Article 7

Tufekci, D. & Sapar, V. (2011). Social constructivist approach: (re)transformation of “little red riding hood” for writing course. Education Sciences, 6 (2), 1732-1746.

This article reported a research done to practice constructivist approach in critical writing in EFL department at Balikesir University (Turkey). This research was done within the constructivism paradigm. The researchers did a thorough literature review of social approach of constructivism. 

The research focused upon the effectiveness of creative writing and critical thinking skills in terms of constructivist approach on EFL learning process.

The subjects of the study were 36 fourth year students who took the selective course “teaching English through Literature”. They collected data through a background questionnaire, interviews, oral presentation, classroom discussions and essays that were parts of students’ portfolio. The researchers discovered that advanced EFL learners’ attitudes were changing positively on creative writing. And this change caused them to write more creative literacy texts.

The study consisted of three steps: 1. Preparation stage (the introduction of the tale, interviews, oral presentations and classroom discussions); 2. Production stage (maintaining Little Red Riding Hood, estimating LRRH’s past and present, writing a parody or a drama and changing the essence of the fairy tale); 3. Data analysis (subjects wrote a journal about the contributions and negative aspects of this study).

The article reported that the creative writing had some considerable contributions to cognitive skills of EFL learners, such as: thinking skills, imagination, synthesizing skills; linguistic skills, leaner’s affection of the target language (motivation and self-confidence); reading, listening, speaking and writing skills; grammatical and lexical knowledge gaining; change in students’ perceptions towards using teaching methodology. But there were also negative aspect of the teaching approach reported: time consuming, challenging, problems posed to learners who were good at individual learning.

I am very grateful that the researchers honestly reported the problem caused by this approach to learners who are good at individual learning. This problem asks us to stop here and question the percentage of constructivism teaching in light of individual differences. This may not indicate that we should throw away the approach, but more pedagogical strategies under this paradigm should be discovered to address all the learners in the classroom.

As to the negative aspect of time consuming and challenging, I am thinking about the possibility of designing tasks of different difficulty in relation to learners’ ability. This may cause great difficulty for instructors to plan the lesson but might be more considerate to the learners.

In a whole, this article set a model for critical writing instruction so that the whole language capacity is improved. I believe this approach deserves duplication in other countries where English is taught as the second language.