blended learning education argumentative essay

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Blended Learning in the Age of COVID-19

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(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

This new series continues a 25-post “blitz” that began on Aug. 1 supporting teachers as we enter a pandemic-fueled school year.

You can see all the posts from this month, as well as the 60 from the spring, at All Classroom Q&A Posts on the Coronavirus Crisis .

Many schools will begin this year in a hybrid situation, with students attending a physical school part time and spending the remaining hours in remote asynchronous instruction. Other districts, like ours, will begin the year entirely online, with students spending part of their time in live classes while working on their own during other parts of the day.

This series may be able to provide some support for teachers trying to figure out how to make this new learning environment work...

Today, Alfonso Gonzalez, Janice Wyatt-Ross, and Kait Gentry share their advice.

The Core 4 of distance learning

Alfonso Gonzalez has been teaching grades 4-8 for 29 years. He is a national-board-certified teacher in the area of early-adolescent generalist with a master’s of arts in teaching and has completed two ISTE Capstone certifications. He tweets regularly at @educatoral and blogs often at Mr. Gonzalez’s Classroom :

With schools all over the world redesigning because of COVID-19, blended learning is becoming a new normal. Blended learning has been around for a while and is the combination of traditional face-to-face instruction with aspects of online instruction all while students are in the classroom with the teacher. Blended learning strives to provide students the best of both face-to-face and online learning experiences. Blended classrooms include face-to-face instruction techniques such as direct instruction or lecture, group discussions, and small-group work while also using technology to provide in-class online learning that students can do at home provided they have access to necessary technology.

Online instruction is often facilitated by a Learning Management System or LMS. An LMS is where the instructor puts all the lessons and activities that students must work through to successfully complete the course. Typical LMS’s that schools use include Canvas , Schoology , Blackboard , and even Google Classroom . If you’re looking for an LMS that can support gamification , check out Classcraft . Just as whole-class discussion and small-group work are staples of face-to-face instruction, discussion forums and asynchronous learning are staples of online learning. Blended classrooms can empower students who are introverted or shy to share their ideas and learn from others using discussion forums where conversations that were started in class can continue well after the class ends.

Teachers who never taught an online course, never used an LMS, and maybe even hardly used technology in their classroom with their students had to learn how to use an LMS and put their often analog or nondigital work, assignments, activities, labs, etc., on an LMS, and they had to do that very quickly. Now that many of us have some time before school starts up again, we can better prepare.

During the spring, as we were offering 100 percent online education to our students, many teachers from my district and all over Washington state took an online course to learn how to teach online. The course, offered by Reimagine WA ED, a Jeff Utecht Consulting Co ., called Shifting School: Implementing Distance Learning, gave us strategies to support our students during their forced at-home-online-learning.

One of the big takeaways for me from the course that applies to online learning and therefore blended learning is what they call the Core 4 of distance learning. School districts, or at least schools, should agree on what systems they are going to use to provide online learning. First, schools need to determine which LMS they will use so that all students, regardless of grade level or teacher, are using the same system. Many schools that already used Google Education tools chose Google Classroom . Second, schools need to determine what teachers and students will use for file storage and sharing. Google Education schools used Google Drive, for example. Third, schools need to determine how teachers will connect with students synchronously for online meetings. Many schools used Zoom or Google Meet . Fourth, schools need to determine what teachers will use for recording video lessons for asynchronous learning. Chrome users use Screencastify for screencasting (recording what you are doing on your computer screen), but services such as Loom and Screencast-O-Matic were also quite popular.

With your Core 4, you can provide your students online learning experiences when they are with you in class, and if or when schools have to shut down again and go 100 percent online, your students will be ready because they will have learned how to use the tech tools needed to learn at home! Now that schools and teachers are being forced to incorporate educational technology and seriously implement blended learning because we will have students working from home, all students will have access to this learning model. Even before COVID, kids were very likely to learn, get higher education degrees, or do on-the-job training through blended learning or online learning, so the sooner kids are exposed to those modes of learning the better prepared they will be for their future learning. It is my hope that two of the many good things to come from this pandemic are more equitable access to technology and connectivity as well as more teachers incorporating technology in their courses.

Flexibility is key

Janice Wyatt-Ross has a bachelor’s in special education from the University of Central Arkansas, a master’s in special education from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and a doctorate in urban educational leadership from the University of Cincinnati. Her career began as an elementary special education teacher, and she has held such positions as a consulting teacher, compliance specialist, field-service assistant professor with the University of Cincinnati, gap-reduction specialist, associate principal at Bryan Station High School in Kentucky, administrative dean at Cardinal Valley Elementary in Kentucky, assistant professor at Asbury University, and director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. She is now the program director for the Success Academy of the Fayette County public schools in Kentucky :

In recent years, it has been harder and harder to educate students in the age of social media. Gone are the days when students would be docile and compliant while sitting and listening to a teacher lecture for an hour. How do teachers in the classrooms compete with upbeat music, realistic photos, flashy videos, and friends there to like and share content with all from the palm of students’ hands? How do you harness these features and bring all of this to the classroom? Now add the barrier of high school students who are delayed in their progression toward graduation and a diploma because many of them got caught up in the frenzy of being social. As the director of a dropout-prevention and re-engagement center, I am addressing this dilemma every day. One way we address re-engaging students in school is through blended learning.

Blended learning for our program is a combination of digital learning, which can be accessed anywhere the student has internet access, 24 hours a day, seven days a week; face-to-face instruction with a certified instructor; and project-based community-service learning activities. Combining all of this with a staff who is persistent in making sure students visualize the goal of completing high school and beyond, there is no justification for students being left behind. Students are attracted to this model because they can work at their own pace while having teachers on hand to give guidance in the areas that they need help, and they can give back to the community. Students receive grades based on a combination of their completion of coursework through the digital learning system and lessons teachers create based on standards addressed in the community-based projects. We have developed a curriculum framework around five elements that are the foundation of our blended learning model. The most energizing aspect of this framework is that teachers have the autonomy to take risks and be as innovative as they can think to be.

We plan to continue this model even in the era of COVID-19 with virtual instruction. As we plan for what school will look like this year, we will incorporate live virtual instructional sessions with recorded on-demand lesson presentations. Students will still have access to their digital learning program, but this will be supplemented with live sessions and prerecorded teacher mini-lessons that students can also watch if they are unable to attend the live sessions and need additional help. Each teacher will have virtual office hours to answer student questions and to provide feedback on assignments. Community members will be invited to speak with students during virtual sessions to aid students in their project-based learning activities.

