The Effect of Worked Examples When Learning to Write Essays in English Literature

Abstract

Worked examples, commonly used in technical domains, are rarely used in language areas such as English literature. In 3 experiments, Korean university students for whom English was a foreign language received worked examples intended to facilitate problem solving in the ill-structured domain of English literature. During the learning phase, half of the students were presented conventional essay questions that they were asked to answer. The other half of the students were presented the same questions along with model answers that they were asked to study, followed by similar questions that they had to answer themselves. All students then were asked to answer retention, near and far transfer tests. Relatively more knowledgeable students were assigned to Experiment 1 than to Experiment 2, who, in turn, were more knowledgeable than were the students in Experiment 3. Results indicated that the effectiveness of worked examples increased with decreasing student knowledge.

Keywords:

• cognitive load theory
• ill-structured problems
• literature instruction
• problem solving
• worked examples