Strategies to teach speaking to young learners

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(1)Running head: STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 1. School of Education English Pedagogy Program. Strategies to teach speaking to young learners Valentina M. Gálvez Soto. Seminario de Grado Seminar / Tutor teacher: Carlos Verdugo / Lusvic Torrellas Santiago, Chile 2016.

(2) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 2. Abstract This action research analyze the consequence of a set of teaching strategies applied to develop speaking skills in a 3rd grade. This investigation was carried out on a public school located in Santiago Centro. The interventions designed for this consist of a set of activities and games which were based on theoretical framework of this project is related to. The data was gathered through observations and test applied before and after the interventions. The results of this investigation demonstrate an improvement in students’ performance when they had to speak English in the class. Key words: Young learners, teaching speaking skills, teaching strategies, students’ performance.. Resumen. Esta investigación de acción analiza las consecuencias de un conjunto de estrategias de enseñanza aplicadas para desarrollar habilidades de habla en estudiante de 3er año básico. Esta investigación se llevó a cabo en una escuela pública ubicada en el centro de Santiago. Las intervenciones diseñadas para ello consisten en un conjunto de actividades y juegos que se basaron en el marco teórico de este proyecto. Los datos fueron recogidos a través de observaciones y pruebas aplicadas antes y después de las intervenciones. Los resultados de esta investigación demuestran una mejora en el rendimiento de los estudiantes cuando tuvieron que hablar inglés en la clase..

(3) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 3. Acknowledgements. Firstly, I would like to thank to María Teresa, Valentín, Fernanda and Cota for their unconditional love and patience during these years. Also, I would like to thank to Mariano, Emilia and Romina for their concern in this process. Thanks to Pía, Yerko, Francisca and Javiera for their friendship and company.. Thanks to the teachers that I had during these five years: for their patience, wisdom and for their solidarity to share their knowledge with me. Above all, I would like to thank to Jose for believing in me more than I believed in myself.. Finally, infinite thanks to Pablo for helping me, teaching me, cheering me, loving me and believing in me. Now, the impossible is possible..

(4) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 4. Index 1.. Introduction. 05. 2.. Context. 06. 2.1 School Context. 06. 2.2 Classroom Context. 07. 2.3 The problem. 08. 3.. Research Question. 09. 4.. Rationale. 10. 5.. Literature Review. 12. 5.1 Young Learners. 12. 5.2 How young learners learn. 13. 5.3 Teaching Speaking. 14. 5.4 Teaching Speaking to young learners. 15. 6. Research Methodology. 18. 6.1 Data Collection Instruments. 18. 6.2 Procedures for collecting data. 20. 6.3 Description of participants. 20. 6.4 Description of interventions. 21. 6.5 Action Plan timeline. 24. 7. Data Analysis. 25. 8. Reflection and analysis of interventions. 34. 9. Conclusion and Implications. 38. 10. References. 42. 11. Appendix. 43.

(5) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 5. 1. Introduction Nowadays, teaching English in Chile has been a controversial issue in terms of Education at schools, mainly because of the bad results in standardized National tests. For this reason, the Ministry of Education has been working on a National Curriculum for English as a subject since 2012, which is not official from 1st to 4th grade. Even so, this National Curriculum is used to teach English in public schools since they do not have their own program contrary to what happens in some subsidized and private schools. Taking the experience that I am having with young learners at Escuela Cadete Arturo Prat Chacon, this research will be carried out on 3rd grade B. Thus, this investigation will be based on teaching young learners. As we are talking about a public school, that is totally based on the national curriculum. Also, the contents and objectives proposed by this curriculum must be associated with the “Proyecto Educativo Institutional” that this school has. This research encourages me to investigate how to improve the speaking skill in students who are recently learning to read in their mother tongue. As a result, it becomes a huge challenge for my personal process as a teacher trainee. However, this investigation takes place in a public school without additional materials and resources excepting those given by the Ministry of Education.

(6) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 6. 2. Context. 2.1 School context. Escuela Cadete Arturo Prat Chacon is a primary, public and secular school located in Santiago Centro. The number of students is approximately seven hundred and two students from kindergarten until eighth grade. Besides, the average of students per classroom is thirty-five, in which thirty percent of the students is composed by foreign pupils from Peru, Colombia and Dominican Republic among others. The socioeconomic status of the students attending this school is diverse. The greatest number of students belongs to middle class, although there is a large percentage of children considered as vulnerable. Regarding the mission of the school, this is an inclusive school. Consequently, Escuela Cadete Arturo Prat Chacón has a ‘Proyecto de integración escolar’ (PIE) which is composed of a team of specialists from different areas including psycho pedagogical teachers and psychologists. Additionally, according to ‘PIE’ this school must enroll all students. Because of this, there are many students arriving to this school each month, and most of them are foreign students. According to the Curricula (2012), this school does not have ‘Jornada escolar completa’ (JEC), as a consequence of this, students just have the minimum hours per week in each subject. Considering this, students from 1st grade until 4th grade have two hours of English lessons per week, and students from 5th grade and 8th grade have three hours per week..

