Vol. 36-2 (2023/12)
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Hsiao-Feng Cheng, Lien-Chiang Chang, & Ting-Chia Lien*
To address the challenges faced in teaching psychology courses, particularly students’ difficulties in understanding the key concepts of psychology and applying psychological knowledge to their lives, this study employed action research to examine the experiences and outcomes of university arts students in a cross-disciplinary psychology course engaged in topic-oriented learning integrated with educational drama. The study involved 38 students enrolled in a general psychology course at the university of the Arts. This research mainly adopted the action research method to tackle practical teaching challenges. A range of data was collected for analysis, including 18 teacher reflections, 268 individual classroom experience is more precise in academic reporting, 30 group history files, and transcripts from 6 focus group interview. Following the course, six groups were visited for 90 minutes each. The research yielded two primary findings: The first pertained to the process of learning psychology knowledge, highlighting two major themes: “fusion” of personal life experience and psychology knowledge—encompassing understanding and application; and “transformation” of psychology knowledge in plot creation—focusing on analysis and generalization. The second finding concerned the effectiveness of project-based interdisciplinary curricula, emphasizing aspects such as “Ease of Communication and Adaptive Negotiation”, “Empathetic Dialogue and Tolerance of Differences”, and “Unified Cooperation and Achievement of Goals.” Based on these findings, specific recommendations were formulated. A notable contribution of this research was the demonstration of was an 18-week “Psychology” course as a model of “intentional” interdisciplinary curriculum. When designing interdisciplinary curricula, it was crucial to consider the learners’ prior knowledge and learning styles. The benefits of project-based interdisciplinary curriculum learning include gains beyond knowledge acquisition, such as the ability among partners to communicate and negotiate, engage in dialogue and tolerate, as well as to cooperate and achieve goals.
Keyword：Drama-in-education, Interdisciplinary curriculum, Project-based learning
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A Study on Chinese Poetry Reading Characteristics and Strategies of High School Students
Fu-Lun Lee*
The purpose of this study is to investigate the reading characteristics and strategies of high school students regarding Chinese poetry. Students from three public high schools in northern Taiwan were selected for this investigation. Through analyzing students’ poetry reading and interview data, the researcher closely examines variations in students’ engagement with poetry. The findings are as follows: In terms of reading characteristics, students generally find it challenging to understand words with special contextual meanings and associations. Those with better reading abilities demonstrate proficiency in recognizing words in poetic lines and offer unique insights when interpreting poetry. Students with average reading abilities are able to grasp the general content but struggle with abstract implications. Conversely, those with weaker reading abilities lack foundational reading skills and show limited inferences and imagination in textual analysis. In terms of poetry reading strategies, students are able to connect clues across poetry lines through elements such as people, events, time, places, and objects, and they mutually expound and supplement between the overall theme and the nuanced connotations of individual words. Students with higher reading abilities focus on unique writing features, imagery arrangement, and poetic structure, facilitating independent reading. Average readers recognize important poetic imagery and focus on the implications of the poem’s ending in relation to the poet’s attitude, whereas weaker readers tend to interpret poems word by word. The researcher, in the end, summarizes how students of varying reading abilities employ different poetry-reading strategies, thereby developing their own unique poetry-reading characteristics.
The study concludes with two instructional suggestions for high school Chinese teachers: 1) Use stylistic elements of poetic genres to design and organize the teaching themes, aiding the development of systematic poetry reading strategies. 2) Adjust teaching content and methods flexibly based on students’ reading levels and learning needs to enhance their understanding of poetry.
Keyword：Chinese poetry, reading characteristics, reading strategy
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A Case Study on Young Children’s Experiences and Exploration of Poetry
Min-Ling Tsai*
Adopting the approach of intrinsic case study, this inquiry documented how a class of 29 young children, aged 3 to 5, experienced and explored poems in teacher-led poetry reading activities. Across one year, they explored 15 books of poetry and 29 short poems. The research identified four primary stages in these activities. Stage one, Connecting: from life to poetry. Stage two, Overall Experiencing: intertextual connection, reading aloud, preliminary discovery, and being aware of poetic forms. Stage three, Detailed Exploration: entailing deeper understanding, representation, application association, and improvisation. Stage four, Suggesting Future Exploration: from poetry to life. The wonderful and open-ended questions of the two teachers helped the children understand the contents of the poems. The teachers also timely guided the children in recognizing the forms of the poems. The use of nimble body movements to represent metaphors and actions in the poems, along with frequent improvisation, were key features of this class’s poetry exploration. This approach successfully forged a connection between the immediate, sensuous world and the symbolic, represented worlds for children. Additionaly, the study demonstrated that poems served as a mediator between young children’s lives and their learning. In the process of experiencing and exploring poems, these young children were able to “perceive, feel and think” more deeply, more delicately, and from broader perspectives. The aesthetic reading approach, adopted by the teachers, enabled the children to enjoy the pleasures of delving into both the content and forms of poems, and to use novel metaphors to express the ideographic flavors of poetry reading.
Keyword：intrinsic case study, poetry for young children, teacher and young children reading poems together, to experience and explore poems
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Shu-Chu Chen*
This study, adopting a quasi-experimental research design, investigated the relative effectiveness of a 15-week extensive reading plus different modes of journal writing on EFL university students’ writing fluency and accuracy. One hundred and eleven participants, with similar initial TOEIC English proficiency levels, were assigned to three experimental groups and one control group. One experimental group participated in an extensive reading plus Chinese journal writing program. The second group was involved in an extensive reading plus English journal writing program. The third group did extensive reading plus English journal writing and teacher corrective feedback while the control group received regular English class instruction. The instruments included a TOEIC English proficiency test, a writing pretest, and a posttest. Students’ writing fluency and accuracy were evaluated by two native speakers of English. Data were analyzed by ANOVA with repeated measures to assess the participants’ writing fluency and accuracy before and after the intervention. Results showed that extensive reading plus English journal writing with or without corrective feedback significantly enhanced posttest writing fluency from the pretest. Both programs yielded a significantly better effect on posttest writing fluency than the regular class and extensive reading plus Chinese journal writing. For writing accuracy, while all three interventional programs significantly improved posttest writing accuracy from the pretest, extensive reading plus English journal writing with corrective feedback was more effective than the regular class and extensive reading plus English or Chinese journal writing. The results offered empirical support for the application of relevant theoretical frameworks, including input, output, and skill acquisition theories. The research held valuable implications for future extensive reading curriculum design incorporating diverse journal writing modes and teacher feedback to enhance students’ writing performance.
Keyword：extensive reading, journal writing, reading-writing instruction, writing accuracy, writing fluency
