (A.Sams, 2011).
Our method of Flipped writing is based on Productive writing approach which was described by G. Gen as an approach focusing on teaching guidelines on how to make writing clear and simple to read, with a specific emphasis on academic genre standards (G. Gen, 2005).
In accordance with T. Tangpermpoon, the product approach reinforces writing skill in terms of grammatical and syntactical forms, and it raises students' awareness of writing from a lower level of language proficiency to a higher level of language proficiency through a variety of activities in product-based writing (T. Tangpermpoon, 2008).
So, in the framework of our method of Flipped writing suggested has the following stages: 1) reviewing and analyzing the example, which includes learning a new writing genre and completing tasks targeted at comprehending, one of the fundamental thinking abilities, so that students may finish this step independently at home; 2) organizing writing, which entails completing exercises targeted at discussing the subject studied and practicing how to use linguistic content in a training scenario. A group of more advanced students complete the tasks on their own, using only written instructions and supporting material, while a group of less advanced students complete the tasks under the guidance and step-by-step support of a teacher who provides feedback on each section. These exercises are completed in the classroom. 3) independent writing, which is aimed at creating own written work independently.
We suggest that using Flipped writing method will increase the academic performance of students in writing.
To evaluate the effectiveness of all these formats of collaboration research was conducted by a group of teachers.
Method
The focus group of the research consists of 108 students of grade 7 and 8 (aged 12-13 years old). Students of this age group were selected for the research as in grades 7 and 8 they start studying genres of writing and learn to write longer texts. It is considered vital to teach them writing at a text level at this stage. Other participants of the research are three EFL teachers and a senior manager of the Center of Excellence which develops training programs for teachers. In this study, the researchers used qualitative method to interpret the data which was received after the analysis of students written works. To collect data, a comparative analysis of students’ written works was made in May, October and December, 2021. Written works were assessed according to the following criteria: task response, genre and style, lexical resource, grammar range and accuracy, coherence and cohesion. Task response criterion determines students’ ability to formulate and develop a position in relation to a given question or task. Genre and style criterion helps to identify students’ awareness of the peculiarities of various genres and the style of language that can be used in particular genres. Lexical resource criterion refers to the range of vocabulary and the accuracy of its use by the student. Grammar range and accuracy criterion assesses students’ range and accurate use of grammar structures. The criterion of coherence and cohesion is concerned with clarity and fluency of the written text (IELTS Score Guide, 2018). Each criterion was assessed separately and constituted 100%. After that, the average percentage of all criteria was calculated. To make the assessment as transparent as possible, rubrics for each criterion were developed (Suastra & Menggo, 2020). Besides, after 2 and 4 months of testing the method (in October and December, 2021), students were given questionaries that allowed the researchers find out the information about students’ satisfaction with the method Flipped Writing. The survey was conducted based upon the agreement among the researchers and the students’ parents. Data in this research were analyzed by using the assistance of the excel chart data series software program, then well-narrated according to the data given by this software.
Expected Outcomes
The results have shown that the students made a considerable progress in each of the five criteria within the given period. The highest percentage was reached in the lexical resource criterion which increased from 68% in May to 81% in December. Higher level vocabulary and word repetition avoidance through using synonyms were noticed among the factors which made this progress possible. The most tangible progress was made in the criterion of coherence and cohesion, which initially was the lowest (41%), as students had had extremely poor knowledge about structuring and connecting their ideas. While using the Flipped Writing method the result finally increased to 60%. The criterion of task response (from 58% to 64%) as well as the genre and style (from 62% to 69%) showed sufficient growth. The least noticeable progress was observed in the grammar accuracy criterion – from 55% to 57% - and was considered as the area for further development and research. Answering the questions of the surveys, 87% of the students pointed out the benefit of the step-by-step instructions that helped them work independently and assess their progress themselves. Less confident students found it useful to have a guided writing practice in the classroom, when the teacher could support them throughout the process. However, 1.5% of the students with advanced language skills showed their concern that the detailed instructions could negatively influence their creativity in writing. It was concluded that for such students the process writing approach would be more suitable. The authors are aware of limitations of the research and the possible inaccuracy of the results that can relate to the number of students participating in the study, the fact that the instruments used for analyzing the data are not world-wide recognized, as well as some other factors that were not taken into account.
References
J. Harmer, 2004. How to Teach English. Pearson Education LTD, England. J. Scrivener, 2015. Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching. Macmillan Book for Teachers. N. Peachey, 2020. The Flipped Classroom for English Language Teaching. Oxford University Press. A. Sams, 2011. The Flipped Class: Shedding Light on the Confusion, Critiques, and Hype. www.thedailyriff.com G. Gen, 2005. A strategic Approach to Teaching English Writing. CELEA Journal, 28 (6). Retrieved from www.celea.org.cn T. Tangpermpoon, 2008. Integrated Approaches to Improve Students , 28 (2). Writing Skills for English Major Students. ABAC Journal. Retrieved from www.journal.au.edu. I Made Suastra, Sebastianus Menggo. Empowering Students’ Writing Skill through Performance Assessment. International Journal of Language Education Volume 4, Number 3, 2020, pp. 432-441 IELTS Score Guide. British Council, IDP: IELTS AUSTRALIA, CAMBRIDGE ASSESSMENT ENGLISH. 2018
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