Project SCRAWL

Focus Group Process

 

To design this writing course to serve the learners better, our team conducted a focus group interview with custodial workers. In this focus group, we mainly focused on their writing experiences and current challenges in writing, as well as their suggestions for our writing project. The interview lasted 90 minutes. All participants currently work for the Department of Housing and Residence Education at the University of Florida. During the interview, they suggested that they are willing to spend some time on reading if the materials were interesting and beneficial for them. All of them agree that reading helps improve their writing, because reading provides the context for them to comprehend. The most reading resources that they regularly access are newspapers, magazines, as well as some downloaded materials from Kindle.

 

Focus Group Results

 

Education background. All participants have achieved their high school diploma except one is still in the General Educational Development (GED) program, which aims to help people who have not graduated from high school obtain the certificate equivalent to the traditional high school diploma. One of them also has three years’ college experience. In addition, some of them have taken advantage of the Employee Education (EEP) program which offers educational counseling and financial support to enhance their skills.

 

Importance of writing. All participants point out that writing is a critical part of their work. Custodial supervisors need to do a lot of documentation work, and they hope that their managers can understand what they write. They are highly motivated to professionalize their writing so they can leave a good impression to their supervisors, making the supervisor feel good and appreciate their work.

 

Writing experience. Participants are concerned that when they were in their GED program, they did not completely understand what the trainers were explaining. Currently, they might not have problems with checking daily email, but they are facing problems with longer writing assignments. For example, a lot of tests are designed to rewrite what the participants are told. Workers might have no problem with repeating what they heard, yet have some difficulty when asked to write it down. Most of the time, participants use different words in the same context to see if they will generate different meanings. They use this strategy as a way to check if their writing might be misunderstood by their supervisors. Also, participants enjoy typing on the computer because there is an automatic spelling and grammar check. They suggest it will be much more helpful if the trainers can provide some short samples of writings in this course.  

 

Aptitude & Attitude. Participants think their writings are of a low proficiency, but they are highly motivated to improve their writing skills.

 

Learners’ needs.  All participants are facing problems of limited vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and issues with grammar. In addition, they are worried about their use of expressions and the particular words that they are utilizing. For example, they are worried if their expressions will "make their writing look stupid". Participants suggested that they would prefer that writing training provide both good and bad writing samples for them to learn. Also, some interesting writing topics will help improve their engagement in writing. The topics can be both work-related and non-work related, as long as they are not boring. Another concern is that they want to know how to put different words into proper context, making their writing sound formal and professional. They do not like writing the same sentence in repetition. They feel that it is difficult to understand a sentence if there is no context provided. Last but not the least, they frequently base their writing on how they speak, and when they review what they write, they cannot even recognize what they have written sometimes.

 

Practice frequency. Because of their work schedule, they don’t have much time to practice writing. However, they would like to spend 10-15 minutes each day on practicing writing skills.

 

Writing Feedback. One participant claims that she was reluctant to expose her writing to others because she feels nervous; the other five participants are willing to have their writing evaluated and shared with others. When receiving feedback, participants point out that they like to get detailed feedback including the weaknesses and all the mistakes that they have made. In this case, they can know how to correct their writing and make it better in the next assignment. In addition, they are afraid that they might misunderstand the supervisors’ feedback, because what they comprehend might not be in accordance with what supervisors mean.

Suggestions. Participants think they will practice writing better if they have a writing partner. Some writing tools such as spelling and grammar checkers were highly recommended for this writing course. Also, the participants want to improve their writings step by step. Short examples, cartoons and some interesting stories are some components that they are interested in. They also suggest that this writing course could provide different themes each week, to attract their attention and motivate them to practice writing. For example, sports, movies, campus activities, etc. They are also fine with posting their working information to a publicly shared location as long as they will not be offended by other learners. Finally, they think that we could provide some negative writing samples (some grammar or spelling errors) for them to evaluate and correct to increase their confidence in writing. This is probably a good way for them to feel comfortable at the initial stage of practicing writing.