August 2024 – Volume 28, Number 2
https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.28110a7
Elsa Desi Putri
Universitas Negeri Malang
<elsadesiputri77841
gmail.com>
Bambang Yudi Cahyono
Universitas Negeri Malang
<bambang.yudi.fsum.ac.id>
Nanang Zubaidi
Universitas Negeri Malang
<nanang.zubaidi.fsum.ac.id>
Abstract
Many believe that flipped learning can open valuable class time for higher-level activities. However, the findings of previous studies on the effects of flipped learning on the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are sometimes mixed. Hence, this study investigates the effect of flipped learning on EFL tertiary students’ ability to write opinion essays and their perceptions. It employed a quasi-experimental design that examined the difference in EFL tertiary students’ writing ability with flipped learning and those taught without it. Data were taken from the opinion essay writing tests and questionnaires of 58 third-semester Indonesian university students. The students in both classes showed significant improvement (p < .01, η2 = .52), but a significant interaction between teaching style and overall improvement was not found (p = .12, η2 = .01). However, interaction was found between teaching style and sub-category scores (i.e., sentence structure and mechanics). Students who were taught using flipped learning mostly had positive perceptions of it. However, there was no association between the students’ positive feelings and writing improvement. The findings suggest that flipped learning should be used more widely to benefit from its impacts on learning but that more research is required to maximize its benefits in the future.
Keywords: Flipped learning model, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Opinion essay, Quasi-experimental design, Writing ability
Writing plays a vital role in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), but it can be difficult for learners. Writing is a significant mode of communication and one of the most commonly used modes by foreign language learners in the workforce after graduating (Schmidgall & Powers, 2021). It has even been suggested that EFL learners regularly use some form of writing to communicate daily (Zhang, 2022). However, improving writing skills can be difficult because it involves a lengthy process of developing ideas and discovering meaning. EFL learners, specifically, also need more exposure to authentic English (Zamel, 1982; Zhang, 2022). These problems are further affected by students’ English proficiency level, knowledge of writing in general, the classroom activities they are provided with, limited classroom hours, and outdated learning models that cannot facilitate the enhancement of writing ability or knowledge (Alostath, 2019; Baltaci, 2022; Bulqiyah et al., 2021; Ekmekci, 2017; Pineteh, 2014). Therefore, EFL teachers must vigilantly adapt their teaching methodologies to aim for more efficient and effective writing classes.
One teaching methodology that is believed to overcome many of the challenges mentioned above is flipped learning, a teaching style in which students learn basic information outside of the classroom and then spend classroom time applying the knowledge (Alvarez, 2011; Birgili et al., 2021; Leis, 2021). This method can be helpful because it opens classroom time to more active learning activities (Ayçiçek et al., 2018; He et al., 2016; Zou et al., 2022) compared to teacher-centered activities wherein the teacher spends a large amount of class time lecturing about the materials. Teacher-centric activities such as lecturing lead to a passive classroom environment where the students mostly just listen to the teacher’s explanation. Furthermore, when lectures are used as the primary mode of information transmission, the students barely have any personalized learning because they learn as a group (Davies et al., 2013). On the other hand, flipped learning is promising as an effective way to activate students’ learning autonomy, create student-centered learning environments, and facilitate students to learn at their own pace (Cobena & Surjono, 2022; Egbert et al., 2014). However, most studies on flipped learning in the EFL context show more enthusiasm than the empirical evidence prescribes (Webb & Doman, 2016). In addition, there has been relatively little research on how flipped learning enhances students’ learning outcomes (Kerr, 2020).
Furthermore, Setren et al. (2019) have suggested that the learning gains from flipped learning are relatively short-term, and the difference between better and less students widen. Due to a lack of empirical evidence and inconsistency in the results of previous studies on flipped learning, this study seeks to investigate to what extent students’ writing abilities improved with the flipped learning model as opposed to those taught without it, what perceptions students had after implementing flipped learning, and whether or not there is any correlation between students’ perceptions and their improvement in writing ability. It also provides an example of a practical implementation of flipped learning in teaching opinion essay writing by integrating learning videos.
Literature Review
The Advantages of Flipped Learning
The flipped learning model has been said to bring considerable changes in creating a constructivist learning environment compared to “conventional teaching,” where the teacher explains the concepts of the lesson in the classroom (Baltaci, 2022). In language learning, students need to take an active role in the learning process, and the teacher needs to provide meaningful content and activities to create communicative language learning. Specifically, when referring to Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), flipped learning suggests the lower levels of cognitive work (i.e., remembering and understanding) should be moved out of the classroom, and the higher levels of cognitive work (i.e., applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating) should be conducted in the classroom. Of course, students still need to be exposed to prior knowledge before entering the classroom to apply the concepts discussed in the in-class time. However, with the advancement of technology, the ability of teachers to provide this knowledge-level learning outside of the classroom has been dramatically expanded. Therefore, the implementation of the flipped learning model has become ever more advisable (Mulyanto & Sujiatmoko, 2022).
