International Journal of Education and Pedagogy (IJEAP) eISSN: 2682-8464 | Vol. 5 No. 1 [March 2023]
Journal website: http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ijeap
A STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST TEACHING APPROACH TO TEACH
FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ACADEMIC ESSAYS AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI
Lê Phương Thảo1*
1 Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, VIETNAM
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
Article Information:
Article history:
Received date : 5 March 2023 Revised date : 17 March 2023 Accepted date : 23 March 2023 Published date : 30 March 2023
To cite this document:
Thao, L. P. (2023). A STUDY ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST TEACHING APPROACH TO TEACH FIRST- YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ACADEMIC ESSAYS AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI.
International Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 5(1), 116-126.
Abstract: Teaching academic essay writing has increasingly become a topic of interest at tertiary education level due to the importance of learning this skill. Hence, multiple approaches to teaching academic essays have been developed. The main aim of this action research is to investigate whether the implementation of the constructivist teaching approach can enhance students’ academic essay performances. The participants of this research include 20 EFL first-year students majoring in English at a university in Hanoi, Vietnam, and a teacher in charge of teaching the participants. Data was collected through pre-test (submitted prior to the treatment) and post-test (submitted after the treatment). The results reveal that students’ writing performances were boosted due to the clear differences in the mean scores between the pre-test and post-test although the improvement did not occur in all respects mentioned in the course marking rubrics.
Thus, some pedagogical implications and suggestions were drawn for the effective application of the constructivist approach in teaching academic essays to university students.
Keywords: EFL students, constructivist approach, academic essays.
1. Introduction
Learners' struggles with writing in general and academic essays in particular, as asserted by Al-Abed Al-Haq and Al-Sobh (2012), can be ascribed to many factors, noticeably the teaching strategies and techniques. Specifically, Batayneh (1986) and AL-Quran (2002) claim that teachers often employ traditional teaching methods in each lesson with a focus on grammar and structure instead paying attention to the writing process and adopting new teaching strategies and techniques. Hence, the adoption of a new and effective teaching approach in which teaching is viewed from a different angle is of critical importance. Hoover (1996) suggests that teaching should not be merely viewed as an act of knowledge transmission with teachers functioning as “sage on the stage”; instead, the teachers are the guides offering learners various opportunities to grow and absorb knowledge efficiently. Based on my observation of my students’ writing performances in my class and their scores of the pre-test in this action research, I realised that to some extent my passive teaching methods resulted in their unsatisfactory academic essay writing skills. Hence, the researcher decided to experiment with the constructivist approach in the class, which according to Clements (1997), would boost students’ academic essay writing competence due to its ability to motivate learners to solve problems creatively, generate ideas efficiently and enhance their motivation to write as well.
This action research aims to explore whether the implementation of the constructivist approach in teaching academic essays to first-year university English majors enhanced students’
performances in academic essay writing. To achieve this objective, the research attempts to answer the following research question: How did the constructivist teaching approach impact first-year university students’ performances in English essay writing in the course?
2. Literature Review
a. Definition of Academic Essays
Irvin (2010) believes that essays are a document following certain rules related to strategies and styles which can be learnt. Dorothy and Lisa (2003) define an academic essay based on its structure; it is a group of paragraphs revolving around a topic and is well-structured with an introduction, a body and a conclusion. In short, academic essays are the type of writing having well-organised structure and displaying students’ understanding, research, analysing skills as well as master of conventions.
b. Academic Essays’ Assessment Criteria
UCLES (2004) suggested using the following four criteria to assess an academic essay which are also adopted in the assessment process in the course under this study: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy.
1. Task achievement: Task achievement, according to (Bagheri & Riasati, 2016; UCLES, 2004), refers to the way writers construct and support their argument in response to the given topic by showing relevant perspectives and examples while the length of the essay is still ensured. To achieve a high score in task achievement, writers must fully complete the given task by understanding the question thoroughly and properly to find out the main idea of the question and the theme of the essay, clearly showing their argument in the essay, logically organising information in paragraphs each of which revolves around one central idea, and clarifying their ideas with relevant instances and supporting evidence (Cullen, 2017).
