Good to see you
again to another post, buddies! In this post I would like to continue reviewing
and paraphrasing the Methodology section. Methodology section consist of
experiment, design and model. Thus, we are going to take a look at those sub-section. Let's
reveal this journal's methodology more intense!
Research context
This
research conducted to private middle school in Italia which publicly subsidized
and recently took a policy to have a research about iPad for their two classes.
In this research, 43 students took a part in the General English Class as a
part of Italian.
Requirement
of Education Ministry and two teachers. Every student had been given an iPad since
2014 for their research in and out of the class. Classroom observation notes
from three lessons, student and teacher interviews (N:18), lesson plans on
speaking tasks (N:3), comments on speaking focused lessons from
teachers’ meetings (3 meetings in total), and survey responses (N:41), those
are the data collected. Those data is checked to interrogate the use iPad by
teachers and students due to speaking activity performance for six months
The
researcher observed the earlier involvement of students with iPad as mediator
for studying English in the first phase of research. When they get ability to
study simple English task (listen for recording, play it, etc.), observe the
use of iPad as mediator to improve EFL skills and to do many things with that
language these mean the students had been mastered it. In particular, differential
in using iPad, strategy that teachers use and the responsive of students toward
mediation in order to speak such as collaboration and self-evaluation is
measured. As the result, triangulation with survey data and interview in the
earlier research, to compare the perception and students’ habit and teachers
toward technology tools.
Data analysis
Classroom observation notes and speaking
lessons
Analysis and
observation on three speaking courses. Course observes three times a year to
get a vivid description about progression. One at the earlier project, one in
the middle and one when approaches the end of main research. Comment about
time, many use of cellular devices during task, problems for teachers and
students, comments on teachers’ mediation and students, those are classroom
observation notes. Notes are also compared with lesson plan which has been
prepared before by teachers to concern on variation and adjustment, also students
and teachers’ reaction toward them. nVivo is used to analyzed three observation
tables of speaking and lesson plan following the standard qualitative
coding method. Particularly, data from observation notes showed that most of
students are involved in the task and following speaking task instruction effortlessly.
Survey and interviews
Quantitative
data of students and teachers’ perception about the improvement of speaking in
the iPad class acquired after the earlier survey. This part of research is only
analyzed about speaking questions. For instance in the earlier project,
students seemed to be not sure about the use of cellular devices to improve
their speaking performance. More than 38% of them were doubt about their scores
to improve speaking skills, and only 42% of them thought that they can improve
speaking skill in the end of project when they all were asked about their
expectation in skill improvement.
Interview for
students and teachers consisted of open question about speaking and particular
tasks. All of the interviews were transcript and given code in nVivo, data used
for this part of research mostly are noted in widely theme of ‘speaking’. Every
interview was then analyzed and coded individually. Main themes under the
speaking umbrella were ‘motivation, ‘mediation and ‘positive practices’.
Positive practices
Teachers
admired the importance of improving speaking skills, and very important to
mentioned it in the interview as investigated aspect
I am
focusing a lot on speaking activities such as interaction and presentations/making speeches,
which is what they lack.
(Teacher B –
interview)
I read there
are many things you can do with tablets also for listening and speaking…I
hope I will
have more chances to work on those skills.
(Teacher A –
interview)
Even though
teachers truly recognize the possibility of opportunity the use of iPad to
improve speaking skill, a group of students really skeptic about this, as if it
confirmed by data from earlier survey. Hence, in planning speaking task teachers
should be careful to ensure that devices always have role as supporter in
learning process. Every tasks are technology oriented: students need to listen
the digest and for details, take notes, repeat, and record their speaking task
in real world (e.g. sending voice recording, record specific instruction,
describe picture to give information, etc.)
Main
language target is to improve pronunciation, fluency and enlarge vocabulary.
Other than that, students feel working
in fluency and pronunciation are relevant. In an interview from the end of
second phase of research, M. a student stated:
I feel we
worked a lot on pronunciation, I think this is why we recorded our voice many times, also last year. I think this was good.
(M. Student
– interview – Phase 2)
Under positive aspects theme ‘there
are high frequency of references for direct feedback about speaking performance’
whether from teachers or stuednts. For example, T., a students, says:
‘Writing,
Listening, speaking, watching films to improve language and vocabulary, and…communicate with teachers, because from home
I can do exercises and my teacher can
see (listen to) immediately what I’m doing and correct me.’
That is my paraphrase, thank you for your visit and see you to another post.