This framework is not for everyone. Teachers and administrators have to be willing to be flexible and be vulnerable enough to admit mistakes and not take it personally when an idea is not successful. Re-engaging students back into school does not lend itself to following a prescribed pacing guide or teacher’s manual. This framework requires lots and lots of planning, reflection, and sometimes revising on the spot. Did I mention that this framework requires flexibility? Every new group of students will have a new set of needs and interests. To be student-centered, culturally responsive, and tailored to student interests, this framework has to be flexible. Our framework is individualized, intervening, intensive, intentional, and immediate.

The flipped-classroom model

Kait Gentry is the middle school learning and support coordinator at Calvert School in Baltimore, where she has taught for 12 years in both middle and lower school. Kait has overseen the development and expansion of Calvert’s Lyceum learning center, which serves the entire middle school student body through both structured and optional enrichment and support periods:

Like many educators, I leapt into the world of virtual learning last spring due to COVID-19 school closures. While some teachers have spent years immersed in the world of technology, many of us were adjusting to sitting behind a screen and figuring out how to best translate the benefits of in-person learning to the virtual world and how to use technology-supported instruction to enhance student learning.

Blended learning, in the traditional sense, combines in-person teacher-student interactions with online learning tools to support overall instruction for both the teacher and student. And with the widespread use of technology in teaching and learning, there are numerous ways to approach blended learning today.

However, as we shifted to distance learning last spring, we had to take the best of blended learning and adjust it to exist in a completely virtual world. Prior to COVID-19, we had explored the flipped- classroom model, which is a popular form of blended learning that typically layers instructional videos to be consumed independently at home, with time spent in the classroom focused on working through assignments, extension activities, or application problems. As we transitioned to remote learning, we worked to capture the benefits of “traditional” in-person learning through live, virtual small-group classes, which allowed students to ask clarifying questions in real time and to provide peer-to-peer learning opportunities, as well as critical social interactions. While there were so many educational losses this spring, this virtual flipped classroom provided opportunities for students to engage in discussions and instruction in smaller groups than would normally occur in a classroom setting. I found that this was ideal for our quieter students (who loved using the chat feature to share ideas) and also allowed teachers to connect with students in even deeper, more authentic ways despite the distance.

The flipped-classroom model, whether virtual or in person, has been a gift for many of my students, most notably those with learning differences or more introverted kids. This model provided the opportunity for students to review new learning materials prior to class beginning, which increased their confidence in the materials and academic engagement during live discussions, as well as encouraged all students to process new material independently. One of the biggest challenges that some students face is relying on peers and teachers to do the work of content “digestion” for them—making connections to prior knowledge or predicting future connections or patterns. The flipped model places a greater emphasis on the student putting in more of their own intellectual effort, leading to greater retention of the material and a significant increase in confidence.

Blended learning also incorporates online learning tools, whether it is in class or at home, that can offer more personalized learning experiences for students. For example, vocabulary development can vary drastically among individual students. Using an online tool like InferCabulary allows my students to work through developing new vocabulary words at their own pace and level. Over time, the program learns what words a student has mastered and which words still need additional work, providing a more customized learning experience than traditional pen and paper vocabulary assignments. This leads to greater retention as well as broader extension and usage of the words in a variety of contexts. Furthermore, the program incorporates gamification to keep students engaged and motivated.

As teachers work through the unknowns of the 2020-21 school year, educators will have to continue to examine and evaluate how to maximize teacher-student interactions as well as online learning tools to support instruction and student development. While this year is sure to bring more challenges, it is equally likely that there will be incredible growth and development along the way.

Thanks to Alfonso, Janice, and Kait for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

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Improving Argumentative Writing: Effects of a Blended Learning Approach and

2018, Language Learning and Technology

Improving Hong Kong secondary school students' argumentative writing: Effects of a blended learning approach and gamification. Language Learning and Technology Abstract This study investigated the effectiveness of a blended learning approach-involving the Thesis-Analysis-Synthesis Key (TASK) procedural strategy, online Edmodo discussion, online message labels and writing models-on student argumentative writing in a Hong Kong secondary school. It also examined whether the application of digital game mechanics increased student online contribution and writing performance. Three classes of Secondary 4 students (16 to 17 year-old) participated in the seven-week study. The first experimental group (n=22) utilized the blended learning + gamification approach. The second experimental group (n=30) utilized only the blended learning approach. In the control group (n=20), a teacher-led direct instruction approach on the components of argumentation was employed. Data sources included students' pre-and post-test written essays, students' online Edmodo postings, and students' interviews. We found a significant improvement in students' writing using the blended learning approach. On-topic online contributions were significantly higher when gamification was adopted. Students' and teacher's opinions on the blended learning approach were also examined.

Related Papers

CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education

Hanan Sanad

JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies)

Over the years, peer instruction and flipped learning approach has indicated its usefulness in teaching and learning. However, studies on how peer instruction in a flipped learning environment encourage active student participation in writing remain limited in Malaysia. Therefore, this study examines ESL students' participation during peer instruction in the flipped learning environment when composing argumentative essays. A total of 120 upper intermediate students undergoing an English proficiency course at a teacher education institution in Malaysia participated in this study. Qualitative data were gathered from student assessment forms (pair work and group work), lesson study logs, EdPuzzle video quizzes, and samples of student worksheets. Descriptive interpretations and thematic analysis were used to analyse textual data. The findings revealed that ESL students participated in this study by engaging themselves in interactions during in-class writing activities, contributing knowledge to others, getting prepared with the essential concepts and content before class, focusing on the task, and assessing the quality of argumentative writing. The findings implicate that teachers should consider the use of peer instruction in a flipped learning environment for students to engage actively in the teaching and learning of argumentative essay writing.

International Journal of Game-Based Learning

Hatice çilsalar

Since gamification has strengthened its place in education over the years, it is frequently preferred in English as a Second Language learning. This study aims to investigate the literature on the effects of gamification on students’ English learning as a second language and the tendency of students to use games to learn English as a second language. This review contains a systematic review of published articles about gamification in English as a Second Language learning for learners aged between 11-18 from 2013 to 2020. The study was designed according to the specifications of the PRISMA 2009 checklist. A combination of words related to gamification, game-based learning, English as a Second Language, and secondary school was included as a search strategy. After selection, 10 research articles written in English were reviewed. Their results indicated that the games enhance the fun, raise students’ motivation, and boost their participation while helping their autonomous learning. This review includes suggestions to support planning game-based English lessons.

