Productive Failure: An Alternative to Pedagogical Sequence in EFL Learning

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 9
  In Poster Session: Social and Cultural Contexts in Learning and Instruction

Abstract

This paper reports a comparison between Productive Failure (PF) and Direct Instruction (DI) in learning written and oral lexicon and syntax in EFL context. PF and DI groups did the same activities with different sequences. PF group did task1-instruction-task2 sequence while DI group had instruction-task1-task2 sequence. Pre- and post-tests on written and oral lexical and syntactic accuracy on describing places were assigned to both groups. The result reported that PF group outperformed DI group in their written tests but did equally in the oral tests of describing places. This suggests the effect of activity sequence on learning written lexicon and syntax, favoring the task1-instruction-task2, but not on the oral ones. Cognitive mechanism for learning will be discussed.

Authors

• Puji Rahayu, The University of Sydney, Universitas Islam Indonesia

• Michael J. Jacobson, The University of Sydney