A WebQuest for English Language Learners to find out more about alternative energy sources, complete with detailed teacher's notes and a rationale. Submitted as part of an MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT from Kings' College London.
16. Richard S Pinner MA ELT & Applied Linguistics
Materials Development Assignment 8 09 Jul. 10
Energy Sources WebQuest Justification
and Rationale
Aims
The aims of this lesson5 are to prepare students on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses to
embark on a research task and to prepare a ten to fifteen minute presentation and 1,500 word essay
on a topic requiring quite specific knowledge and vocabulary, yet also relevant and present in
current affairs discussions. The students work in groups and at times individually. The project is
designed to be similar to what would be expected of them on many university degree programs.
A WebQuest is described as “an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information
that learners work with comes from the web.” (Dodge, 1995) By doing a WebQuest it is hoped that
the students would have greater freedom and autonomy when conducting the research thus helping
them to improve their digital literacy while simultaneously allowing them to develop other skills
(such as researching, presenting and essay writing) which they will need in the future as they
continue their studies.
An additional aim of this lesson is to improve the students’ awareness of the issues surrounding
sustainable and renewable energy sources. Not only is this an important theme in many debates
surrounding current affairs, but also an ethical issue which I believe is important for people to know
about. It is also my intention that due to the subject being important to current affairs it would be
more engaging for students and also broad enough for the whole class to find relevant and
interesting. The project begins with reasonably easy tasks such as vocabulary matching and
brainstorming, before building up to more cognitively demanding tasks such as presenting and essay
writing. This is intended to increase retention and is based on findings which support the
Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001; Hulstijn& Laufer, 2001)
Another reason behind choosing a project based lesson in the form of a WebQuest is that it allows
for greater autonomy because the students are working more independently with the teacher
merely operating as a facilitator, which Tomlinson (2003) lists amongst one of the positive trends in
materials development.
A major factor in the choice of the lesson format is that by doing a WebQuest, students will be
exposed to authentic language in context, which again has been linked to increased motivation and
autonomy. WebQuests are understood to expose students to authentic material (Barahona Durán
2006). Siekmann states that “WebQuests are sources of linguistically and culturally authentic
materials” (2008:144). Peacock (1997) found that authentic materials are more motivating for
students, and thus it is hoped that the students would be more engaged in the lesson. Dörnyei
(2001) lists autonomy as an important factor in motivation, and again the lesson is designed to foster
autonomy with the students by allowing them to manage the project and choose much of the
content from within a clear framework provided by the lesson aims.
Context
This lesson was designed to be taught as part of an EAP course taking place in a school in Britain,
although this project could be adapted or used as it is in a broader range of contexts. I have
5
I have chosen to refer to this WebQuest project as one lesson even though it spans three days of
classes. The reason for this is that I believe, since the aims are the same throughout the project, the
term lesson is appropriate.
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17. Richard S Pinner MA ELT & Applied Linguistics
Materials Development Assignment 8 09 Jul. 10
attempted in the teachers’ notes to account for varying class sizes in particular, as this can have a big
influence on lessons where a number of groups are presenting, both in this context and wider
contexts.
The course for which this lesson was designed runs for a ten week term period, and students are
continually assessed as part of the course. All of the final marks are from summative assessment,
and as such, due to the short length of the course and large number of assessments, motivation and
task engagement are perceived as problematic by many of the teachers on the course. This is
something I found in my own experience when teaching on the course. It is very hard to fit in longer
projects which are not directly related to the assessments as there is a syllabus which covers pages
from course books that need to be completed each session. However, when teaching on the course I
found that working purely through the syllabus was not engaging for the students and as such meant
that students were often not satisfactorily prepared for their assessments, especially as they have
very little time to practice for their assessments in an authentic way. For this reason I began ‘cherry
picking’ the most important features of the course and designing tasks and projects which I felt
would better enable the students the opportunity to learn and practise the skills needed for their
assessments and, more importantly, their future studies at university. Although I have never
formally quantified this, I strongly believe these projects to be of great benefit to the students. In
contexts where the syllabus is more rigid, this may not always be possible however.
Another feature of this context is the availability of computer labs and projectors for in-class use.
There are a lot of technical requirements for such a project, so again this lesson would need to be
adapted for use in a wider context. Another issue here would be the teachers’ own efficacy when
using web or computer based applications for teaching, not to mention the students’ level of digital
literacy. For this reason I have tried to keep the focus on the tasks themselves and not on the
technology used to facilitate them.
The classes consist of roughly fifteen students of mixed nationality and sex, between the ages of 17 –
35. They are expected to have a good level of English already (Upper-Intermediate to Advanced,
Council of Europe (2001) B2-C2) and to be already quite familiar with the use of computers. In
addition, from earlier in the course they would have been introduced to many academic
conventions, such as referencing, avoiding plagiarism and structuring an academic essay or
presentation. However, the aim of this lesson would be to strengthen and build on this knowledge,
although the lesson is not designed to present this information for the first time.
