What strategies can I implement to foster my 9th grade students' oral production during english class?
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(2) 2 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. INDEX Abstract________________________________________________________3 Introduction_____________________________________________________4 Context ________________________________________________________6 Research Question______________________________________________10 Rationale _____________________________________________________12 Literature Review_______________________________________________14 Methodology __________________________________________________19 Procedures____________________________________________________21 Interventions___________________________________________________23 Data Analysis__________________________________________________28 Reflection on Data Analysis_______________________________________36 Conclusions___________________________________________________39 References____________________________________________________41.
(3) 3 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Abstract The following investigation has as an objective to look for the most suitable learning strategy in order to foster oral participation in an eighth grade class during classwork time, creating like this a proper learning scenario where students feel safe to participate, and building at the same time a learning community inside the classroom. Firstly, I will look for the right learning strategy to promote my students’ oral participation in class. And, secondly, I will implement these strategies during my English lesson to see how students interact as a whole through team and cooperation. Keywords: Learning Strategies, Cooperative Learning, Oral participation, Classwork..
(4) 4 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. INTRODUCTION. When we think about language we shall think on communication as a human systemic method, either written or spoken. Moreover, according to the online Cambridge Dictionary, language is a system of communication consisting of sounds, words and grammar, that is to say, a system to express feelings, opinions , etc ,either verbally, written or any manner that you choose to do it. Hence, we need to understand the importance of language as a tool of communication, especially, when teaching and learning a second language, which in this case is English. As teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), we need to ensure that all the abilities that concern language, that is to say the four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing, are correctly achieved in order to have a prosperous communicative relationship in the classroom. Therefore, I have realized that speaking performance is one of the weakest of the four skills in the class I will analyse throughout this research, and it needs to be ensure carefully and dynamically taught in order to keep our students interested and challenged. We as EFL teachers know the burdens when getting our students to produce and achieve a suitable level of proficiency when they have to express themselves orally or answer inside the classroom in a language that is not familiar for them. Frustration, boredom and lack of motivation are some of the difficulties that we as EFL teachers cope with this situation inside the classrooms, in contexts where for several reasons students do not manage the necessary level of English for developing tasks and express themselves orally fearless and.
(5) 5 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. confident. That is why the aim of this Action Research is to implement dynamic and useful strategies and methodologies to get my 10 th grade students interested and motivated to use the second language while communicating in oral activities which requires their participation during classwork.
(6) 6 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. CONTEXT This pedagogical study, focused on the improvement of speaking production, will take place in the 9th grade H at Liceo A – 20 Eliodoro García Zegers, which is a mixed and public industrial school, specialized in telecommunications, electricity, electronics and industrial mechanics, so the main goal of the school is to instruct students with an occupation and with future projection to obtain a college degree. This school is located in the historical center of the capital city, Santiago, Chile. Students come from different places of Santiago and some of them are foreigners, mostly Peruvians, Haitians and Colombians. The school community is composed by 26 teachers, including the principal, inspectors, coordinators and the educational psychology team. There is a universe of 896 students, with an average of 28 students per class, with 8 classes per level, which goes from 9 th to 12th grade, in a two full-time schedules starting at 7.45 AM to 13.45 PM then the next slot from 14.00 PM to 20.00 PM in order to have the necessary space to shelter the whole students universe. Liceo A-20 Eliodoro García Zegers since this year addresses a new program, which is still being developed and it is related to English as a tool for main/general concepts and specific knowledge on. the school technical. specialties (as before mentioned, electricity, telecommunications, electronics and industrial mechanics), in an English elective class, which I am participating to develop this Action Research. Only half or less of each course group choose to take the elective English class, otherwise, the other half of the course takes.
