Course
description
In English language education, writing
argumentative writing is one of obligatory subjects that all students must take
in that it becomes one of the skill set to accomplish before assigned to write
academic essays and research proposal or report in the higher level of higher
education. This
subject focuses on establishing students ability to present logical reasoning, strong and
convincing argument, as well as critical analysis and judgement in the form of
argumentative essays. Therefore, in this subject the
students are expected to be able to write argumentative essays about any given
topics or those of their interest. Before doing this subject, the students should have the ability to
write a good paragraph
because that would be the prerequisite skill to write an essay. Furthermore, this subject consists
of 4 credits which require the students
to dedicate eight
hours of learning perweek on their own.
Issues
concerning writing
There are a number of issues regarding
writing in the university where I am teaching. For instance, students seem to
be demotivated to write compared to their interest in spoken interaction. Trang,
TTT & Baldauf, JRB, (2007) suggest that demotivation decreases students
interest in learning English. Once students lose interest in learning, it would affect
their engagement to the learning activities both in and out of the classroom. As
result, it would be hard for them to achieve the learning objectives.
One of the reasons is probably due to
the teaching method employed by the instructor which is traditional in nature. By
traditional means, the use of old textbook and hand writing are still
predominant although there are thousands of writing sources available on the
website and despite the availability of computers in the university. Concerning that, TTT & Baldauf, JRB
(2007) further outlines that teacher’s teaching method becomes the largest
source of it.
On top of that, it is worth mentioning
that there is also interesting facts about the students in my teaching context.
Despite losing interest in writing class, they have great engagement with
writing on social media like Facebook and weblogs. They could spend hours to
write their feeling and thoughts and communicate with their peers or with
anyone online. This is probably
caused by the attraction provided by those media. For instance, they can build
network, upload and download pictures which interest them. Moreover, many of them belong to group
discussions which require them to give comments, argue and support their ideas.
Furthermore, some of them have produced
pages of writing on their weblogs. This is really contradictory to what happens
in their writing class.
Potential
benefits of Facebook in writing
Reflecting to such contrast facts, we
can draw an assumption that information technology and communication,
especially social media, has great potential benefits not only to increase
students’ motivation to learn to write but also, more importantly, to refine
the traditional teaching method in the classroom. Bosch (2009) argues
that students who used Facebook found a list of benefits of using Facebook for
academic purposes. For instance, they got assistance in identifying online
resources for learning from their Facebook friends.
Integration
of other multimedia
The other emerging ICT are computer and the
internet. In computer, there is a word processor like Microsoft word, which can be used as
teaching and learning media. Dudeny and
Hockly (2007, p. 15) point out that Microsoft word can be used in many
inventive ways. As an illustration, students can personalize their writing by
inserting images, voice, videos or website links to their writing to make it
more appealing. With these features,
students would find writing enjoyable. Furthermore, writing on Microsoft word
allows the students to work collaboratively with their friends. An example of
this activity is by getting students to write collaborative story (Dudeny and
Hockley, 2007, p.24). In that instance, students become co-writers for the
story and this would be enjoyable and less demanding activity.
For the purpose of writing
argumentative essay, collaboration is possible with such an application, for
instance with TrackChange. This tool allows the learners to share their
documents with
the other students as well as to change or edit ideas or language features that
considered requiring revision (ibid, p. 19). Further benefit of this tool is
that it enables the learners to do peers’ review or give feedback to each
other. Mangelsdorf (1991) points out that
peer review is found to have helve helped many students to
revise the content of their drafts. However, it is worth noting that the
reviewing tasks
must be carefully structured in order for the students to become successful
critics (ibid). In other words, teachers must provide a rubric for peer review
and train students to give feedback appropriately in order to avoid drawback of
this type of feedback. Furthermore, along with peer feedback, teacher can also
use TrackChange to give feedback to their students during the writing
process.
Dudeny and Hockly (2007, p. 62) argue that one of the
most used and useful information and communication (ICT) tools around the globe
is email. For this teaching and learning purpose, email will be used as media
to send the essay draft to their friends and teacher. Composing an email has
added the benefit for learners in writing process as it allows them to edit
their writing before sending them (ibid, p,63). However, before applying this
technology, students are expected to have basic email skills. There are two
basic skills of emailing: communication skills and technical skills.
Communication skills include formality of writing and basic netiquette or rules
of engagement in email writing while technical skills includes steps to
receive, send emails and how to deals with viruses (ibid).
Task
based: Procedures
Willis (1996, cited in Littlewood, 2003, p.321)
argues that “tasks
are always activities where language is used by the learners for communicative
purpose to achieve and outcome”.
