Journal of English Teaching through Movies and Media 2010;11(2):207-228.
Published online December 30, 2010.
Blogging Towards a Purpose: Inquiry-based Instruction and Purposeful Language
Porter Curtis
Abstract
This paper reports on a classroom research project designed to investigate the potential of inquiry-based instruction (Beach & Myers, 2001) as a means of encouraging purposeful language production. An eight week Internet blogging project was conducted in a low level required English class for non-English majors in a Korean university. Data sources included student projects and open ended questionnaires. Guiding questions were 1) in what ways did an inquiry-based multimedia project encourage purposeful language in a low level freshman English speaking course, and 2) what benefits and drawbacks did students perceive in this inquiry-based media project? A brief review of tasked-based instruction reveals the danger of reducing the notion of purpose to a meaning/form dichotomy. However, dialogic speech and speech genres (Bakhtin, 1986; Johnson, 2004) offer a new dimension to mainstream discussions on the purpose of classroom tasks. Qualitative analysis of students' projects revealed the use of purposeful language, and questionnaires provided evidence of student autonomy and investment. Responses also suggested a need for more explicit grammatical support. I argue that inquiry-based instruction was a viable approach to English language teaching in this case; yet inquiry-based techniques are best viewed as a means of augmenting, rather than replacing task-based instruction.
Key Words: multimedia and language learning;inquiry-based instruction;task-based instruction;speech genres
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