(7) 7 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Religion course. Basically, students prefer to take religion because according to the students “I only listen I do not have to work in this class” or, “English is difficult to me so I prefer religion”. The elective classes are only once a week, with an average of 80 minutes length. The course that will be participating in this Action Research is a 9th grade. This is a very particular class due to the fact there are only 6 boys; at first they were 10, then 8 and finally. only 6 took part in the interventions. because 9 of the students who belonged to this elective class, always 6 (sometimes less than 6) assisted to class constantly. The class is 80 minutes length and only on Fridays from 12.25 to 13.45. This annual program has 6 modules, each one with an assigned topic regarding the specialties: Electronics, Electricity, Telecommunication, and specific grammatical content. Furthermore, the program contains the objectives concerning the four skills: Reading, writing, listening and speaking, which is taught parallel with the common English class with a cumulative grade by the end of the year. About the class and my students in terms of level of English, it is low. They are constantly translating every single word they hear or read into Spanish, which turns difficult to them to carry on the whole class in the target language. In general, students are very participative and talkative; they like to be asked about what they are seeing in class by answering in Spanish. They sit close to each other but they keep an individualistic attitude, and they like to ask and to be asked and answer energetically or listen to the answers and give their own opinions, but always in Spanish and individually. I always have to tell them that they have to raise their hand in order to speak and I give the word in turn,.
(8) 8 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. otherwise everybody talks at the same time . As it was previously stated, they read and comprehend by constantly translating English into Spanish and they are insecure of speaking the target language, even when this group of students is very cooperative and close among each other. Why? As my host teacher is a new teacher in the school and (he began this year in May) he is going ahead with the responsibility of this new unfinished program addressed by the school, we realized, as another factor, that the poor achievement of the students is because these lessons are only once in a week and the continuity of the learning process is affected due to the fact that there is no enough time in it. Besides, students are not used to the target language even in their common English class nor they are used to do tasks where they are required to perform the target language.. They have shown insecurity towards English utterance. since they are only exposed by readings and writing activities. Sometimes, at the beginning of this final practicum, my host teacher showed them videos which accomplished one of the four skills required: listening, but they had to read first the subtitles and of course they translated to Spanish and make questions in Spanish about some technical words they did not know. On the other hand, the religion’s teacher (the other elective class) continually has missed or sent disruptive students of her class to my host teacher to keep them in the English elective class instead, therefore, the class is interrupted and students lose the focus of the lesson. Sometimes when the religion’s teacher does not attend school, we have been with the whole group class and it is always a chaos because they do not work on the extra school material (mostly worksheet) that my host teacher has in these special cases, and mainly my students, are even more insecure about speaking activities because the other.
(9) 9 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. group, the religion group class, begin typically to annoy them. Finally, another issue found in my final practicum is the lack of lessons when the school has other random activities prepared for Friday, for example, school anniversary, student’s day, teacher’s day, move one hour forward in order to leave earlier in municipal elections’ day etc, which makes me miss some of my lessons prepared. Finally, regarding to my personal context, I arrived at Liceo A-20 in the first week of September of the present year, having three weeks of observation before I started to teach..
(10) 10 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. RESEARCH QUESTION My students at Liceo A-20 who are part of this Action Research are participative but individualistic; they like to give their opinions but in Spanish and they are enthusiastic about it. Through all this time in the practicum has been hard yet impossible to make them respond in the target language, because they prefer to win the turn to speak and have the total control at the moment of speaking instead of producing speaking abilities in English, as if all the time they were in a debate. For this reason, I thought that students need a new way of working and feeling part of a community, being cooperative among each other and focus on speaking skills since they are very talkative students.. According to Tsou (2005) studies in language learning have addressed the requirement of classroom interaction or students’ oral participation in the classroom. However, getting students to respond in a certain foreign language inside the classroom is a problem that most English teachers face. The relevance of developing speaking skills belongs to the idea of language as a tool for communication. We communicate our opinions and ideas to others and vice versa, and a significant part of communication takes place when there is through oral interaction or speech. Without these concepts previously stated, communication is reduced only to written form of language or mere script. Thus, the importance of developing speaking skills is huge for the learners of a foreign language..