(7) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 7. In terms of English lessons, the school does not have an English department since it just has one English teacher who plans the lessons according to what has been proposed by the Ministry of Education. Furthermore, students work with the book provided by the Ministry of Education that, according to the curricula, it is not fully updated. This means that what is proposed by the National curricula is not coherent with the contents of the book. Additionally, the school does not have an English laboratory or any other extra equipment for this subject.. 2.2 Classroom Context As I mentioned before, students from 1st grade until 4th grade have two hours of English lessons per week. Consequently, I only deliver my lessons at those classes once a week, but it is enough time to observe and realize how interesting the class is. This investigation will be held in 3rd grade B which is composed of 41 students; fourteen girls and twenty-seven boys who are eight or nine years-old. Inside this class, there is one boy diagnosed as autistic who does not participate in the English class. Students from 3rd grade B are extraordinarily participative; they are always prepared to learn something new and to do new activities. Nonetheless, the students from this class are extremely noisy. This means that students can work on the given activity, but they are speaking among themselves all the time. Most of the students of this class behave like any kid of this age; that is to say that they are greatly active (physically) and creative. Nevertheless, the students do not usually work in groups inside the classroom. Every activity they develop is an individual one. Their sitting arrangement corresponds to the.

(8) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 8. classic order in most classrooms: students sit in pairs distributed in four rows. Everyone looking towards the board (see appendix). In terms of English, students from this class can understand instructions and songs easily. At the same time, they manage the vocabulary expected for this level. They can name things they already know, for instance: ‘pencil’, ‘dog’, ‘blue’. However, in terms of speaking skills, they are not able to make short sentences using the words they know, for example: ‘The pencil is blue’. Hence, I can say that students from this grade are able to recognize vocabulary, but they are not capable of putting their vocabulary in practice.. 2.3 The problem As time passed, some problems inside the classroom showed up. As it was mentioned before, my students used to manage a lot of vocabulary. However, they were only able to name things. Due to this situation, I discovered that my lessons were only based on teaching vocabulary. To be more precise, my students have a lot of abilities for learning new words, and I have a lot of abilities for teaching vocabulary too. Consequently, this situation made me feel comfortable, and I did not dare to move forward. During the reflexion that I made about my teaching practice, I realized that I needed to teach them to apply the words they knew, but I did not know how to achieve it. I strongly believed my students could develop their speaking skills using the vocabulary they already knew. Nevertheless, I did not know how to do it and how to teach them. Therefore, that need became a problem, and the problem became a question..

(9) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 9. 3.. Research Question. During my lessons at school, I discovered that teaching vocabulary was uncomplicated for me. Consequently, my lessons became quite routine and I did not dare to make a change. After that, I realized that I did not manage the strategies for teaching speaking in order to make my students perform their vocabulary. I used to believe that if my students learned new words easily, they would learn to talk in that way. As you may think, I was wrong. I realized that I did not dominate the proper strategies for teaching them to speaking in English. Consequently, the research question is:. What strategies can I use to develop speaking skills in my 3rd grade B at Escuela Básica Cadete Arturo Prat Chacón?.

(10) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 10. 4. Rationale This research may benefit three different groups: first, my students in 3rd grade B and students from other classes. Second, this may benefit my personal trainee process. And finally, it may benefit those teachers who are in the same situation. Regarding what is proposed by the National Curricula, this research may contribute to improve 3rd grade B students’ speaking performance, since this is one of the expected objectives at this level. After this research, I expect that my students will be able to express themselves in English using short sentences. This is one of the main objectives proposed and it is possible to visualize it in the quote below. “(Los estudiantes) podrán intervenir en diálogos en parejas o interactuar con el docente, en grupos o con el curso, desde decir unas pocas palabras o expresiones aprendidas, hasta expresar ideas simples o hacer preguntas relacionadas con algún tema conocido, usando oraciones simples. Su pronunciación estará marcada por la pronunciación de la lengua materna, aunque comenzarán a identificar –y a veces a usar– una pronunciación más parecida al inglés en algunas palabras”. (Ministerio de Educación. 2012 p. 22) Moreover, I expect my students will learn to work in groups to improve their communicative skills. It is important to foster communication within the classroom since it gives them the possibility to develop their speaking skill better. As a matter of fact, one of the benefits of this research for my teaching practice has to do with these challenges: first, to teach young learners, and second, to teach in a diverse.

(11) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 11. environment. Even though having students with special needs within the classroom has not been a difficulty, it is necessary to have special considerations for those cases since it could help me to improve my teaching performance, and to create an inclusive classroom for all my students, and the students that I will have in the future. Finally, this research will be relevant for those teachers who are in the same situation. In fact, this research will provide tools for teachers who work with young learners and want to improve the strategies they use in the classroom..

