| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 外國語文學系 === 102 === This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of sentence making and sentence completion on EFL sixth graders’ vocabulary learning outcome and vocabulary retention. It also was intended to examine their sentence writing motivation through the use of a web-based writing platform with pictures (Storybird) and to investigate whether the use of Storybird would change their sentence writing motivation. Seventy-seven six graders in three intact classes from an elementary school in central Taiwan were recruited. Each class was assigned to one of the following writing tasks respectively. The three writing tasks employed in this study were sentence writing using Storybird (SWS), sentence writing without using Storybird (SW), and two sets of sentence completion exercises (SC). Twenty five target words were selected and divided equally into the five treatments. All the target words were high frequency words and they were all nouns and verbs.
The three writing groups took a vocabulary pretest. Five immediate and delayed vocabulary posttests were given during the experiment. The SWS and SC groups responded to a sentence writing motivation questionnaire before and after the experiment. Only the SWS group responded to an extra questionnaire regarding their perception of using Storybird. The data collected was computed using SPSS 15.0. for Windows. One-way ANOVA was used to see if there existed any significant differences among the three groups in terms of their vocabulary learning outcomes and retention. Independent-simples t-tests were performed to examine and compare the SWS and SW groups’ sentence writing motivation. A paired-samples t-test was employed to investigate the SWS group’s sentence writing motivation improvement. Last, descriptive statistics were computed to describe the participants’ writing perception of using Storybird.
The quantitative data showed that the three groups produced similar vocabulary learning outcomes and there were not any significant differences in their vocabulary retention. No significant differences were found in the students’ sentence writing motivation between the SWS and SW groups. Nonetheless, the SWS group’s intrinsic sentence writing motivation was significantly improved. The qualitative data showed, the majority of the participants reported a positive attitude and anticipation to sentence writing using Storybird. Finally, the researcher proposed several pedagogical implications and suggestions for the reference of future research based on the findings of the study.
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