A development of the instructional process based on strategies-based instruction, learning cycle model and interactional feedback to enhance paragraph writing ability of undergraduate English majors

Abstract

The purposes of this research were: 1) to develop the instructional process based on strategies-based instruction, learning cycle model and interactional feedback to enhance paragraph writing ability of undergraduate English majors, 2) to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional process through experts’ validation and by implementing such in class The developed instructional process included five stages: (1) studying, analyzing and synthesizing the strategies-based instruction, learning cycle model and interactional feedback and their underlying theories: social constructivism, constructivism and interactionist and socio-cultural theories, (2) writing the pedagogical principles of the instructional process based on strategies-based instruction, learning cycle model and interactional feedback to enhance paragraph writing ability, (3) specifying the objectives and expected learning outcomes, (4) developing the steps of the instructional process, (5) validating the instructional process by experts, and then try out the instructional process. The comments and suggestions from the experts and the results of try-out were used to refine the developed instructional process. This developed instructional process was implemented to the sample who were 30 students majoring in English majors and taking a paragraph writing course, summer semester, the academic year 2007, and were purposively selected as an experimental group (15 students) and a control group (15 students). Before the experiment, English paragraph writing test as a pretest was administered to both groups and the results confirmed that they were comparable. The duration of this implementation was five weeks. The experimental group and the control group obtained a 3-hour class a day for 10 days of the developed instructional process and the conventional teaching (PPP Method) to enhance paragraph writing ability respectively. After the treatment, the English paragraph writing ability test was administered in both groups in order to evaluate the differences. Furthermore, the students in the experimental group had a chance to complete the questionnaires eliciting their opinions towards the instruction process based on strategies-based instruction, learning cycle model and interactional feedback to enhance paragraph writing ability. The findings of this study were as follows: 1. The developed instructional process consisted of five principles: 1) to challenge learner’s thoughts or to make a cognitive conflicts, 2) to promote learning strategies among learners, 3) to share interactional feedback among peers-peers, teachers-learners, 4) to enable learners to become more proficient and skillful, 5) to show learner’s work piece or production. The objective of this instructional process was to enhance paragraph writing ability of undergraduate English majors. There are six teaching steps in this instructional process: 1) raising curiosity and awareness, 2) inductive and deductive modeling, 3) practice with explanation, 4) elaborated action planning, 5) automated focused tasks, and 6) evaluation and reinforcement. 2. The results of the evaluation of the effectiveness of the instructional process based on strategies-based instruction, learning cycle model and interactional feedback to enhance paragraph writing ability were: 1) paragraph writing ability posttest scores of the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the control group at .05 level, and 2) the data from the questionnaires showed that the students in the experimental group had positive opinions towards the developed instructional process.