Technology Matters
Online D-I-E Quick Write: An Activity
to Develop Impromptu Writing and theFact-Opinion Distinction
Tomoyuki Kawashima
Gunma University
Online teaching with Zoom allows teachers to share information easily with students, while
it also provides every student with an opportunity to participate. These advantages areamplified with a large class. This paper describes a ten-minute activity the author conductedwith 118 second-year university students while taking advantage of online instruction.
It aimed to promote impromptu writing and raise awareness about the fact-opinion
distinction. Student questionnaire responses demonstrated the positive effect of instruction.
Zoomを使用したオンライン授業は、教師が簡単に学生と情報を共有することを可能にするとともに、すべての学生に参加する機会を提供する。これらの利点は、大人数クラスほど強く感じられる。本稿では、そうしたオンライン授業の利点を利用し筆者が118人の大学2年生に行った、10分間の活動を取り上げる。その活動は、短時間で英語を書くことと、事実と意見の区別についての意識向上を目的とした。学生のアンケート回答により、指導の効果が示された。

The amount and types of writing exercises are limited compared with thoseof reading and listening practice. Students lack chances to reproduce English
grammar and vocabulary learned through the textbook in an uncontrolled way.
Kobayakawa (2011) revealed that 41.4% of all the tasks in the 10 top-selling
senior high school writing textbooks in Japan were translation tasks, followedby fill-in-the-blank tasks without translation (16.3%). Evidence for lack of freecomposition from the student perspective (e.g., Yasuda, 2014) is also available.
Yasuda asked 481 university students of various majors studying at six universities
about the types of writing tasks and the frequency they experienced each typeof task during high school. The result showed that the two most common types
155Kawashimaof tasks in high school English were writing exercises focusing on accuracy ingrammar and translation of Japanese into English.
A call for change to this situation has been heard. Brown (2012) suggested
that the focus should be shifted away from teaching grammar in and of itself
and toward teaching grammar via writing. By stressing content with grammar
and vocabulary, he argued that teachers can “shift from ‘structure for the sake ofstructure’ instruction to the use of structure in the function of writing” (p. 2).
Similarly, Murakoshi (2015) claimed the need to give learners ample chances toexpress themselves to add their new knowledge to a repertoire of skills they canuse freely on other occasions. Despite these arguments, teachers are hesitant toadopt writing activities in their lessons. Part of their reluctance may be due tothe extra effort required for this type of student writing. For this reason, writing
activities that will free teachers from correcting errors or grading student writing
are preferred.
Besides, raising student awareness about and sensitivity to differences
will help students to improve their communication. Greater respect for andacceptance of many differences are sought in our society. It is, therefore, timely tolearn that people do not necessarily share the same way of thinking.
The author designed an online activity that integrated a reflective training
method for critical thinking skills with a writing task to address the needs
mentioned above. The activity had two primary goals: developing impromptu
writing and enhancing awareness of the difference between observable facts
and subjective interpretation based on our experiences. The following sections
describe two instructional approaches adopted by the present study: a quick
write and the Description, Interpretation, and Evaluation (D-I-E) exercise.

Quick Write

A quick write is a “brief written response to a question or probe requiring
students to explain a principle or phenomenon” (Green et al., 2007, p. 39). In
practice, quick writes are short written responses to lectures, in-class activities,
assignments, or school events for teachers to examine student understanding,satisfaction, or needs. The author thought the informal and less threatening156

Online D-I-E Quick Write, OnCUE 14(1), pages 155-166

nature of the task could bridge the gap from the mostly controlled writing
activities students experienced at high school. Moreover, Sato (2008) provided
evidence that fluency-oriented instruction contributed to a larger word count inJapanese junior and senior high school students’ writing. Therefore, a quick write
may help Japanese learners develop writing skills as well.

