Area-Educación Internacional

2010

The purpose of this action research was to describe the effect of using a VLE when learning to write a paragraph in an English as a Foreign Language or EFL class. Participants were twenty four Intermediate level EFL students from Basic Year Ten (Ninth Grade) from a private high school in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The effect of the VLE on learning was described comparing it with the classroom environment. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected and analyzed to report levels of improvement in the three areas measured: paragraph quality, feedback quality and students‘ perception of learning in the two environments. The intervention consisted of teaching writing concepts and strategies of peer feedback and practicing them in the two environments. A structured interview at the end of the process was used in order to triangulate final results. In addition, student-VLE interaction was studied by analyzing number and purpose of hits students had in the VLE. Results indicate that paragraph writing improved more in the classroom environment than in the VLE. Implications are discussed in terms of what factors contributed to learning by comparing the two environments and by making recommendations for future professional development and research