1.4.Research Objectives
- To find out how using blended learning impact on 4th Grade’s achievement in English language in Jalaan School. Pre-post tests
- To assess the effectiveness of the implementation of blended learning on students’ engagement to technology Pre-post tests
- To identify the 4th Grade students’ readiness in adopting English Language blended learning in Oman. interview
- To identify the issues that affect the teaching and learning experiences in a mixed environment, you gain insight into how students and teachers should be supported in this new learning environment. Interview
- To suggest the framework of using flipped classroom, which can enhance English competency and engage to technology. Questionnaire
- To investigate the students’ attitudes towards blended learning on improving English language after learning and to gain insight into how students and teachers should be supported in this new learning environment. qustionnaire
- To explore the possibility of implementing flipped classroom in Omani schools. questionnaire
Chapter Three:
This chapter addresses the design of the study. The sample and the population of the research, research instruments, validity and reliability of the instruments, procedures of the study, data collection and data analysis procedures are handled.
Population of the study
The population of the study included the following:
1- The population of schools will consist one school which will be Jalaan school for Basic Education cycle One (1-4).
2- The population of teachers will consist of all female EFL teachers who taught English for Me for grade 4 in Basic Education schools in the first semester of academic year 2020\2021. They were 80 teachers.
3- The population of students consisted of all boys and girls EFL fourth grade students who will study English for Me in Jalaan for Basic Education (1-4) school in the first semester of academic year 2020\2021. There total number will be 210 students.
4- The population of parents will consist of male and female who their children will be taught English for Me for grade four in Jalaan for Basic Education (1-4) school in the first semester of academic year 2020\2021. There total number was 8 parents.
The Sample of the study
Jalaan for Basic Education School in Jalaan as state will be selected purposefully since COVID- 19 there are certain restrictions and precautions to move from states to other. Since this study has different objectives, different samples of English students for grade four will be chosen to fulfil the purposes of this study. The researcher will aim to select one sample of English student. One sample will be chosen for the pre-post written skills tests. The sample of students will be described as follows:
Fourth grade English students’ sample of pre-post English written skills tests:
One school which includes both boy and girl students was chosen purposefully from the population of this school. The grade of fourth English students was the subject of this research, there will be 234 students. The number of boys will be 125 while 109 girls. All of these students will sit for the reading and writing pre-post-tests. The school which was selected as a simple of the study will be Jalaan School for Basic Education for both boys and girls. All of them will study English for 8 weeks, three periods a week with one hour for each period.
Parents sample of interviews
The researcher has used typical case purposeful sampling strategies to chose participants. This kind of purposeful sampling focused on selecting information-rich situation (Patton,2002) .
Implementing the data obtained from ……… , the researcher defined and chosen ten cases. Of the ten fourth grade students’ parents selected for this qualitative section of this study, eight agreed to participate in these interviews. Every participant was given a number to offer her unknown participation.
Participant Age Gender Occupation Use of IT
All these eight participants will complete the one thirty minutes qualitive face to face interviews via teams interviews. The researcher will all these participants similar questions individually ) and ) thus that nascent themes might be involved in the analysis. After selection of these samples, the researcher has kept contacting each interviewee on the determined date, time and location. The interview included structured questions to collect rich data about factors of effectiveness of using BL to develop students’ written skills. The research recorded all the parents’ interviews after taking permissions from them. After eight qualitative face to face interviews conducted a professional agency transcribed all tape. Then the researcher will review all transcript to assure accuracy.
The requirements of using BL:
Applying BL in education English required special training programs as compulsory courses. These training programs help teachers to use the electronic material with traditional material. There some requirements of using BL :
• The new teachers in government schools in Oman have to attend training programmes in using technology for the first two years from hiring him/her as a teacher. The program was presented by specialists and trainers from the MoE. At the end of program, the participants passed certain tasks such as doing assignments and applying recorded lesson in the classroom.
• Teachers from cycle one and two participated in 30 hours training program in using google classroom platform.