(11) 11 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. For all these reasons mentioned above, I decided to come up with the following question:. WHAT STRATEGIES CAN I IMPLEMENT TO FOSTER MY 9th. GRADE STUDENTS’ ORAL PRODUCTION DURING ENGLISH CLASS?.
(12) 12 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. RATIONALE The purpose of this Action Research is to improve my own teaching practice based on experiences on learning strategies that will help me to improve my students’ speaking production during classwork. On the other hand, to help me improve participation among each other concerning my students’ needs towards the acquisition of the target language by means of cooperative learning. I noticed that my students can do the activities with no problem if they translate all the time and I have had to adapt myself to this since most of them come from schools in which English has been taught from 5th grade only, so I give them the chance to translate when its necessary, for example , manuals about electronic devices, but, by the end they have to relate specific vocabulary and discuss about topics regarding to their graduate profile on electronics , electricity or a different subject they will come in 11th grade. Being realistic about learning outcomes, I know that due to the lack of the time of this short Action Research my students will not develop productive skills in an expert level. In fact, what I really expect from this Action Research is that students improve their confidence towards this language at the moment of oral production, which is the first step to make progress firmly.. My assumption is. that will help my students to learn not only academically but also to like school and the English class, feel more accepted and supported by their peers, which is important to the whole school community. Lastly ,. acquiring essential. employability skills for fuller participation in the 21st century work world, and be.
(13) 13 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. prepared to live more fulfilling lives, since the school mission hopes to provide a real vision of the academic and future work prospects..
(14) 14 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. LITERARY REVIEW To begin with, it is necessary to give a detailed explanation of the concepts included in my investigation to support my future interventions. Keywords will be described in the following lines. Learning Strategies Learning is the activity of acquiring knowledge through experiences. According to the definition by Jeff T. Cobb (2015) learning is the lifelong process of transforming information and experience into knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes. For the purpose of this research, we will take into consideration the meaning beyond Learning, and take it to a deeper understanding as it is with Learning Strategies, which is crucial to comprehend this investigation. According to the definition provided by Weinstein et al. (1986), learning strategies are sets of actions that the learner engages with learning process. Among these strategies, there is one that seems to be a matching possibility to solve my problem about oral production, which is Cooperative Learning. Cooperative learning Cooperative Learning is was an innovative teaching strategy that goes back 30 years ago created by Dr. Spencer Kagan, an important psychologist in education, who encourages students to work together in small groups to achieve a common goal. It also enhances affect and equity in order to create a learning community inside the classroom. As defined by Johnson et al. (1999),.
(15) 15 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together in teams to maximize their own and each other's learning. Spencer Kagan (1994), says we may face four basic principles that shape teams into a cooperative learning class structure in which I based my interventions these are: Positive interdependence. This occurs in cooperative learning when the objectives of the learning activity have to be meaningful for everyone in the team, so that they all have a positive interdependence helping each other on their projects, homework or activities. Individual accountability. This is given when all members of the team have a responsibility and have to contribute within the team itself, so that they can succeed as a whole requiring the effort of each one of them. Equal participation. It occurs when participation of the team is alike, letting everyone in the group participate and contribute. This is usually given with distribution of tasks. Simultaneous interaction. This type of interaction encourages students’ language production; each team member has the opportunity to speak. Cooperative learning strategies As defined previously, learning strategies are sets of actions that a learner engages during learning (Weinstein et al., 1986), while cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups (teams) so that students work together to engage their own and each other's learning. (Johnson et al, 1999). Therefore the use Cooperative Learning Strategies as stated by Slavin (1991), results in.
