Abstract: This paper focuses on the evaluation programme of two EFL classes. The purpose of this paper is to show that content- based instruction (CBI) results in a higher communicative and linguistic competence and that programme evaluation is an essential part of teaching practices. During a school year one group of subjects was instructed following FCE (First Certificate in English) Exam format while another group was instructed following FCE format and Literature. Results show that the second group performed better in the tests administered than the first group.
Introduction
Programme evaluation must have a relevant place in any social practice. Being teaching a social practice, it must be of particular interest to teachers, in our case, teachers of English as a foreign language (TOEFL).
Lynch (1996) defines evaluation as the systematic attempt to gather information in order to make judgments or decisions, while a programme is seen, within the language teaching context, as any instructional sequence. He proposes the context-adaptive model (CAM) for language programme evaluation, which is divided into five steps which will be used in this research paper.
Darío Luis Banegas ISFD 809, Esquel
To begin with, Group A performed poorer than Group B when tested at the beginning of the study. When asked about this situation, subjects expressed that lack of interest and excessive FCE exam practice could be the cause of a drop in performance even though both groups had received the same amount of practice.
They went to say that they felt rather demotivated because they had the feeling that they had not done much with the language and that the aim seemed to have been training rather than learning. Regarding Speaking and course evaluation in general, they asserted that they would have liked to talk about current global issues during the course.
On the other hand, Group B performed better in the post-tests. They obtained better results at Grammar, but slightly lower at Speaking. When asked about this situation, they, contrary to Group A, expressed that mortality affected results since one of the subjects who had been absent as well as the one who passed away had got 9 and 10, respectively, in that paper in the pre-test. When asked about their results in general and their evaluation of the course, they expressed that they were content with content (Hillyard 2005). They admitted that, though they had not devoted much time to studying, they had gained a wider range of vocabulary and that they had been given the opportunity to use English with a real purpose during the second half of the year.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it must be said that this paper proves that CBI and programme evaluation are worth taking into account in our teaching practices.
CBI stresses critical and creative thinking and adds relevance to a course. CBI makes English become meaningful and it encourages commitment, participation, and is motivating in its own right since learners are allowed to make suggestions.
Programme evaluation, in turn, has proved to be essential. The so-called action-reflection-action cycle is an effective way of improving teaching practices and syllabi. Changes show that they must be adapted to other classes so as to improve results during the teaching-learning process.
The task of replicating this study to see whether these results remain invariable or whether new variables might give a better or different account of the picture However, in June 2006, one of the groups, henceforth Group B, expressed they
would like to have the opportunity to learn a subject in English. This group accepted to have half of its 12 contact hours devoted to Literature from August until the end of the school year, December 2006. The other group, Group A, continued with their original syllabus since they never requested any changes. This shift suggested that its pedagogical implications needed to be evaluated.
In general terms, Group A received instruction following FCE format, using the textbook Knockout while in Group B materials from literature textbooks were incorporated to their programme during the second half of the school year. From the beginning, Group A had classes with one teacher, whereas, Group B had classes Table 2
POST-TESTS Average marks
(10= top)
Use of English
Speaking
Speaking
Group A (control group)
5.57
7.09
6.29
Group B
7.7
8.27
7.98
All in all we can compare general results in the following table (table 3) Table 3
Group A
Group B
X (mean) SCORES
7.653
7.73
0.077 PRE - TEST
6.29
7.98
1.69 POST - TEST
writing task. These feelings are characterized by great reluctance to write, high levels of anxiety related to the process of writing and low self-esteem regarding both the skills involved and the quality of the texts produced. According to these authors, there are different levels of WA; some individuals may show a high degree of writing apprehension (HWA) and others might have low degrees of writing apprehension (LWA).
Using an instrument designed specifically for this purpose (the Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test – DM-WAT), they investigated writing apprehension among L1 college student writers. Their findings highlighted the fact that HWA may significantly restrict writing quality, as students presenting high levels of apprehension were shown to produce shorter, less complex and poorer essays than LWA writers, and to find it more difficult to focus on their own ideas and put them down on paper (Faigley, Daly & Witte 1981). Even beyond the writing skills as such, WA seemed to permeate many of the students' academic decisions regarding course enrollment and future career prospects. In other words, WA was shown to be an important restriction not only for the development of writing but for the learning process as a whole (Daly & Shamo 1978).
Research on WA in ESL writing has not been extensive and has generally been limited to higher education contexts, mainly in the United States (Barbeito 2003).
Taylor, Johnson & Gungle (1987, in Gungle & Taylor 1989) adapted the DM-WAT in order to study WA within an ESL setting. Their findings confirmed to a large extent those of previous research in L1: ESL writers who presented HWA tended to focus less on the content of their texts and tried to avoid writing as a whole, while their LWA counterparts were shown to be more willing to enroll in Advanced Writing classes and to pay more attention to content than to form while composing. The modified ESL version of the DM-WAT was applied in another revealing study involving second language learners, in which writing apprehension was characterized as a skill – a specific type of anxiety (Cheng, Horwitz & Schallert 1999). A more recent study regarding ESL writing apprehension was carried out by Lee and Krashen (2002) to examine the impact of WA on L2 writing performance in upper-intermediate university students. The authors studied how writing apprehension, among other predictors, influenced students' grades as a measure of competence and attainment. The results revealed a strong relationship between writing apprehension and grades in writing classes, with HWA students