Bishop and Verleger (2013) pointed out that the flipped learning model consists of two major elements: out-of-classroom and classroom activities. The out-of-classroom activities are divided into two major phases, namely the pre-class and the after-class activities, both aimed to push students’ autonomous learning and provide opportunities for them to construct their knowledge based on their self-paced learning. Meanwhile, the classroom activities are used to encourage interactive discussion and a collaborative relationship between the teacher and the students and among the students. The classroom activities are known as in-class activities. The implementation of flipped learning model in a writing class is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The implementation of flipped learning model.
Benefits of Flipped Learning on EFL Teaching
Studies such as Afrilyasanti et al. (2016), Afrilyasanti (2015), and Al-Sharah et al. (2021) have noted that learners from a range of English proficiencies struggle to improve their EFL writing due to several challenges such as cohesiveness, coherence, fine-grained grammatical structures, word choice, and the appropriateness in using articles. Furthermore, Lambe et al. (2023) suggest that expressing an idea through spoken language is much easier than cohesively expressing it in well-organized writing. Thus, no matter what level of writing ability students possess, they often have various challenges in writing classes. Furthermore, Sulistyo et al. (2019a) revealed that less autonomous students rely more on their teachers’ explanations. As a result, teacher-centric teaching methods (i.e., lecturing) are still prominent in many EFL classes. However, this teaching style does not match the needs of 21st-century students living in the digital era, where information can be easily accessed anywhere and at any time. Hence, there is a growing need to implement learning models that can accommodate the diversity of the student’s writing abilities while integrating technology into the teaching and learning process (Chang & Salas, 2020).
In addition to the studies focusing on the effect of flipped learning on learning outcomes, several studies have been conducted on students’ perceptions of flipped learning. For example, Afrilyasanti et al. (2017) showed that most students who learn via flipped learning in argumentative essay writing classes agreed that it contributed to better learning outcomes. Similarly, Maharani et al. (2020) found that students perceived flipped learning positively because it creates meaningful instruction and improves student competence. Furthermore, Yujing (2015) found that students had positive perceptions of the meaningfulness, competence, and impact of flipped learning. However, it should also be noted that some studies found that not all students were positive toward flipped learning. Afrilyasanti et al. (2017) revealed that some students preferred to have the teacher explain the material during classroom time.
Similarly, Hewitt (2017) found that older students preferred conventional teaching methods with a teacher’s explanation of flipped learning. Webb et al. (2014) also found that students perceived conventional teaching as better than flipped learning at the beginning of the instruction. However, their perceptions changed to hold flipped learning in higher esteem as the class continued.
Many researchers have noted positive effects when implementing flipped learning in EFL teaching in general and EFL writing specifically. For example, Egbert et al. (2014) pointed out that implementing flipped learning can activate a student-centered learning environment, enable students to learn the target language, and minimize foreign language anxiety among the students. However, Egbert et al. (2014) also mentioned that students preferred direct explanations from the teacher instead of watching learning videos or reading learning materials themselves. Abdelshaheed (2017) and Mashhadi (2022) provided examples of flipped learning in EFL writing courses in the Arabian context. They found that the implementation of flipped learning affirmed to improve the student’s learning outcomes, specifically their writing, the students’ learning autonomy, and the students’ involvement in the classroom. Shooli et al. (2022) also found that flipped learning significantly enhances the students’ attitudes toward writing, the students’ understanding of writing, and the students’ writing performances.
Similarly, Leis et al. (2015) showed that students in the Japanese EFL context who learned via flipped learning spend more time preparing for class and writing more words in a post-test than their counterparts who did not learn via flipped learning. Leis et al. (2015) attributed these differences to the opportunities to review the materials repeatedly outside of class time and receive direct feedback from peers and the teacher during class. Furthermore, Su Ping et al. (2019) interviewed students in the context of Malaysian EFL who were provided with flipped learning. They found that they felt better prepared for class, had greater involvement and interaction, and received more encouragement and direct feedback due to the increase in classroom exercises. However, Su Ping et al. (2019) study did not directly compare students in flipped classrooms to those in more traditional teacher-centric classes and relied on qualitative analysis. Finally, Afrilyasanti et al. (2016) and Mubarok et al. (2019) compared the effect of flipped learning on argumentative essay writing skills in the Indonesian EFL context across students with different learning styles, finding that flipped learning provided better student improvement than teacher-centric methods, regardless of student learning styles or field dependency.
