Proteína en estudio: Alfa-amilasa

In the paragraphs above, the perspective of the writing had been of that of a reflective teacher, who was reflecting on the practice of a more experienced practitioner of drama pedagogies, as well reflecting both in and on action in his own practice. In Handal and Lauvas’s (1987) developmental traditions of reflective teaching, it is essential that the reflective practitioner also look at how the students themselves had perceived what they had learnt. This also aligns with Ellis’ (1994) definition of uptake, where the students are able to describe to the teacher what they had learnt, or what they perceived to have learnt. The following paragraphs describe what the learning through the eyes of the students themselves.

Combination of drama and ESOL

One of the main objectives that we had set for the study was for students to be able to learn language in applied drama lessons. The Lead and I also wanted the students to be able to connect what they were doing in the drama lessons to their own ESOL classes, in order for them to be able to understand and appreciate the work that they were doing with us. In the final focus group interview, one of the responses that was obtained from the students is as follows:

We learn words here, and we learn how to write sentences in our normal [ESOL] class. So half and half (Interview 7.7.11 – Jung Su)

This statement gave credence to the work that this study had initiated, that the students had in fact felt that they had learnt language, in this case vocabulary, in the applied drama lessons. What was even more interesting was that it showed an active awareness that learning was happening in both the drama and normal ESOL sessions, where this particular student had felt that he had learnt an equal amount of language through both classes, using what was presumed to be ‘normal’ ESOL pedagogy, and drama pedagogies. This acknowledgement gave rise to some very interesting premises, that learning through drama pedagogies should be used hand-in-hand with some ‘normal’ ESOL/ESL/EFL/EAL pedagogy. This particular combination led to the formulation of a more structured teaching methodology that combined I call staging the textbook which will be described in more detail in the subsequent chapters. However, the depth of this statement should not be analysed at face value, taking for granted that the 50/50 split between the two methods of teaching is totally black and white, between normal and drama

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classes. Being able to understand the class in its entirety, understanding the content that is taught as well as how it is taught, is also of the utmost importance to the students.

Normal class is hard. I don’t really understand normal class. Here is good, I understand more. (Interview 7.7.11 – Min Yong)

When probed further, another student responded that the major problem for her, and agreed upon by the others in the group interview, was that a lot of it was due to the teachers themselves.

Normal class is boring because teacher just bla bla bla. I don’t get it. (Interview 7.7.11 – Hyo Jin)

Many of the students reported that the teachers were not sensitive to how much the students were able to understand. This reflection led me to appreciate that it is important to incorporate a feedback mechanism that is able to assist the teacher in gauging whether or not the students have understood what is being said or taught. Specifically to this context, the students identified not being able to understand the teacher’s oral communication, whether it was the actual speech or the content that was delivered through the speech, as being a major hurdle to understanding their normal classes. Goh (1999) mentions five factors that students believed impacted on their ability to understand spoken text, and they are: i) vocabulary used by the spoken text; ii) prior knowledge about the topic or theme of the spoken text; iii) speech rate the spoken text is delivered in; iv) type of input that is given in delivering the spoken text; and v) the accent that the speaker delivers the spoken text in. Scaffolding each factor would give the ESL student a greater chance of understanding their teacher, which should by default, increase their rate of interest and ultimately, their language acquisition.

Further, Goh (2002) goes on to describe the cognitive strategies that students used for listening drawn from literature (O’Malley et al., 1989; Oxford, 1990 Young, 1997; Ross, 1997, and DeFillippis, 1980 as cited in Goh, 2002), which are inferencing, elaboration, prediction, contextualisation, translation, fixation, visualisation, and reconstruction. One of the assumptions that can be made of the students’ ability to understand more in our drama in ESL classes is that, other than the talking styles of both the Lead and myself which we felt were very accommodating to second language learners, there were also the relevant value added bonuses that could be gleaned from using drama pedagogies. We did not just rely on the spoken and written texts for the students to make meaning, but we also relied very heavily on visualisation, physicalisation, as well as contextualisation of the learning material. For example, Goh (2002) elaborates on inferencing as filling in missing information and guessing the meaning of the words, by using contextual clues, using familiar content words, drawing on one’s knowledge of the world, applying one’s knowledge about the target language, and using visual clues. All of these criteria were applied in our drama classes, and according to the students, paving the way for better understanding of English as a second language.

