Enhancing students’ deep learning, higher order thinking and collaboration through combination of online annotations, reciprocal teaching and task-based learning in the course of Introduction to Linguistics

Abstract

In many professional fields, practice can be consolidated on the basis of solid theoretical foundations. For EFL teachers, they not only need to be fluent in the four skills but are also required to be familiar with theories in the sub-fields of linguistics and how these theories explain the learning of English as a foreign language. Deep learning of linguistic theories indeed reinforces foreign language learning and improves teaching. However, in university of science and technology where practice is emphasized, English majors tend to have the misconception that theoretical knowledge is not of much value and overlook those theory-oriented courses, thus missing chances of building solid foundations, which is a great loss for students who aspire to careers in EFL teaching. How to help student teachers learn professional courses deeply and consolidate professional foundations thus become a main concern and responsibility of teacher educators. To this end, this ongoing study aims to investigate the effect of combining Google Docs online annotations, reciprocal teaching and task-based learning for the course “Introduction to Linguistics” in the context of a university of science and technology. There are 92 sophomores from two intact classes participating in this project, one class as the experimental group and the other the contrast group. The study took a pretest-intervention-posttest design. Data collected include three questionnaires, online annotation records, unit test scores, group presentation and semi-structured interviews. The data are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. It is hoped that by applying such a teaching approach, students’ deep understanding of professional knowledge in linguistics will be attained, their higher order thinking, learning motivation and collaboration can be enhanced. It is also hoped that such a teaching approach will help students build up solid foundations for their career development.

Keywords

Online annotations, reciprocal teaching, task-based learning, collaborative learning, reading comprehension