Register Journal

M. Zaini Miftah

This article reports the results of investigation on the utilization of Edmodo as an online tool in EFL writing class to increase the students’ ability in producing an argumentative essay. Classroom Action Research was applied in the study. 15 Indonesian EFL students who enrolled in the course of Argumentative Writing became the participants of the study. Observation, writing task, questionnaire, and field notes were used for the data collection. The data obtained were categorized into qualitative and quantitative data. The collected data were then analyzed for the conclusion drawn. The results show that the utilization of Edmodo in EFL writing class could significantly increase the students’ ability in producing an argumentative essay in the Cycle 2. The Appropriate teaching procedures are; prepare the teaching materials, introduce Edmodo, guide students to get ready to use Edmodo, give an opportunity to students to get in the Edmodo group, train students to use Edmodo group, group...

Interdisciplinary Journal of Sociality Studies

Ayomiku Olaniyan

Critical literacy is a skill needed for academic and intellectual achievement, lifelong learning, discourse, future job prospects and other endeavours. Although it is instrumental to developing social interactions and relationships, some students cannot think critically and contribute meaningfully to spoken/written discourse because they do not possess the necessary skills and strategies. One way of developing critical literacy is through argumentative writing. Often, some students perceive argumentative writing as a complex and complicated skill in spite of its importance to their academic and lifelong goals. This paper discusses the importance of critical literacy and explores how argumentative writing can help develop this skill to salvage this situation. The article concluded that students should be exposed to the rudiments of argumentation to become critical literates who can critically scrutinise, appraise, and interpret information for their academic development and social t...

Mohammad Abu El-Magd

This research aimed at developing the oral argumentative skills of the ELT researchers at Ismailia Faculty of Education in order to help them present their work in a way that convinces the opposing side and leads to a fruitful discussion. TEFL topics were taken from their M.Ed. and PhD researches for presentation and oral discussion through webinar sessions in order to determine how far webinar was effective on developing their oral argumentation. The subjects were eight ELT researchers from Ismailia Faculty of Education in Suez Canal University (SCU). The research design was a combination between two methods: the quasi-experimental method which was used for statistical testing of the hypothesis as well as the descriptive method that was used to find out how much progress had been achieved through the sequence of the eight webinar sessions. The measurement tool was an analytic rating scale for oral argumentation rubrics developed by the researcher. The findings revealed that webinar had a high positive effect on developing the ELT researchers’ oral argumentative skills.

Serpil Özdemir

The aim of this study is to view how argumentative text pattern teaching influences constituting argumentative essay elements. The study was performed according to one-group pre-test post-test design. The study was carried out in spring term of 2017-2018 academic year and it lasted for five weeks. 33 prospective teachers who took the course of Text Producing Techniques participated in the study. The data of study were collected through 132 argumentative essays which prospective teachers wrote and Argumentative Text Elements Rubric to evaluate these. The results of the research are as follows: Quite few students included argumentative essay elements before argumentative essay pattern teaching and none of the students wrote justification for counter argument. It was determined that 66,7% of the students didn't write data, 81,8% of them didn't write counter argument, 87,9% did not write justification for counter argument, 84,8% did not write rebuttal of counter argument and 48,5% did not write conclusion. At the third study, number of successful students increased on the basis of all elements. However, the majority of students have reached a partially successful level. At the post test, most of the students achieved successful level on the basis of all elements except refuting counter argument. Significant differences on behalf of the post-test were determined between pre-test and post-test scores at all of the argumentative essay elements.

Yin Ling Cheung

With academic writing now viewed as an important part of English language instruction, research studies have seen an increased emphasis on the question of how innovations in writing instruction impact students' writing outputs. Using the method of qualitative metasynthesis, this study provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of 60 empirical studies published during the period of 2005-2016 that examine this question. Several constructs pertaining to the domain of innovations in writing instruction from primary, secondary, and higher education have been identified. Based on this research review, we explicate the impetus of, lessons learned from, and future directions of innovations in writing instruction in China.

Paul Stapleton

It is generally acknowledged that counterargumentation is a key factor contributing to the persuasiveness of argumentative essays; however, recent research has revealed that students tend to neglect alternative viewpoints when responding to argumentative writing prompts. This study used a pretest-posttest design on experimental and control groups with 125 participants at a Chinese university. The control group received instruction in argumentative writing (which typically ignores counterargumentation in mainland China), while the experimental group received instruction in argumentation which included counterarguing and refuting. The results of the study demonstrate the efficacy of explicit classroom instruction in counterargumentation. Text analysis on posttest scripts showed that the inclusion of counterarguments and rebuttals was significantly positively correlated with the overall score of an argumentative essay using the evaluative rubric of a high-stakes test. These findings may have important implications for writing prompts and rubrics as well as argumentative writing pedagogy in China and beyond. It is proposed that counterargumentation be considered in the writing prompts and rubrics of high-stakes English tests, and included in classroom instruction on argumentative writing.

Reinders, H., Nunan, D., & Zou, B. (Eds.), Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching: The Case of China (pp. 63-87). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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• Original article
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• Published: 27 November 2019

Scaffolding argumentative essay writing via reader-response approach: a case study

• Mojgan Rashtchi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7713-9316 1  

Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education volume  4 , Article number:  12 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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The variety of activities and techniques suggested for improving the writing skill shows that EFL/ESL learners need scaffolding to gain mastery over it. The present study employed the reader-response approach to provide the assistance EFL learners require for writing argumentative essays. Five upper-intermediate EFL learners in a private class participated in the qualitative case study. The participants were not selected from the fields related to the English language and did not have any previous instruction on literary texts. During the treatment that took 20 sessions, each session 2 h, the participants read five short stories. Different classroom activities were used as sources of information, which helped the researcher to collect the required data. The classroom activities consisted of group discussions, writing tasks, and responses to the short stories that helped the learners to reflect on the short stories. Think-aloud protocols helped the researcher to learn about the participants’ mental processes during writing. The semi-structured interviews provided the researcher with the information necessary for a deeper understanding of the efficacy of the classroom procedure. As the results of the study showed, successful writing requires manipulation of meta-cognitive strategies and thought-provoking activities. Although the findings of the study cannot be generalized, they can inspire EFL/ESL teachers and material developers to seek a variety of procedures in their approaches to teaching writing.

Introduction

EFL/ESL learners encounter enormous challenges for mastering the writing skill, which is essential to learning the English language. One source of the problem is traceable to the learners’ inefficiency in self-expression. Usually, language learners do not know how to verbalize their ideas, nor do they know how to organize their thoughts and write about a subject. In writing classes, learners not only should be instructed on the mechanics of writing, but also they should be taught how to use thinking skills. As Kellogg ( 1994 ) argues, “thinking and writing are twins of mental life” (p. 13), and writing requires tasks such as problem-solving, decision-making, and reasoning. Writing about what one knows, as Kellogg argues, is a self-discovery as much as it is one way of communication with others. However, excellence in writing requires excellence in thinking and requires systematic thinking ( Paul, 1993 ). One should be able to arrange one’s thoughts in a progression that makes it accessible to others.

