Teaching First-Year Report Writing to Build a Foundation for Learning at the University:

Focusing on Academic Schema Formation

Abstract

  This study attempts to examine how to approach content and form in teaching report writing in a class of first-year students with time constraints through a design-based research approach, by placing the report in the same academic context as the thesis. The practice was designed through instructional design, aiming to promote schema formation regarding academic writing by exposing students to the process of academic writing. The main activities included the following: a task wherein students search and analyze articles according to their interests to deepen their understanding of being an academic, a task wherein students create a story line as well as search for information to set up a problem, an experience of the process to increase the transferability of learning through collaborative learning, and language development through cooperative learning including peer review.

  The results of the first practice showed a positive effect on the problem setting of the report, but not so much on the format. Therefore, a color-coding task was introduced in this practice to make the students focus on expression as well. Consequently, positive effects on the formality as well as the problem setting were observed. The results of the questionnaire and interviews with students indicated that even when students write reports alone, they write them with an awareness of the process they experienced in the practice, such as by referring to the actual format of the paper and creating a storyline before beginning to write. Furthermore, students wrote to demonstrate their new findings and were pleased to have their questions answered, which also influenced their attitudes toward writing. This suggests that reports should be placed in the same academic context as papers, even for first-year students. It was subsequently suggested that incorporating tasks with actual papers to invite them into the academic community and having them read analytically would promote the formation of the schema necessary for report writing.