Students' Perceptions of Lecture-style Classes and Reading Journal Activities in College General English

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how the self-directed learning of writing a reading journal helps students learn English compared to lecture-style classes and how students perceive these two types of classes. 145 first-year students participated in the study. The class consisted of a lecture with news articles in the first half and activities involving the reading of articles or books and the writing of a reading journal in the second half. In week 15, students filled out a questionnaire to investigate how these two types of classes helped them in their studies. The results showed that lecture-style classes were helpful for 75.86% of the students and that the activities related to reading and writing a journal were helpful for 79.81% of the students. Grammar was mentioned most frequently for lecture-style classes, and improvements in writing, reading, and vocabulary learning were mentioned often at a similar rate for the reading journal activities. Thus, writing a reading journal was found to be a useful activity to improve students’ reading and writing abilities. 71.03% answered that the reading journal activities were more helpful than lecture-style classes, and self-direction was found to be the greatest factor that contributed to the improvement of their English skills. This is because a considerable number of students mentioned keywords such as ‘direct,’ ‘self,’ and ‘alone.’ 26.21% answered that lecture-style classes were more helpful to them. Also, the frequent mention of ‘explanation’ showed that the instructor's explanation helped such students more than when they were learning on their own. The results of this study reveal that self-directed learning of reading journal writing is more beneficial to students' English learning than conventional lecture-style classes. Based on these results, this study suggests that activities involving individual reading and reading journal writing should be properly introduced into college general English courses, and that the ratio of lecture-style classes and self-directed learning should be adjusted in consideration of the students' English proficiency levels.