High-quality writing, then, is produced by someone with specific standards for both thinking and writing. As Lipman, Sharp, and Oscanyan ( 1980 ) assert, “if the thinking that goes on in a conversation is densely structured and textured, that which goes in the act of writing can be even more so” (p. 14). For successful writing, student-writers not only should express viewpoints but also they need to provide logical reasons, support their ideas, and organize them. Therefore, one requirement in teaching writing to EFL/ESL learners is to employ techniques and strategies that can enhance the thinking skills of the student-writers. The reader- response approach in the present study was implemented to do so.

Besides, one issue that Iranian EFL learners confront is the difference between the organizational patterns of English and Persian argumentative texts, which magnifies the challenge they encounter while writing. As found by Ahmad Khan Beigi and Ahmadi ( 2011 , p. 177), Persian paragraphs are circular, metaphorical, and follow “Start-Sustain-Turn-Sum” structure, whereas English argumentative essays are straightforward and linear and follow “Claim-Justification-Conclusion or Introduction-Body-Conclusion” pattern. Also, contrary to English students who write “monotopical” essays, which add “unity to the overall paragraph organization”, Iranian students tend to use more than one topic sentence and thus write multi-topical paragraphs as the result of the influence of different organizational patterns of English and Persian (Moradian, Adel, & Tamri, 2014 , p. 62; Rashtchi & Mohammadi, 2017 ). Thus, reflection and response to literary texts were manipulated to help the EFL participants in the present study overcome the two-fold problem they might encounter in argumentative essay writing.

Using literature is by no means a novel idea in ESL/ EFL classes and has been extensively discussed by several scholars in the field (e.g., Gajdusek, 1988 ; Oster, 1989 ; Spack, 1985 ). The present study differs from the previous ones due to its underlying assumption that employing a scaffolded reader-response approach can change writing “from an intuitive, trial-and-error process to a dynamic, interactive and context-sensitive intellectual activity” (Hyland, 2009 , p. 215). In this endeavor, reading short stories and creating personal interpretations could shape the participants’ viewpoints, organize their thoughts, and help them produce compositions that conform to the English language structure.

Literature review

The role and use of literature in teaching writing have been a source of controversy in the studies related to the writing skill. Belcher and Hirvela ( 2000 ) in their comprehensive article about employing literature in L2 composition writing found the manipulation of literary texts in writing classes to be questionable, demanding further exploration despite all efforts to link writing and literature. One way to connect literature and writing is Rosenblatt’s ( 1938 ) reader-response approach that Belcher and Hirvela refer to it as one way, which can reduce the problems of using literature in the classrooms. Spack ( 1985 ) also maintains that in writing classes reading literature encourages learners “to make inferences, to formulate their ideas, and to look closely at a text for evidence to support generalizations” which leads them to think critically (p. 721).

Furthermore, Shafer ( 2013 , p. 39) maintains that if teachers decide to use literature in writing classes, “it should be approached in an inclusive, reader response method so that students have the opportunity to transact with the text and shape it.”

The reader response approach employs literary works in the English language classes and focuses on the reader rather than the text or as Rosenblatt ( 1976 ) conceptualizes, considers a creative role for the reader (p. 42). Therefore, it gives value to the reader as the driving force who can create meaning (Grossman, 2001 ) and provide new interpretations to a literary text. As Smagorinsky ( 2002 ) argues, in the reader-response approach, learners enrich the topic under scrutiny by their “previous experiences” and thus establish an “understanding of themselves, the literature and one another” (p.25). A critical characteristic of the reader-response approach is perspective-taking. According to Chi ( 1999 ), literary texts are not for teaching form and structure; preferably, they are a conduit of encouraging learners to read critically, to extract their understanding of a text, and as Rosenblatt ( 1985 ) maintains, to organize their thoughts and feelings when responding to them. The unique characteristic of the reader response approach, which values the readers’ interpretations of a text due to emotions, concerns, life experiences, and knowledge they have can connect literature and writing.

A review of the related literature shows that the approach has been employed in English language classes to examine its effect on learners’ understanding of literature as well as on developing linguistic and non-linguistic features. For example, Carlisle ( 2000 ) studied the effect of creating reading logs on the participants’ reading a novel while Gonzalez and Courtland ( 2009 ) explored how by the manipulation of the reader-response approach for reading a Spanish novel, the participants could learn the language, appreciate the cultural values, and improve their metacognitive reading strategies. Dhanapal ( 2010 ) reported that using reader-response could enhance the participants’ critical and creative thinking skills. Also, Khatib ( 2011 ) used the approach for enhancing EFL learners’ vocabulary knowledge and reading skills though she could not find a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups. In another study, Iskhak ( 2015 ) reported that the participants’ personality characteristics and L2 speaking and writing improved as the result of participating in reading a novel and responding to it.

The researcher was particularly interested in examining how the participants’ mental processes after reading and reflecting on literary texts could help them in writing. She used group discussions and personal reflective writings as stimulators of thinking ability that seem to be responsible for creating good-quality essays. Thus, the reader-response was viewed as a starting point that could stimulate reflection, and if scaffolded by group discussions and writing tasks, it could enhance the elements of thinking necessary for providing argumentation in writing. Moreover, the classroom procedure was intended to help the participants adjust their essays to the rules (related to mono-topicality) of English writing. Multiple forms of data collection were employed for the present qualitative case study whose purpose was to describe a “phenomenon and conceptualize it” (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2003 , p. 439).

Contrary to what is suggested by scholars regarding the occurrence of qualitative studies in natural settings (e.g., Creswell, 2013 ; Dornyei, 2007 ), this research was conducted in a classroom. The justification, according to Gall et al. ( 2003 , p. 438), is that in occasions where “fieldwork is not done, the goal is to learn about the phenomenon from the perspective of those in the field.” Thus, the following research questions were proposed to fulfill the objectives of the study:

RQ1 : How does the reader-response approach operate in writing argumentative essays?

RQ2 : How do the participants proceed with writing argumentative essays after reading short stories?

RQ3 : How do the participants’ essays before and after the treatment compare?

Participants

Participants were five Iranian EFL learners who participated in a private writing class. Table  1 shows their demographic information. As the table shows, they had studied English for several years and had started learning English from childhood.

Meanwhile, all of them were attending language classes in different institutes in Tehran at the upper-intermediate level. However, they asserted that they needed individual instruction in the writing skill. The participants did not have any significant academic encounter with the English literature before the study.