Research Questions
According to the previous studies introduced above, flipped learning is often well-received by students and can positively impact EFL writing classes. However, there are still inconsistencies in the results of previous studies regarding the impact of flipped learning on learning outcomes. This inconsistency might be caused in part by the variation in the educational backgrounds of the participants involved in the studies (Abdelshaheed, 2017; Leis, 2021; Mashhadi, 2022; Shooli et al., 2022; Su Ping et al., 2019). Therefore, this study aims to add to the growing body of research investigating the benefits of teaching with flipped learning by investigating EFL students learning writing who all have the same major, take the same course, and have similar prior modes of teaching. It also seeks to investigate the link between perceptions and improvement. Specifically, this research aims to answer the following questions:
(1) Is there any significant difference in EFL students’ improvement in writing ability when taught via flipped learning as opposed to teacher-centric classes?
(2) What are EFL students’ perceptions of using flipped learning to learn opinion essay writing?
(3) Is there any correlation between writing ability improvement and favourability towards flipped learning?
Method
Participants
This study employed a quasi-experimental research design, following Abbot and McKinney (2013), to examine the cause-effect relation between two teaching methods: flipped learning and teacher-centric lectures. A total of 58 Indonesian EFL learners at the State University of Malang (Universitas Negeri Malang) in East Java, Indonesia, participated in the present study. They were in their third semester (second year) at university and were between 18 to 20 years old. Due to the nature of how classes are conducted in the university, convenience sampling was used, with roughly half of the participants being in one of two classes., one of which was randomly designated as the experimental group (N = 32) and the other as the control group (N = 26). Subsequently, students’ self-reported English proficiency level was intermediate, which maps to a roughly CEFR A2 level (CEFR, 2020). At this level, students can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest, briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans, write descriptions and comments about common topics, and express their thoughts using basic English grammatical rules (CEFR, 2020). The demographic data of the participants are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. The demography data of the research subjects
| Group | Gender | Number of students | |
| Male | Female | ||
| Experimental | 12 | 20 | 32 |
| Control | 7 | 19 | 26 |
Classroom Procedures
While conducting the study, the first author was the instructor who taught the two groups involved: the experimental group, where flipped learning was implemented, and the control group, where it was not. Among several writing courses that were offered in the English Department at the State University of Malang, an argumentative writing course was chosen for the implementation of this study because it was compulsory, ensuring a robust sample size, and has two prerequisite courses (paragraph writing and essay writing), which ensure a certain level of base knowledge. In addition, several kinds of essays must be mastered by the students in the course: opinion essays, argumentative essays, and discussion essays.
The teaching of opinion essays by using flipped learning and conventional teaching, i.e., teacher-centric lectures, was implemented in 100-minute sessions held twice per week for a total of eight consecutive sessions, including two sessions for pre-and post-tests. Furthermore, the first author developed an opinion essay module as guidance for students from both groups to grasp the basic concept of opinion essays and to ensure that both groups were identical in terms of the materials presented. During the teaching of opinion essays, there were six topics presented, namely: 1) introduction of the opinion essays; 2) introductory paragraph of the opinion essays; 3) body paragraph-1; 4) body paragraph-2; 5) concluding paragraph of the opinion essays; and 6) review all the concepts of the opinion essays. More particularly, a sample of the instructional activities taken from one session and the time used for the two groups are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. The instructional activities for the control group and experimental group
| Pre-class Activities | |||
| Control Group (Conventional Teaching) | Experimental Group (Flipped Learning) | ||
| The students completed the writing task given by the teacher. | The students accessed the teachers’ learning materials (e.g., instructions and learning videos) through Google Classroom. The videos were less than 5 minutes in length. Students made notes about the videos for in-class activities. | ||
| In-class Activities | |||
| Control Group (Conventional Teaching) | Time | Experimental Group (Flipped Learning Model) | Time |
| Warm-up activity prepared by the teacher. | 10 min | Warm-up activity prepared by the teacher. | 10 min |
| The teacher led a discussion about the student’s writing tasks. | 15 min | The students shared their understanding of the pre-class materials and discussed them with their classmates. | 25 min |
| The teacher explained the materials related to the topic in the lesson plans and gave opportunities for question-and-answer sessions. | 45 min | The students completed the writing task with assistance and guidance from the teacher, including giving and receiving feedback from both the teachers and peers. | 65 min |
