Thai EFL Learners’ Perceptions toward Learning English Descriptive Paragraph Writing through Haiku Poems
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Abstract
The writer was looking forward to using this traditional Japanese poem to encourage students' learning, particularly in the field of descriptive paragraph writing, because she appreciated composing haiku in English. Since writing was often considered to be the most difficult ability to learn while learning a language, the writer has great expectations that this straightforward method of poem writing would help students achieve improved literacy. Students were required to begin composing haiku to improve their creativity and develop their descriptive writing abilities. The objectives of this research were to explore the perception of students towards using haiku poems to improve students’ writing ability in descriptive paragraph writing. The objectives of this research were to explore the perception of students towards using haiku poems on students’ writing ability in descriptive paragraph writing.The participants of this study were 18 participants at Wattaitalad Municipal School, Uttaradit Municipality, Uttaradit province. They were assigned to solve an individual problem. The problem to be solved was about writing a descriptive paragraph. The research instruments included questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The quantitative data from the questionnaire were analyzed for arithmetic mean and interpreted using descriptive analysis. Content analysis was used to examine the qualitative data from the semi-structured interview.
The findings showed that participants had positive perceptions regarding learning how to write descriptive paragraphs using haiku poems with at a high level (x=4.13). The questionnaire and semi-structured interview results revealed that the students had mixed perceptions toward haiku poems. The students perceived that haiku poems were not only helpful for developing their descriptive paragraphs writing but also creative learning skills and emotional aesthetics since haiku poems offered them an opportunity to express their own voice, experience and emotions through haiku composing and focused tasks with facilitation of the teacher. However, some negative perceptions were discovered. Some differences English proficiency of participants affected their learning outcomes. The findings suggest that haiku poems can be implemented to develop Thai EFL students’ English descriptive paragraph writing with careful considerations of involving factors.
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References
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