(12) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 12. 5. Literature Review Directly related to the research question, the concepts that I am going to use to guide, define and support my research process are: young learners, how young learners learn, teaching speaking and teaching speaking to young learners. 5.1 Young Learners According to Harmer (1998), we understand young learners as students between 5 to 9 years of age. In the same way, Shin & Crandall (2013) state that the young learners are characterized as: energetic and physically active since children can connect the oral utterance with the movement and they can follow the commands through repetition (p. 26). Also, they state children are spontaneous and not afraid to speak, because “they are good imitators of language” (p. 27). At the same time, children are curious by nature, “the world is a new place for them, and they want to know more about it” (p. 27). Moreover, children are imaginative because they enjoy activities in which they can pretend they are something or someone else. The authors expose children are easily distracted since they have short attention spans. They are egocentric because ‘they have difficulty perceiving things from another person’s perspective’ (p. 31). Finally, they expose that children are social, because they are living their socialization process (p. 31). However, Scott & Ytreberg (1990) state that young learners enjoy working alone but in company with others. “It is often said that children are very self-centered up to the age of six or seven, and they cannot see things from someone else’s point of view. Sometimes pupils do not want to work together because they do not see the point” (p. 3). Similarly,.

(13) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 13. Scott and Ytreberg (1990) state that young learners can understand situations faster than they understand the language used since between the ages of 5 to 9 they are still living the first language acquisition process. 5.2 How young learners learn Shin & Crandall (2013) support that children learn by doing and interacting with their environment. According to Piaget (1970) young learners are very active at learning and thinking because they are very imaginative. Young learners at 5-7 are starting to distinguish between fantasy and reality. This is because they are starting to develop their logical thinking. “Creating opportunities for children to learn by doing and to learn by interacting with their environment is extremely important in the young learner classroom” (Shin & Crandall, p. 23). Moreover, Scott and Ytreberg (1990) state that children need to follow routines since it is important for them being familiar with the class. In other words, Shin & Crandall (2013) say that children need support and scaffolding by the teacher (p. 34). According to Vygotsky (1962) children learn by interacting with others. This means that children and adults work together in the Zone of Proximal Development, “which is the difference between the child’s capacity to solve problems on her\his own and her\his capacity to solve them with assistance or ‘scaffolding’” (Shin & Crandall, 2013, p. 24.). Therefore, as Vygotsky (1962) states, the role of the adult is as important as the learner’s role. At the same time, Scott and Ytreberg (1990) expose that children need variety in the classroom due to their attention span being short and limited to five or ten minutes. It.

(14) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 14. means, as young learners are always full of enthusiasm and energy, they need activities which include movements and involve the senses because it will always help them to learn. In terms of language learning, Shin & Crandall (2013) state that young learners need a learning environment similar to the first language acquisition atmosphere. For that reason, the authors expose that children do not learn language through explicit grammar (p. 41) since learning the second language is a process that learners live as natural as the first language acquisition. As Cameron (2003) taken from Shin & Crandall (2013) wrote, “children see the foreign language ‘from the inside’ and try to find meaning in how the language is used in action, in interaction and with intention, rather than ‘from the outside’ as a system and form” (p. 107). 5.3 Teaching Speaking Harmer (1998) states that there are three reasons for teaching speaking which are: ● To provide rehearsal opportunities, it means, giving students “chances to practice real-life speaking in the safety of the classroom” (p. 123). ● To provide feedback for both teacher and students because “both can see how successful they are and what problems they are experiencing” (p. 123). ● To activate various elements of language to help students to become autonomous language users. “This means that they will be able to use words and phrases fluently without very much conscious thought” (p. 123)..

(15) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 15. On the other hand, Brown (2007) states that the interaction within the classroom is crucial when teaching speaking skills. Consequently, the author also highlights that to develop speaking skills, it is important to develop listening skills too, since “[...] to learn to listen is also to learn to respond and to continue a chain of listening and responding. [...] Students need to understand that good listeners (in conversation) are good responders” (p. 254). In that sense, Brown (2007) exposes that redundancy is a factor that could help the listeners to develop their speaking skills since the information listened can be rephrased, repeated and used to elaborate new dialogues. “Redundancy helps the hearer to process meaning by offering more time and extra information” (p. 252). When Brown (2007) notes about interaction effect, he focuses on the “learner’s performance, which is is always colored by that of the person (interlocutor) he or she is talking with” (p. 269). It is possible to say that interaction is key for teaching speaking successfully. 5.4 Teaching speaking to young learners: strategies. In agreement with Shin & Crandall (2013), they express there are seven principles for teaching speaking to young learners to create a comfortable and nurturing environment for students to feel motivated to participate. Among those principles are: 1. To build classroom routines in English to ensure students use the language communicatively. “YLs will remember these routines in English better than some course content because of all the repetition in a meaningful context” (p. 125). The routine could be related with greeting each other, saying the date, sharing what they did yesterday, and so on..

(16) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 16. 2. To use speaking activities that are developmentally appropriate to motivate students intrinsically. These activities should consider the age of the students, their interests and their background knowledge. As Cameron (2001) exposes in Shin & Crandall (2013) “Discourse in a young learner classroom should follow patterns children find familiar, from their home and family, or from their school experience, and should not demand more of children than they can do, in terms of imagining someone else’s state of mind or expressing causes and beliefs” (p. 53). Consequently, there are activities like songs, chants, retelling stories and plays that young learners like because they give them the possibility to practice the language based on a clear model. 3. To build classroom interaction by giving students plenty of opportunities to participate because the classroom could be the only place where they practice English. “Teachers should have as a goal that every student has the chance to speak out and practice during every class” (p. 128). 4. To keep the speaking environment active -to not correct errors explicitly because: first, making corrections can interrupt the flow of the class. Also, children have “fragile egos” and they can get shy if they feel embarrassed in front of their peers. Therefore, it is important for teachers to promote a “classroom atmosphere that makes students comfortable speaking out and working with the language” (p. 130)..