| The teacher assigned writing tasks to the students and guided them. | 25 min | The students were informed what activities to complete for the after-class and pre-class activities before the next session, and the class was wrapped up. | 5 min |
| The teacher assigned writing tasks to be completed at home by the students and wrapped the class up. | 5 min | ||
| After-class Activities | |||
| Control Group (Conventional Teaching) | Experimental Group (Flipped Learning Model) | ||
| The students completed the writing tasks given by the teacher. | The students revised their essays based on the feedback given by their classmates or the teacher. | ||
Data Collection
Pre- and post-tests of writing were administered to all students. They were required to write an opinion essay based on writing prompts where they (i) described their position on the given topic, (ii) wrote a 250-300 word, four-paragraph opinion essay, and (iii) had only 90 minutes to complete the writing test. The topic for the pre-test was “College education should be a requirement for a job,” and the topic for the post-test was “Learning English through movies is helpful for EFL learners.” Jacob et al.’s (1981) ESL composition profile was adapted as the scoring rubric for this study. It consists of five aspects graded separately and then added together to create a 100-point scale. The aspects scored are content (scored from a possible 5 to 25 points), organization (7 to 20), sentence construction (7 to 20), voice (3 to 10), and mechanics (5 to 25). More particularly, content and organization were included in declarative knowledge, which was assumed to belong to low-level activities referring to Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy.
On the other hand, the three other elements (sentence structure, voice, and mechanics) were included in the procedural knowledge, which required high-level activities based on Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. Two raters scored the students’ pre- and post-test essays to ensure that the scoring process would be fair and unbiased. Very high inter-rater reliability was confirmed by a Krippendorf’s Alpha test; α = 0.957.
After the treatment, questionnaires were distributed to the experimental group to reveal their perceptions of the use of flipped learning. Five-point Likert-scale response choices were employed in the questionnaire (Bertram, 2007), with “strongly agree” being represented by the number 5 and “strongly disagree” being represented by 1. The questionnaire was adapted from Yujing (2015) which was arranged based on the Learner Empowerment Scale (LES) (Frymier et al., 1996) and includes three aspects: meaningfulness, competence, and impact. Meaningfulness deals with how this flipped learning creates valuable learning for the students to construct their understanding of opinion essays. The competence aspect relates to the student’s capability to write good opinion essays. Finally, the impact aspect represents how flipped learning influences the students’ learning to make it different in the classroom. The list of questionnaire items can be found in Appendix 1.
The data from the questionnaire were analyzed into four categories: overall scores, meaningfulness, competence, and impact aspects. A senior lecturer at the State University of Malang evaluated the items used in the questionnaire to ensure their effectiveness, relevance, and practicability. Cronbach’s alpha was conducted for the three aspects it was designed to measure, and we found that the constructs showed at least high reliability: meaningfulness: α = 0.79, competence = α = 0.74, impact: α = 0.77.
Data Analysis
In order to determine whether or not there was any meaningful difference in the performance of the two classes, pre-and post-test scores were first presented descriptively. The normality of the data was checked using a Shapiro-Wilk’s test, and skewness and kurtosis were observed following Spring (2022). Since the data sets failed the normality test, a Scheirer-Ray-Hare test was used with eta-squared for effect size. All effect sizes were interpreted according to Plonsky and Oswald (2014) or Spring (2022). Furthermore, we checked for interactions between treatment and teaching style for overall test scores and the sub-category scores, i.e., the five aspects’ scores.
The data from the questionnaire were analyzed descriptively to check for students’ general perceptions. To check for any correlation between the students’ writing improvement and their perceptions of its implementation, Spearman’s rank correlation test was used with delta scores (i.e., post-test minus pre-test scores) and average scores of each aspect of the survey. Spearman’s rank correlation test was used due to the ordinal nature of the writing test data, as per the above checks.
Finally, some teacher observations were added in the discussion section to help contextualize and explain the quantitative results provided above.
Results
The descriptive data of students’ pre- and post-tests is shown in Table 3 and graphically represented in Figure 3. The results of the Scheirer-Ray-Hare test are presented in Table 4. The results show that both groups improved significantly, i.e., with a large effect size. However, there were also inherent differences in the groups, with the experimental group being slightly more advanced than the control group in general, albeit with a medium effect size. This resulted in a non-significant intersection between the groups and a small effect size, indicating that while both learning styles were effective, it is unclear whether one was more effective.
