The Effect of Teammates' Gender on Students' Participation in Group Activities in a CLT class

溝通式教學法課堂中組員性別對學生參與小組活動影響之研究

柳薇芬(Liu, Wei-feng)

gender ； power ； small group activities ； 性別 ； 權力 ； 小組活動

台北海洋科技大學學報

13卷1期（2022 / 03 / 01）

95 - 123

英文

As a popular teaching approach for the past decades, CLT has been adopted in many English courses in Taiwan. Small group activities, one of the characteristics of CLT, are also prevalently implemented in college general English classes. Nonetheless, few studies examined the role teammates' gender play in CLT group activities. In response to the gap, the present research explores if gender has an influence on discursive power, students' willingness to participate in group activities and their academic performance. The case study included data from the field notes and video-recordings of class observations, semi-structured interviews and participants' weekly reflection sheets. The analysis of the data from two female and one male participants manifests that gender is influential in group activities. Teammates' gender could even outweigh participants' language proficiency in terms of their performance in discussions. It is also found that there is a close relation between gender and discursive power in groups. Gender, furthermore, can trigger both negative and positive impacts on learners' willingness in the participation of group activities although there is no great variation in their performances in their midterm and final. Language teachers are suggested to pay close attention to students' responses to their group members' gender. Future studies can be conducted to investigate if learners' reactions to group members' gender may lead to long-term effects on their learning outcomes.

在過去幾十年間，由於溝通式教學法的盛行，臺灣許多英語課程採用此教學法來教授英文。小組活動作為溝通式教學法其中一項特色，也常被用在大學普通英文的課堂中。然而，文獻中卻鮮有討論組員性別在小組活動中所扮演的角色。本研究旨在探討在小組活動中性別是否影響話語權，學生參與活動意願及學業成就。本個案研究之資料來自於觀察兩位女學生及一位男學生課堂現場筆記、課堂錄影資料、半結構式訪談及參與者每週課後的反思單。研究結果顯示，以參與者小組的表現而論，組員的性別比參與者自身的英文能力更具影響力。本研究也發現在小組活動中性別與話語權有緊密的關係。此外，雖然三位參與者的期中及期末成績未有劇烈變化，但性別確實對於學生參與小組活動產生正面及負面的影響。英語教師應密切注意學生對組員性別的反應。未來的研究則可以觀察組員性別是否會對語言學習者帶來長遠的影響。

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