(17) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 17. Likewise, Scott, W and Ytreberg, L. (1990) establish some strategies to consider during speaking activities. Some of those strategies are: first, using a mascot to present the language and give them an example of what they are expected to do. Second, using drawings to introduce new words and model their activities. Also, they suggest to use silhouettes and puppets to make the activities meaningful and to have a variety of activities (p. 36). Regarding to Scott, W and Ytreberg, L. (1990), they mention that it is important to highlight that teachers have a relevant role during speaking activities since they are in charge to model the students and make them feel familiar with the activity..

(18) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 18. 6. Research Methodology Collecting information regarding the events that happen within a classroom requires instruments that help the teacher to register every factor that may influence the process. As this research is about young learners and the development of speaking skills, it has been difficult to design instruments to evidence the problem and validate the research question since young learners are spontaneous and unpredictable. However, I have found the appropriate instruments to gather information and to engage students during the procedures. 6.1 Data collection instruments In order to collect evidence of the whole process, I will use three instruments which are: a diagnostic test, a journal and a post-test. ● Diagnostic test: the objective of this instrument is to validate the problem, the research question and to establish the starting points for future interventions. It consists of an oral assessment based on spoken vocabulary studied in the previous lessons. During the assessment, students will name what appears in a flashcard showed by the teacher. For example, the teacher shows a picture of an apple and the student answers out loud the name: ‘apple’. This diagnostic test will be applied by the researcher teacher to twenty students from 3rd grade B in English lessons. As the sample of students represents fifty percent of the population in the classroom, the assessed students will be chosen randomly..

(19) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 19. For this instrument to be reliable, the gathered information will be registered in a checklist rubric (see appendix B1). ● Journal: the objective of this instrument is to register my personal process as a teacher. Consequently, I am going to write what catches my attention during the lessons, and how I feel in this process to reflect about the delivered interventions. Also, it may help me to improve the interventions so as to accomplish what I expect. As Burns (2010) exposes these are going to be “notes written about the classroom events with the researcher’s comments placed next to them” (p.68). For this journal to be reliable, I created a sample sheet to fill in, which is divided in two parts. On the right side, I will describe the situations that catch my attention. On the left side, I will register the feelings and thoughts that the events make me live (see appendix B2). ● Post intervention test: the goal of this instrument is to gather information about how successful the interventions were. Like the diagnostic test, it consists of an oral assessment based on vocabulary. During the assessment, the student will name what appears in a flashcard showed by the teacher and give information about it using the preposition of place. For instance: the teacher shows a picture of an apple on the table and the expected student’ answer is ‘The apple is on the table’. This post test will be applied by the researcher teacher to twenty students of 3rd grade B in the English lesson. As the sample of students represents the fifty percent of the population in the classroom, the assessed students will be chosen randomly. Thus,.

(20) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 20. the assessed students may not be the same students assessed during the diagnostic test. For this instrument to be reliable, the gathered information will be registered in a checklist rubric (see appendix B3). 6.2 Procedures for collecting data Regarding the procedures to gather the necessary data, the diagnostic test is going to be the first instrument to be applied. As the name explains, the objective of this tool is to demonstrate that the problem has no relation with students’ vocabulary, but with students’ speaking skills. For that reason, this diagnostic test is going to be applied during the second week of October. During my interventions in the classroom, I will register the observations on my personal journal. This journal will be written after each class during the third week of October and first week of November. At the end of this process, the post intervention test is going to be the final instrument to be applied, since it will help me to visualize the changes after my intervention. Consequently, this tool will be applied during the second week of November at the end of the lesson. 6.3 Description of participants During the data collection process, there will be two participants: the students and I, the English teacher..

(21) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 21. The main participants of this research are the students. As I mentioned before, the diagnostic and the post intervention test are going to be applied to twenty students from 3rd grade B, since they represent fifty percent of the classroom population. Before I develop these tests, my host teacher and I decided to make this diagnostic test as an activity of the class. For that reason, all the students were informed about this during the previous week. Regarding the post intervention test, it also will be applied to twenty students. However, some of them may not be the same students chosen during the diagnostic test, because this is a process that I will develop with the whole group of students. Consequently, if the interventions achieve their objectives all the students will improve their speaking skills. The second participant of this research is me, as the English teacher. Because one of the main purposes of this research is to help me to improve my teaching performance, I will write a journal after each lesson. Therefore, this journal will be written since the second week of August until the second week of November. 6.4 Description of intervention The intervention that will be delivered consists of different strategies to develop 3rd grade students’ speaking skills. Consequently, the strategies that are going to be included in my lessons are: Songs: These are going to be used to reinforce the routines of the class. Shin & Crandall (2013) expose that young learners need routines in the classroom. They need to know what is coming next in order to feel comfortable with the environment. Therefore, I chose a song for the pre-stage of the class and a song to say goodbye. Also, I realized that.

