Students’ attitude changes through integrating computational thinking into English dialogue learning

Computational Thinking (CT), a problem-solving skill rooted from Computer Science (CS), is gaining attention from computer scientists and K-12 educators increasingly. Language communication skill, in the meanwhile, is one essential skill developed through the K-12 education, which will continue to attract attention in the foreseeable future globally. There is the possibility for students to learn an effective communication skill while using or improving CT, given that the interdisciplinary work of integrating language learning into a CT learning activity has not been fully discussed in existing literature, this preliminary study, which is going to be extended to a largescale work in the future, is important from the perspective of both language and computer teachers. As an initial step, this research attempted to obtain insights on developing CT in the context of English dialogue learning by investigating the attitude changes of students after they have experienced the integration of CT into English education in Scratch programming environment. To achieve this objective, pre/post-lesson surveys were distributed to nine Hong Kong primary students who attended the intervention class to study computer programming by using the graphical programming language Scratch. The preliminary results show that primary school students have positive reaction to the introduction of CT into English dialogue learning through graphical programming language. Students were more motivated to learn English dialogue after the class under study; however, their attitude towards learning graphical programming language become less positive after the intervention. Copyright © 2018 The Hong Kong Jockey Club.