Referring to what Willis has outlined, this teaching method employs a
task-based approach. This is mainly because
the ultimate goal of using this method is to provide as many opportunities as
possible for learners to use the language in order that that they can gain
ability to write argumentative essays. Furthermore, the more students the
chance to use language, for instance through reading a page on the internet,
writing on email, Facebook and speaking in or out of the classroom, the bigger
the possibility that their language skills will be enhanced. Once they make progress on their skill, it is
expected that they can be encouraged or have intrinsic motivation to learn the
language. On top of that, they can gain confidence and start to learn
independently.
The following are the stages the
students will go through during the writing process:
1.
Students are divided
into groups of three
2.
Each group are to
choose a topic, either from the given topics or those of their interest
3.
Start to research
online to find information about their topics
4. After getting the
information, they have to summarize or paraphrase it and finally post the
information on the Facebook along with the reference. The posting of the
information should be on the topic of their choice, for instance, topic on
bilingual education.
5.
Students, afterward,
copy and paste all the ideas from Facebook to a Microsoft word. On it, they can
start organizing the ideas. At this stage they will write their draft or essay.
6.
After completing the
draft, they have to send their draft to the other group to get feedback.
7. Feedback given is
focused on content, ideas organization, coherence and cohesion. This done using
Trackchange.
8.
After providing feedback,
the students should resend their friends draft via email.
9.
By using the feedback,
the students can revise their writing.
10. After revising their
writing, the students have to send their revised draft to their teacher to get
feedback.
11.
By using teacher’s feedback,
returned by teacher via email, students can revise their drafts.
12.
After revising, they
can edit the grammar, punctuation, spelling and perhaps the vocabulary.
13. Having completed that,
they have to write a summary of their essay (100 words) to post on the
Facebook.
14. The full essay with its
references will be published on class blog. In the Facebook, the weblog address
should be attached.
15. Students can also be
encouraged to give presentation in the classroom by using Misrosoft Word or Power
Point if considered necessary.
Assessing
students’ writing
The
students final essay will be evaluated based on the rubric designed by Schwalm (2007). Aspects to assess will include: introduction,
conclusion, main points,use of sources, sentence precision, and mechanic.
However for overall score, other asspects will be considered. These include their postings on facebook and
weblog.
Despite the facts that there have been
many researches about the use of ICT in language teaching, the effectiveness
and efficiency of this method cannot be measured yet. Therefore, by the end of
the lesson, students will be asked to give their comments on Facebook regarding
this method. Students’ personal feeling on the advantages of this method will
be explored as well as the downsides.
Along with students’ responses, teacher himself will also do
self-evaluation. By referring to these, a betterment of this method can be
expected.
Variation
to this approach: a note for teachers
This method can
be used in varied ways. For instance, teachers can use the Facebook for online
chatting or discussion. Students’ afterward can be asked to summarize the
result of their chats or discussion. In
addition, teacher can post questions and ask the students to provide answers,
taken from online sources, on Facebook page. Concerning email, teachers can
take into account of what Dudely and Hockley (2007, p. 67) suggests, that is to
make an online projects on the other genre of texts. In short, designing an
online lesson would be motivating in many ways.
Reference
Bosch,
TE (2009) Using online
social networking for teaching and learning:Facebook use at the University of
Cape Town. Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and
Research Volume 35, Issue 2, 2009pp.
185–200 Accessed on 19 October 2013, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500160903250648
Dudeny,
G & Hockly, N (2007) How to teach English with technology, pp.15, 19, 24,
62, 63, 67. Pearson longman, England.
Littlewood, W (2003) The task-based
approach: some questions and suggestions, ELT
J (2004) 58 (4): 319-326, pp.321, accessed on 19 October 2013 , http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/4/319.short
Mangelsdorf, K (1991)Peer
reviews in the ESL composition classroom:what do the students think?ELT Journal (1992) 46 (3): 274-284,accessed on 19
October 2013, http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/3/274.short
Schwalm, K (2007) Rubric for the Assessment of the Argumentative
Essay, Accessed on 20 October 2013, http://web.gccaz.edu/English/Assessment/Spring07/Final/ArgumentRubric.htm
Trang, TTT&
Baldauf, JRB, (2007) Demotivation: understanding resistance to Englishlanguage
learning – the case of Vietnamese students, The Journal of Asia TEFL Vol 4, No 1,
pp. 79-105, Spring 2007
*Rational for WebQuest
project of EDGT940: Materials
& Technology in Second Language Teaching.
** Master of
TESOL student in School of education, University of Wollongong, NSW
Australia. (Spring, 2013).
The Power Point Presentation of this teaching method can be accessed in http://www.slideshare.net/Marham
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