Table 3. Descriptive data of the pre-and post-test scores: Range; Mean (Standard Deviation)
| Test | Group | Overall Score | Content | Organization | Sentence Str. | Voice | Mechanics |
| Pre | Exp. | 29–77; 41.73 (11.35) |
5-19; 9.11 (3.74) |
7-15; 8.78 (2.07) |
7-16; 8.17 (1.89) |
3.5-7; 4.69 (0.95) |
6-20; 11.00 (3.69) |
| Control | 27–58; 38.48 (9.15) |
5-12.5; 7.29 (1.92) |
7-12.5; 8.33 (1.48) |
7-15.5; 8.81 (2.47) |
3-6.5; 4.42 (0.98) |
5-18; 9.64 (3.57) |
|
| Post | Exp. | 69.5-89.5; 78.47 (5.67) |
14.5-22; 17.48 (1.71) |
13-19; 16.64 (1.37) |
15-19.5; 17.39 (1.26) |
5-8.5; 6.91 (0.87) |
14-23; 20.04 (1.96) |
| Control | 49-83; 72.98 (8.18) |
10.5-20; 16.40 (2.11) |
11.5-18.5; 15.59 (2.09) |
10-20; 16.65 (2.52) |
4.5-7.5; 6.33 (0.93) |
12.5-21; 18.00 (2.17) |
Table 4. The result of the Scheirer-Ray-Hare test (H statistic, p Value)
| H | p | η2 | |
| Overall Test Score Analysis | |||
| Control and Experimental Groups | 60.93 | <0.01 | 0.33 |
| Pre-test and Post-test | 137.20 | <0.01 | 0.52 |
| Intersection (Treatment and Group Type) | 1.10 | 0.12 | 0.01 |
| Analysis of Test Subsections | |||
| Content Score and Treatment | 0.44 | 0.28 | 0.00 |
| Organization Score and Treatment | 1.44 | 0.11 | 0.01 |
| Sentence Structure Score and Treatment | 2.06 | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| Voice Score and Treatment | 1.03 | 0.13 | 0.01 |
| Mechanics Score and Treatment | 3.92 | <0.01 | 0.02 |
Figure 2. The estimated marginal means of the control and experimental group
The results of the questionnaire given to the experimental group and the correlation to delta scores are provided in Table 5. The results suggest that participants in the flipped-learning classroom were generally positive towards it, but most notably in the meaningfulness aspect, with them feeling slightly less favorable in terms of competence and impact. Furthermore, no significant correlations were found between positivity and improvement in writing, so there is likely little association between students’ perceptions towards flipped learning and how likely they are to reap the benefits of this teaching style.
Table 5. The overall analysis of the student’s perceptions of implementing the flipped learning model in the teaching of opinion essays
| Category | No. items | M | SD | Min | Max | Correlation to Delta |
| General analysis | 20 | 4.066 | 0.244 | 3 | 5 | rs = -.001; p > .99 |
| Meaningfulness aspect | 10 | 4.278 | 4.409 | 3 | 5 | rs = .02; p = .90 |
| Competence aspect | 4 | 3.867 | 0.475 | 3 | 5 | rs = -.02; p = .87 |
| Impact aspect | 6 | 3.844 | 0.493 | 3 | 5 | rs = -.05; p = .78 |
Discussion
The quantitative results of this study did not provide conclusive evidence on whether or not the implementation of flipped learning significantly influenced the students’ overall writing ability improvement, as indicated by the Scheirer-Ray-Hare test result. More particularly, both students taught with the conventional way of teaching and students taught with flipped learning had improved their overall writing abilities, as shown from the pre and post-test scores comparison. There are several reasons why this result was obtained. Firstly, the students’ initial scores from the two groups were slightly different, as shown in Figure 2. Specifically, the students in the control group were initially weaker writers than the students in the experimental group. However, at the end of the teaching process, the experimental group improved more than the control group (36.74 versus 34.5 points of improvement), so it could be that a larger or more homogeneous pre-test group might have revealed significant results. Additionally, the teacher observed that the students in the class where flipped learning was implemented seemed to be active and had discussions during classroom hours. The teacher also observed that the questions the students asked were more varied than those of the control class. This could be because students taught with flipped learning had more time to process the information since they had acquired the materials earlier. Accordingly, the students in flipped learning perceived that the reading material shared was valuable for improving their writing ability, referring to their response to the questionnaire item on the meaningfulness aspect. Nevertheless, the students who were in the conventional way of teaching still had been somewhat successful in improving their writing ability even though they started to absorb the information right in the classroom. This was probably caused by the materials presented in both groups being the same and the students having the same opportunity to improve their writing.
