Study Site A

Site A was a tertiary institution that offered academic degree programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The institution through an affiliated academic unit also offered a certificate level English language programme to international students who were unable to meet the minimum English language requirement to gain direct admission into degree level programmes such as Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or Education. The language programme was for a total of 12 weeks (a teaching “block”). There were four intakes a year for this programme, which corresponded to four teaching blocks. The academic calendar for the programme was independent of the semester-based

82

academic calendar of the institution. Data were collected from this site during the second teaching block (April – June 2009) for a period of 12 weeks.

The programme consisted of eight levels ranging from elementary to advanced. Student classroom contact hours at each level were 23 hours per week each class. Classes ran in the mornings from Mondays to Friday for three hours (9.00 am to 12.00 noon) per lesson and in the afternoon on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays for two hours (1.00 to 3.00pm) per lesson. There were no afternoon classes on Wednesdays, as that time was reserved for staff meetings or professional development programmes. The morning classes at all levels focussed on the four language skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking, as well as vocabulary, and grammar. At the intermediate level (students who might be expected to score between a band of 4.5 and 5.5 based on a standardised assessment such as the IELTS) to the advanced level (students who might be expected to score between a band of 5.5 and 6.5 based on a standardised assessment such as the IELTS), the emphasis was on academic study skills such as note-taking, research, and oral presentations. The afternoon classes consisted of a language skills programme, which was compulsory for the lower levels (students who might be expected to score between a band of 1.0 and 4.0 based on a standardised assessment such as the IELTS). Those at the intermediate to the advanced level could choose from a range of options such as IELTS preparation, Business English, and Academic Reading and Writing, or Listening and Speaking.

This research focussed on a Level Five, which can be considered as an intermediate level. There were four classes at this level and each class had approximately 20 students. The level did not have a curriculum that prescribed the learning areas, determined the delivery of the academic content, recommended teaching approaches, or identified the number or types of assessments. There was also no language syllabus that provided the specific language learning content and how this content was organised and sequenced. The delivery of the Level Five programme closely followed the course outline, which was made available to all students including the researcher. The course outline described the structure of the level, listed the learning objectives, provided information on the classroom schedule, prescribed the textbook used, and explained the teaching methodology.

83

Classroom lessons were organised around five learning units based on the prescribed textbook which focussed on the reading skill. Each teacher was provided with this textbook and also an accompanying teacher’s manual. The students were also provided with a copy of the textbook. Each learning unit in this textbook contained two chapters and each chapter consisted of four topics. In total there were 10 chapters and 40 topics, which needed to be covered during the 12- week teaching block. One chapter was covered each week and began every Wednesday of the week (this second teaching block began on a Wednesday) and ended on the Monday of the following week. A typical lesson consisted of students and teachers discussing the notes made by the students based on their daily reading of the texts in each topic in the textbook. Such discussions concerned the extent to which the essential information in the text were identified and included in the students’ notes. The students were also required to complete a series of reading comprehension questions and occasionally vocabulary and grammar exercises in the textbook when time was available during the lesson.

In addition to reading, there were also listening and speaking activities. The listening activities corresponded to the topics in the textbook. Students listened to audio recordings of dialogues and lectures in a classroom lesson, wrote notes based on what they heard, and discussed the information within the same lesson. These notes were then used to support the students’ classroom speaking activities and writing assessments. The classroom speaking activities were conducted every Monday at the end of each chapter. During the speaking activity, each student was provided with a printed “task card” that contained a set of rubrics. These rubrics stated the topic and listed key points to guide a student to speak about the topic. These task cards were prepared by teachers who had previously taught Level Five, but had since left the institution or were teaching at other levels in the programme. The students were organised in pairs and given one minute to individually prepare their responses following the requirements stated in a task card before taking turns to speak to one another about the topic for two minutes.

The writing activities were part of the course assessments and consisted of two process writing exercises, a summary, and a final essay. The process writing involved the stages of drafting, redrafting, and writing the final product, which

84

lasted for two weeks per exercise. The drafting stage involved the students composing a complete essay in class for two hours and submitting it as a first draft for the teacher’s comments. In the following week, this first draft with the teacher’s comments was returned to the students for redrafting. After incorporating the teachers’ comments, this revised draft was submitted by the students to the teacher on the same day, as a second draft. Within the same week this second draft containing the teacher’s comments was returned to the students for the final drafting and then submitted by the students as the final essay. The last two stages (redrafting and writing) were conducted for one hour each time during scheduled computer lab sessions, as students were required to word-process these drafts. There were two process-writing exercises at this level. The first exercise was conducted in week three while the second exercise was in week seven. The implementation of the process writing exercise is illustrated in Table 4.1 below.