(16) 16 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. improvements both in the achievement of students and in the quality of their interpersonal relationship, being the most suitable option to apply it within my class, improve my teaching practice, and to solve the problem of the participation using oral English.. Spencer Kagan (1994), says we may face four basic principles that shape teams into a cooperative learning class structure in which I based to create my teams, these are:. Think-Pair-Share (Lyfam, 1981). Where students work in pairs, each team member has to think individually on a topic or task, and then they share their ideas and opinions while partner listens. Projects (Johnson et al., 2006). Through this strategy, students will face Positive Interdependence. Students in groups will be assigned a topic or task that cannot be made individually, needing necessarily a partner in order to accomplish their task. Another crucial element of this research is to enhance oral participation in the target language, thus for the purpose of this Action Research it is necessary to give a brief explanation of what Speaking Participation means..
(17) 17 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Speaking According to Chaney (1998) Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. In this sense, speaking becomes crucial when teaching or learning a foreign language. On the other hand, according to Kayi (2006) despite its importance through the years, teaching speaking has been underrated and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues. Therefore, it is of real importance to take into account that speaking is much more than merely reproduction of language, but it is related to the construction of language and meaning as well. That is to say, to get your students to go further and do something new.. Speaking strategies In order to get my students use English in speaking activities it is crucial to find strategies to help them improve their speaking skills. Learning strategies according to O’Malley and Chamot (1990) are special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn or retain new information. Therefore, when we mention strategies to learn speaking we’re referring to all the thoughts and behaviors we can teach or convey to our students for them to learn to speak in the target language. According to Ardekani et al (2011) the most common speaking strategies used by EFL learners can be categorized into two main groups: on-line and off-line strategies. By on-line strategies it is meant those strategies that are used at the.
(18) 18 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. time of speaking, such as: interference of mother tongue, error correction, importance of correcting mistakes, body language and substitution. On the other hand, by offline the researchers intend to show strategies used to develop learners' speaking ability not necessarily at the time of speaking, such as: include educational-aid methods and instruments, memorization and summary. Use of English (L2) v/s Use of Mother tongue (L1) As mentioned before, it is important to make emphasis on students’ performance on second language acquisition since their lack of confidence and they are constantly afraid of making mistakes, therefore they use Spanish . According to Cook (2001) students should reduce their use of the L1 in order to fully acquire the L2. Also, students need as much exposure as possible to the second or target language in order to acquire it. That requires them to use the L2 as much as possible. Furthermore, it is reasonable to say that in order to get students actually use English, it is crucial to have teachers exposed to the target language by speaking the second language in the first place..
(19) 19 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. METHODOLOGY. Instruments According to Cambridge (2008) an instrument is a way of approaching or causing something. In this Action research project, the achievement is to get my small group of students closer to the target language instead of using Spanish in speaking activities. For this purpose, the instruments to be used are the following: Surveys, journals, photographs ,interviews and participation records.. Survey- before interventions:. The first purpose of this intervention is to. collect information about how the 9 th grade students feel about using the target language. Second, give them the opportunity to choose among 8 speaking activities only 3 they would like to perform during the process. Therefore, we can say that this survey is qualitative evidence since, it measures number of students choosing activities and also feeling or appreciations among the use of the target language (L2).. Survey- after the interventions: The purpose of this survey, is to have a clear picture on how students faced the interventions. Therefore, the survey will be only considering questions about how the 9 th grade students felt with the lesson. So, this evidence will count as qualitative data..
(20) 20 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Photographs: These are visual evidence in a research. During the weeks of intervention and research, I will take several photographs of my 9 th grade students in different moments of the English lessons, but particularly when they were developing the speaking activities. The objective of the photographs is to keep a visual register of my students’ work. Journals: I will be using written observations from September the 30th to November 18th. These journals will be my own qualitative evidence of the Action Research project process. The journal entries’ to be used will be the ones which follows the intervention. So, the entries ought to be written immediately after the lesson has finished. Host teacher interview after interventions: the purpose of this interview is to get to know if the perception of the teacher in relation to the 9 th grade students speaking skills has changed after my interventions. (3 of each) So, this evidence will count as qualitative data..