• Teachers from cycle one schools participated 20 hours training program in using Al Mandhara platform.
• Teachers from both cycles one and cycle two participated self-online course on MoE website. At the end, they passed exam to get a certificate.
• English Fourth grade Teachers sample of questionnaire
There will be 80 English fourth grade teachers around south al Sharqiyah schools in Oman. This sample will be selected purposeful from the population of those schools.
Educational material and methods focus on
This study will be implemented on the written skills of fourth grade students. The educational material will be taken from English for Me for fourth grade for basic education and based on the followed four units including (Families, The Home, Jobs and Healthy Habits) and each unit covers 12 lessons. Each unit will contain recorded video for three lessons together. The electronic material will be derived videos via Teams, Class Dogo and al Mandhara platform. It will take six weeks to complete this study. The implementation of the study will take 8 weeks. Each unit will include Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary, Reading and self-study.
Reading and Writing skills
A. Reading skill
Videos Reading will include certain families member’s facial description, types of jobs and their location, house work and people’s healthy habits. Reading questions will focus on comprehension to check understanding of the important details. Students will upload their answers on Al mundhara platform.
B. Writing skill
The main role of writing will be to describe the picture with focusing on comprehension questions what can you see in the picture, what are/is they/(he/she) doing, describe the clothes ,facial and feeling. After video writing lesson, Teacher will ask students to do home work and then upload their answers on Al mundhara platform.
Variable of the Achievement pre-post English written Skills’ tests
Independent variables
- Learning Model; it will include two level:
a- Blended Learning
b- Traditional Learning - Students’ Gender; it will include two categories
a- Boy
b- Girl - Dependent Variable: The Students’ grade on the written skills’ test of the English language “Reading and Writing”.
Instruments of the study
For the goal of soliciting information needed to fulfil the purposes of the current study, the researcher will use the following instruments:
A- Instructional lesson plans
The researcher will aim four units; four plans will cover four units based on blended learning. These educational plans will be used by the three English teachers depending on applying BL.
B- An achievement test
The researcher will adopt an achievement test of reading available online via google form to assess the students’ ability level in reading. The exam will include two sections, each one includes five items. The first sections will be based on multiple choice questions while the second section will focus on wh questions. The answers of model will provide after the test due to give students a direct feedback. The other test will design to assess the writing skill. This test will include two sections too. First section will assess the learners’ ability level in writing sentence. This section will focus on five items. The second one will assess the students’ ability level in writing a paragraph about describing a picture. Each student will not require to write less seven sentences. The answers of model will provide after the test due to give students a direct feedback. The researcher will deal with each test individually which will design depending on the scientific action procedures studies since the researcher will deal with the two tests as one comprehensive exam result in statistical analysis, the questions answering of the current study and the results discussion.
C- Interview
To find out the parents’ perceptions relating to the effectiveness of using blended learning in improving their children’s written skills, and the suggestion will help to improve the BL implementation, the research will carry one structured interviews with them. The interview involved of eight information questions (See Appendix 10). This interview will be conducted Live Teams meeting. Approximately 30 minutes will be taken for each interview. Eight parents from Jalaan will be chosen randomly to participate in the interview because parents become as a part in this model of education. The questions in interview will be based on the parents’ opinion of program, their perceptions toward BL in EFL education, and their suggestions to improve the implementation BL.
D- Questionnaire
To obtain the teachers’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness of using blended learning in developing the students’ written skills, and their suggestions to progress the implementation of blended learning, the researcher will carry out ten items of questionnaire. The researcher will apply google form to send questionnaire to the English fourth teachers. The items in questionnaire based on the teachers’ teaching experiences in the programme, their views of the programme, their perceptions toward blended learning in English education, and their suggestions to improve the implementation of Blended learning in English education. A five-point Likert-type scale , A=never true, B= seldom true, C=occasionally true, D= often true and E= always true will be used in teachers’ responding.