Table 4.1

Implementation of the process writing exercises at Study Site A

Week Stage Location Duration

Three / Seven Drafting Classroom Two hours Four / Eight Redrafting (second draft) Computer lab One hour

Writing the final product (final essay) Computer lab One hour

The last two writing exercises were the summary, which was conducted as an in- class assessment in week nine of the teaching block, and the final essay, which was administered in week 11 as part of the final examination for the level.

Course assessments at this level were progressive and included the assessment of the four language skills. In addition to the writing assessments described earlier, there were three reading and listening tests and two speaking assessments. The first speaking assessment was conducted in week seven while the second assessment was at week 12. As for the reading and listening the first test was administered in week nine, the second test in week 11, and the final test in week 12. In total, nine assessments (four writing assessments, three reading and listening tests, and two speaking assessments) were conducted during the 12-week

85

teaching block at this site. Table 4.2 illustrates the schedule of the various course assessments during the teaching block at Site A.

Table 4.2

Schedule of the various course assessments at Site A Week Course assessments

3 Writing assessment 1 (process writing) 7 Speaking assessment 1

Writing assessment 2 (process writing) 9 Reading and Listening Test 1

Writing assessment 3 (summary) 11 Reading and Listening Test 2

Writing assessment 4 (final essay) 12 Speaking assessment 2

Reading and Listening Test 3

There were marking criteria, which were used to evaluate the students’ performance in each assessment. The students were provided with a summary derived from the criteria as feedback. The researcher was not privy to this information.

Computers were used by teachers and students at Level Five. All teachers had access to an individual desktop computer in their work area and were observed using various software applications (such as word processing, electronic grade book, web browser, and email) for teaching preparation and administrative work. Students had access to the computer in spaces that were designated for the English language programme. These spaces included a small computer room (seating capacity of approximately 10 students at any one time) located at the English Language Resource Centre and one networked computer lab (seating capacity of approximately 20 students at any one time). While the resource centre was located approximately a five-minute walk from the teaching rooms, the lab was located approximately a 10-minute walk away from the main classroom building. Both spaces were opened to students from Mondays to Fridays from 8.30am to 5.00pm.

86

The computer lab was a shared facility with other levels in the English language programme and the use of it was organised based on a schedule to ensure fair access. Although there were other computer labs available throughout the institution, the English Language Programme students had no access to them as these spaces were for students pursuing the various degree programmes.

The institution’s campus was Wi-Fi connected and Internet access was provided on a pre-paid basis. The students were required to do this transaction electronically using their student identification card at stipulated terminals around the campus. Students were also able to access the Internet on their mobile devices by logging into their institutional student portals for the pre-paid access or by purchasing pre-paid or post-paid plans from the various mobile phone service providers in New Zealand.

In the classrooms, except for three rooms which each had an interactive whiteboard (IWB) recently installed, none of the classrooms had a computer. Students were taken to the computer lab as mentioned above to word-process the two process writing drafts. Lab sessions were organised as part of the classroom schedule before the teaching block commenced to ensure equitable access to the space for all Level Five classes to word-process their writing. Each Level Five class was provided access to the lab twice in this teaching block and each session was for the duration of one hour.

At the beginning of this study, five teachers voluntarily participated in the data collection. However this number of participants was reduced to three. One teacher had to opt out at the end of the second week of data collection, as she had to take a long leave to attend to a personal matter overseas. Another teacher was not able to participate in all interviews as she went on maternity leave during the latter part of the data collection. Three teachers participated in this case study and were identified as Teacher One (T1), Teacher Two (T2), and Teacher Three (T3). T1 coordinated the team of teachers teaching Level Five. This role required her to ensure the smooth running of the programme at Level Five in terms of the synchronisation of lesson topics and the administration of the required

87

assessments. She also assisted the Programme Administrator for the English Language Programme.

The three teacher participants came from different academic backgrounds with varying teaching experiences. They had undergraduate degrees that were not related to English Language Teaching (ELT). T1 was trained as a primary school teacher and during the period of the data collection, was pursuing a postgraduate diploma in Second Language Teaching (SLT), which was offered at the tertiary institution. Both T2 and T3 majored in language studies. In addition, all teachers had obtained the Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA). In terms of their teaching experience, all the three teachers had been teaching at the study site, T1 for eight years, T2 for approximately three years, and T3 for approximately seven years.