Secondly, the students who participated in this study were mostly exposed to teacher-centric learning environments before the experiment began, so both groups had the same opportunity to improve their writing. The students in the present study were used to the presence of a teacher as the primary source of knowledge in the classroom, and the fact that they were able to enter a good university in East Java, Indonesia, suggests that the learners in the control group might be a subset of learners that is successful with teacher-centric materials. However, it was found that even though in the flipped learning class, the teacher likely acted as the guide instead of being the primary source of knowledge, the students seemed to adapt to the situation by willingly providing their time to watch or read the basic information out of the classroom shown by their continuous participation in the discussion led by the teacher during the in-class activities. However, based on immediate interviews during class time, a few students did not watch the videos because they had other tasks to complete from the other courses. This was similar to what had been mentioned by Chun and Heo (2018), that one of the challenges of flipped learning was when the students did not watch the learning videos shared in the pre-class activities, and this would make the teacher find it difficult to proceed with the other learning activities during in the in-class activities. Therefore, both teaching methodologies could improve the student’s writing ability, yet the choice to flip or not to flip the class still depends on the student’s needs and the teacher’s observation (Egbert et al., 2014).
Thirdly, another possibility is that the changes in learners occurred at a more fine-grained level than our study was able to observe. For example, the quantitative data in Table 4 shows that specific aspects of writing tied to students’ procedural knowledge, which includes the scores for sentence structure and mechanics, had statistically significant interactions, albeit with small effect sizes, with the implementation of flipped learning compared to the students’ declarative knowledge which includes the content and organization of the essay. However, regarding the voice aspect of the essay, we did not observe an interaction between the students’ improvements and the teaching methodology implemented. The improvement in the procedural knowledge of the students who joined the class where flipped learning was implemented might be due to the benefits of joining three phases of flipped learning (before-class, in-class, and after-class activities). More particularly, the pre-class activities, which were conducted virtually in the flipped learning, could help the teacher to free up the class hours to focus more on the higher levels of cognitive work (i.e., applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating) because the lower levels of cognitive work (i.e., remembering and understanding) were moved out of the classroom through the pre-class activities. This initial learning phase in flipped learning assisted the students to develop their understanding by assessing the ample materials through Google Classroom. It gave them a chance to practice writing during the in-class activities.
Based on the above, we believe that flipped learning allowed the class hours to be maximized to facilitate the students’ writing practice with the teacher’s assistance during the writing process. This teaching style provided more opportunities for the teacher to expose the students to the activities related to procedural knowledge in writing. The teacher could foster how to construct good sentences and use correct mechanics. Eventually, this helped the students to decrease their writing apprehension and confusion while composing their opinion essays because the class time could be used optimally to direct them to compose their opinion essays. This could happen because only 25 minutes of class was required to review the materials shared in pre-class activities, while the other 65 minutes could be used to compose essays. Furthermore, the paired review and teacher feedback activities could also be incorporated within the 65 minutes of the class hour used to compose the students’ opinion essays in every session. Furthermore, the students agreed that the peer-review activity could help them improve their writing ability, as shown by their responses to the questionnaire item, explicitly focusing on the meaningfulness aspect.
Moreover, the teachers noticed that flipped learning could make an independent learning environment alive, which aligns with the 21st-century learning environment where the learning activities were not necessarily conducted in a three-dimensional classroom. Additionally, it seems that the activities conducted through Google Classroom in this study could increase the students’ engagement, as evidenced by the fact that out of 32 students, the assignments were turned in on time in Google Classroom. Though two students were late submitting their assignments due to health issues, most were punctual. This also leads to a more flexible learning environment. Nevertheless, even though most students turned in their assignments, immediate interviews of a few students after assignment submissions revealed that a few of them accessed the Google Classroom just to submit the assignment and not to learn the materials. Therefore, as a future recommendation for implementing flipped learning, teachers must provide more interactive discussions or topics to be discussed in online learning in pre-class activities.
In addition to the advantages of flipped learning mentioned above, the study reported that the students in the experimental group had positive perceptions of the implementation of flipped learning, particularly its meaningfulness, competence, and impact aspects. It was shown by the results of the students’ overall and individual aspects in the survey (meaningfulness, competence, and impact). The students generally agreed that implementing flipped learning was meaningful and impactful. However, it should be noted that students felt slightly less positive about the competence and impact aspects of learning. This finding was in line with previous studies, which indicated that students embraced the implementation of flipped learning positively (Fauzan & Ngabut, 2018; Maharani et al., 2020; Shooli et al., 2022; Yujing, 2015).