Choice of materials
As this is a lesson designed for an EAP course, it can be assumed that the teachers using it would be
reasonably well experienced already, thus the procedure is not too prescriptive. Teachers who work
on the EAP course for which this lesson was designed are usually required to be TEFL-Q or DELTA
qualified. However, I have tried to keep the teachers’ notes as simple as possible for such a long
project and accessible to less experienced teachers.
Throughout the stages of the lesson the students are engaged in Evaluations which are designed to
increase their self-assessment and autonomous thinking while also focusing them back on the task.
Presentation
The students are given the lesson aims at the beginning of the lesson so that they know exactly why
they are doing this project. I believe it is important to include the students as much as possible in the
decisions behind undertaking a certain task in order to facilitate independent and autonomous
thinking. It also helps the students to prepare for the lesson. By showing the students the project
timeline diagram they are aware that more is expected of them as they have longer to work on it
than perhaps a usual stand-alone lesson.
Pre-task: energy types brainstorm
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18. Richard S Pinner MA ELT & Applied Linguistics
Materials Development Assignment 8 09 Jul. 10
The purpose of this task is to activate the students’ existing schematic knowledge and also to allow
the teacher time to gauge the students’ current level of vocabulary knowledge and competence with
the subject.
Vocabulary matching
This task is designed to enable concept checking and to ensure that the students already know
enough to begin the more in-depth research task.
Project timeline:
The decision to feature a project timeline comes from the fact that one of the aims of this lesson is
to allow the students to experience a sense of responsibility and to understand the stages involved
in preparing a presentation and doing research. This is an integral part of EAP courses and as such I
believe project work such as this is very useful in preparing students and giving them practice in this
area.
WebQuest:
The WebQuest section features quite structured sets of questions which the students need to find
answers to, but it also features additional and more detailed questions for more motivated or
capable students who would quickly work through the initial questions. This was an attempt at
allowing the students more freedom and control over the content of their research task, while still
providing enough structure to have coherent and achievable outcomes.
Presentation task:
The presentation task is supposed to happen on the 2nd day of the project, thus allowing students
the opportunity to use their own time to finish preparing. Again, this is what happens at university
level. In addition, it is hoped that this extra time would give students the opportunity to work more
autonomously.
During Presentation task:
The purpose of this task is to ensure that the full class is engaged in the activity and not just those
presenting. It is also to encourage a sense of collaboration and community.
Post presentation task:
This is a consolidation task which could be done either as homework or part of the class.
Debate
The purpose here is to begin thinking about the issues surrounding energy use and electricity
production.
Essay
This is the main EAP focus of the lesson and would hopefully involve the most cognitive effort. It is
intended to be both consolidation and EAP literacy development. As this lesson is intended to be
taught in the middle of an EAP course it is designed to allow students to put what they have
previously learned about essay writing into practise.
Rationale
The main reasons behind choosing to prepare a WebQuest are the opportunity to expose students
to authentic materials, foster greater student autonomy and allow students to work together in a
way which is student centred and not too dependent on the teacher. It is also hoped that the lesson
would help the students to improve both their academic literacy and digital literacy. In addition, by
making the task a project length set of goals it is hoped that the students would have more
ownership and thus task engagement, thereby facilitating greater motivation and learning.
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19. Richard S Pinner MA ELT & Applied Linguistics
Materials Development Assignment 8 09 Jul. 10
1,749 words
Bibliography
Barahona Durán, M.A. (2006) ‘Why WebQuests can be useful in EFL’ proceedings from TESOL Chile
2006 ‘Changing our ways: Making classroom innovation and assessment count’
http://www.slideshare.net/malba08/why-webquests-can-be-useful-in-efl (accessed 7/07/2010)
Council of Europe (2001) European Language Portfolio http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/portfolio/
Dodge, B. (1995). ‘What is a WebQuest?’ http://webquest.org/index.php (accessed 18/04/2010)
Dörnyei, Z. (2001) ‘Teaching and Researching Motivation’ Longman: Pierson
Hulstijn, J. H., & Laufer, B. (2001). Some empirical evidence for the Involvement-Load Hypothesis in
vocabulary acquisition. Language Learning, 51, 539–558. (accessed 18/04/2009)
Laufer, B., & Hulstijn, J. H. (2001). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: The
construct of task-induced involvement. Applied Linguistics, 22, 1–26. (accessed 18/04/2009)
Little, D. (1991) Learner Autonomy. 1: Definitions, Issues and Problems. Dublin: Authentik.
Peacock, M. (1997) ‘The effect of authentic materials on the motivation of EFL learners’ ELT Journal,
5 (12)144-156: Oxford University Press (accessed 10/05/2010)
Siekmann, S. (2008) ‘Peer scaffolding and orientation towards the task during collaborative
WebQuests’ in Eckerth, J. and Siekmann, S. (eds.) Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching:
Theoretical, Methodological, and Pedagogical Perspectives. (143 – 172) Frankfurt: Peter Lang
Tomlinson, B. 2003) ‘Introduction: Are materials developing?’ in Tomlinson, B. (ed.)(2003)
‘Developing Materials for Language Teaching’ Continuum: London
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