Impact of Hypermedia-based Reading on Professional Writing; An Experimental Study Based on ‘Sri Lanka Sunday Observer’ E-Paper

Impact of Hypermedia-Based Reading on Professional Writing; An Experimental Study Based on ‘Sri Lanka Sunday Observer’ E-Paper

¹Mohideen Bawa Nowzath., ²Singanayagam Umashankar

¹Assistant Lecturer Department of English, Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education,

² Senior Lecturer Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Arts and Culture, Eastern University, Sri Lanka

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2024.1109049

Received: 19 August 2024; Accepted: 11 September 2024; Published: 07 October 2024

ABSTRACT

The application of hypermedia-based learning with electronic newspaper; refers to facilitate the learning with graphics, images, animation, sound and hypertext shows a major role in the performance of the students. This research was conducted to find the relationship between the hypermedia-based newspaper reading under the business English in the Higher National Diploma in Accountancy syllabus with learning strategies: tasks and activities in newspaper corner with poster method and the performance in the professional writing in HNDA course of Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education as there were no any previous research studies done in the academic field. Ninety students from HNDA – A were taken as an experimental group and ninety students from HNDA- B were taken as a controlled group. A pre-test was conducted for the groups to find the previous knowledge of the students in the professional writing proficiency and the mean differences were found to be negligible for the groups. Later, the experimental group was used to pursue hypermedia-based newspaper (Sri Lanka Sunday Observer) reading on the strategies; tasks and activities in newspaper corner with poster method for six months with sixty hours learning while the controlled group was taught without the use of hypermedia-based newspaper reading. After six months a post-test was conducted for the groups. When it was conducted the mean was slightly improved for the group – B, and the mean was considerably improved for the group – A. Thus, the research findings imply that hyper-media newspaper reading improves professional writing of the learners.

Keywords: Hypermedia, Newspaper reading strategies, Professional writing, Newspaper corner, Poster method.

INTRODUCTION

The student’s actions in professional writing through hypermedia-based newspaper reading with appropriate learning strategies; tasks and activities in newspaper corners with posters is a theme in today’s higher education. Hypermedia combines many kinds of media messages into training and learning practice. Furthermore, hypermedia is typical of the revolution of information production and writing. Hypermedia allows learners to confidently include new knowledge into their original knowledge bases so that learners develop decision-making in information processing with their syllabus contents (Tarnopolsky, 2013).

It is found that low participation in hypermedia-based newspaper reading without appropriate learning strategies is understood as one of the causes for disappointment in the performance in the professional writing in academic courses (Vadivel, 2021).  During the previous decade, studies that explored the relationship between hypermedia-based newspaper reading and the performance in the professional writing established that a constructive correlation exists between these two variables (Oleg, 1999), and it is to indicate that due to lack of empirical evidence of the impact of newspaper reading on business and professional writing particularly in the Sri Lankan context, I chose to investigate in this area. As per the gap, along with the direct investigation, this study aims at looking into the impact of the hypermedia-based newspaper reading with selected learning strategies: tasks and activities in newspaper corner with posters in the performance in the professional writing using data collected from Higher National Diploma in Accountancy course at SLIATE under the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka.

The hypermedia-based newspaper reading; principally references to empower the learning practice through the control of graphics, images, and animation, sound, video and other multimedia information with the assistance of hypertext, was understood as one of the utmost vital properties of communication worldwide after the coming of the internet. The learners of English as the Second Language can increase different information regarding solid expressions, resourceful statements, appealing opinions, day-to-day script structure of sentences and so on from the hypermedia. Learners are educated by the hypermedia what is standard on around them and neighbourhood with flavour of professionalism and business context. And also, hypermedia unlocked ways to learners’ lives with many focused supports, examination and valued articles on varied themes worldwide. It is found that learners cannot absorb much about variety, potential situations and indication on positions without a hypermedia (Barnett, 1986).

LITERATURE REVIEW

Professional writing (or simply ‘writing with professionalism’ in a business or academic context) encompasses various topics including report writing, proposal writing, letter writing, memoranda writing, e-mail writing, obituary writing, news story writing, writing opinion essays,  compiling agendas and notices, practising professional minutes, writing reports of charts /graphs/diagrams /table, curriculum vitae writing, envelope writing, corporate communications and documentations (Diana, 2005)

Professional writing is a style of writing that is clear, concise, and seeks to convey information and ideas quickly in a professional setting. Professional writing in communication can also be said to be the way employees, management and administration communicate in order to reach to their organizational goals (Harmer, 2001).

