Exploring the effectiveness of using authentic non-print texts as a teaching resource to motivate primary students to learn English

Abstract

This dissertation shares my personal narrative stories of how I made use of authentic non-print texts in my English language lessons during a 10 week teaching practicum in my final year of the Bachelor of Education program. Narrative stories are significant in the field of education as “by listening to participant stories of their experience of teaching and learning, we hope to write narratives of what it means to educate and be educated.” (Connelly and Clandinin 1990, p. 12). The study was conducted in a Hong Kong local primary school in a district where most of the children are from low socio-economic background. The focus of the study was to see if I could motivate students to learn English in my lessons by including a range of authentic non-print texts (e.g. cartoons and songs from YouTube). The data include analysis of my lesson plans, reflective journals, questionnaire for teachers, observation notes as well as an analysis of the curriculum documents. The findings of the study has shown that students’ motivation significantly increased in a short period of time after incorporating authentic non-print texts and this suggests that authentic texts have a role to play in a textbook driven curriculum. Drawing from the observations and my personal experiences of this practicum experience, implications for language teaching will be discussed and recommendations for the Education Bureau, school administrators, teachers and student-teachers will be made. It is hoped that by sharing my experiences, it will inspire other language educations to consider making more use of authentic non-print texts in their teaching.