The teacher was the researcher of the study. Her B.A. degree in English language and literature, the literature courses she had passed as the requirements of her M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics had provided her with a background in English literature. Additionally, teaching literature courses such as Oral Reproduction of Short Stories, Introduction to English Literature, and English Prose and Poetry in the university where she was a faculty member, had drenched her with the necessary knowledge to instruct the classes. Besides, teaching writing courses for more than 15 years, and publishing papers related to the writing skill gave her insight regarding teaching the skill.

Data collection

The researcher triangulated the study by different types of data obtained from several sources. First, an English proficiency test consisting of 20 vocabulary items, 30 structures, and three reading passages each followed by five comprehension questions extracted from TOEFL Test Preparation Kit ( 1995 ) was used to ensure the participants’ homogeneity regarding the English proficiency level. The reason for using an old version of the test was to control the practice effect, as the participants were familiar with more recent versions.

Also, the participants were expected to write an essay on “ Is capital punishment justified?” as both the pre and post writing tests in 250–300 words which could help the researcher have a clear understanding of their writing ability before and after the treatment. However, the researcher did not intend to go through any inferential statistics, as the study was a qualitative one.

To select a controversial topic of writing which could persuade the student-writers to provide argumentations, the researcher prepared a list of ten topics and asked ten colleagues and ten students to mark the most challenging one. Thirteen of the respondents selected the topic related to capital punishment. Some of the other topics were, “Do we have the right to kill animals ?” “ Education must not be free for everyon e,” and “ Internet access must be limited. ”

A writing rubric (Allen, 2009 ) was used for correcting the essays (Additional file 1 ). The rubric considers four levels (No/Limited Proficiency, Some Proficiency, Proficiency, High Proficiency) across five characteristics of originality, clarity, organization, support, and documentation. The participants’ scores were obtained by adding the points for each level of writing, ranging from 1 for No/Limited Proficiency to 4 for High Proficiency. The researcher and a colleague of hers who had also taught writing classes for about 10 years rated the essays. They negotiated on the merits and shortcomings of each essay and finally agreed on a quality mentioned in the rubric.

The next source of information was students’ reflective responses written after reading the short stories. In these responses, the participants attempted to relate the stories to their personal experiences or write about their feelings, thoughts, and attitudes toward the stories.

Think-aloud protocols were also used as an instrument for data collection. Although according to Bowles ( 2010 , p. 3), “requiring participants to think aloud while they perform a task may affect the task performance and therefore not be a true reflection of normal cognitive processing,” its positive outcome cannot be denied. As Hyland ( 2009 , p. 147) sustains, despite criticisms against think-aloud protocols, they are used extensively in different studies since “the alternative, deducing cognitive processes from observations of behaviour, is less reliable.” Thus, the participants were trained on thinking aloud before the data collection, and then during the study, they were encouraged to report their thought processes while engaged in writing.

Another tool for data collection was a semi-structured interview conducted after completing the circle of reading each short story. The interviews were recorded and analyzed to enable the researcher to explore the participants’ learning experience (Additional file 2 ).

The researcher selected five thought-provoking short stories of high literary merits to initiate class discussions and elicit responses from the participants. The stories were The Lottery (Jackson, 1948 ), The Rocking Horse Winner (Lawrence, 1926 ), The Storm (Malmar, 1944 ), The Last Leaf (Henry, 1907 ), and Clay (Joyce, 1914 ).

Furthermore, the researcher prepared some tasks based on each story to help the participants practice writing and thinking skills (Additional file 3 ). Section A of the tasks required the respondents to organize the sentences according to the sequence of occurrence in the story. Section B asked the students to complete some incomplete sentences with “because,” and Section C consisted of “ WH” questions. Both sections required the learners to think and reason. The participants were expected to complete the three-step tasks after reading each story.

The classes were held in fall 2018. The instruction took 20 sessions, each week, two sessions, and each session 2 h. Before the advancement of the study, the researcher explained the classroom procedure and obtained the participants’ consent regarding the teaching/learning procedure. Then they took the general proficiency and the writing tests to provide the researcher with an estimation of their English language level. In the three subsequent sessions, the researcher gave instructions on English essay writing and discussed the characteristics of an excellent essay. The samples of high-quality and weak essays presented during the instruction could elucidate the characteristics of argumentative essays. The first short story ( The Lottery ) was introduced in session four, which the learners were asked to read before the succeeding session.

In class, first, the researcher asked the participants to take turns and read the story aloud because as Gajdusek ( 1988 ) argues, “many clues to meaning are conveyed by intonation and other expressive devices available” (p. 238). Then some time was allocated to the reflection on the story that could lead to the intellectual involvement of the participants. In the next step, the class followed group discussions through which the learners struggled to verbalize their responses to the story. In this stage, the researcher encouraged talking about viewpoints and emotional states that the learners experienced after reading the story. Following Sumara ( 1995 ), the researcher took part in the discussions to show some of her understanding from the text, although she tried to be concise and give most of the discussion time to the learners. Through comments and questions, the researcher intended to encourage the participants to share ideas with classmates.

After the group discussion, which usually took about 45 min, based on the reader-response treatment, the learners wrote about their feelings and views without trying to stick to the rules of writing such as organization, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, and the like.

In the subsequent session, the researcher asked the student-writers to refer to their notes before doing the tasks. The tasks had a twofold purpose. First, they aimed to help learners organize their thoughts by reflecting on the story. Second, they enabled the learners to relate the stories to their personal experience and understanding. Once the participants completed the tasks, they were invited to agree about a topic more or less related to the theme of the story and start writing a five-paragraph essay. The researcher corrected the essays based on the writing rubric and returned them in the next session (Additional file 1 ). While the learners were involved in writing, each session, the researcher asked two or three of them to participate in the think-aloud process.

The third session was devoted to interviewing the learners. Each interview took about five to 10 min. The participants started re-writing their essays based on the corrections after the researcher explained about their mistakes and errors. Table  2 summarizes the order of presenting the stories and topics attempted in the class.

Table 3 demonstrates the classroom procedure in each session.

The researcher used the data derived from group discussions, reader-responses, think-aloud protocols, and interviews to answer the first and second research questions. For answering the third research question, the quality of the essays written before and after the treatment was compared.

Group discussions

Before reading the first story, the participants were cynical regarding the usefulness of reading literature. They believed that the texts were too complicated; reading them was time-consuming and required skills different from the ones necessary for writing. However, after the first group discussion on The Lottery , they were excited. Some of the comments were:

“ The discussions help us express the feelings and emotions [which were] there inside but couldn’t find their way out, ” “ Classes lower my anxiety,” and “While reading, I felt I was in a different world forgetting [my problems].”