(22) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 22. singing and repeating songs is a very useful tool to teach grammar. For instance, I will teach them songs related to the contents we are studying. Games: In the same way, Bruner (1983) stated that it is important for children to play, since it gives them the opportunity to discover the world and learn about it. Therefore, I determined to teach them through games. For instance, I decided to choose one student each class to demand in the ‘Simon says’ game to make them speak a little bit more and to help them to familiarize with the language. Seating arrangement: In order to develop students’ group work, they are not going to sit next to their pair. They will be seated face to face to foster the communication and participation within the classroom.. 6.4.1 Intervention N°I The first intervention was performed during the morning of October 20th, as an activity of the English lesson. In this opportunity, the intervention consisted on a dialogue created by the teacher. The dialogue is based on the unit ‘I eat’ (see appendix B4). Description of the activity: the teacher plays a dialogue using puppet to make students understand the dialogue. After the role play finishes, teacher read the dialogue line per line and students are asked to repeat. Then, students practice the dialogue in pairs and present in front of the class..

(23) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 23. 6.4.2 Intervention N°II and N°III These consist on a set of game that students must deliver in groups about the studied unit called ‘I live in a house’. Description of the activity: in the first game, students will be asked to mime some actions previously studied during the lessons. The objective of this is to refresh the vocabulary practiced in class. The teacher will ask to one student to mime the actions, such as ‘sleep, eat, relax, cook and wash’. The rest of the students must guess the name of the action. In the second game, students will watch a set of picture about cats in different places and they must answer the question ‘where is the cat?’ Students have to choose one of the three options: ‘in - on - under’. However, the answer is only considered correct if they answer using present simple tense. For example: ‘the cat is on the table’. Due to the difficulty of the game, students will work in groups. In the third game, the teacher will choose one students to draw on the whiteboard a place of a house. For instance, the bedroom, the bathroom, etc. Then, the rest of the students must guess where their classmate is. The answer is only considered correct if they answer using present simple tense. For example: ‘he is in the kitchen’. Due to the difficulty of the game, students will work in groups..

(24) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 24. 6.5 Action plan timeline. Activities. August. September. Week. 3. 1. Observation (problem) Teaching (intervention) Data Collection Data Analysis Conclusions *School strike. 4. 2. 3. 4. October 1. 2. 3. 4. November. December. 1. 1. 2. 3. 4. 2. 3.

(25) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 25. 7. Data analysis Regarding the diagnostic test applied to twenty students from 3rd grade B, the results are: Figure 1: Diagnostic test: How many words do you recognize?. As it is observed in figure n.1, regarding to the diagnostic test. It is possible to visualize that the predominant group is [10 - 8], it means most of the assessed students were able to recognize at least eight words. Also, there are four students who can identify at least five words and one student who is able to distinguish at least two words. In this diagnostic test, all the assessed students could recognize at least two words. Therefore, most of the students know and remember the vocabulary taught during the lessons and they can identify objects and their names..

(26) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 26. Regarding the intervention n° I and the observations registered in my personal journal, students were able to understand the activity proposed by me. According to my notes, “during the activity, students demonstrate they are interested in the activity since they participate actively. They ask questions about the pronunciation and meaning of certain words. They practice their dialogue”. At the same time, students used to connect the activity with their personal life, it is possible to visualize in my notes: “Students read the dialogue and talk about it. The characters of this dialogue are talking about the food they like and dislike. After they practice this, they share the same information with the classmates”. However, during intervention N° I, group work was a difficult issue for some of them. I stated two situations on my personal journal that caught my attention: “Not all of them are working in groups. There are some students that are constantly playing among them. When I ask them why are they behaving like this, one of them asks me back ‘¿y por qué tenemos que trabajar en grupo?’ Then, I answer: ‘Lo que sucede, es que ésta actividad es para que podamos aprender a hablar en inglés, ¿podríamos aprender a hablar sin hablar con otros?’. And he answers: ‘es que nosotros no trabajamos en grupo, Miss’. On the other side, there was one girl working alone. I asked her why she was not working with others and she replied: ‘es que nadie quiere trabajar conmigo porque me molestan’”. After this activity, students were supposed to present their dialogue in front of the class. Just the half part of the class did the presentation. The other part of the class explained they.

(27) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 27. did not feel prepared to do that: “Some of the students refuse to present the dialogue. Most of them say that they do not know the language. As a consequence, they can not speak. ‘pero Miss Valentina, yo no sé inglés entonces no puedo hablar’. ‘Miss, yo no sé inglés’.” Regarding the intervention N°II and the observations registered in my personal journal, students were capable to develop the activity as it was expected. In this time, students participated actively during the whole class, as I wrote in my personal journal “students seem interested on the activity. They participated and shared their opinion with their classmates”. On the contrary with intervention n° I, at this time the whole class work in their groups. As I exposed in my personal journal, they share their points of view and they also help each other to find the right answer for the activity. However, when I ask for a volunteer to present in front of the class, a huge disorder is produced since all students want to participate: “Most of the students want to participate. It is possible to see when I ask for a volunteer to come to the whiteboard. They all stand up for me to choose. I feel very nervous because I always try to explain that they do not need to behave in that way, but they do it anyway. I try to model their reaction during the whole class but this sometimes works and sometimes not”. According to the activities that I delivered in this intervention, it was easy for them to understand the instructions given by me. As I wrote in my personal journal: “I explain the instructions. They understood the given instructions. Also, students start developing the activity as I expected”..

