JL/EISII/ILC_TASK

ELT 1108
English Improvement Strategies for Reading and Writing
Guided Task Sheet # ( 1 ) for ILC /Independent Learning Activities

Name: Ng Tsz Chung Date: 30/1/2011

Title: Social work practice and context

Text type: Literature

Start time: 2000 End time: 2053

1. What is (are) your learning objective(s) for today’s practice? (Set 2-3 realistic
and concrete task aims for each learning activity.)
1) To experience the process of social work research by reading a social work
research article.
2) To experience the strategies that predicting and previewing within 0.5 minutes.
3) Guessing the meaning of unknown vocabulary and checking up the dictionary to
broaden my knowledge of vocabularies.
4) To criticize the process of the research study.
2. Give a brief summary or description of the material(s) you have used in around
150 words.

The literature introduces the multisystemic therapy and discussing its effectiveness.
The study of this article compared outcomes for youth who received MST controlling
for the impact of race and ethnicity to evaluate the research hypothesis that are
African American and Hispanic youth diagnosed with an emotional disturbance and
with multiproblem families receiving multisystemic therapy will experience (a)
improved mental health symptoms, (b) improved overall youth functioning, (c)
decreased severe and disruptive behavior (d) decreased risk of self-harm, (e)
improved family functioning, and (f) improved school functioning at the same rate as
Caucasian emotionally disturbed youth with multiproblem families. And the findings
of the research can provide further evidence for child welfare practitioners to consider
when working with children and families from diverse populations in decision-
making.
3. What are the major problems you have encountered in the process of doing this
activity? Please list them one by one and be specific.

(1) In the article, there were too many points in one sentence. Thus, it was quite
difficult for me to read because the sentence was too long. For example, the article
pointed out that structural barriers is one of the factor contributes to the health care
disparity. It gave examples in the sentence that contained 64 words in a sentence.
(2) The data analysis of the study used different method to test the validity and
reliability of the research. Those of the method required academic knowledge to
understand which consumed a lot of times of remind the concept of the methods.
(3) There were too many quotations in the literature that were disturbing my reading.

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Guided Task Sheet for ILC or Independent Learning Activities
4. What were the strategies that you used/developed to help solve the problems
reported in #3 above? List them one by one and be specific. Please discuss the
effectiveness of these strategies.

1) I used the Clustering to read the words chunk by chunk instead of reading a
sentence a time. This strategy was effective to deal with the problems that there
are too many words in a sentence because clustering can allow the sentence read
chunk by chunk to improve the understanding of the sentence.
2) I used predicting to predict the meaning of the testing methods and checked them
after reading. It was also effective to deal with the problems that the method
required academic knowledge to understand because the article already had some
brief explanations that was able for us to understand by predicting.
3) I used Clustering to read the words chunk by chunk and skipped the chunk of
quotations. After that focused on the content of the literature which can improve
the effectiveness of reading. It was also effective to deal with the problem that
there are many quotations because it can skip them completely.

5. How did you like the learning materials? Would you recommend them to your
classmates? Why or why not? If so, to whom in particular?

I think the material is good for me to learn about the process of social work research.
Thus, this is benefit to my social work study. However, I would not recommend the
article to my classmates because the research study is not well valid and some of the
content is confused. And also the therapy is not introduced in detail that classmates
cannot learn much from the article.

6. How would you rate your overall performance with special reference to your set
objectives? Please circle.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
ß----------- --------------à
Very poor Well done
Why? Please be specific.

6, it is because I have paid a lot of efforts and time to study the article. And I have
learned much more about the research process during the following of the steps of the
research. Besides, I have used the predicting and previewing to have a better
following of the research process. Thus, the reading effectiveness can also be
improved. After that I have learned much more vocabulary from the dictionary which
encouraged me to continue the reading.

7. What future steps will you take to learn more effectively next time? Be specific.

I think I should do revision before the reading of academic article because it can
enable me to understand the article more. Also, I can give myself a target to finish
the reading in limited time in order to improve the concentration and reading
effectiveness. After that I should also read more newspaper to broaden my
knowledge of vocabulary which enable me to predict the meaning of words more
accurately.