The Effects of Cooperative Evaluation and Group Rewards with Writing & Evaluation – Cooperative Online Learning (WE-COOL) System on Senior High School Students’ English Writing Achievement and Attitudes

• Main Authors: Ching-ya Chiu, 邱靖雅
• Other Authors: Shu-chuan Chung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/85075328973093211179

博士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 國民教育研究所 === 94 === Writing can be viewed as a thinking process, a tool for language learners to explore ways of communicating their thoughts and feelings effectively through words. The process-oriented writing paradigm emphasizes the writing stages of planning, translating, and reviewing. Although English writing is highly emphasized in senior high schools in Taiwan, students do not generally demonstrate high degrees of writing proficiency in the College Entrance Exams, and view English writing as difficult and stressful. Therefore, assisting students to improve their level of the achievement in English writing has become an important issue for exploration. With the employment of cooperative evaluation and group rewards in a CALL learning environment (the WE-COOL system), this research set out to investigate whether high school students in Taiwan would improve their English writing performance and attitudes. By means of four instruments – writing tests, questionnaires of English writing attitude, questionnaires of responses to the writing system, and the observation of interactive behavior types – a 25-week quasi-experiment was conducted. The principal findings were as follows: (1) There was an interaction effect of cooperative evaluation and group rewards on the improvement of students’ overall writing achievement. (2) There was an interaction effect of cooperative evaluation and group rewards on students attitudes toward English writing. Writing confidence was increased and anxiety was reduced significantly. However, their perceptions of the usefulness of English writing remained unchanged. (3) The students responded positively to the use of the system. Also, positive attitudes toward cooperative learning and the use of group rewards were also found. (4) With group rewards, some interactive behavior types were found to be significantly different. On the basis of these findings, several pedagogical implications are raised, along with suggestions for further related research.