An Experimental Study on the Innovative CDIO Method in English Language Teaching

Abstract

This experimental study is an attempt to bring a new perspective and a new teaching method CDIO (Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating) to the ELT field. The CDIO method was applied in the 11th grade in a private high school in Diyarbakir, Turkey. The students were subjected to a pretest before the treatment process and to a posttest after the process. The treatment procedures and materials were prepared according to the CDIO curriculum and standards. The treatment process lasted for fifteen weeks for the experimental group while the control group continued learning English without being exposed to the CDIO teaching method. Subsequently, the collected data was analyzed with the assistance of IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0 to see whether the CDIO methodology has effective results on the students’ performance or not. After the data was collected and analyzed, the results showed that the students performed better after learning English using CDIO in the rate of 14.45%, where the mean score of the pretest was 71.66 while the mean score of the posttest was 86.23. Moreover, the results exhibit that the participants’ fulfillment developed in grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. Accordingly, there is a great improvement in the students’ performance of the experimental group. Also, the outcomes show that the CDIO has played a big role in developing the students’ level and has shown a positive effect on learning English. Finally, it is expected from this research to open the door for schools and faculties of teaching English to adopt the CDIO approach and apply it in their programs.