At this institution, language teachers were hired based on a continuing, fixed, or casual contract. Those on a continuing term contact were guaranteed employment every year. Teachers who were employed on a continuing basis worked an average of 40 hours a week. These hours included a classroom contact time of 19 hours per week. They were also expected to develop and update teaching and learning materials, prepare and mark course assignments and assessments, and attend main staff meetings as well as team meetings as required. As for teachers employed on a fixed term, they were hired on a yearly term and had to reapply for another contract every year. These teachers too worked an average of 40 hours a week, but their classroom contact hours varied and were determined by the number of classes at a particular level. They could also be assigned additional hours to teach as relief teachers and were paid on an hourly basis based on their fixed term salaries. Teachers employed on fixed term contract were also expected to develop and update teaching and learning materials, prepare and mark course assignments and assessments, and attend main staff meetings as well as team meetings as required. The casual teachers were employed on a needs basis and paid an hourly rate.

At this intermediate level, two teacher participants – T1and T3 were employed on a continuing basis and taught one class each – Class 1 and Class 2. T1 taught one

88

class (Class 1) for three days (Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) per week in the morning. T2 who was on a fixed term contract shared the teaching of Class 1 with T1. T2 taught Class 1 twice (Mondays and Tuesdays) per week in the morning. T3 taught another class (Class 2) from Mondays to Fridays every morning. In addition, each teacher taught on either a language skills programme or the options during the afternoon classes. In total each teacher taught 19 hours per week. Details of the three teachers, terms of employment, class allocated, and teaching schedule for Level Five are provided in Table 4.3 below.

Table 4.3

Details of the teachers, terms of employment, assigned class, and teaching schedule for Level Five - Study Site A

Teacher Terms of employment

Class allocated Teaching schedule

T1 Continuing Class 1 Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays (Three hours)

T2 Fixed Class 1(shared with T1)

Mondays and Tuesdays (Three hours)

T3 Continuing Class 2 Mondays to Fridays (Three hours)

These teachers had expressed their interest to participate in the research as they believed that the use of technology could support their students' classroom language production. In particular, they were interested in using Moodle, which had been introduced at this institution in 2006 and implemented in 2007. All teachers however, had never used Moodle in the programme prior to this study. There was no indication that the use of Moodle was mandated by the tertiary institution.

Support for teaching staff to use Moodle at this institution was provided by a centralised eLearning unit within the tertiary institution, which had been established two years prior to this study. Training in the use of Moodle was provided in the form of a series of workshops for teachers and was managed by the eLearning unit. These workshops were organised at designated computer labs and involved a hands-on approach. A schedule of the workshops, which were

89

organised throughout the year, was available on the main Moodle page and the main page of the eLearning unit. Teachers were encouraged to attend these workshops before attempting at using Moodle. Access to the LMS site, which was known as a “Moodle Paper” was provided by the unit upon request by the teachers. A Moodle paper consisted of the online site complete with all the accompanying features. One Moodle paper was provided to all teachers to be shared at Level Five. On the basis of Moodle training being readily available, the researcher assumed that the teachers had attended / were attending as will be described in the discussion chapter. This assumption however, was unfounded. The implications of the assumption will also be discussed in the concluding chapter.

The teachers intended to use Moodle to provide their students with the opportunity for asynchronous learning. Moodle was used to support the students’ classroom speaking. Discussion forums were created on Moodle and involved the task cards used during the classroom speaking activities as described earlier. Instead of providing the students in class with a printed copy of a task card or rubric containing the set of criteria, which stated the topic and listed key points to guide a student to speak about the topic, the information was uploaded as text on to the online forum. The online text information was referred to as a “Speaking Exercise” by the teachers and this term will be used throughout this study in the subsequent chapters which reported the findings and discussed the key themes.

The students were then expected to post their responses online to the topic based on the key points in text form, to share the information with their peers outside classroom learning hours. They were required to incorporate the notes from their reading and listening classroom lessons in their online responses. This approach in using Moodle was aimed at giving students more time outside the classroom learning hours to prepare for the weekly classroom speaking activity. The teachers expected that the availability of many ideas online could provide the students with more information that they could use to help them prepare to speak in the classroom. During the classroom speaking activity, each student was given two minutes to speak about the topic in front of the class.

90

All three teachers at this study site agreed to take turns to upload the information by every Wednesday morning. They also agreed to organise classroom speaking activities for 30 minutes every Monday morning in the following week. As the teachers had never used Moodle, they requested the researcher’s assistance to create the online forums. In total, nine forum discussions were created for each class on Moodle.