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With respect to acquiring vocabulary, the students noted that they had indeed learnt the intended vocabulary, and that the learnt words were helpful to their normal English classes.

For vocabulary, I can use the other classes your vocabulary, so I can talk more about, like, grammar. (Interview 7.7.11– Min Yong)

I learned, I learned about the right speech, because, because the first time I came here I was not very good, because I was too shy, but now with a play and join with a study, I could do it. I’m good enough to speech and vocabulary and spelling test. (Interview 7.7.11– Elizabeth)

Although the rudimentary language errors were an indication of the students’ language abilities, the statements served as confirmation that they felt that they had indeed gained from their time in the applied drama classes. Further in the interview, Elizabeth indicates how she had felt shy in her normal classes, even those outside of ESOL, before she started attending the applied drama classes. If scrutinised carefully, there are several aspects that she mentions in her statement. First, she talks about how she felt that she did not have very good speech, which could have been attributed to low vocabulary that inhibited the content of what she wanted to say, general low proficiency which had to do with a combination of grammar and vocabulary, or it could have also been in part due to her lack of confidence, which she mentions as ‘shyness’ above. Next, she mentions how joining play and study had been the recipe for her perceived ability to overcome her obstacles to being able to communicate. In fact, this combination of play and study was a prevalent theme that was emphatically agreed upon by all the students during their interviews. Additionally, it has to be noted that the word ‘perceived’ is used when describing any form of improvement above, as it is seen from the viewpoint of the students, but has not undergone any rigorous testing to empirically validate the claims. However, where relevant, any form of observation or reflection that is thought to substantiate or refute any of the students’ claims has been added into the account of this Frame of investigation.

Building trust

In Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Friere, 1996), he suggests that teachers implement a horizontal relationship between themselves and their students for meaningful dialogue to take place. This stepping away from the top-down approach that takes place in drama is aimed to do exactly that through the development of mutual trust (Kao & O'Neill, 1998). Boal (1985, 1994) used building of trust through creating horizontal relationships for the participants of his Theatre of the Oppressed to enable them to realise their states of oppression, and to release them from their inhibitions to share their thoughts with the other participants. Similarly, building trust was one of the elements that the Lead and I tried to instil in our lessons. From the very first class until the very last class, even through the minor setback in teacher-student relationship that I had experienced in my first solo lesson, it could be observed that a progression in trust had occurred. The following extract from the focus group interview that was carried out after the final class shows this progression.

91 Elizabeth: Let’s play games. Before you go. Lead: What games would you like?

Elizabeth: The games from first class.

Lead: But we played them before. Why do you want to play them again. Elizabeth: Because now we trust you.

Min Yong: Yeah. Now we can enjoy playing. Elizabeth: And play properly.

(Interview 7.7.11)

It can be gleaned from the extract above that the students had reached a point where they were willing to try the activities that we wanted to do with them without resisting. It can also be surmised at this point that the students had reached the state ‘horizontality’ with us as the instructors (or least to the point where they were able to let their guard down with us), to enable them to ‘enjoy playing’, and to ‘play properly’, which suggests that this state of trust would have been a great booster for teaching and learning should we have decided to continue the lessons in another teaching block.

How had we achieved this level of trust? Was it merely a natural progression of the teacher and student relationship? If not, how would a teacher using drama to teach ESL replicate a similar result when teaching another group of students? The last question was one that was of particular interest to me as I aimed to do so with the groups in the research contexts in the ensuing Frames.

