Explaining Hong Kong students' response to process writing: An exploration of causes and outcomes
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文摘
The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate student reactions to the attempt on the part of their English teacher, a native Cantonese speaker, to apply the innovation of process writing in 3 multiple-lesson units. Answers to a questionnaire revealed a variable reaction to the units across 8 classes of Cantonese-speaking secondary-school students. For two groups in academically achieving all-girl classes, the experience was judged as positive, for two in lower achieving mixed-gender classes as negative, and for the four other classes as mixed positive and negative. The teacher judged at the beginning of the project to have had the most positive attitude toward process writing taught the students who evaluated the experience as most positive. The class that evaluated the experience as most negative had the teacher judged at the outset as having been most conflicted about process writing. There is evidence that in the two classes where the students had the most positive reaction the teacher made a fuller adoption of the process approach than in the two classes where students had the most negative reaction. In the former, the teacher integrated elements of process writing into an overall teaching routine, whereas in the latter, the focus was on traditional language exercise and grammatical accuracy, and process approach elements were not well integrated into the teacher's instruction. The results illustrate the complex pattern of cause-and-effect relationships existing between teachers' and students' attitudes and behaviors in the context of on innovation. They further demonstrate how an innovation can be reinterpreted when implemented in a new culture.