When storytelling meets active learning: an academic reading experiment with French MA students
Résumé
Reading, understanding, analysing, and synthesising texts in English are skills all French university students in humanities and social sciences are expected to develop. “Research and Storytelling” is a pedagogical project funded by Sorbonne Paris Cité that aims to help Master of Arts (MA) students in the humanities become better readers of research articles by using a specific set of narrative devices. We hypothesised that the use of storytelling devices would not only improve comprehension of scientific articles but also ease anxiety and raise confidence. The data provided by 26 students is composed of 11 journal entries per student (one per class session), a stress test completed at the end of the semester, their grades and feedback, and their final evaluation of the course. Results indicated that after 12 two hour sessions, most students had a sharper and more robust method for reading articles than before the course. They felt more comfortable with the task, and their self-confidence had increased. Most students also stated that after taking the course they felt more able to re-inject the knowledge and know-how they had acquired into the writing of their master’s thesis.
Domaines
Linguistique
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Beaupoil-Hourdel_et_al_2017_REVISED_04_10_2017.pdf (823.17 Ko)
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