The students perceived that the implementation of the flipped learning model provided a valuable learning experience due to the assignments being given through pre-class, in-class, and after-class activities. The students believed these activities were beneficial in creating a meaningful learning environment. This was likely because the activities were completed in sequence but connected to each other. As a result, the students could probably create a comprehensive understanding of what should be written in opinion essays. In addition, the current study found that 90% of the students watched the learning videos, evidenced by their ability to be involved in the question-and-answer session during in-class activities.
Students agreed that the activities implemented in the flipped learning model were valuable in improving their ability to write opinion essays. Moreover, according to the quantitative results of the student perception survey, the highest-rated aspect of the class was the fact that the writing practice was incorporated during classroom hours. More particularly, the students perceived their ability to write opinion essays to be better because they had more chances and time to discuss their drafts with the teacher or their peers during the in-class activities. The after-class activities could then be used to have students revise their drafts based on the feedback from their peers or the teacher, and they could review the concept of opinion essays if needed. Moreover, in the current study, the students were expected to complete the opinion essays step by step, commencing from the introductory paragraph in the in-class activity, main body paragraphs, and concluding paragraph, and in every structure of the opinion essays, the student would be guided to have a discussion regarding to their draft. This could be in the form of a presentation of the students’ drafts in the class and changing their drafts with their peers to be reviewed. As a result, it helped them to focus on the particular structure of the opinion essays in each session during the in-class activities. Therefore, it is essential to integrate some collaborative activities into the in-class activities and implement flipped learning.
Subsequently, the implementation of flipped learning was perceived to have impacted the students’ participation and interaction during the in-class activities. The teachers observed that during the in-class activities, the students taught via flipped learning could actively participate in the class discussions, and the questions raised were more varied. Furthermore, they tended to interact deeply in discussions regarding the drafts of their opinion essays. However, a few students were still discouraged from being actively involved in the class dimension even though they had watched the learning videos outside of the class and in the pre-class activities. With the assistance of flipped learning, when the teacher asks immediate questions related to the concept of opinion essays to those kinds of students, they could be assisted in building their knowledge regarding the opinion essays since they could rewatch learning videos shared in the in-class activities based on their learning style and pace. This observation matches that of other studies which have shown that the implementation of flipped learning could accommodate the students’ learning differences (Afrilyasanti et al., 2016), maximize the students’ effort throughout the course (Leis, 2015), facilitate the students with different learning styles (Mubarok et al., 2019).
The findings from this research add to the literature for instructors or future researchers interested in implementing flipped learning. More particularly, this study suggests that students can improve overall writing ability whether using flipped learning or not, but that certain aspects, such as sentence structure and mechanics, seem to show slightly more improvement when learned through flipped learning. Furthermore, the survey results and teacher observations indicate that students who received flipped learning seemed to adapt to a student-centered learning environment, asking a wider variety of questions and participating in discussions more actively. Furthermore, the results of the Scheirer-Hare-Tests suggest that the ultimate advantages of flipped learning may be related to increasing procedural knowledge, as both styles seemed to increase declarative knowledge equally well. Finally, considering the results of the survey and teacher observations, flipped learning seems to fit more students’ individual needs. However, it should be noted that this study had some limitations in terms of sample size, normality of data, and how specifically we were able to measure various aspects of writing. Therefore, future studies should look at how specific aspects of writing are affected by flipped learning in more detail. Further research should also involve more types of students and writing courses.
Conclusion
This study finds that both teaching methodologies implemented (conventional way of teaching and flipped learning) in the current study could improve students’ overall writing ability. However, the quantitative analysis of the sub-category scores of the students’ essays showed more improvement in the students’ procedural knowledge (sentence construction and mechanics) for flipped learning than for conventional teaching. Though there was no significant interaction between the students’ voice improvement and the teaching methodology implemented, the students’ declarative knowledge also showed no interaction between the teaching methodologies implemented and the groups’ improvement. This is assumed to be due to three factors involved in the implementation of the flipped learning model that influence the student’s understanding of the concept of opinion essays. Those activities are pre-class, in-class, and after-class activities, which link one another. Moreover, based on the general analysis of the students’ responses towards the implementation of flipped learning, the students have positive perceptions of its implementation. Additionally, the present study provides the students’ perceptions of implementing the flipped learning model in three aspects of learning: meaningfulness, competence, and impact. In all three aspects, EFL tertiary students perceived flipped learning positively as improving their learning, specifically in meaningfulness. It could be said that flipped learning could create a meaningful learning environment based on the students’ responses to the questionnaires. Meanwhile, the correlation statistical test results show no significant correlation between the students’ improvements and their perceptions of its implementation. Therefore, it is suggested that future research should have open-ended interviews with the students to gain a deeper understanding of the implementation of flipped learning.