E- Documents
The document will gather for this current study consist of one electronic copy of English for me curriculum, a copy of teacher’s book as guide, a and a summary of marks awarded for grade four students. Gathered information from the Ministry of Education website will use in this study.
Validity of the instruments
To ensure the validity study instruments, a jury of four EFL university professors, two EFL supervisors of Jalan schools two EFL teachers will be asked to give their comments and feedback on the appropriateness of the achievement test, the interview structure, and the instructional lesson plans. There responses will be taken into consideration to prepare the instruments final draft.
The Reliability of the instruments
According to access the reliability of the instruments, the following procedures will be applied:
a- Test-retest method: the reading and writing pre-post tests were applied140 students according to Krejcie and Morgan’s table (1970) as a pilot sample.
Design of the Study
This current study will be a mixture of a quasi-experimental one and qualitative. The research will depend on two groups to answer first and second question. First group will be experimental which will be taught by blended learning format and will sit for pre- post-tests, while the control will be taught by traditional learning format and will sit for the pre-post-tests. The researcher will use the ANCOVA to adjust the differences between groups before beginning the experiment because the researcher will not have the possibility to determine the study sample subjects randomly.
The answers to questions number three and four will be analyzed qualitatively. The high standard criterion for high quality research was the consistency between questions of study and design of study (Jick,1979). The current study questions will be based on questions of how and descriptive what to cover and understand the model of Blended Learning in English language teaching. Benefiting from interviews with students’ parents as prioritize research strategies to answer these questions about contemporaneous phenomenon (Yin,2003). Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered for this handle study within instructional methodologies data (qualitative), interview data (qualitative), questionnaire data (quantitative) and documents such as English for Me curriculum (qualitative), information on the implementation of BL inside EFL classrooms (qualitative), students' achievement in the written skills of English after learning through BL (quantitative).
Statistical analysis
In terms of answering questions, there will be several statistical procedures which will be used and collected by using instruments of such study. The following
Analysis of the achievement pre post-tests:
Proportion and frequency, standard deviations, means and correlation were proceeded to analyze the numeral achievement tests data. The researcher will apply the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) as a statistical tools to analyze the students’ results in the pre post tests of the English written skills.
Analysis of EFL parents' interview data:
The researcher will be based on inductive data analysis to code and categorize the qualitative data for emergent themes relating to theory approach (Glaser, 1967). In such current study will include the researcher constantly reviewing, collecting and making the data using the hard copies the reduplicated interviews over two months period. Through applying the inductive method, themes according to the parents’ perceptions will promote and analysis from the data. The categories of themes from data will divide into primary and secondary building from the ground up.
A spreadsheet will be also created for coding and ordering the parents’ names and numbers of page in the interview to refence the incidents in the interview transcriptions. Incidents from all interviews will be coded for every group and constantly contrasted with former incidents. The next stage, a professional statistician will be asked to code one of the interview transcription into created themes and categories. All the parents' interviews will be reviewed for the revised coding categories and themes and categories.
Analysis of EFL students' CCES survey data:
An Excel spreadsheet will be based on to create and record survey data. Such surveys will be reviewed and screened as they will be received. All surveys will be ensured accuracy. According to the coded survey, the researcher will develop a data entry table depending on the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Through an assigned survey number, every survey will be appointed a row and every survey question answer will be appointed a column. A numeral value will be indicated to each possible survey answer. An “A”+ answer on the survey will be coded as a “1” in SPSS, a “B” as a “2” and so on. Survey data will be put in SPSS. After each value will be entered into SPSS. Then, the researcher will check for accuracy. Both Inferential and descriptive statistics will be used to analyze the survey. The survey results will be analyzed to determine whether any considerable differences will be found between the way of students take traditional, online and BL instructional approaches) classes responded on the CCES scales. Thus, inferential statistics will allow the generalizations of discovering from a random sample on the current study survey instrument to the nation being studied. Such study will use survey research data collected from English survey students in Jalaan School for basic Education.
Sample Solution