Subramaniam (2003) practically mentions that teaching of topics with speech description to pupil starts with a framework and the watchfulness of approaches and values of the language in the scripts and these supports create solid tracks to disseminate to students writing structures and to reveal their parts. Finally the linguistic ways documented through language-based and stylistic methods may be used to progress attentive reading which can boost the quality of writing.  Serafini (2003) surveys how training explanations and their influences through lecture might increase writing skill at school level and he proposes that an consideration on the attraction of the words of the target language and on their student-directed training in non-grammatical as well as in grammatical settings, can move forward important and suitable written communication of own meanings, in addition to aiming on specific features of structure and syntax.

María  (2011) examines the relationship between the e-newspaper reading of students and their professional writing skills with what is taking place in people by means of 19 e-news items with images beforehand testing and professional performance beforehand giving the e-news items and afterward giving the e-news stuffs by approaching the pictorial illustration of minor settlers in a model of a native e-newspaper and the study finds that familiarizing pictorial professional writing with grammar in an English language courses with the usage of e-newspapers, with multimodal writings in the teaching-learning procedure from writings of e-newspapers and enquiring students to assess this kind of writings, links the activities completed in the classroom to mature their language skills with what is taking place in people as per the day today vocabularies in the e-newspapers as per the method.

Diana (2005) assesses the relationship between the authentic news of professional business simulations using media and the performance of the students of the English language classes with text authenticity, task authenticity, pedagogical authenticity and learner authenticity among the students in the particular classes with the usage of appraisal system with comparison. This study finds that there is a positive relationship between the authentic news of professional business simulations with media and the performance of the students of the English language classes with text authenticity, task authenticity, pedagogical authenticity and learner authenticity among the students in the particular classes.

Oleg (1999) assesses the relationship between the reading-based integrated skills with hypermedia and the success of the performance of the class conditions with the availability of the framework of hypermedia-based reading habit – knowledge acquisition for the second year students in a university in Russia with pre-stage reading, reading stage and post-stage reading testing. This study finds that the suggested method seems not only realistic but undoubtedly one of the best for reaching wanted outcomes in teaching English where class time is restricted and where the aim is in cooperation to improve students skills for hypermedia-based reading professional literature and to cultivate the skills of listening speaking and writing in practiced circumstances. This method has certainly recognized its productivity in the real-world involvement of using it at methodical academia.

David (2000) empirically examines the relationship between the newspaper and online version reading habit of the students and knowledge acquisition of the students using the framework of reading habit. This study finds that there is a connection between these two variables as an actual consequence of changes in understanding experience, online news readers were less possible to remember having read national and political news topics that seemed in the Times newspaper and more likely to remember business and other news topics.

Hypermedia shows a vital part in the field of education, which essentially denotes to ease the learning process through the control of graphics, images, animation, sound, texts and other multimedia information with the support of hypertext. Hypermedia is a combination of many types of media messages into teaching and learning process. Moreover, hypermedia is typical of innovation of information presentation and writing. Hypermedia permits learners to positively incorporate fresh knowledge into their original knowledge bases so that learners become decision makers in information processing with their syllabus contents. In this line of argument the hypermedia can be effectively used for the development of professional writing skill of students in higher educational institutions too (Odeumi, 2019).

Furthermore, it is recognized that the students still face the issues in professional writing, mainly in writing a paragraphs for professional matters. It becomes problematic for the learners to comprehend the format, because this context is used in institutes. According to the opinion of Ozgur (2012), he defines that the students’ paragraph writing in professional maters weakens due to poor topic sentences, poor backup sentences and poor contents. Meanwhile the greatest number of students becomes fatigue to support writing. Also, students have negative thoughts and opinion towards writing in professional places.

To win these problems, it is essential to follow present trends in writing, to relate innovations within the lecture halls, to generate writing atmospheres wherever students will write easily exploiting their mind set, and to modify students to collect professional writing skills that they will use throughout their lives (Odeumi, 2019). In this context, to overcome the problem, significant explanations with newspaper composition becomes a valid resource for developing the professional writing skills among students.

It is methodically found that reduced link in hypermedia-based newspaper reading without suitable learning methods is understood as one of the drives for failure in the performance in the professional writing in academic courses (Vadivel, 2021). During the last decade, studies that investigated the link between hypermedia-based newspaper reading and the performance in the professional writing established that a positive relationship occurs between these two variables (Oleg, 1999) and it is to state that due to absence of empirical indication of the impact of newspaper reading on professional writing especially in the Sri Lankan context, it has been selected to do a research in this area. As per the available gap, along with the direct investigation, this study focuses at viewing into the effect of the hypermedia-based newspaper reading with certain learning strategies: tasks and activities in newspaper corner with posters in the performance in the professional writing by utilizing of data collected from Higher National Diploma in Accountancy course at SLIATE under the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka.