Acknowledgement
The researchers would like to thank the Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan Indonesia/LPDP) for the support of the research funding process.
About the Authors
Elsa Desi Putri is currently teaching English privately. She was a scholarship awardee of Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan Indonesia/LPDP) when pursing her master’s degree at Universitas Negeri Malang. She has presented some articles at national conferences such as ETICS (in Riau), REELS (in Malang), BCLL (in Jakarta), and the International Conference on Research in Education and Science (ICRES) in Nevsehir, Cappadocia, Turkey. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1812-3968
Bambang Yudi Cahyono is a Professor in Applied Linguistics at Universitas Negeri Malang, East Java, Indonesia. He earned his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include English Teacher Professional Development, Information and Communication Technology in English Language Teaching, and Second Language Writing. He has published widely. He teaches courses in Essay Writing, Argumentative Writing, Thesis Writing, and Writing for Publication. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5210-5208
Nanang Zubaidi is an assistant professor in educational linguistics in the Department of English at Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Nanang’s research interests include educational linguistics, interlanguage pragmatics, and applied linguistics. He teaches linguistics and English education courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels and serves as the secretary of the Center of Digital Innovation in Language, Literature, Arts, and Teaching (C-DILLAT). ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0840-6374
To Cite this Article
Putri, E. D., Cahyono, B. Y., & Zubaidi, N. (2024). Flipped learning in EFL classrooms effects on tertiary students’ writing skills and perceptions. Teaching English as a Second Language Electronic Journal (TESL-EJ), 28(2). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.28110a7
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Appendix 1
Questionnaire items on the students’ perceptions of the implementation of flipped learning.
| No. | Statements | SD | D | N | A | SA |
| 1. | I think the writing practices in the classroom are valuable for me to improve my writing ability in writing opinion essays. | |||||
| 2. | The learning videos about opinion essays are valuable to help me improving my writing ability in writing opinion essays. | |||||
| 3. | The reading materials (handouts) about opinion essays are valuable to help me improving my writing ability in writing opinion essays. | |||||
| 4. | Watching the learning videos about opinion essays in the pre-class activities are helpful in giving me ideas about what is going to be studied in the class. | |||||
| 5. | Reading the learning materials (instructions) about opinion essays in the pre-class activities are helpful in giving me ideas about what is going to be studied in the class. | |||||
| 6. | I feel confident with my writing ability in writing opinion essays after combining pre-class activities (watching learning videos about opinion essays), in-class activities (writing practices), and after-class activities (reviewing the feedback on the opinion essay writing draft). | |||||
| 7. | I feel confident with my writing ability in writing opinion essays after combining pre-class activities (reading the learning materials about opinion essays), in-class activities (writing practices), and after the class activities (reviewing the feedback on my opinion essay writing draft). | |||||
| 8. | I could write English opinion essays better now in the classroom since I have watched the learning videos about opinion essays before the class. | |||||
| 9. | The learning videos about opinion essays shown are understandable for me. | |||||
| 10. | The learning materials (handouts) about the opinion essays shared are understandable for me. | |||||
| 11. | I could actively participate in-class activities, since I have known the topic being discussed on that day from the learning videos about opinion essays shared before. | |||||
| 12. | I could actively participate in-class activities, since I have known the topic being discussed on that day from the reading materials (instructions) about opinion essays shared before. | |||||
| 13. | I could discuss further about the opinion essay during in-class activities with the teacher. | |||||
| 14. | Learning at home (watching the learning videos about opinion essays) affect me during in-class activities. | |||||
| 15. | I feel encouraged to review my opinion essay writing out of the classroom through the feedback given by the teacher during in-class activities. | |||||
| 16. | I feel encouraged to review my opinion essay writing out of the classroom through the feedback given by my peer during in-class activities. | |||||
| 17. | I gain more understanding on how to write an opinion essay through the implementation of the flipped learning model. | |||||
| 18. | The model essays of the opinion essay shown in the class activities are beneficial for me to develop my own opinion essay. | |||||
| 19. | The in-class activities (developing opinion essay) step-by-step through each session helps me well to organize my opinion essay. | |||||
| 20. | The peer-review activities conducted during in-class activities are helpful for me to develop my ideas on writing an opinion essay. |
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