(21) 21 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. PROCEDURES First of all, it is important to mention again that the question for this Action Research comes from an issue I could identify along the 2 nd month have been in Liceo Industrial A-20 Eliodoro García Zegers and the 9th grade. After some small changes in the structure and vocabulary I came up with the following research question: WHAT STRATEGIES CAN I IMPLEMENT TO FOSTER MY 9th GRADE STUDENTS’ ORAL PRODUCTION DURING ENGLISH CLASS? Afterwards finding the right question to help improving my teaching practice, I started looking for my hypothesis and finally got that my students’ oral participation will improve once they have acquiring the sense of cooperative learning skills by I, as a teacher, implementing it during classwork, in order to also create a proper learning scenery inside this. After revising literature , I started looking for dynamics that helped me foster my students’ teamwork skills, for example, new activities according to their interests, and as working together is an essential requirement for them to improve their oral participation. Consequently, I had the possibility to carry out this Action Research in three lessons. The first intervention took place on November 18th and it was a worksheet that promoted students pair-work. The second one on November 25th were students worked in poster creation about safety and preventable work incidents, also pair -work. And, the last intervention was held on December 2nd , where students participated in an oral presentation about their posters..
(22) 22 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. After the first intervention, students had to fill a survey that helped me to know if I was doing my lessons according to their needs and interests. A second survey was done after the third and last intervention .Doing those surveys about my interventions was important to me as it helped me to see students’ perceptions on cooperative learning strategies used in class and how they felt about them. A complement of the surveys was the Participation Record where I wrote groups names on the board according to their oral participation in class. It is important to mention that every intervention the activity was changing, but it was always promoting students’ groupwork and oral participation, so that like this I could see what were the most beneficial activities to achieve the purpose of my research. After analyzing students’ answers on the checklist and comparing it to the participation record I kept, I discovered that every intervention, students’ were progressing on cooperative skills and were also participating more in English during class when it came to oral activities..
(23) 23 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. INTERVENTIONS. The interventions done during my investigation were the following:. Lesson 1 Graduate Profile Worksheet The activities in this class were thought to be done in pairs, following the think-pair-share model, so that pairs can think and share their ideas about their future abilities on learning main/general concepts about electronics (current unit) and what they will be able in the future if they chose this specialty in 11 th grade. In this task students were gathered in pairs. First, discuss their ideas in pairs interacting in small group (the whole class of 6 students) and then shared their thoughts and ideas to the other members about their interests or if they preferred another specialty..
(24) 24 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Figure 1. Students working on their graduate profile worksheet. Within the following lines I will describe the activities done by students during this intervention. 1.Recall vocabulary previous lesson: As students were just a few (only 8) I made them to sit in a semi-circle instead of rows from now. Students remember the correct names of parts of an electric circuit (previous lesson). If they knew the correct name, they passed to the front and wrote the correct name on the.
(25) 25 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. board and also uttering correctly after me. Also, the rest of the students repeat after the correct pronunciation .. 2. Prediction activity: In this activity the class was arranged to work in pairs, so that students would discuss the meaning of a word or what a picture means with his partner. Students had 5 minutes to discuss about pictures shown or new vocabulary, then I asked every pair about it asking what does it mean…? Or “what does this picture describe” and they answer me with their ideas while writing them on the board. Finally I cleared their doubts along with the ppt presentation that I had prepared for each lesson.. 3.Pair Discussion: This task was the core of the group dynamic, here students had to discuss about the question provided, in order to make predictions about the coming listening activity. In this part of the class, students would brainstorm their ideas on their notebooks, to finally share them to the whole group class.. Lesson 2 Poster Creation on safety at work As the name of the unit was “safety at work”. In pairs, students had to design a poster to present to the class about safety. After they have finished their poster, students will have to present it, leaving one representative of the team and then swapping, so that both people on the group could speak..
(26) 26 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Figure 2. Poster creation. Examples on the board by the students. Lesson 3 Video Describing In order to get my students attention on listening activities, I decided to show them a video with English subtitles about safety, but I stopped the video every time a keyword about previous lesson appeared. I ask them as a whole group about what is going to happen next or what word did they hear etc, and they raised their hands to answer. This time, besides to give them extra points on participation, I gave them candies for their correct answers..