The discussions began with some challenging questions written by the researcher on the board. As the classes proceeded, the participants showed interest in the activity by listening to classmates, expressing viewpoints, and providing arguments. After reading the Lottery , Nima said:

“ I was shocked when I read the story, the name of the story implies something good, but something awful happened … how amazing! ”

Maryam added:

“ It’s like life when you expect good things and bad things happen .”

Azin looked at the story from a different perspective:

“ How selfish people can be, exactly like what happens nowadays, we keep silence until something injures [us].”

And Melika believed:

“ Others’ miseries are a relief for us … how cruel human beings can be, and this is true even in today’s civilized world.”

When reading Clay , Nima said:

“ I was expecting something unusual to happen, something which needs thinking and interpreting , I was sure clay implied something…not expecting .”

Ali asserted that he could understand literature better, could go beyond words, think more profound, and analyze the events in the short stories. The group discussions showed that the participants connected themselves with the stories and characters, and although they were unfamiliar with the English literature, they started appreciating the literary values of the stories.

Another advantage of the classes was the mental relief they caused as reflected in Melika’s words:

“ It is interesting to read about people who do not worry about the messages on their cell phones!”

One crucial point in the class discussions was the improvement of vocabulary knowledge. The participants sought to use words and phrases they had encountered in the stories. They asserted that reading and discussing literary texts helped them remember words with more ease. Besides, the discussions gave them self-confidence in self-expression and overflow of feelings. Maryam emphasized the role of group discussions in shaping her thoughts:

“ They [group discussions] were constructive; made me think and get familiar with others’ views … sometimes you think there is only one way of looking at something … then you find out … issues which you had never thought about before .”

Sharing ideas gave learners the courage to reason, evaluate, justify, agree, and disagree. Expressing agreement and disagreement regarding an issue was an achievement for the learners because it helped them while writing essays.

Another advantage of the group discussions was that they enhanced attention to the details. As the classes proceeded, the participants were conscious of the details mentioned in the stories, and tried to relate them to the plot and characters of the story and tried to infer the meaning they implied. For example, Maryam said:

“ The storm has a double meaning; it refers both to the weather and her inner feelings.”

Melika mentioned:

“ Drooped shoulders show how anxious she was .”

Azin referred to a sentence from the story (But now, alone and with the storm trying to batter its way in, she found it frightening to be so far away from other people) and stated :

“The storm inside her was destroying the image she had built of her life...now she was trying to find someone to stick … watching the imaginary heaven breaking … into pieces.”

The following excerpt is an example from group discussions on Clay to show how the class progressed in answering the leading question: “ How do you feel about Maria ?”

Azin: I think she is an unmarried middle-aged woman … I sympathize with her. Maryam: Why? … … .. why sympathize ? Azin: Because she is not married. Maryam: Is not being married a reason for sympathizing with someone? Melika: No, not marriage … … but loneliness … .. she was very lonely . Ali: Melika is right. Loneliness is too bothering, especially for the old; old age brings worries for people. I always try to show my concern for the elderly. Nima: Good thing to do . But I think some sort of sadness was around her which made me very sad, too…the writer implied kind of nothingness … … after so many years working she had nothing to be happy for. Azin: I do not agree, why nothingness … such is life, 1 day we come [to this world], and 1 day we must go … .this tells us to enjoy life. Maryam: Azin is right. Life is a blessing; we should enjoy every minute of it. Teacher: Let’s try to conclude. Nima … .please, the keywords were loneliness, sadness, marriage, life, and happiness.

Reader-responses

The responses promoted the participants’ focus on the stories. They pointed toward their inner feelings, judgments, preferences, and thoughts about the themes of the stories. They had addressed themselves and the characters and had put themselves in their place. They had used both questions and statements in the responses. Two responses to the Rocking Horse Winner by Maryam and Azin are as follows:

“She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them.” There are hundreds of people who can’t have children, you are lucky...Sometimes … we cannot realize how lucky we are, I am most [ly] like that … I should not be !”

“ … they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.” Feeling you are superior can destroy you … this is what kills human beings. When you think it is your right to have everything and … you forget others … sometimes others deserve but don’t have as much as you .”

Overall, the responses facilitated remembering the sequence of events in the stories. The tasks, together with group discussions, helped the participants organize their thoughts, and thus avoid recursive or cyclical writing. For example, on the first topic, “ The negative role of traditions in our life ,” Melika wrote:

“ Traditions can have both positive and negative roles in our lives. The negative role of traditions is most of the time more dominant though positive roles can be mentioned, as well. The negative role of traditions can cause ignorance, unawareness, and cruelty. Traditions can change the direction of people’s lives and force them to choose ways that are not appropriate. However, traditions can bring about good things, too.”

The writing is recursive as it repeats the idea of negative and positive aspects continuously. However, comparing Melika’s first writing with the last one, “ Superstitions should be abandoned ,” shows her improvement in expressing her idea clearly:

Superstitions are the result of [a] human being’s ignorance. People resort to them when they cannot find solutions to their problems or are not strong enough to face the disasters they encounter.

Additionally, the tasks enhanced reasoning and looking for evidence among the learners. For instance, Ali’s writing on the first topic not only shows his tendency to repeat the same idea but also reveals his lack of reasoning and thus relying on “educated people” and “scholars” to prove himself:

“Educated people never show a tendency toward traditions. Scholars believe that traditions are not scientific, and in today’s world, we must pay attention to scientific findings to solve our problems. The scientific developments help us to be able to live in this modern world.”

However, his introductory paragraph on “the role of motivation in life” showed some argumentation in developing his writing:

“ Motivation seems to have a positive role in our life and can help us to do different activities with less effort and more energy. For example, when we are interested in completing a project, we do not feel tired, but we think about the sense of achievement we will gain .”

Think-aloud protocols

As stated above, think-aloud protocols mainly focused on the participants’ thinking processes while they were engaged in writing. In each writing session, two or three learners participated in the think-aloud procedure. The researcher sat beside one of the participants who had agreed to take part in the thinking protocol. S/he explained the strategies s/he was using or accounted for his/her thought processes. All participants’ voices were recorded by their permission and transcribed for further analysis.

The analyses of the protocols showed that all participants first tried to take a perspective regarding the topic of the writing. The most frequent strategy was self-questioning. They first wrote questions and then answered them. Some questions were, “ What do I think about the topic? Why do I think so? What are my reasons? What is the evidence to support my idea? Are my reasons logical ?” Moreover, they reported that they used mind maps and outlines before beginning to write. Another strategy was using the phrases and words they had extracted and memorized from the texts that, as they asserted, could help them start writing.