The feedback request

As with my own beliefs on error correction, the Lead also did not appear to believe that the students should be subjected to feedback on every single language error that they produced, as constant feedback on error had the ability to damage students’ confidence in learning (Chen & Chang, 2004; R. L. Oxford, 1992), and did not support a natural way of language learning, where the learner needs to be exposed to comprehensible input (Krashen, 1982, 1985, 2003) and go through a process of internalisation, and subsequently, acquisition. Krashen and Terrell (1983) state that communication should be the focus of instruction, and not form; and that error correction, drilling, and explicit learning of grammar plays has very little importance to focusing on understanding messages in the target language.

However, it is also acknowledged that language learners require corrective feedback in order to facilitate language uptake (Lyster, 2002; Lyster & Ranta, 1997), that they also learn through repetition and trial and error (Skinner, 1957)), and that learners may require negative evidence (i.e. information about errors in grammar) in the form of feedback (Panova & Lyster, 2002). Likewise, in the interview, the students shared that they had wanted us to carry out more of this corrective feedback in our sessions.

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Olivia: Maybe because we don’t have time. But we don’t, like, doing enough discussion. We just doing like when are OK and is it OK and we just pass it.

Me: So you want more discussion? [Agreement]

Olivia: We like to know if we say something correct. Like, if we say something wrong, we want to know.

(Interview 7.7.11)

Error correction had always been an aspect of my teaching that I had thought to be rather well implemented, at least in my own practice, and this approach seemed to be echoed in the Lead’s approach to error correction as well, which was that unless an error distorted the meaning of the message, it was not deemed to be strategically sound to be corrected within the tight time-frame that we had. Nevertheless, it has to be noted that we had indeed implemented corrective feedback, with the most common strategies being recasting (implicitly reformulating the students’ error), eliciting (obtaining correct form by asking questions), and repetition (repeating the error with a change in intonation to denote focus). I noted that at least one of the students was able to pick up on these cues, as it was observed that she silently repeated words of forms that had been corrected to herself to consolidate her own learning.

Elizabeth strikes me as being on top of the ball when it comes to noticing and repairing errors. I see her silently repeating the words or phrases that she or her friends get wrong after they are identified by the Lead. Also she would follow up with a question to consolidate what she has learnt, and in the question, she would use the exact word or phrase that she had identified as being wrong. I notice that she would speak, and pause just before uttering the target word/phrase, get a look of concentration on her face, and make the correct utterance. (Research journal 29.6.11)

However, this behaviour was not explicitly observed in most of the students in the group, which denoted a difference in their sensitivity to error correction. Panova and Lyster (2002) also talk about the difference in which learners took to corrective feedback by quoting Robert’s (1995, as cited in Panova & Lyster, 2002, p.576) report of his research on three adult learners of Japanese, where one learner was able to identify 46 percent of the corrective feedback moves that were carried out by the teacher, another identified 37 percent, and another only 24 percent. It can be assumed here that the students indicated a preference to include more explicit forms of correction (i.e. giving clear indication that the student had made an error in utterance or writing and providing them with the correct form), and more time allotted for active discussion of their errors. This echoed an earlier observation that I had made in the first lesson.

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It seems like the students are obsessed with ‘getting things right’. Even after they were told that they were not going to be tested on what they learnt here with us, they are constantly looking to us, as if to ask us to validate their utterances. (Research journal 12.4.11)

Initially, I had interpreted this behaviour as hesitance and being unsure of the answer. However, with the extract above, I now relabelled this behaviour as needing the necessary corrective feedback for uptake to occur.

Nevertheless, although it is acknowledged that there could have been more error correction that could have been implemented in the lessons had there been sufficient time, it is also importance to recognise the impracticality of providing such a detailed amount of error correction in a much larger class, say for example a Malaysian secondary school classroom, which would be the focus of the next research cycle. Leki (1991), though talking about corrective feedback in writing, suggests that the expectations of expected learning and focus on error correction be discussed for students to benefit from the feedback.