(28) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 28. As the first activity was called “Mime the action”, students showed very energetic when I asked them to mime in front of their classmates. The rest of the students were able to recognize and name each action. It is possible to visualize in the next fragment of my personal journal: “At the very beginning, the first student to mime the action shows ashamed. He performs the action and his classmates answer correctly. The other four students to perform the action seem very energetic. My students answer all the exercises correctly”. During activity two and three students have to answer the questions using present simple tense. For that reason, these activities are more difficult than the first one. However, students develop these activities as I expected. They were able to answer each question. Actually, most of them were able to speak in front of their classmates using short sentences created by themselves. It surprised me because I did not expect it to happen so soon. As I wrote in my personal journal, most of them were able to develop the activity. Also, they help each other to answer the questions correctly: “Most of the students answer each question using present simple and the vocabulary they already know. If they have a doubt regarding to this, they ask among them or they ask me. The answers given by the students are correct most of the time. There are few mistakes that I correct individually. It means, not in front of the whole class”. Also, during these activities students seem more interested in the lesson and they comment they like the activity”..

(29) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 29. “While we are working on the activity called “Where is the cat”, students look interested on what we are doing. As I am showing some pictures about cats, they laugh when the next picture appears. “Miss, a mí me gustan mucho los gatos”. “A mí me gusta que practiquemos inglés viendo fotos de gatos”. “Miss Valentina, me gusta adivinar donde está el gato porque puedo hablar en inglés”. This comment makes me feel comfortable in the class because I feel they are enjoying my lesson. Telling sentences is a fun activity for them because some of the say “Ahora puedo hablar inglés”, “Le voy a contar a mi mamá que puedo hablar en inglés”, “Hablemos inglés más seguido, Miss”. At the end of this intervention, most of the students are able to speak in English using short sentences. In my personal journal I wrote one situation that caught my attention: “Some of the students start creating sentences using their personal information such as “My pencil is on the table” and “My pencil is green”. Regarding the intervention N°III and the observations registered in my personal journal, the activities were not developed as I expected since just a few group of students remembered the vocabulary studied in the previous lessons. The first activity was about vocabulary. In this, students had to look at the pictures on the whiteboard and name it. Not all of them were able to answer. As I wrote in my personal journal: “I paste some pictures on the whiteboard for them to name. Just a group of students is able to develop this. The rest of students do not answer.”.

(30) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 30. The second activity was called “Mime the action”. It was not an unknown activity for my students because I have played it during intervention II. However, they showed not able to do the activity since no one wanted to perform in front of the class. Therefore, I change the activity. I asked them to name and explain each one of the actions that I had for the next activity. Some of the students answer correctly. The rest of them were in silence. I wrote this in my personal journal: “Just one group of students seems interested on the activity. Most of them are sitting in silence just observing what we are doing. The students that participate in the activity answer the questions correctly. This is the same group that developed the previous activity”. The situation was similar during the third activity, which was also an activity known by them. Some students (about ten) answer the questions made by me. The rest of the class was sitting in silence or playing with the person next to them. That caught my attention as I exposed in my journal: “The last activity did not work. Definitely, this activity was a mess. There were ten students participating in the activity, and the rest of them was in silence or playing among themselves”. During this intervention, the most difficult issue was the students’ behavior. At the beginning of the lesson they did not want to participate in the starting routine. Moreover, they were not totally engaged in the activities. It was the first time that this situation happened in this class. Nevertheless, in my personal journal I wrote about a striking situation related to this: “When I was finishing the last activity, one the boys said to me: “Miss, no queremos más clases, estamos cansados” I asked them why that student was.

(31) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 31. telling me that, and another girl explained “No queremos más clases, por eso nos portamos mal””. After the second and the third interventions, I applied the post intervention test which was similar to the diagnostic test. It is possible to observe the results in the figure below.. Figure 2: Post intervention II test. No correct answers. Four correct answers. Two correct answers. One correct answer. Three correct answers. Regarding to the intervention N°II, it is possible to visualize that of a sample of twenty students, all of them were able to answer at least one question correctly. Also, we can appreciate that eleven students were able to answer the four questions correctly. It means, eleven students were capable to answer the four questions using present simple tense properly. In the second column, we can observe that six students answered three questions.

(32) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 32. as it was expected. In the third column we can observe that two students answered just two questions, and in the fourth column just one student answered one question correctly.. Figure 3: Post intervention III test. No correct answers. Four correct answers. Two correct answers. One correct answers. Three correct answers. After intervention n° III, the results of the post intervention tests applied to twenty students are: six of the students were capable to answer the four questions accurately. Also, five students answered three questions properly, and other six answered just two questions correctly. In this case, I have two students who answered just one question properly and one student who did not answer any question or did not answer correctly..

