scholarly journals The effectiveness of using scoring rubrics in academic writing to English-majored students

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 76-82
Author(s):  
Linh Hong Trinh

English academic writing competences play such an integral part in students’ academic life. Nevertheless, students often deliver poor performances in academic writing class at university or have a great deal of difficulties in writing a composition. The paper presents the results from an action research project on the effectiveness of using scoring rubrics in teaching academic writing to English-majored freshmen in University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University. 150 students coming from 6 different classes, all majoring in English language teaching or English language interpretation participated in this study. The article shows that after a semester using rubrics, the academic writing skills of students improved significantly with the increase in their grades also the decrease in the number of mistakes that they made during the writing process. However, there are still some certain hindrances to the use of rubrics in teaching and learning academic writing. Several recommendations are made concerning the effective use of scoring rubrics in academic writing class.

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalis G Wamba

The Kwithu project started when a volunteer who joined Kwithu, a community-based organization in Mzuzu, Malawi (Africa), to teach English gave a diagnostic test to a random group of forty 7th and 8th graders (20 boys and 20 girls) and discovered that most of them could hardly read or write in English. The test results prompted Maureen, the Kwithu director and co-founder, the teacher and myself to meet with the headteachers of the three schools mostly attended by Kwithu children. The headteachers appreciated our concerns about the English proficiency of the children, but they advised us to focus on more urgent matters if we truly wanted to help, e.g., lack of teaching and learning materials, lack of running water in schools, hunger, teacher qualifications, etc. This advice shifted our initial inquiry goal—from English language teaching—to a community-based participatory action research project designed to address the school conditions in Luwinga. In this paper, I describe the community-based participatory action research inquiry and I reflect on the process of participation.


Author(s):  
Steven Kirk ◽  
David Casenove

Over the past two decades, flipped learning has become a buzz word in education discussions. Flipped learning was first applied to science teaching, where lecture has traditionally been the primary means of delivering new content to students (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). While many teachers have heard the term, it is often not well understood, and its application to English language teaching has not yet been explored in depth. This chapter aims to show how the flipped learning paradigm can be applied to an EFL academic writing class. This will be supported with empirical research involving surveys of students in an EFL scientific writing class, to examine how students interact with the video content, and their perceptions of the flipped learning format. This research differs from most previous research in focusing on how students are interacting with the materials in a flipped classroom context, rather than only focusing on the learning outcomes.


Author(s):  
Steven Kirk ◽  
David Casenove

Over the past two decades, flipped learning has become a buzz word in education discussions. Flipped learning was first applied to science teaching, where lecture has traditionally been the primary means of delivering new content to students (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). While many teachers have heard the term, it is often not well understood, and its application to English language teaching has not yet been explored in depth. This chapter aims to show how the flipped learning paradigm can be applied to an EFL academic writing class. This will be supported with empirical research involving surveys of students in an EFL scientific writing class, to examine how students interact with the video content, and their perceptions of the flipped learning format. This research differs from most previous research in focusing on how students are interacting with the materials in a flipped classroom context, rather than only focusing on the learning outcomes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eriselda Vrapi ◽  
Xhevdet Zekaj

This study aims to explore the use of video in English language teaching (ELT) elementary school (grades 8 to 9)... In addition, the thesis aims to find out how videos in English lessons helped to achieve the goals of English curriculum. The main hypothesis was that teaching with video would develop pupils’ communicative skills and, therefore, was appropriate for the communicative approach to ELT. The study addressed five research questions regarding the use of videos in English lessons in the case study school: why the teachers used videos in ELT, what kinds of videos were used in English lessons, how and how often videos were used, what was taught and learned through the use of videos and, finally, what the teachers’ and pupils’ attitudes to lessons with videos were. The research was performed as a case study at an Elbasan elementary school. The data for the research was obtained through the use of mixed methods: qualitative, in the form of interviews with four English teachers and observations of three of the interviewed teachers’ lessons with videos, and quantitative, in the form of a pupil questionnaire answered by 105 pupils from two 8th grade and two 9th grade classes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Farzana Sharmin Pamela Islam

As 21st century is the era of modern technologies with different aspects, it offers us to make the best use of them. After tape recorder and overhead projector (OHP), multimedia has become an important part of language classroom facilities for its unique and effective application in delivering and learning lesson. Although in many parts of Bangladesh, a South Asian developing country, where English enjoys the status of a foreign language, the use of multimedia in teaching and learning is viewed as a matter of luxury. However, nowadays the usefulness and the necessity of it are well recognized by the academics as well as the government. The study aims to focus on the difference between a traditional classroom void of multimedia and multimedia equipped classrooms at university level by explaining how multimedia support the students with enhanced opportunity to interact with diverse texts that give them more in-depth comprehension of the subject. It also focuses on audio-visual advantage of multimedia on the students’ English language learning. The study has followed a qualitative method to get an in-depth understanding of the impact of using multimedia in an English language classroom at tertiary level. For this purpose, the data have been collected from two different sources. Firstly, from students’ written response to  an open ended question as to their comparative experience of learning  lessons with and without multimedia facilities; and secondly, through  observation of English language classes at a private university of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. The discussion of the study is limited to  the use of multimedia in English language classroom using cartoons, images and music with a view to enhance students’ skills in academic writing, critical analysis of image and critical appreciation of music. For this purpose, cartoons in English language, images from Google and music from You Tube have got focused discussion in this paper.


2021 ◽  
pp. 204275302110482
Author(s):  
Thi Nguyet Le ◽  
Bill Allen ◽  
Nicola F Johnson

Although blended learning (BL) has emerged as one of the most dominant delivery modes in higher education in the 21st century, there are notable barriers and drawbacks in using BL for English language teaching and learning in Vietnamese universities. This study reports on research into the use of BL, conducted through semi-structured interviews with 30 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers from 10 different universities across the two major cities of Vietnam. The findings revealed that EFL lecturers identified eight groups of barriers and four groups of drawbacks to the successful implementation of BL. The most significant barriers included: lack of infrastructure and technology, institutional policies and support; lack of knowledge, experience and investment in using BL; lack of technological competence and information technology (IT) skills and lack of teaching time to employ web-based technologies and online resources in classrooms. Meanwhile, the most crucial drawbacks were: lecturers’ workload, ineffective use of BL, time consumption and demotivation. The authors point to the underlying factors contributing to these barriers and drawbacks and make implications for how some of these can be effectively addressed through constructive changes to policy and practice.


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