2. Coherence and cohesion: Coherence and cohesion refers to the way the essay is organised in general (UCLES, 2004). Coherence specifically concerns the inextricable link of the idea while cohesion is about the use of cohesive devices to form such connections. According to Halliday (1985), cohesion features could be divided into grammatical cohesion (including reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction) and lexical cohesion (including reiteration and collocation). According to UCLES (2004), analysis of logical relationships in a text helps to detect its level of coherence, and there are four kinds of relations forming the coherence of a text, namely additive, adversative, causal and temporal relation.
3. Lexical resources: According to UCLES (2004), this criterion aims at checking the diversity, precision and appropriateness in writers’ vocabulary use. In other words, lexical resources can show whether writers have the ability to paraphrase the information and to use a wide range of vocabulary appropriately as well as flexibly to clearly express ideas without making any errors.
It is often wrongly believed that bombastic language in an essay is a reliable indicator of vocabulary mastery. However, UCLES (2004) emphasised that using words appropriately, naturally, flexibly and comprehensibly is of paramount importance. In addition, the word level is concerned when it comes to lexical resources. To analyse the level of words, Laufer and Nation (1995) suggested the Vocabulary Profile, which includes four levels: the first 1000- word level (1000WL), the second 1000-word level (2000WL), the Academic Word List (AWL WL) and the Off Word List or lower frequency words (Off WL).
4. Grammatical range and accuracy: Grammatical range and accuracy, as claimed by UCLES (2004), requires writers to showcase the diversity and precision of their grammatical structures.
This means these structures are both used correctly and varied in the essay. Rimmer (2006) added that with a good grammatical competence, writers can produce complex structures in writing.
C. Definition of Constructivist Teaching
Constructivist teaching, which plays a significant role in the process of educational reform, is an umbrella term referring to teaching approaches that promote active learning and constructive activities in a meaningful context for learners (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Brooks & Brooks, 1999). Such approaches derive from different learning theories, for instance, cooperative learning, (e.g., Vygotsky’s ZPD), reciprocal teaching (e.g., predicting, questioning, etc.), situated learning (e.g., providing a meaning learning context), active learning and problem- based learning originating from social constructivism. Hence, according to Brooks and Brooks (1999) and Powell and Kalina (2009), it is critical that teachers deeply understand and incorporate the strategies and techniques of cognitive and social constructivism in their classrooms to teach constructively, facilitate students’ knowledge construction and enhance their learning performances. The constructivist teaching approach in this action research can be understood as what is defined by Elliott et al. (2000): the approach allows learners to build up their knowledge in an active way based on their experiences and social interactions.
d. Characteristics of Constructivist Teaching
Synthesising the key factors of constructivist teaching as pointed out in the research of Vygotsky (1978), and Wilson and Cole (1991), Paily (2013) identified two major features of constructivist teaching: learning forms require social interactions and teaching activities are learner-centred. Such features have the following indicators:
1. Constructing knowledge from social interactions
2. Encouraging students to learn collaboratively and cooperatively 3. Encouraging students to show multiple perspectives
4. Guiding not lecturing students
5. Accepting and welcoming students’ mistakes 6. Using realistic learning situations
7. Using primary data sources
8. Using activities demanding high order thinking skills 9. Using hands-on activities
10. Emphasising the interrelatedness of writing concepts and linking knowledge of different subjects
11. Scaffolding students in challenging cases only 12. Using authentic assessment
13. Allowing students to plan the lessons by setting learning objectives, deciding teaching methodology and teaching aids
14. Encouraging students’ metacognition and self-reflection
15. Letting students mostly be responsible for their own learning process 16. Letting students construct their own knowledge
17. Provoking students’ prior knowledge and experiences to construct their new knowledge 18. Encouraging students to explore and seek knowledge by themselves
2.1 Problem Statement
There are differing views about the impacts of the constructivist teaching approach on students’
learning outcomes in tertiary education. Numerous studies have reached a consensus on the teaching approach’s positive impacts on university students’ writing competence. To illustrate, Supriyadi’ research (2013) in which the constructivist approach was adopted to teach students academic writing in four activities (orientation, exploration of concept, interpretation/concept inquiry, and concept application) shows that the method helps enhance students’ learning outcomes. AL-Ghazo and Al-Zoubi (2018) share the same viewpoint on the positive impacts of the constructivist teaching approach on students’ writing competence, evidenced by the striking differences in the post-test of their research between the mean scores of EFL students in the experimental group taught with constructivist teaching strategies and the mean scores of those who were not in a constructivist learning environment. Regarding the writing features that students taught with the constructivist instruction could make, Baradaran and Sarfarazi (2011), Hussain (2012) and Tufekci and Sapar (2011) respectively assert this teaching approach could better task achievement, coherence and cohesion, and lexical resources in students’
essays. The view on the effect of the constructivist teaching method on grammar and accuracy is differing with Sheppard (1992) claiming no improvement in this aspect in students’ essays while Tufekci and Sapar (2011) stating the opposite.
