Phase 1: Planning process
(a) Exploring problem and
identifying concern
The researcher was interested in helping
her students develop their grammatical
knowledge through authentic writing after
discovering the following results from her
initial survey. The survey was carried out
with all 32 first-year Thai undergraduates
of her class in the 2008 academic year,
utilizing a Student’s Reflection
questionnaire (Appendix B). The results
pointed out that the students perceived
grammar (81%) followed by writing
(75%) as the most difficult skills of
academic English. Since none of the
students had prior exposure to JW, she
was curious about what they thought about
JW and its effect on their grammatical
ability if they had a chance to write
journals. Her investigation was guided by
the research question:
“What are the students’ opinions
of the use of journals as a means to
improve their grammatical ability?”