Innovation in Chinese Educational Environments: an Action Research in a Spanish Writing Classroom in Taiwan

Abstract

In foreign language classes in countries such as China, Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, subjects such as Conversation tend to be taught without integrating the different skills, while others such as Grammar, Writing, or Reading and Vocabulary, are taught using such traditional methods as the grammar-translation or audiolingual methods. This reminds us that modern communicative approaches to foreign language teaching are not as widespread as is usually thought. Given this situation, I believe that the concept of educational innovation in such environments, as well as in subjects such as those mentioned, should be understood in a broad way, as promoted today by globally relevant institutions such as the UNICEF or the OECD. Based on this idea, my objective in this research was to verify whether an innovative teaching method, based on training for the DELE exams, and focusing specifically on DELE instructions, guiding points and rating scales, can contribute to improving the discursive competence and confidence of undergraduate students in Taiwan; not only when taking DELE exams, but also when studying Composition. For this purpose, during the 2020-2021 academic year I developed an action-research project with a group of third-year undergraduate students from the Spanish Department of the Tamkang University. The results obtained confirm the effectiveness of the method I developed, and they imply that deep knowledge of the DELE written tests, on the one hand, and continued practice considering DELE guiding points and rating scales, on the other, can greatly help students to improve their ability and confidence in writing tasks, in general, as well as when facing the written expression and interaction tasks of the DELE exams.