3. Method
Being aware of students’ low academic essay writing competence, I decided to adopt action research to solve this problem in my class. This action research employs quantitative research methods with qualitative data collection and analysis methods.
3.1 Materials 3.1.1 Samples
The students in the research were asked to do a pretest and a post-test, which were recorded and used for comparison to explore any possible impacts of the constructivist approach on students’ academic essays performances during the research progress. In other words, the quantitative data from the pre-test and post-test help to answer the research question. The pretest covers the topic “Education” while the post-test requires students to write an essay about the topic “Travel”. These topics are included in the syllabus of the studied course. In addition, the pretest and post-test were taken from the bank of writing tests used in the academic essay writing course and compiled by the experienced teachers teaching the course. These teachers were masters of TESOL, gained a certificate of second language testing and assessment from the testing and assessment centre in the university and had at least 5-year experience of designing tests in English for EFL. Each writing test comprises one part aiming to assess students’ written communicative competence through an essay. It targets the test takers at level B2+ CEFR. According to the course guide, students scoring at least 7.0 out of 10 fulfil the course requirement. The two writing tests share the same response format, time, intended operations, task type, instructions, number of items and weighting in the test specifications.
Specifically, students doing both writing tests were asked to write an opinion essay of at least 250 words in 40 minutes, using his/ her experience and knowledge to support his/ her arguments. The test-takers must present arguments, highlight main ideas and support them with relevant details. Another similarity between the two tests is that their results were made consistent and reliable due to the use of the same marking rubrics used in both the prerequisite course and the academic essay writing course.
The quantitative data analysis method was adopted for the analysis of writing tests in terms of scores and essay criteria assessment. Specifically, the researcher used SPSS to analyse the quantitative data of students’ scores in the pre-test and post-test. In addition, quantitative measures of elements of task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource and grammar and accuracy in students’ pre-test and post-test essays were made.
The research participants included 20 first-year university students majoring in English language in the 2022-2026 cohort. The students studied in the same class and are both male and female. The average age of the students was 19. It is noted that all the students in the studied class had taken the previous course on academic writing offering an overview of academic essays, its elements and the four marking criteria. The beginning level of the students in the studied academic essay writing course was B2-, and they were expected to achieve B2+
by the end of the course. The findings of this study would be ideally generalised to ELF first- year university students majoring in English language because they have a similar study environment to that of participants in this action research.
3.1.2 Site
This study was conducted in a class of a university specialising foreign language teaching in Hanoi. The research was implemented at the Faculty of English, which is well-known for training students to become English language teachers, translators and interpreters. The writing course in this research was part of English Language Skill Development for first-year and second-year university students. The course in this study, which aims to upgrade students’
English level from B2- to B2+ according to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference), has 11 lessons delivered in 11 weeks, and each of them lasts 180 minutes. The intervention was applied in 10 weeks, from week 2 to week 11 of the course.
3.1.3 Procedures
The students in the research were asked to do a pretest and a post-test, which were respectively done in the first lesson before the treatment and in the last lesson of the course. The scores of these tests were recorded and used for comparison to explore any possible effects of the constructivist approach on students’ academic essays performances.
After taking thorough considerations of the characteristics as well as the benefits of action research, the researcher of this study decided to adopt it as the research design of this study.