(27) 27 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Figure 3 .Video Describing on safety at work..
(28) 28 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Data Analysis I arranged my interventions focused on my action research question, which is linked to looking for a strategy to foster my students’ oral participation in class. Taking this into account I chose three different dynamics to get my class working on cooperative learning activities, which is the strategy that fitted to support my students to speak English in class. The strategies used were: The group worksheet, poster creation, and video description. For the purpose of understanding the analysis process, I will categorize the participants’ description, sampling , and its related data . Participants The participants are from 9th grade students. This is a group of 8 students, all boys. They have two pedagogical hours of English per week: On Fridays from 12.25 to 13.45. Another important participant in my action research was my host teacher Claudio Gatica who always was concerned about the process and making me suggestions to improve in every lesson. Also sending me material by mail, that might be usual for every lesson in the future. Regarding to the school community, the whole community was very important for doing this action research because they were very inclusive along the few months I stayed at the school..
(29) 29 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Sampling In the samples used in this Action Research, 6 students participated, as these were the ones that remained equal since I started my interventions. The instruments to gather the samplings were Surveys filled by students after every intervention, so that I could keep track of students’ interests and needs while doing cooperative activities, the Participation Record that complement pictures taken to the students who took part of the data collection.. Data Analysis Within the following pages I will show the results gathered by means of the instruments used during the process of investigation and their corresponding analysis. It includes the corresponding analysis for each instrument in order to revise if the results evidenced or not the achievement of this process: oral production during classwork. Survey- before interventions: This survey was taken on November the 18th before starting my interventions. All the students were present, 6 in total, so there might not be any bias present. As it was previously stated it was related, first, to how the students face and feel with the speaking activities and second to choosing activities for the upcoming lessons. In the first part of the survey the results showed that more than half of the class does not feel comfortable when speaking in English, but more than the half of the class also thinks that they can actually use English in speaking activities. Furthermore, the last question was really important to me because it.
(30) 30 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. was directly linked to my first hypothesis in relation to the use of proper activities to encourage the use of target language in speaking activities. The results showed that 3 students out of 6 think that the activities I proposed are good enough, that means that half of the class thinks that I need to change the speaking activities.. 1. From 1 to 10, ¿Do you feel comfortable when you speak in English in the class? 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. 1. 2. 1. 9. 10. 2. ¿Do yo think you are able to use English in speaking activities? Sí. No. Más o menos. 4. 1. 1. 3. ¿Do you think the speaking activities proposed by the teacher are good enough? Sí. No. A veces. 3. 0. 3. On the other hand, what I considered the most to prepare my interventions were their preferences in relation to the activities. Therefore, after reading students’ answers the results showed that the most favorite activities were: storytelling, story completion, reporting and picture describing..
(31) 31 Fostering Oral Production in English Class Power Points. 4. Video describing. 6. Worksheet. 0. Complete activities on the board. 0. Oral presentations. 2. Picture describing. 1. Picture narrating. 2. Work in pairs. 3. Roleplays. 1. As we can see in the table above, there are 18 answers, but only 6 students answered the survey. This is because the students needed to express interest in 3 activities from the list. After collecting this data, my analysis of it was related to find the tools to implement these activities in my lessons in order to provide a communicative environment which would encourage the use of the target language while speaking.. Survey after the interventions: This survey was taken on November the 18 th at the end of the intervention process. Regarding their feelings towards.
