A pilot study was conducted from 11th-15th October 2010. The aim was to capture the reality of a traditional English writing class in a Chinese high school, to enable the researcher to design infusion lessons that would be feasible and suitable for high school students. Moreover, data collection instruments should always be tried before the actual data collection in order to verify their suitability for the target subjects. The CCTDI and CCTST were tested to find out how long it took to administer them and whether or not they were comprehensible to high school students, since they were designed by researchers from Western countries and originally written in English. Semi-structured group interviews were also conducted to investigate whether the students could answer the questions and how they felt about being interviewed.
3.6.1 Classroom Observation
Two English writing lessons were observed, which were taken by two teachers. Teacher B had taught English at high school for more than 8 years, and had a Master’s
degree obtained in Singapore. Teacher C had taught English at high school for more than 15 years, and was the head of both English teaching and the research group at the school.
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The results of the observation supported the finding of previous studies that the teaching in Chinese high school English classes is still teacher-dominated and textbook-based; the teachers failed to create opportunities for students to think critically, and limited the amount of time they were allowed for deep thinking (see chapter 1, section 1.4). Extracts 1 and 2 are examples of the interaction between teacher and students in the two classes.
Extract 1: (Teacher B and her students)
1 T: What is ‘申请 ‘(apply) in English? 2 Ss: Apply.
3 T: What is its form of noun? 4 Ss: (silent)
5 T: Application 6 Ss: Application
Extract 2: (Teacher C and her students)
1 T: What are the key words to write a job offer? (What are the key 2 words? Do it quickly.)
3 (Students read the job notice in the textbook silently for two minutes)
4 T: What are the key words?
5 (Teacher said the key words aloud together with students) 6 T: OK. Remember, these are key words to write a job offer.
Extract 1 is an example of teacher B’s interaction with her students. The students
remained silent after the teacher repeated the question (lines 3 and 4), and she told them the answer immediately. Then the students repeated it (lines 4 and 6). The teacher did not ask further questions to guide or provoke their thinking, and thus failed to encourage her students to find out the answer by themselves. Extract 2 is an example of teacher C’s interaction with her students. Teacher C asked the students to
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notice in the textbook individually, and afterward, the teacher read the key words from the book along with the students and told them to remember these words. Again, she did not illustrate the use of the words or guide the students to think about what these key words were used for or why they were important before instructing the students to remember them. At the same time, neither of these teachers created opportunities for individual students to present their ideas, although in teacher C’s class, she could have asked the students to find the key words and discuss them in pairs or in groups, instead of reading the textbook individually and in silence.
Based on these findings, the researcher selected questions from Paul and Elder (2005) and Browne and Keeley (2004) that would help the teachers to encourage and provoke the students’ thinking, and that also required students to complete the thinking tasks
collaboratively through discussion, in order to encourage them to present and exchange their ideas.
3.6.2 CCTDI and CCTST
117 first-year students from the same high school took part in the piloting of the CCTDI and CCTST. The CCTDI was completed in class on the morning of 12th October 2010, followed by the CCTST, and these tests had to be completed within 15 and 45 minutes respectively, as suggested by the manual (see section 3.8.1).
89 (76.06%) students submitted the CCTDI answer sheets within 15 minutes, and 115 (98.2%) completed them within 20 minutes. Moreover, only 62 (52.99%) students were able to complete the CCTST within 45 minutes. Five additional minutes were
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then provided, but this was only enough for 24 of the remaining students to complete it. In the end, 106 (90.59%) students had returned answer sheets after 55 minutes.
It was therefore decided that five and ten more minutes for completing the CCTDI and CCTST respectively should be allowed in the main study. Although the suggested administration time for the CCTDI in the Chinese manual is 15 minutes, it was decided to allow 20 minutes in this study. There were two justifications for doing this. First, the author of the original CCTDI suggested that 20 minutes was appropriate for the test- taker (Facione et al. 1994). Secondly, the findings of the study on the reliability and validity of the Chinese versions of both the CCTDI and CCTST were based on a sample of 318 Chinese college students (see section 3.8.1). High school students may take more time to complete the test. It was thus deemed reasonable to allow five more minutes for them to complete the CCTDI. Moreover, although the CCTST has been used with high school students in America, the students in the pilot study for the current research reported that they were not familiar with these types of question and had not taken this type of test before. They needed time to familiarise themselves with the test. Therefore, ten more minutes were given to the students to complete the CCTST.
3.6.3 Semi-structured Group Interview
Five first-year students were interviewed. The three main questions were intended to address students’ attitudes towards and perceptions of current English teaching, and
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learn in an English class? And c) Do you think current English lessons need to be improved? If yes, how?
The interviewees answered all the questions during the interviews, and they provided no negative feedback about the issues raised. It was therefore decided to conduct semi- structured group interviews, for two reasons. First, based on their understanding of their students, the teachers recommended that the researcher conducted group interviews, since the students had not been interviewed before and would be anxious about being interviewed alone. Secondly, the semi-structured interview can stimulate fuller responses, since the researcher can add relevant questions when needed (see section 3.8.4).