Genre-based visualization through an online teaching platform: A strategy to engage with academic texts during the Covid-19 outbreak

Abstract

During the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, students of all education levels are pushed to study at home via online classes. Schools, universities and other educational institutes have to make sure that their students can keep receiving knowledge and information based on the indicators set by the curriculum. The same thing also occurs at the English Education Department of Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. This article presents the results of a two-cycle action research project conducted in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, through an online learning platform using Zoom meeting. In this study, eight undergraduate students participated in the online intervention class to apply genre-based visualization metacognitive strategy. A total of six academic texts of the explanation genre were taken from TOEFL tests and used in both cycles. In the online intervention class, students generated visual imagery of the academic texts, built up their knowledge of the text genres in the online discussions, and individually drew visual representations of the explanatory texts. The images drawn by the students were taken for the qualitative analysis, and the tests given to the students were analyzed quantitatively. Both data are used to find out their improvement in reading comprehension. The findings of this study revealed a remarkable contribution of genre-based visualization for improving students' comprehension of academic texts of the explanation genre at TOEFL level, particularly through online learning during the pandemic.