METHODOLOGY

The aim of the research was to identify the relationship between the hypermedia-based newspaper-reading with selected learning strategies: tasks and activities in newspaper corner with poster method and the performance in the professional writing in HNDA course of Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education. Students in two groups were randomly taken from HNDA course with the targeted subject professional writing from SLIATE under the Ministry of Education. 90 students from Higher National Diploma in Accountancy – class – A were taken as the experimental group and 90 sample students from Higher National Diploma in Accountancy – class – B were taken as the controlled group.

A pre-test was conducted for both the groups in professional writing and the mean differences were tested. Later, the experimental group was instructed to pursue hypermedia-based newspaper (Sri Lanka Sunday Observer) reading with selected learning strategies: tasks and activities in newspaper corner to display the related sentence types from the professional writing and poster method to show the sentence structures with figure of speech for six months with sixty hours learning practices and the classes for the controlled group were conducted with usual leaning practices. After six months a post-test was conducted for both the groups in professional writing with the same questions and the data were statistically analysed for comparison of any changes as a result of the introduction of hyper-media into teaching and learning activities.

Hypothesis

In order to accomplish the aim of this research the following hypotheses were developed.

Hypothesis ₀: There is no impact of hyper-media based newspaper reading on the performance in the professional writing.

Hypothesis ₁: There is an impact of hyper-media based newspaper reading on the performance in the professional writing.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The data analysis and findings bring out the representation of data which were collected with the marks through pre-test for experimental group, pre-test for controlled group, post-test for experimental group, and post-test for controlled group. In this analysis, significant p value and mean difference were mainly considered with the support of Statistic Package for Social Science – version 23.

At this point, from the pre-test, the Table 1 shows that mean value of the marks of group A was 9.4232 with the standard deviation of 2.03220 and group B took the mean of the marks as 10.3414 with the standard deviation of 3.10032. The mean deference between Group A and B is -0.844 in the independent sample test. The t statistics is -1.116 and associated p value was as 0.064. It means that the value is more than 0.05 and, therefore the null hypotheses H₀ is not rejected and it shows that the mean differences (- 0.84444) were found as to be negligible between both the groups.

Table 1: Group Statistics

The Table 2 shows paired sample t test of group – B (pre and post). The mean of the marks is as 10.3121 with the standard deviation of 3.13961 in the post-test. The mean of the marks is as 11.2213 with the standard deviation of 3.13932 in the Pre-test. The mean deference between pre and post-test of groups B is – 0.07778 and standard deviation is 3.6338 in the paired sample t test. The t statistics is -0.203 and associated p value was as 0.840. It means that it is more than 0.05 and, therefore the null hypotheses is not rejected and it shows that the mean differences were found as to be negligible between both the test and expound as there is no considerable improvement in the performance.

Table 2: Paired Samples Statistics

The Table 3 shows paired sample t test of group – A (pre and post). The mean of the marks is as 11.6869 with the standard deviation of 2.0792 in the pre-test. The mean of the marks is as 15.3437 with the standard deviation of 1.9165 in the post-test. The mean deference between pre and post-test of groups A is – 2.877 and standard deviation is 1.8712 in the paired sample t test. The t statistics is -14.579 and associated p value was as 0.000. It means that it is less than critical alpha value 0.05 at 95% confidential level. Therefore, the null hypothesis (H ₀) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (H ₁) is not rejected. It means that there is an impact of hypermedia-based reading with learning strategies on the performance in the professional writing.

Table 3: Paired Samples Statistics

CONCLUSION

The students who continued hypermedia-based newspaper reading with appropriate learning strategies; tasks and activities in newspaper corner with posters as described in the methodology section for six months with sixty hours of learning practices show a positive impact on the performance in the professional writing. However, the students who followed usual learning practices, described in methodology section do not show an impact on their performance in the professional writing.

Significance of the study

This research presents experimental evidence of the relationship of hypermedia-based newspaper reading with appropriate learning strategies; tasks and activities in newspaper corner with posters and the performance in the professional writing. The evidence presented in this research will essentially contribute to the body of existing literature, relating to research on hypermedia-based newspaper reading with appropriate learning strategies and the performance in the professional writing. Further, the outcome of the research will make the learners deeply think of the usage of the hypermedia-based newspaper reading in the classroom activities as it supports the learners’ thought and will bring the real experience to the learners. When the learners are aware of the usefulness of the hypermedia-based newspaper reading, the receptive skills and the productive skills of the learners will increase with the inclusion of standard level of attending, accepted level of interpretation, established level of communication and recognized level of writing.

Along with the direct investigation, the establishment of a correlation between the hypermedia-based newspaper reading with learning strategies and the performance in the professional writing would assist in applying different policies in terms of Accountancy studies in English language in Sri Lanka and it will have a broader result in updating the policy makers in the educational field.

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