(33) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 33. Figure 4: Results interventions II and III. If we compare the information gathered in the test applied after interventions N°II and N°III, it is possible to discover that after intervention N°II most students were able to answer the four questions correctly. Actually, the four correct answers represent the mode of this post intervention test. On the contrary, after intervention N°III just six students answered the four question properly. This number is almost the half part of the students that answered right in intervention N°II. The average of correct answers after intervention N°II was 3.35. In the assessment post intervention III, it is possible to appreciate it has two modes: four correct answers and two correct answers. In other words, the number of students who answer the four questions correctly is the same than the students that answered two questions properly. The average of correct answers after intervention N°III was 2.05..

(34) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 34. 8. Reflection and analysis of interventions In this section, I am going to analyze the interventions performed in my action research project. According to intervention N°I, it was delivered in the morning of October 20th during the English lesson. As I explained before, the activity consisted on a dialogue that students had to practice in pairs to expose in front of the class. This intervention was crucial for my action research project and for the following steps of this project since it gave me the opportunity to know my students and how they react in an activity that was totally different and unknown for them. One of the aspects modified during intervention N°I were the type of work that my students used to do. Kids from 3rd grade B used to work individually. However, in this intervention they experienced the pair work. It was a difficult issue for some students because not all of them have a good relationship. On the contrary, for other students it was a good time to share and learn English since they understood that communication with other is important when learning to speak in English. Another aspect that I modified during the intervention N°I was the topic of the activity. In order to make the activity more engaging, I prepared an activity about a universal topic, which was “Food”. That is to say that the topic of the class was known by all of them. Therefore, it gave them plenty opportunities to associate the topic with their personal experiences, and to participate in the class. As I stated in my personal notes at the beginning of the semester: “Students seem not interested on the class. They usually do.

(35) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 35. activities that are not related to this, such as playing cards, drawing and playing with their smartphones. Once, one of them asked me ‘por qué tengo que aprender inglés si no voy a viajar a Estados Unidos’”. Nonetheless, during intervention N°I they performed the activity. Also, they linked the activity with their personal lives sharing information about them. They used to write the contents on their copybooks and to recognize the vocabulary studied in the previous lessons. However, in this intervention most of them dared to speak in English. After this intervention I realized that I needed to improve the group work with some students. Also, I understood that I had to try new activities if I wanted to achieve the objective. Then, I started to work on intervention N°II and N°III. In the interventions N°II and N°III the activities were based on games about the unit we were studying. As is mentioned in section 6 “research methodology”, these games were: ‘Mime the action’, ‘Where is the cat?’ and ‘Where is your classmate?’ Due to the difficulty of the games, students had to work in groups as a competition. One important point of these interventions is that students learned grammar by playing; since along with the instructions of the game, the teacher gave to them an example of the expected response. Intervention N°II was carried out in the morning of October 27th during the English lesson. One of the aspects that I corrected during this intervention was the focus of the class. In the previous classes we used to have lessons about “theory” or just based on contents. Nevertheless, this whole lesson was based on practice speaking while playing. For that reason, students’ participation was remarkable. Indeed, it was the most important aspect of.

(36) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 36. this class. Students were very motivated and interested on this. It is possible to say that all of them spoke in English. They realized that learning by playing is possible, and I could noticed that by their comments at the end of the lesson. On the other hand, intervention N°III was performed in the morning of November 24th during the English lesson. As I said before, interventions N°II and N°III was based on the same activities but with different difficulties. The results of interventions N°III were totally different than the ones obtained in intervention N°II. Even if these interventions were similar the results was not the same. The most important aspect that I wanted to reinforce in this was the speaking skill. The goal of this intervention was to insert the students in a different stage and help them to turn into an “autonomous language users”. According to Harmer (1998), it is important to expose the student to different situation in order to activate the elements of the language. Thus, students are able to use words fluently without much conscious thought. As it was explained before, interventions N°II and N°III were based on the same type of activities but these had different results. The most important difference has to do with the time between both interventions. That is to say that intervention N°III was performed almost one month after intervention N°II without having English lessons in this period. During the first three weeks of November the school went on strike. As a consequence, my last two lessons at 3rd grade B were developed on October 27th and November 24th. This loss of classes affected the students’ performance in intervention N°III since they lost the practice we were developing during the previous lessons..

(37) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 37. Before my interventions, my students used to not be interested on the English lesson. Also, they used to manage a lot of vocabulary but they did not know how to express this in practice. However, after the interventions these issues changed. As I created interesting lessons for them, they dared to speak English in the class. They learned how to create simple sentences using the vocabulary they knew. Finally, they discovered that speaking English was not just about knowing the language, but about dare to speak the language by mixing everything previously learned..

