Effectiveness Study in Chinese Rhetoric Teaching Using Freeware Constructed Learning Platform for the Fifth Graders

[[abstract]]In the E-generation, the growth of information technology has gradually impacted on the learning strategy and teaching environment. Therefore, it has been not only a trend to develop learners’ abilities by digital learning but also a crucial long-term goal of the government. Among the fifteen (15) types of rhetoric techniques which were involved in the achievement assessments for 203 fifth graders, five (5) types of rhetoric techniques with higher error rates have been selected for the design of the research. For this study, Flash and PowerPoint were prepared as a series of digital teaching materials for the five types of rhetoric techniques. Besides, 15 pupils were taught by the selected computer-assisted teaching materials and evaluated by the Interactive Response System (IRS). The assessments of teaching results will be determined by the Moodle platform. The consequences could be presented as following:1. After the achievement assessments for the 15 types of rhetoric techniques, it is clear, among those methods, the researcher selected five (5) types of rhetoric techniques with higher error rates.2. After learning through the digital materials and IRS, it is apparent that the abilities to identify three types of rhetoric techniques were significantly improved. Moreover, the results showed that the post-test were better than the pre-test.3. According to learners’ level, participants were divided into three groups, such as low achievers, middle achievers, and high achievers. All of them were instructed by the selected digital materials. The achievement assessments for each group have a great difference between pre-test and post-test. Among those groups, the low achievers and middle achievers had a great deal of improvement. The results of low achievers were twice than that of the middle achiever. Compared the low achievers with the middle achievers, it seemed that the improvement in high achievers were not very obvious. However, with regard to the specific technique which had the highest rate of error, a significant increase was founded in the high achievers.4. With the series of computer- assisted teaching materials, the results of pre-test and post-test had revealed that there was a significant improvement in identifying the five types of rhetoric techniques. The most important of all, it indicated that the grades of pre-test were greater than that of post-test