D-I-E Exercise

The D-I-E exercise is originally an activity for cross-cultural training (Yashiro
et al., 1998) and for communication training (Wendt, 1984). It is not clear
who developed the method, but training based on the fundamental principles
of description, interpretation, and evaluation was presented in Ball and Byrnes(1960). The exercise consists of three phases. Participants describe what they see
in a photo. In the interpretation phase, they make subjective statements about
the picture, e.g., what they think the people are doing. Participants need to add
a reason because interpretation is the work completed in our minds. Evaluation
is another type of interpretation. Participants write how they feel about thepeople in the photo. This activity aims to make participants aware of the dangerof making groundless, often culturally biased interpretations unconsciously.
Ryan (2018) argued that by reflecting on unusual things or places repeatedly,
participants would come to ask themselves “how they know what they think theyknow” (p. 77).
The D-I-E exercise is played with pictures selected “from cultures otherthan the culture of the participants” (Intercultural Communication Institute,2008, p. 9). Kawamura et al. (2006) provided a case where the D-I-E activity
was conducted with intermediate and advanced learners. They used picturesfrom the listening section of the TOEIC as prompts for speaking activities. Aftercompleting the oral D-I-E exercise, students took the listening test. Kawamura etal. (2006) reported that students had become highly interested in the listening
prompts of the test by that time. One advantage of this exercise the author
previously realized is that once students are used to the activity, they become
ready to describe photos and drawings found in the textbook.

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Methods

The study was conducted in an English course for 118 second-year university
students (21 males and 97 females) majoring in health sciences for 14 weeks
in 2020. They were in three groups (41, 38, and 39), and the author instructed
those students. The average TOEIC scores of 157 students in the department,
including 39 students who attended the class taught by another teacher, were462.0 in January 2020. Considering the average TOEIC scores of the first-year
university students in Japan being 438.0 (IIBC, 2020), participants’ English
proficiency levels in this study were slightly higher than those of the average
Japanese university students. Students attended a 90-minute class once a week,
and the class was conducted online via Zoom. Learning basic medial English
with the textbook was the main activity, and the D-I-E quick write was used as a
warm-up activity for the class. It did not account for any percentage of the grade.

Instruction of the Online D-I-E Quick Write

Photos showing everyday life in 14 countries were selected among the pictures
the author took on his overseas trips (Figures 1 and 2). The first 10 minutes ofeach class were spent on the D-I-E quick write. The teacher showed a new photoon Zoom with the slide share function. Students then typed in their descriptions
into a chat message within one and a half minutes, and with the teacher’s
instruction, they sent out the message to all participants. Then, another one anda half minutes were provided for the interpretation of the photo. At the teacher’ssignal, students submitted their writing.
Later, the teacher explained the image in English within three minutes. While
explaining, he showed the location of the country on Google Maps. A website
with more images was sometimes introduced to help students understand thepictured situation. For instance, in Week 14, the teacher showed a picture of ahuge cow-shaped object being prepared on the street (Figure 2). The cow wasbeing crafted for a cremation ceremony in Bali, Indonesia. To fully understandthis unique tradition, students should know that Balinese people believe in
Hinduism and that a cow is regarded as a sacred animal in their religion. For thispurpose, the teacher displayed a travelogue website about the cremation festival
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Online D-I-E Quick Write, OnCUE 14(1), pages 155-166

Figure 1. Image for Week 3.

Figure 2. Image for Week 14.
and explained how the massive cow-shaped float would be used in a funeral.
When Zoom meetings were closed, the student writing was automaticallysaved to the teacher’s computer as a chat message, with their IDs and names
included. Student entries were then sorted by the ID number. The teacher readthrough the student entries and prepared the comments he would make in the159Kawashima

next class, highlighting the related parts in the writing in a few colors (Figure 3).
In the second week onward, four minutes were spared at the beginning of
the activity for the teacher’s debriefing about the student writing completed
in the previous class. Showing students’ writing on the computer screen, theteacher focused on writing skills and the distinction between description andinterpretation.
For language learning, the teacher gave three pieces of advice one by one.
First, writing many English words was encouraged. Later, providing expressions
such as “in the foreground” and “in the background,” the teacher instructed
students to indicate the location of things or people in the picture. Thirdly,
instruction was given to make sentences longer. Sato (1991) revealed thatJapanese learners tend to use fewer adjective clauses than adverb and noun
clauses. The teacher told students to describe the people and things in moredetail by adding modifying phrases and sentences. Illustrating good samples,e.g., “so many round-shaped fruits in the bowl,” the teacher recommended using
modifiers more frequently.
For sensitivity training, students were told not to confuse facts based onwhat they saw in the picture with opinions based on what they thought intheir minds. Attention was called to the use of words expressing social status,
such as “teacher,” “student,” and “parents” for description. Moreover, students
were reminded to add reasons to their interpretations because they may differ

