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2014 CALL Conference
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be
Data collected were analyzed and the findings indicated that the Web Quest Writing
Instruction (WQWI) was more effective than the traditional instruction in that students in
the WQWI class improved their writing performance significantly more than those in the
traditional writing instruction class.
Research Procedures
At the beginning of the research project, a writing performance pretest and a
questionnaire on motivation towards writing were administered to the subjects in the
control group and the experimental group. Taught by the same teacher, both groups
received writing instruction of six hours a week in the English class. The stages of writing
process (pre-writing, writing, and post-writing), peer editing and revising and teacher
responses to the drafts were conducted. The Participants in both groups were given three
writing tasks requiring them to produce paragraph writing. The three writing tasks in
both groups focused on the same writing modes and grammatical points. A total of 45
eighth -grade students participated in the study. The control group, which completed
traditional instructional activities, consisted of 22 students, 13 males and 9 females. The
experimental group, which completed the web quest activity, consisted of 23 students,
17 males and 6 females. The two classes were, at the beginning, homogenous in terms
of academic ability. The control group received traditional classroom instruction and met
in a traditional classroom the entire time. The lesson plans adopted and modified for the
traditional classroom writing instruction were originally compiled by the teacher and had
been used for years. These lesson plans, in the form of printed materials, were handouts
designed mainly for traditional classroom instruction. The experimental group received
the WQWI lessons and met in the traditional classroom as well as in the language
laboratory where pre-writing activities were conducted. The three lesson plans for the
WQWI lessons were adopted from Dodge's Matrix of web quest Examples at
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/matrix.html and modified to a large extent by the researcher.
The instructor identified the weaknesses and strengths of the sample lessons excerpted
from the thematic unit titled "Friendship and Honesty". After that, she employed the
thematic unit rubric in order to enhance the pointed out weaknesses and to fill out the
deduced gaps. Next, the instructor revised the sample lessons to bridge the gaps with
supplemental materials posted on the web quest. As such, the instructor assessed the
structure, content and layout of the sample lessons excerpted from the critiqued
thematic unit and created an enhanced version for the sample lessons excerpted from
the critiqued thematic unit. The instructor designed a new unit that integrates web-based
resources to improve the quality and efficacy of the lesson/unit under discussion.
As shown by the sample lesson plans of both the WQWI and WI, the traditional writing
instruction lessons used in the control group provided students with vocabulary, outline
formats, and sample written passages to familiarize them with the content and
organization for the writing assignments, whereas the WQWI lessons used in the
experimental group guided students in completing their writing assignments by leading
them to surf web quest materials organized in five major sections (introduction, task,
process, organization, conclusion).
At the end of the research study, the writing performance post-test and questionnaire
were administered to the subjects.
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