Prácticas del comportamiento que afectan a los negocios

The pilot study was set up to try out the designed tasks, TBLT and mediation procedures as well as research instruments. Two groups of second-year accountancy and business study major students were recruited as participants on a voluntary basis. They had not yet completed the units on presentation skills and had never attended any TBLT classes. Since piloting was arranged during a summer term, only six BA students participated in the study, but all withdrew later because of heavy workloads. Tasks and instruments were then trialled with eight accountancy learners and two

observers. This small-scale pilot study provided useful insights that led to the refinement of the tasks, TBLT and mediation procedures.

Out of five lessons, only three lessons were task-based. Lesson one focusing on presentation skills used both newly produced materials and Unit 2 of Get Ready for Business Book 2 (Vaughan and Zemach, 2009) – a set textbook used in the compulsory English for Communication 3. The use of Unit 2 containing useful expressions for presentation introductions as a bridging activity to tasks in other lessons was effective, despite its heavy focus on language elements. Other lessons included ‘Describing Company Profiles’ (Task1), ‘Describing Company Products’ (Task 2), ‘Describing Business Situations or Trends’ (Task 3) and a session on giving a full presentation.

The feedback for the pilot study indicated both practical and impractical features of tasks. Students enjoyed most tasks and found pre-task task materials e.g. funny VDO clips showing good and bad presentation, quizzes about companies and products, and companies’ website information interesting and motivating. Students found the tasks that required them to brainstorm and work with other group members to find out things on their own promoted their thinking skills, which they perceived as very different from learning from a set textbook. Nevertheless, the observers and I were not satisfied with pre-tasks that devoted excessive class time on explaining new words and structures. Because of learners’ lack of prior knowledge and experience in business and their limited English proficiency, substantial time was required for explaining and brainstorming ideas on business concepts and practices and business jargon. Most learners were not confident in offering their ideas and participating in discussions, even though they showed great interest in tasks. They preferred being

asked questions to taking part in discussions. I sought out advice from the observers and my supervisors. They all suggested putting learners in pairs or groups to discuss and pool ideas before asking them questions. Providing more language support was another option, but brief class time (two periods per task) seemed to be a major constraint.

In the pilot study, mediation was not fully integrated in tasks and did not always follow a pre-planned mediation inventory, especially when learners had to solve complex language problems. Another mistake was that I tended to give explanations, rather than prompts during mediation. Thus, an opportunity to check their actual understanding was missed. I also hesitated several times over whether errors should be indicated or the lesson should be allowed to flow. My decision was to ignore mistakes students had made during pre-tasks, as the focus was on getting concepts correct and to provide mediation during script development. Despite these mistakes, learners responded positively to mediation saying in interviews that they wanted all mistakes to be corrected and thought it was challenging to identify and correct mistakes themselves.

The Willis framework (Willis, 1996) used in this study had to be adjusted due to the learners’ lack of linguistic ability enabling them to cope with the complexity of language and tasks. However, adaptation did not take place following the pilot study but was delayed until more comments were received from observers after the first task in the main study. In terms of technical arrangements, recording class interaction was also a challenge. All lessons were recorded using two VDO cameras with the permission of the learners. Students did not mind VDO recording of lessons but disliked recording of their interactions with me. They spoke in a soft voice in the

first few lessons, but after I assured them that pseudonyms were used in my thesis their co-operation increased. The observation form was adjusted by providing headings on focused areas as guidelines to elicit more details and feedback from observers.

Briefly, the pilot study provided me with insights into the content areas and the research procedures. Firstly, problems relating to learning and teaching were identified, and this helped me think about possible solutions in case similar problems occurred in the main study. Secondly, trying out the tasks enabled the observers and me to evaluate tasks and to identify areas that needed to be improved. Thirdly, the pilot study gave me practice in teaching, interviewing, writing a journal, recording lessons, working collaboratively with observers and building up rapport with learners. Also, some instruments, such as an observation form and an interview guide, which were developed during the research design, were revised in the light of the pilot study in order to be consistent with issues and problems that had arisen. Above all, piloting provided me with a chance to look closely at the actual dataset obtained from all sources. This was very useful as I could plan methods of data analysis.