Figure 2. Sample of student writing.
160Online D-I-E Quick Write, OnCUE 14(1), pages 155-166

from person to person. Many Japanese learners tend to use a subordinate clausestarting with “because” without a principal clause (Kobayashi, 2009). Therefore,
the teacher reminded students not to start a sentence with “because.”

Data Collection and Analysis

A questionnaire was administered in Week 14 to examine the effects of instruction.
The questionnaire had three questions: two multiple-choice questions (Table
1) and one open-ended question asking students to write their thoughts freely
about the D-I-E activity on the Moodle platform. The number of responses to thefirst two questions was counted to examine how strongly students perceived theeffects of instruction in developing their impromptu writing and the distinction
between subjective and objective descriptions. Student comments were divided
into smaller comments until each comment had a single point of view. Later,
the comments were thematically classified into topics. Students responded inJapanese, and translation into English was done by the author.

Results and Discussion

Table 1 shows the degrees of the perceived strength of the instructional effectby students. With one absentee, 117 students attended the 14th session. As
for Question 1, 93.1% of the students responded that the online D-I-E quick
write helped them improve their writing skills. In response to Question 2, 94.0%
answered that the activity helped them learn about the subjective-objective
Table 1Student Perception of the Effect of Instruction
It helped alot.

It helped.

Neither yes
nor no.

It didn’t help
very much.

It didn’t help.

Total

0 (0%)

117 (100%)

Q1 “Did the D-I-E activity help you raise your writing skills?”
52 (44.4%)

57 (48.7%)

7 (6.0%)1(0.9%)

Q2 “Did the D-I-E activity help you distinguish objective matters and subjective matters?”
59 (50.4%)

51 (43.6%)6 (5.1%)1 (0.9%)161

0 (0%)

117 (100%)

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distinction.
The results of the investigation based on student comments are presented inTable 2. Of the 117 students who participated in the 14th session, 88 students(75.2%) filled in their reflections. Students were numerically coded from S1
to S88, and their comments were further divided into 153 discrete comments.
The table shows nine topics into which 153 discrete comments were sorted indescending numerical order. The topic which students commented on mostwas improved writing skills and a sense of progress (39.2% of the total numberof comments). Five subtopics emerged as reasons students felt a sense of
improvement.
The first subtopic seems to show the teacher’s explicit instruction on usefulexpressions scaffolded for students. One student wrote, “By using fixed phrases
repeatedly, I expanded the vocabulary I could use actively” (S43). Some students
referred to the increased English they wrote as the session progressed (S30,
S66). Other students commented that their writing skills and their imagination
Table 2
Thematic Classification of Student Reflections on the D-I-E Quick Write
Ranking