Developing an inner dialogue before writing was another strategy used by the participants. Maryam said:

“ I … talk to myself and meanwhile try to write all of the sentences I exchange with myself during the dialogue. Then I organize them .”

Translating from L1, trying to write for an audience and drafting were other strategies used by the participants.

An interesting point mentioned by Maryam, Ali, and Nima was thinking about the stories before writing:

“ … in this way, writing becomes easier .” “ Discovering what you really think about a subject is difficult … I cannot make a decision … but the story is really helpful … it gives direction to my thoughts. ” “ I don’t know how to start my essay, that is why I am trying to review the story in my mind … .”

During the interviews, the participants talked about their learning experience. Their answers to the first interview question showed that they viewed writing a troublesome and challenging activity that needed expertise beyond general proficiency in English. They believed that for effective writing, besides knowledge of the language, learners should learn how to organize their thought processes and transfer them to words. They believed that the classroom procedure gave direction to their thoughts and enabled them to think and write systematically. Some of the advantages of reading literature, as they mentioned, are as follows:

“The use of technology makes me tired; people are always checking something in their cell phones; human relations are weakening … I think reading and sharing ideas is a relief .”

“ Freeing myself from my problems was great … reading stories gave me something different from the routines of life .”

“ The class gave me a reason to talk … something I miss nowadays … I am fed up with reading and writing in the [social network] .”

“ I hate traditional classes they do not give me space to be myself and talk about something different from casual things .”

“ … it was the first time I enjoyed writing because I had ideas to write about. I could [let] myself go.”

Regarding the second question, the learners believed that perspective-taking and organizing ideas were the most demanding tasks while they also maintained that controlling both content and form was difficult. Melika stated:

“ if it were not for grammar, I would have been more comfortable to express myself .”

Moreover, three of the participants (Maryam, Ali, and Nima) pointed to group discussions and mentioned that in the very first sessions, it was difficult for them to express their viewpoints regarding the topic of the discussions, but as the classes continued, they gained the necessary self-confidence. Maryam stated:

“ As the classes started, I was [worried] about my ideas to be irrelevant … I could have seemed funny … but little by little I gained courage to speak out .”

The flow of ideas was considered the most encouraging characteristic of the class (third interview question) for all of the participants. They believed that the short stories were excellent sources of ideas, and responding to them stimulated looking at the themes of the stories from a different perspective. Additionally, listening to classmates was considered encouraging because their opinions inspired confidence, thinking, and appreciation for literature.

Regarding the fourth interview question, the learners pointed to the role of the reader-response approach in boosting thinking skills, shaping ideas, and recovering life experiences. Further, all participants asserted that the approach could enhance inferencing, logical reasoning, and analyzing. They underlined the deep thinking brought about by transferring knowledge from the short stories to their personal lives and believed that by reading and reflecting on the stories, they realized that they had never had the opportunity to think deeply about some of the themes entailed in the stories. Subjects such as greed, selfishness, truth, security, and superstition were the subjects, which triggered thinking and led to a better understanding of human nature, the value of life, and social relations. They underscored the role of the classroom procedure in shaping their ideas and providing them with the input they required for writing.

Writing pretest and posttest

The comparison between the pretest and posttest seemed to be worthy of note. As Table  4 shows, the participants’ writings show a change of status from the pretest to the posttest in the components of the rubric. For example, regarding Originality, the raters witnessed a shift from “Limited Proficiency” in the pretest to “Proficiency” (Azin, Ali, Melika) and from Some Proficiency to “High Proficiency” (Maryam, Nima) in the posttest. Azin wrote the following sentence as the thesis of her essay:

“Capital punishment is a death penalty for wrongdoing.”

While in the posttest, she wrote:

“ Crimes are the result of the pressure society puts on individuals’ minds and souls.”

Maryam’s thesis statement in the pretest was:

“Human beings do not have the right to kill people [for] committing crimes.”

“Crimes are the manifestation of [the] society’s failure in evaluating humanity among its members, and the death penalty is the reflection of the deficiency of social institutions.”

Regarding Clarity, the second criterion in the writing rubric, all participants’ writing showed a shift from “Some Proficiency” to “Proficiency” (Azin, Melika) and to “High Proficiency” (Ali, Maryam, Nima). Ali’s improvement can be shown in the following examples extracted from the pretest and posttest, respectively:

“ Due to the fact that crime is the child of society, it can be studied from different perspectives. Of course, this is relative.”

“Crimes are the result of social injustice, and factors such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of enough education are responsible for leading people toward committing crimes. However, the question is whether the death penalty is the only solution against criminals.”

However, considering the fifth criterion, the Use of Sources/Documentation, the participants did not show much improvement. Their writings showed a shift from “No/Limited Proficiency” to “Some Proficiency” which could be due to the lack of enough time, not having access to different sources while writing, and not having enough practice in using references and quotations from other sources.

Table 5 presents the participants’ scores obtained from the proficiency test and the writing pretest and posttest. The writing scores signify improvement. It is worth mentioning that although the present study was a qualitative one, quantification was used for clarification since “numerical descriptions can make it readily apparent … why researchers have drawn particular inferences” (Mackey & Gass, 2005 , p. 182).

The data gathered from the diverse sources were employed to answer the first research question of the study. Group discussions were useful in helping the participants listen to others and get acquainted with their viewpoints. Listening to classmates exposed learners to a plethora of ideas, helped them avoid biases (Lipman, 2003 ), and enabled them to provide arguments and counterarguments. Reading short stories facilitated writing as they took the role of brainstorming before writing activity and gave direction to the learners’ thoughts (Spack, 1985 ).

The reader-response approach, accompanied by other classroom activities provided appropriate mental exercises that could activate the participants’ thinking skill. In line with Paul ( 1993 ), this study implies that thinking is a potential that needs to flourish through appropriate mental exercises. The reader-response approach can encourage learners to reflect on what they read and to decide on their perspective. The integration of reading literary texts and reflecting on them enhance focus on the sequence of events, promote inferencing, and thus, as Rosenblatt ( 1976 ) argues, help learners, become agents who give meaning to the text they read.

Moreover, the reader-responses could help learners become “conscious of the reasons and evidence that support this or that conclusion” (Lipman, 2003 ). In line with Kellogg ( 1994 ), this study supports the idea that writing and thinking are intertwined skills and improving writing skills is connected to fostering the thinking ability of learners. In the same vein, Oster ( 1989 , p. 100) also connects literature, critical thinking, and writing as she asserts that when students engage in discussing what they have read, they “develop the capacity to see” things with more precision and intensify their “seeing” by writing.