The researcher firmly believed that action research, which is classroom-based and undertaken through a cyclical process, will deepen her understanding of the academic essay teaching and learning in her own class and offer some workable ways to better academic essay writing performances of her students. This action research is based on the proposed prevalent model by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) with two cycles comprising four steps: planning, action, observation and reflection. The justification for the application of this model in this study is
“action research is to plan, act, observe and reflect more carefully, more systematically, and more rigorously than one usually does in everyday life” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988, p. 10).
Adopting Kemmis and McTaggart’s action research model, the researcher can identify students’ real problems in class and then make informed decisions with an enhanced understanding.
The independent variable in this study is the constructivist teaching approach and the dependent variable students’ writing post-test scores. The researcher taught academic essays constructivistly by making lesson plans based on the characteristics of this teaching approach.
Regarding writing post-test scores, like writing pre-test scores, they were measured by the researcher and another teacher teaching academic essays, based on the assessment criteria of academic essays.
The sample size is all students in the same class (20 first-year university students) instructed with the constructivist teaching approach. These students all received the same instruction and teaching approach, so the researcher decided to choose all of them for this action research.
3.2 Measurement
Firstly, the researcher numbered students’ writing essays from 1 to 20 in each test. Then, the researcher and the second rater reached a consensus of the way to score student’s writing test essays based on the marking rubrics used in the course. When marking each essay, both raters gave analytical scoring of each criterion in the marking rubrics, from which they found the score of the essay. The final score of the essay was the mean of the scores given by the researcher and the second rater. A difference of more than one score in an essay in each test would lead to the re-analysis of the essay and the discussion between the two raters to reach the consensus. This rater training procedure was based on that proposed by Shohamy, Gordon and Kraemer (1992). After that, a pilot rating of three essay writing tests was done.
Consequently, the researcher imported the data of students’ scores in writing pre- test and post- test into an Excel file and ran a paired t-test in Excel. The statistical difference between these two groups of data was then identified based on the means, standard deviations, median and p value. The figure of each measure of the element of the marking rubrics criteria in students’
essays in both tests was imported into an Excel file to count. The comparison was then made between these types of data in pre-test and post-test to identify any improvement in students’
essays in terms of task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, grammar and accuracy.
3.3 Data Analysis
The quantitative data analysis method was adopted for the analysis of writing tests in terms of scores and essay criteria assessment. Specifically, the researcher used SPSS to analyse the quantitative data of students’ scores in the pre-test and post-test. In addition, quantitative measures of elements of task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource and grammar and accuracy in students’ pre-test and post-test essays were made. It is worth noting that the detailed instruction on writing an essay satisfying these four assessment criteria in the course marking rubrics was provided in the prerequisite course, and the revision was made in the academic essay writing course in this study. To be more specific, based on the marking rubrics used in the course, the researcher found out that the requirement of task achievement entails essay structure, idea development, addressing all parts of the tasks and word count.
Hence, to analyse task achievement in students’ essays in both tests, the researcher measured the average parts of essays, average number of paragraphs, average number of supported ideas, average number of addressed parts of the task and average number of words. Regarding cohesion, students’ pre-test and post-test essays were analysed based on the theories proposed by Eggins (1994) pointing out all types of cohesion mentioned in the course marking rubrics, namely grammatical and lexical cohesion. As for coherence which according to the marking rubrics refers to the flow and connection in the text, the researcher based the analysis of coherence in the logical relation theory from UCLES (2014). In terms of lexical resource and grammar analysis, to measure their complexity which is described in all band scores, the researcher based on the CAF model by Pallotti (2009). Specifically, the researcher counted the number of different words per the total number of words to identify the complexity of lexical resource in students’ essays, and the complexity of grammar was measured by using the number of words per clause, the number of words per T-unit and the number of clauses per T- unit. Also, the CAF model helped the researcher measure and analyse the accuracy of lexical resources and grammar in students’ essays in both tests. The ratio of error-free T-units to total T-units, error-free clauses to total clauses and errors to words based on this model contribute to the measurement and analysis of lexical resources and grammar accuracy.
