Title: Constructionism and error analysis to understand and improve written English composition of Thai software engineering students

Authors: Teeraporn Saeheaw; Komsak Meksamoot; Nopasit Chakpitak; Arnan Sipitakiat; Nitida Adipattaranan

Addresses: College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, 239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand ' College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, 239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand ' College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, 239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand ' Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chiang Mai University, 239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand ' Faculty of Education, Chiang Mai University, 239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand

Abstract: To improve Thailand's higher education students' written English skills, this paper presents a learning innovation: the remedial framework targeting software engineering students, by integrating constructionism philosophy and leverages error analysis as a key mechanism to assess students' writing. Results show the most common errors are capitalisation, noun phrase, verb phrase, semantic word selection, determiner phrase, calque, and plurals. The assessment of a pretest and posttest written exercise was statistically significant improvements. This paper suggests that the new framework and assessment technique can improve Thais' written English by shifting from the grammar-based learning method to reach higher levels of learning.

Keywords: innovation; constructionism; error analysis; remedial framework; grammar-based learning; learning incubators; English as a foreign language; EFL; written English composition; Thailand; software engineering; software education; higher education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2014.060875

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2014 Vol.15 No.3, pp.227 - 253

Published online: 21 Jun 2014 *

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