(38) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 38. 9. Conclusions and implications This action research project was carried out to find strategies for teaching speaking to young learners in order to help them to perform their English vocabulary. Also, this action research was accomplished to acquire strategies to improve my teaching practice. In this section I am going to expose the conclusions, implications and limitations that this project has. Taking into account all the information gathered in this project, I can state that the strategies that I applied in my interventions helped to my students to develop their speaking skills. That is to say that after each intervention my students were able to speak English during classes using short and simple sentences. It is possible to visualize in intervention N°II and N°III, where my students had the opportunity to speak in class using the vocabulary they knew and playing different games. Moreover, after each intervention I tested them in order to collect quantitative information about this process, and these instruments revealed that at least the 80% of the tested students were able to speak in English using a short and simple sentence, what it expected at the level that the students are. Regarding the strategies that I used in my interventions, these were very beneficial to develop the speaking skills of my students, but there were also useful to engage students in the English lesson. As Harmer (1998) expressed, it is important to engage students in the classroom because it gives them opportunity to participate and practice the language in the.

(39) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 39. safety of the classroom. Therefore, these strategies game me the opportunity to create a proper environment for them to practice the language. According to my personal experience, this process helped me to discover another teaching methodology to teach young learners English, and to develop their speaking skills. Before this project, I did not manage the proper techniques for teaching speaking to young learners. However, it is possible to say that this action research project gave me the chance to learn and to prepare myself for the future teaching conflicts within the classroom. On the other hand, this research benefited me to find out my own teaching skills such as creating educational games for my students, interesting and didactic English lessons and, the most important aspect, it was advantageous to realize about my social skills in the classroom. In other words, this action research help me to empathize with my students in order to understand what they needed to feel comfortable to speak in English in my class. I can say this is one of the most important issues for me because it gave me the opportunity to build ‘rapport’ with my students based on trust and respect. Nevertheless, in this process I had two important limitations. The first has to do with planning of my lessons and interventions. Every activity that I promoted had to be based on the planning that my host teacher did at the beginning of the school year, or it should be based on the activities from the web class platform. Consequently, I did not had the opportunity to plan my interventions as I wanted to do. I just had the chance to readapt some activities that were not designed by me..

(40) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 40. The second limitation belongs to the strike that took place during the first three weeks of November. I did not perform lessons the time while the strike was going on. I lost three weeks and I did not have time to reclaim this. In the course of this period, my students did not practice the language at school neither in their homes. When we went back to classes I discover that some of them lost practice. Therefore, I did not have enough time to make a review to prepare them for the last intervention, which was not successful as I expected. In the future, I would like to investigate more about techniques for teaching speaking skills. Also, it would be interesting to explore the ‘young learners’ teaching world’ since to study little children is an attractive issue. We were kids, so why is so difficult to understand them? After this action research project, I realized how challenging it was to promote speaking in English in class. We as a teacher can dominate some strategies to motivate participation but we do not have the strategies to conduct other factors such as the context. As Vygotsky (1962) explained, the context that surrounds the learning environment has a great impact on the child’s learning and motivation but we do not have the proper techniques to manipulate this. Therefore, the following is a set of questions that came into my mind and that could be a future research question: -. How can keep students’ attention in a speaking activity?. -. What strategies can I use to teach grammar to young learners by playing speaking games?. -. How can I assess my young learners students by speaking in groups?. In conclusion, through this research I confirmed how important is to reflect on the teaching practice in order to improve this. Reflection upon our actions and decisions within the.

(41) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 41. classroom help as to develop more teaching skills. Moreover, reflection helps us to make the students’ learning process more meaningful and successful. After this investigation, I would like to imagine that this might be useful for all the English and Spanish teachers that are looking for new strategies to make their students to learn more..

(42) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 42. 10. References Brown, D. (2007). Teaching by Principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains: Longman. Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s talk: learning to use language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A guide for Practitioners. New York: ESL Professional series. Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harmer, J. (1998). How to teach English. Harlow: Stenton Associates. Ministerio de Educación. (2012). Propuesta curricular Idioma extranjero Inglés para tercer año básico. Santiago, Chile. Unidad de currículum y evaluación. Piaget, J. (1970). The science of education and the psychology of the child. New York: Oxford. Scott, W and Ytreberg, L. (1990). Teaching English to Children. Harlow: Longman Pub Group. Shin, J. & Crandall, J. (2013). Teaching young learners English. Boston: National Geographic Learning/Heinle. Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT press..

(43) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 43. 11. Appendix. Appendix A: Sitting arrangement.

(44) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 44. Appendix B: B1.. Pre test: rubric.. Time:. Student:. Date:. Vocabulary. Student answer correctly. Student answer wrong / No answer. 1. Apple. 2. Red. 3. Dress. 4. Sunny. 5. Green. 6. Crocodile. 7. Scarf. 8. Teddy Bear.

(45) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 45. B2.. Journal sheet.

(46) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 46. B3.. Time: Vocabulary:. Post intervention test: rubric.. Student:. Student fully describes where the Where is the____? In object is. - on - under. 2pts. 1.Apple 2. Elephant 3. Pencil 4. Teddy Bear. Date: Student just names what is in the picture.. Student answers wrong / No answer.. 1pts.. 0pts..

(47) STRATEGIES TO TEACH SPEAKING TO YOUNG LEARNERS. 47. B4: Dialogue.

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