3.3.1 Validity and Reliability
This action research’s outcomes are reliable because of the consistency in the marking of the measure of pre-test and post-test across both raters and the internal consistency of both tests.
Additionally, the findings have a high level of validity as the measurement covers all aspects of the concept being measured. However, it is the time limitation that made it impossible for the researcher to assess the impacts of the constructivist approach on students’ writing performances in the long term. Some researchers, notably Greenberg, Rice and Elliot (1993) claim that more meaningful effects of the intervention like this may appear long after the end of the intervention rather than on the data collection day. Hence, the researcher can impossibly collect such data.
4. Results and Discussion
A comparison between the scores of the pre-test and post-test and an analysis of students’ pre- test and post-test essays based on four marking criteria (task achievement, coherence and cohesion, grammar and accuracy and lexical resource) were employed. Overall, the results obtained from students’ essays in the pre-test and post-test echo the previous studies’ findings that the constructivist teaching approach contributes to students’ competence (Daloğlu, 2009;
Supriyadi, 2013; and AL-Ghazo and Al-Zoubi, 2018)). Besides, the findings from this action research offer detailed explanations for which writing features that students could make significant improvements.
Firstly, statistical analysis of students’ pre-test and post-test shows their progress in writing scores after the course receiving the intervention (constructivist teaching). This was indicated by higher mean, mode and median in the scores in the post-test. Also, the difference between students’ writing performance before and after the treatment was significant and caused by the intervention because the value of p (0.00) was less than the α value (0.05) in the t-test. This finding is consistent with that in the research Supriyadi (2013) and AL-Ghazo and Al-Zoubi (2018) pointing out the striking difference between EFL learners’ writing scores in pre-test and post- test, and stands in a stark contrast with the results of the studies by Makanong (2000) and Kim (2005) claiming no contribution of the constructivist teaching approach to the score difference in pre-test and post-test.
Secondly, based on four marking criteria-based analysis, overall students’ writing performances improved. As for task achievement, after the course, most of the students could write a complete essay, develop ideas in the essay, resulting in a greater number of words in the essay to meet the word count requirement. This result is in line with that of the study by Baradaran and Sarfarazi (2011) indicating the marked improvement in students’ writing in terms of generating ideas and structuring essays. Students in the researched class also upgraded their essays’ coherence and cohesion, which is congruent with the research findings by Hussain (2012). It was the errors related to subject-agreement and fragments that were least observed in the post-test compared with the pre-test, in terms of grammar and accuracy. This result is supported by Tufekci and Sapar (2011) but goes against the claim by Sheppard (1992) who reported no impact of the constructivist approach on writing accuracy of students. With respect to lexical resources, overall, students’ vocab size was expanded much more than the pre-test, which is in agreement with the research result by Tufekci and Sapar (2011). The number of lexical cohesion and uncommon words were the exceptions with their reduction in students’
post-test essays. This could be explained by learners’ less familiarity with the topic in the post-
test (free and paid education) than that in the pre-test (arts) though they are related to the education theme.
5. Conclusion
The research findings point out the positive impacts of the used constructivist approach on students’ essay scores and their essays. In terms of scores, there was a significant difference between students’ pre-test and post-test scores. Regarding the essays of students in the research, overall, there was an improvement in the quality of students’ essays after the treatment, which was evidenced by the betterment in almost all criteria in the marking rubrics. Only the number of lexical cohesion and uncommon words in students’ post-test essays declined. A plausible explanation for this may be the familiarity of students with the topic in the pre-test, thus resulting in better lexical cohesion and uncommon words in their pre-test essays.
6. Acknowledgement
It is my great privilege to send my sincere thanks to the research participants who are my dear students and my supportive colleague, the second rater in this research. It is their great contribution and kindness that helped me to acquire the most reliable data.
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Appendices Pre-test
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Present a written argument or case to an educated reader with no specialist knowledge of the following topic.
Some people think that art is not an essential subject for children at school since it is a waste of time. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience. Write at least 250 words.
Post-test
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Present a written argument or case to an educated reader with no specialist knowledge of the following topic.
Organised tours to remote communities and other countries should be promoted by their enormous benefits to society. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience. Write at least 250 words.
