The Impacts of Portfolio-Based Writing Activities upon Enhancement of Intercultural Awareness in Secondary EFL Settings
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47750/pegegog.14.04.15Keywords:
Culture teaching, Intercultural awareness, assessment of writing skills, Secondary EFL learnersAbstract
The current research presents the findings of the investigation that pursued to scrutinize the rapport between the explicit teaching of culture in writing-focused lessons and Intercultural Awareness (ICA) development in Turkish secondary EFL classrooms and reflect the students’ viewpoints on ICA development. The data were collected from a total of 84 sixth- and eighth-grade students throughout ten weeks in the fall semester of 2021-2022 academic year. The triangulation of data collection was provided via quantitative and qualitative findings in a mixed-methods research design. While the quantitative data was gathered via an adapted version of an analytic writing assessment rubric, the qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews conducted. Descriptive and inferential statistics were operated for the analyses of quantitative data, and content analysis was performed for the qualitative data. Concerning ICA development, the quantitative results indicated that the experimental groups who experienced direct teaching of culture were substantially superior over the control groups who had standard teaching of culture in writing parts of elementary English lessons. Secondly, eighth-grade experimental group students’ writing achievement scores given to the written assignments in portfolios were slightly more superior than those of their sixth-grade experimental counterparts. The qualitative findings demonstrated that secondary EFL students shared their background knowledge and experiences together with engendering a positive attitude towards ICA enhancement through developing writing skills. The results will function as amendments for the writing sections of secondary EFL lessons and curriculum development.
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