Preliminary Study of a New Self-Directed Learning Approach for Secondary School Students’ Narrative Writing in Singapore

Based on the three self-directed learning main elements (experience, study, productivity) proposed by M. Gibbons (2002) and the integration of contemporary writer-oriented approach in the teaching of writing, this paper established a selfdirected Chinese writing framework. The framework was used in a nine-month pedagogical experiment in a main-stream secondary school in Singapore to develop a narrative writing program entitled Let Me Tell You A Story. The program aimed to integrate students’ experiences in their daily lives with narrative writing. Subjects of the research were two classes of secondary one students. The pedagogical study employed the non-equivalent independent design of quasi-experimental research to explore the effectiveness of the writing program. The preliminary results showed that the program has a positive effect on improving students’ overall performance in narrative writing. The effects of the program on students’ performance across the three assessed dimensions, namely content, structure and language, were not equal and this article will provide a detailed analysis of these findings.

Keywords

self-directed learning writer-oriented materials from everyday life written narrative

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; June 2017; Issue No. 1; p.99 - 130

Publisher

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Chinese Language Program, Columbia University
Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

Language

Chinese

ISSN

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)