Photonovel: A Participatory Action Research in Students’ Writing Skill in Language Learning

Abstract

This research study entitled Photonovel: A Participatory Action Research in Students’ Writing Skill in Language Learning was an effort to explore students’ motivation in writing skill using photographs and analyze the strategies students employ in writing skills through photographs. This participatory action research study consisted of five cycles, carried out in five meetings from 1 September, 2018 to 13 October, 2019. During the research process, the researcher worked collaboratively with students. The subjects of this research were five students of Grade ten studying at two private schools of Kathmandu district. The data of this study were qualitatively collected. The qualitative data were obtained by observing the students’ writing process during the implementation of actions with different series of photographs. The qualitative data were in the forms of field notes and written stories under photographs or in the balloons. The collected data from the series of photographs were analyzed and interpreted based on coding techniques of Strauss and Corbin (1990). The finding shows that the picture series were useful tools for practice materials to increase motivation for developing photonovel. And the role of picture series-aided writing strategy (plan, act, observe, reflect) increased student’s collaboration and active participation in developing photonovel. This thesis has been organized in to five chapters. The first chapter deals with the background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives, research questions, significance of the study, delimitations of the study and operational definitions of key terms of the study. The second chapter incorporates review of related theoretical literature, empirical literature, implication of the review for the study and conceptual framework. In the same way, third chapter deals with the methodology employed to conduct the study. It gives information about the design of the study, population and sample, sampling strategies, study area, data collection tools, data collection procedure and data analysis and interpretation procedure. Similarly, the fourth chapter deals with the analysis of data and interpretation of the results and summary of the findings. The fifth chapter includes conclusions and recommendations. This chapter is followed by references and appendices.