Investigating the effect of activities tiered by cognitive complexity on EFL students' written production

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Date
2014
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university of Oum-El-Bouaghi
Abstract
In the overtly crowded algerian EFL classrooms, teaching rarely responds to learners' differences; therefore, an observer may spend a long time in such classrooms and never notice any instance of differentiated instruction. This study was twofold. It first attempted to examine the teachers' awareness and ways of dealing with students' differences. Secondly, it attempted to examine the effects of implementing one of the strategies of differentiation, namely tiered activities, on students' written production. To support the first aim, a questionnaire to the english department confirmed teachers at the university of Oum-El-Bouaghi was used as the instrument of gathering data. Twenty teachers responded to this questionnaire that aimed also at scrutinizing their knowledge and perceptions of differentiation. A one-group pre-test post-test pre-experiment was conducted to fulfil the second aim of the study, and twenty of the english third year students at the same university participated in this pre-experiment. The students received a one-size fits all activity in the pre-test, and based on their scores, they were divided according to their cognitive readiness into three levels. Each level received a matching activity in the post-test. These matching activities are the tiered activities that were structured by cognitive complexity. The results extracted from the questionnaire show that despite their awareness of the students' differences, teachers seldom adapt their teaching to these differences; thus, they seem not to implement differentiation. Furthermore, the results obtained from comparing the pre-test and the post-test scores in the pre-experiment show that students' written production is positively affected by the use of tiered activities.
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Enseignement langue (anglais) : EFL
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