The think-aloud protocols and answers to the interview questions showed that the participants enjoyed reading the literary texts and believed that the texts could shape their awareness toward the details that they commonly fail to attend while encountering different issues in the real-life. Moreover, they successfully related the themes of the stories with their personal experiences, which could facilitate their perception and recall (Sherman, 2013 ).

Likewise, the data gathered from the think-aloud protocols and interviews enabled the researcher to answer the second research question of the study. The analysis of the learners’ answers revealed that connecting writing and literature could turn writing to a meaningful task which prevents the student-writers from becoming “passive recipients of teacher-driven models and assignments” (Shafer, 2013 ). The participants’ use of metacognitive strategies (e.g., self-questioning, outlining), which was stimulated by the writing activity after reading short stories shows that personal interpretations and reflection can activate the cognitive structure of student-writers. Furthermore, the emergence of inner-dialogues after reading activity shows that short stories could cultivate reflection, analysis, and inferencing.

The comparison of the students’ writing before and after the manipulation of the reader-response approach was employed to answer the third research question. As the writings signified, the learning process implemented in the study was successful in improving the participants’ writings regarding originality, clarity, organization, and reasoning.

As stated in the introduction section, one problem with Iranian EFL learners’ writings is “multi-topicality and the use of different forms of parallelism” (Ahmad Khan Beigi & Ahmadi, 2011 ; Moradian et al., 2014 ; Rashtchi & Mohammadi, 2017 ) which originates from their thinking structure and their first language. The planned classroom procedure employed in this study could improve learners’ writings because it was a practice for organized and linear thinking. This account finds support from Wegerif ( 2006 , p.17) who believed that the teaching of thinking skills “needs to be carefully contextualized to be effective.” The study suggests that thinking skills, triggered by the reader-response approach, can be transferred to the writing skill. In line with Rashtchi ( 2007 ) and Topping ( 2001 ), the present study states that one way of teaching thinking skills is through another transferable skill such as reading and writing.

Conclusions

Written tasks and group discussions scaffold the reader-response approach and lead to productive outcomes in thinking and writing. This study suggests that reflection and response cannot turn into writing skill automatically. The various data gathering tools clarified that the reader-response is a thought-provoking activity and can stimulate the employment of thinking strategies. The classroom procedure adopted in this study was a carefully designed activity to improve learners’ writing by tapping their thinking skills.

The present study was a small-scale study, which aimed to probe its participants’ mental processes and report how they reacted toward reading literature, reflecting, and writing. The aim of this study was not to generalize findings but to encourage teachers to employ a variety of techniques and procedures to help their students improve their language skills.

Availability of data and materials

The data and materials will be available upon request.

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Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the participants who voluntarily took part in this study and who kindly consented to cooperate in the data collection procedure, including think-aloud and interview sessions. Following their request, although I cannot mention their full names, I do appreciate what they did to make this study possible.

No funding was received for this study.

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Mojgan Rashtchi

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Additional file 1..

Writing Rubric. Northeastern Illinois University (Adapted from B. Walvoord by Allen, 2009 ).

Additional file 2.

Interview Questions.

Additional file 3.

Sample Task. The Lottery (Shortened to meet word limits).

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Rashtchi, M. Scaffolding argumentative essay writing via reader-response approach: a case study. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 4 , 12 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-019-0078-2

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Received : 19 June 2019

Accepted : 30 October 2019

Published : 27 November 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-019-0078-2

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Blended Learning In The Philippines Essay – Studies, Research, & More

Essay examples about blended learning in the philippines.

BLENDED LEARNING – In this article, we’re going to provide you with essay examples regarding the new education system in the Philippines. Furthermore, we’re going to discuss everything you need to know about modular and distance lessons.

NEW NORMAL EDUCATION

For the Philippines, the new normal of education comes in the form of “Blended Learning”. As the country continues to deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, students needed a safe way to learn.

Due to this, the country initially held online classes. Additionally, the Department of Education (DepEd) also had modular learning schemes where students can learn via workbooks at home.

But, as the Philippines got access to more vaccines, the government is now aiming to conduct face-to-face classes in the next semester. Through this, we get a glimpse of the new normal, “ blended learning “.

Using a mix of traditional face-to-face lectures and online-based instruction, DepEd aims to promote a fresh take on education. However, with a new system coming into play, it’s bound to have some advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGES AND DISTADVANTAGES OF BLENDED LEARNING

Clearly, going into a new form of education can be a daunting task. Due to this, we need to clearly weigh out the advantages and disadvantages of this new normal of education.

SAFETY – Amid the coronavirus pandemic, allowing students to safely learn from the comfort of their homes has become the priority.

LEARNING AT YOUR OWN PACE – Through online classes, activities, and lectures, students can now learn at their own pace. Thus, this promotes time management and effective personal study habits.

RESPONSIVE FEEDBACK – During traditional classes, quizzes, homework, and projects take time to check. As such, teachers can take days to finish an entire class’s worth of assignments. But, through online platforms, teachers can give automated feedback.

FLEXIBILITY – Each individual student has their own distinct learning style. Thus, teachers may have a hard time adjusting to all of them. But, with blended learning, teachers can use new online platforms to include activities like learning through podcasts, videos, and other forms of media to promote student participation.

Unfortunately, with the many advantages online learning has over traditional education, there are still key areas that need to be accounted for.

DISADVANTAGES OF NEW NORMAL EDUCATION

EFFECTIVENESS – One of the most difficult aspects of online learning for many students is the inability to focus on a screen for lengthy periods of time. Students are more likely to be quickly distracted by social media or other websites while they learn online. As a result, teachers must maintain their online lessons concise, interesting, and interactive in order to keep students focused on the topic.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES – Another major issue with online classes is the lack of internet access. While internet penetration has increased by leaps and bounds in recent years, maintaining a stable connection with adequate speed remains a challenge in smaller cities and towns, especially in highland areas of the Philippines.

There can be a loss of continuity in learning for children if pupils or teachers do not have access to the internet on a regular basis. This has a negative impact on the educational process.

TEACHER TRAINING – Teachers must have a basic understanding of how to use digital modes of learning in order to teach online. However, this is not always the case. Teachers may have only a rudimentary understanding of technology. They don’t always have the resources and tools they need to offer online classes.

Thanks for reading. We aim to provide our readers with the freshest and most in-demand content. Come back next time for the latest news here on Newspapers.ph.

READ ALSO: New Normal Education In Philippines – Blended Learning In PH

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