(32) 32 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. speaking in English during the class there is a small progress concerning comfort at the moment of speaking. Furthermore, regarding he activities proposed by me, most of the students agreed they were good enough. But, it is important to remember that I only proposed some activities and the 9th grade students chose the ones they were going to perform during the interventions. 6. Students' survey. Number of students. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 0. Difficulties in reading Difficulties in listening. Difficulties in writing Difficulties in speaking. Vocabulary. 4. 6. 1. 2. Grammar. 2. 0. 3. 2. Topics. 0. 0. 2. 1. None of them. 0. 0. 0. 0. Figure 4. Statistics about students’ difficulties in the four skills. The graph shows two axis, the vertical axis represent the numbers of students. In this case the survey was filled out by the 6 students that compound the 9th grade. The horizontal axis illustrates the four questions and their four corresponding alternatives At first sight, it is clear that most students have a difficulty in terms of vocabulary when they have to face any kind of task. Regarding writing, grammar is the principal issue according to students because they do not know.
(33) 33 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. how to create sentences. But, this aspect also affects them at the moment of speaking. Photographs:. The. photographs. were. taken. during. the. moment. of. implementing the speaking activities and while the students were developing them. This is visual evidence used to show how the students fulfill the activities and as a complement to all other evidences that will show if the students succeed in the activities or not. We could say that photographs are preliminary evidence that show that the activities were actually carried out. Journals: The personal journal entries reveal a progress in terms of what has been under research and what has been implemented in the classroom. This qualitative data due to its subjective origin might show some bias. The journal entries used in this research are from September the 7th to December the 2nd . The first part of the journal reveals the process concerning this action research: Use of English in speaking activities. The journal entries also are revealing my own annotations of the interventions and the preliminary perceptions of the results. Therefore, after every lesson, I wrote my personal impressions. Subsequently, the written results showed that there was a small progress regarding the use of English immediately after the first intervention in which students started to actually use the target language to comply with the activities. Host teacher interview after interventions:. My mentor teacher, Claudio. Gatica, was the main witness during this process. Therefore, I considered necessary to make a new interview which might reveal his perception on any progress the students might have had concerning the use of English in.
(34) 34 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. speaking activities. The interview was carried out on December the 2 nd after finishing the interventions.. Interview to host teacher: before interventions 1. Do you think the interventions were useful? 2. Did you notice any progress in students using English in speaking activities 3. From 1 to 10. How much progress did you notice? Why?. Interview to host teacher: before interventions 1. Do you think the interventions were useful? Why? “Yes, I think the interventions were very useful because students were really motivated to participate and that helped them to feel encourage enough to use more English.” 2. Did you notice any progress in students using English in speaking activities? “Yes, there has been a slight progress in the use of English in speaking activities and in the classroom in general. I think that has to do with the students getting used to listen to each other to speak in English and also how the teacher encouraged them to do so.” 3. From 1 to 10. How much progress did you notice? Why? “I would say that when the students started with the new activities proposal it was a 4, but now that I have seen some changes I would say a 7.”.
(35) 35 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Claudio’s answers showed that he truly believes that the interventions carried out during the semester were useful for getting the students use English in speaking activities. Furthermore, he mentions that he has seen progress in the students using English, but he did not consider that the students actually needed time to prepare their speeches in order to actually utter something using the target language..
(36) 36 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Reflection and Analysis of Intervention After all these years as a student-teacher, I have faced many important situations regarding my practicum at schools, being this Action Research project a challenging opportunity to face one of them. In the following pages I will analyze and reflect about my interventions. Lesson 1 The first intervention was sort of messy since students were really distracted with their cellphones and finishing tasks from other subjects as usual. After spending some minutes explaining the whole class the purpose of the activity, that I was doing a research, and how that would benefit us, I could finally maintain the class in order. Regarding recalling vocabulary of the previous lesson activity, students liked the idea of predicting the activity individually, but were not motivated of speaking in English or write on the board keywords if they were selected to do it. So, I had to give some students two chances, if someone did not wanted to participate in the class, students could choose someone else. If the second person did not want to participate either, the whole group did not have the extra point. Eventually, students started participating as they learnt that if they failed, they could prejudice the whole group on getting that extra point. On the other hand, in Pair discussion activity was a difficult task to manage at the beginning (they lost the focus very easy by their cellphones or whatever), but after setting the rules (same assessment extra points and keep.
