Application of Learning Community Approach in the EFL Classroom: An Action Research

• Main Authors: HSIEH, YI-HSIU, 謝易修
• Other Authors: SHEN, TIEN-CHENG
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ss97wu

碩士 === 南臺科技大學 === 應用英語系 === 107 === 　Under the 12-Year Basic Education policy, competence-based pedagogy and student-centered learning are increasingly important components for entry of Taiwan’s educational environment. Previous research has proposed that teachers who adopt student-centered learning in the classroom better focus on pupils’ learning processes, and the role of educator is gradually transferred from lecturer to facilitator in the modern educational scenario (Lin, 2017; Wilson, Sztajn, Edgington, & Myers, 2015). Moreover, research by Shan (2013) has proposed that teachers in learner-centered circumstance better orchestrate children’s communicative speech and assist them in constructing positive peer relationships during classroom learning. Therefore, the collaborative style of a learning community can benefit children in ease of acquiring academic knowledge. Many researchers argue that instructors integrate learning communities into English language classes and have positive effects on students’ English literacy and the connections between pupils (Han, 2014; Huang, 2017; Kuo, 2016; Lee, 2016; Wu, 2016). Nevertheless, these studies have not provided the specific collaborative learning strategies that can be employed in tackling academic difficulties and social troubles with pupils in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom; furthermore, the concepts of social context for second language acquisition and the influential elements on collaborative willingness and academic success have not been demonstrated this literature. Therefore, this thesis portrays the diverse perspectives on “the classroom as a learning community” movement in Taiwan, explore the influential elements on collaborative willingness and academic achievement, and develop the application of collaborative instructional strategies in the EFL class. 　Our research uses classroom observation forms for outside observers and researcher’s field notes for the teacher researcher to monitor the learning process of pupils in this study. Social skills questionnaires are designed to survey learners’ collaborative willingness and classroom task participation, and the social skills observation sheets for both homeroom teacher and teacher researcher provide a way to monitor the frequency of learners’ social behaviors in small-group learning activities. 　The findings in this study confirm that these collaborative instructional strategies, language knowledge co-construction, clarification provision, and modified Go Fishing language tasks, can resolve issues with sight word recognition and sounds substitution; moreover, other pedagogies—collaborative language sharing, collaborative role-playing, peer scaffolding, and teacher-led scaffolding—can enhance both capable and less capable learners’ collaborative willingness and classroom tasks participation in the EFL classroom. Students who are in the collaborative learning environment can boost their confidence in second language (L2) production and achieve academic success through positive interdependence cultivation at school. 　The excerpts and study results, such as social skills questionnaires and social skills observation sheets, were analyzed for future researchers to implement a learning community approach in the EFL classroom.