Scratch'in çocukların İngilizce ve bilişsel becerileri üzerine etkisi

This study integrated Scratch into language teaching for children, investigated the effects on language and cognitive skills, and explored the benefits and challenges from the students' and teachers' viewpoints. The study consisted of two sub-studies. Study A was designed as an intervention study in which ten students and one teacher participated. We collected quantitative data through the exit test of the course book, OYLPT, MAIN, Wisconsin CST, and Design Scenarios. Based on the results, Scratch had a significant effect on children's listening and computational thinking skills, yet not on academic achievement, language use, narrative skills. However, the experimental group showed a clear trend by outperforming the control group in nine out of 13 components. We believe that this finding might be significant with more participants. For the executive function skill, no trend or a significant result was found. In Study B, we collected qualitative data via journals and evaluation forms from 56 students and five teachers. We found that the students had a positive attitude towards Scratch. They believed the lessons with Scratch were fun, they enjoyed creating projects and pair-work. The challenges were mostly about the disagreements between the pairs and not enjoying the roles in the pair work. On the other hand, the teachers found Scratch beneficial for improving language skills, motivation, and collaboration. Regarding the challenges, their opinions were mostly related to the students and consistent with the students' answers. Overall, the benefits of Scratch outnumbered the challenges. Finally, the findings indicated some suggestions for the teachers.