(37) 37 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. their cellphones off) students started working progressively to create a respectful scenario for the whole group.. Lesson 2 During this intervention, and after one week of working with cooperative learning strategies, students liked the idea of working together in a common project that was developed during class time, as they felt more confident being supported by a classmate when it came to speaking in front of their peers. By this time, most of the students were already fond of the cooperative learning structure and new dynamic of the class, so most of them did a good job encouraging each other in order to finish their posters, being respectful to each other, and getting confident in terms of group cohesion. During the assessment of this project, students had to speak about their poster and what did they want to prevent at workplace or at school, and it worked as expected. None of them complained about having to share their work to their classmates, being respectful when listening to other classmates. Moreover, comparing the results of this intervention with Lesson 1, students are being aware that they need to cooperate and collaborate not only with their pairs, but also with his classmates. I could realize about this through the students’ positive attitude on class. Thus, being like this a positive outcome regarding the building of a proper learning environment to help foster my students’ oral participation in class..
(38) 38 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Lesson 3 In this intervention, I decided to give candies for every correct answer given. Students did a good job in terms of maintaining focused on the activity, also, they forgot to play with their cellphones as when I met them, participating orally during class work, using the target language in a respectful scenario. When I stopped the video for the video describing activity in the important parts, they were very motivated and answered my questions by raising their hands and thinking before speak. I thought that students would focus only to get candies (competition) rather than helping each other and learning together. But, they were encouraging each other and giving candies if they have more than one to their partners. For instance, games and projects were the instances where students work together communicating with each other, encouraging the four basic principles that shape teams into a cooperative learning class structured, which are: positive interdependence, individual accountability, equal participation, and simultaneous interaction..
(39) 39 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. Conclusions As a conclusion, I can say that cooperative learning strategies are really useful for fostering my students’ oral participation. In only three interventions, I was able to accomplish something that during my stay at school I was not able to achieve with my students. Cooperative Learning strategies, not only helped me to foster my students’ oral participation during classwork worked properly, but also to manage my students’ behavior towards building an appropriate learning environment for them, where they can speak to each other in a foreign language, leaving aside the fear of speaking in English and being teased by their classmates. As the research has shown, I can say that at the end of the interventions, students felt that the classroom environment was a safe place to orally participate in without negative repercussions. Although, on one hand, it was a difficult task to get students to know and familiarize with cooperative learning and being accountable for their own learning process and their classmates’, oral participation was becoming an easier chore as students were getting to know more of each other. Throughout the research process, students gradually started to feel part of the class community, more confident while participating in the activities, as well as safe, and supported by their mates. Student-Talking-Time, also.
(40) 40 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. increased during cooperative activities, interacting with each other giving and receiving answers from one each other. On the other hand, the class arrangement at the beginning promoted students’ individual work, not letting them interact and to know each other, normally was creating a violent learning atmosphere, where students were afraid to speak or to participate orally during classwork. For instance, while working with their peers, students felt more confident and activities worked as expected. From the Action Research process experience, I can say that the tools I used benefited my teaching practice, as I could also keep track of my students’ performance as they were on task during classwork time..
(41) 41 Fostering Oral Production in English Class. REFERENCES. Weinstein, C.E. and Mayer, R.E. (1986). The teaching of learning strategies. In M.C- Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching, Third Edition. New York: Macmillan. Cook, V. (2001). Using the first language in the classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 57, 402–423. Kagan, S. Interviews Jeff Cobb (2015). Lifelong learning expert on Vimeo. (n.d.). Retrieved on November, 4th of 2015 from https://vimeo.com/138932485 Liceo A-20 Eliodoro García Zegers , From http://a20.k12.cl/ Cambridge (2008). Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Third Edition. Cambridge University Press. Wenli Tsou. (2005). Improving Speaking Skills through Instructions in Oral Classroom Participation. In Foreign Language Annals. Volume 38, N° 1 (46). Alexandria, VA: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Kagan,S. (2009) Kagan Cooperative Learning , Kagan Publishing..
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