Topic

Number ofComments

Percentage

1

Improved writing skills & sense of progress

60

39.2%

2

Different cultures & foreign affairs

31

20.3%

3

Lack of time

14

9.2%

4

Analysis of own productive skills

12

7.8%

5

Enhanced motivation

10

6.5%

6

Difficult tasks

9

5.9%

6

Others9

5.9%

8Subjective-objective distinction

4

2.6%

8

Fun activity

4

2.6%

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improved (S14, S21, S49).
The second reason was related to their desire to use English. Students may
have wanted opportunities to write in English. A student responded, “I haven’t
attended this kind of training, so I thought it very good to have practice indescribing pictures” (S53). There was another student who went so far as to say,“Without activities like the D-I-E, I wouldn’t have had a chance to write English”(S51). Moreover, seeing other students’ writing may have exerted a positive effecton students. Comments in this third subtopic included, “It was good for me tolearn various ways of expression by looking at other people’s writing” (S17).
The fourth subtopic that emerged as a reason for students to feel progress
was the spontaneity of the task. Students were urged to write within the time
limit. One last point that emerged was the sense of difficulty. Many students
mentioned that they found the task challenging at first. However, the initial
feeling of difficulty may have given students an even greater sense of confidence
and joy once they felt they could complete the task well. A student stated, “Theactivity was difficult for me in the beginning because I didn’t know how to writein a limited time. However, I became able to write in that way in the latter half ofthe course, thus finding it fun to do the task” (S36).
Moving forward, the second most popular topic was different culturesand foreign affairs (20.3%). Student comments suggested a pleasant learning
experience. For example, one student wrote, “It was much fun to try the D-I-E
exercise with a picture of different countries. I have never been abroad, so I wasable to gain not only English skills but also knowledge about foreign countries”(S82). Another student commented, “Seeing interesting photos every time mademe feel as if I were visiting a foreign country. I was able to engage myself in theactivity with fun” (S22).
The next three topics were a lack of time (9.2%), analysis of own productive
skills (7.8%), and enhanced motivation (6.5%). Some students felt pressed fortime because they had to type in English messages on their computers. The
comments sorted into “the analysis of own productive skills” were primarily
negative reflections on their current level of mastery.
On the other hand, the topic that followed in percentage, “enhanced
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motivation,” was positive. “I want to brush up my English by doing similar
training on my own” (S35). “I found myself spending more time outside of classin making sure of grammar and trying to expand my vocabulary, thinking about
the D-I-E exercise” (S51). “The activity made me feel like exposing myself toEnglish more often” (S81). All these comments suggested positive developmentof student motivation toward English language learning. In addition, there
was a comment referring to self-confidence, i.e., “I was rather poor at writing,but I became slightly more confident by making sentences on my own” (S83).
Attitudinal change in learners is a goal of language instructions. Therefore, thesecomments suggest that the activity may have been helpful to foster independent
learning attitudes and language skills.
The D-I-E quick write aimed to teach the fact-opinion distinction. However,
only a small percentage of comments fell into this category (2.6%). Thoughsmall in number, the comments suggested the effect of instruction. For example,“I haven’t thought about the difference between objective and subjective
information, so I was surprised to know that ‘unique’ and ‘mysterious’ are words
expressing our subjective evaluation. I came to think about the distinction inusing English, too” (S48). “I had seldom cared about the subjective-objective
distinction when I talked about pictures before. However, after I experienced the
D-I-E exercise, I became able to tell the difference more clearly” (S52).

Benefits of Online D-I-E Quick Write

Conducting the D-I-E quick write online saves teachers time and effort for classpreparation. The author gave the D-I-E exercise to 40 students in a classroom
before, but he found it much easier and more efficient to conduct the activity
online. Teachers do not need to prepare copies of a picture. Moreover, the easeof showing the works of other students is an advantage of online instruction. In
addition, the online activity gives each student a chance to participate and use
English instantly. This guaranteed opportunity to participate and use English isa great advantage.
Concerning areas for improvement, teachers must consider the wide rangeof student English proficiency. Providing students with formulae with blanks,
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e.g., “We can see ____ in the center of this photo. A man is _______________.
There are ______________ in front of the man” might help low proficiency
students to participate. Besides English proficiency levels, teachers should pay
attention to student typing skills. Typing skills can also vary from one student toanother. Some students are not used to typing the English alphabet. Therefore,
typing practice, with the use of websites providing free training, should beconsidered before starting the online quick write so that more students have therequired technical skills.

Conclusion

This paper described the instruction of online D-I-E quick write. The analysisof student responses supported the instructional effects of impromptu writing
and training on the fact-opinion distinction documented in the literature. In thequestionnaire, students typically mentioned increased writing skills and a senseof progress. Though preliminary, this study has provided a practical suggestion toteachers and a path for further research. Interested teachers can try this activity
with their students by using free images available on websites.

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Author bio

Tomoyuki Kawashima is an Associate Professor at Gunma University. He received
his Ph.D. from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His research interests
include pedagogical applications of World Englishes in English language teaching,affective factors in speaking English, and the development of speaking and writing
skills. tkawashima@gunma-u.ac.jp
Received: May 22, 2021
Accepted: June 8, 2021
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