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Contents

3. Where do I start ?

1. Prologue

2. Where am I ?

4. A Itinerary & Travel Pieces

5. Souvenirs

6. Epilogue

Two of the most important goals of elementary school English are having students

maintain their interest and have confidence learning English, however, in my class many

of the students seemed not only to be unhappy about taking English class but also

hesitant to participate in classroom activities. In addition, the class has a wide range of

English competence levels - ranging from false beginners to those who have a good

command of English. These issues have been a great challenge in my six years as an

English teacher. Another issue in my classroom was the lack of opportunities for the

students to try out their communicative skills. Therefore, I have been focusing on dealing

with these difficulties by changing classroom activities from teacher-centered to student-

centered.

I will provide different kinds of evidence showing how I was able to improve the

current situation by applying various techniques and by making connections with

practices and theories. Thus, this product portfolio focuses on the strengths and

weaknesses of my instructions as well as the improvement of my teaching practices that

have allowed me to move forward in my teaching profession. It has been a challenging,

but exciting journey. When I arrived at the conclusion of my journey, I learned a plethora

of useful information and would like to share it with my peer teachers in order to bring

small changes into our respective English classrooms.

An introductory statement

Resume

One of my best qualities as a language teacher is my ability to inspire confidence in my

students so that they feel comfortable expressing themselves regardless of their proficiency.

The personal trait is coming from my personal experiences as a language learner myself. I am

well aware how a learner’s intrinsic motivation and his/her confidence toward the target

language have powerful influence over learning the language. Therefore, I always try to act as

a motivator rather than as a disciplinarian in my classroom.

I believe language learning occurs where learners are willing to take risks. To provide a

supportive classroom environment where students are encouraged to try out their own ideas

in English, and actively participate in their learning processes, a teacher should lower the

language classroom anxiety by implementing strategies for dealing with students’ anxiety,

such as establishing good relationship between the teacher - the students, the students – the

students; accepting a variety of answers; providing balanced approaches for different types of

learners etc. I also want to create a classroom environment where no one was afraid of asking

for help.

Another belief on language learning is that it should be enjoyable. It is especially true for

young learners, since learning a language should be a life-long processes. Elementary school

English is the starting point of the public foreign language education. Therefore, students

have to maintain their interest and have confidence in language learning in their classroom so

that they are willing to keep learning English throughout their lives. One thing that I want to

highlight here on English learning is the students’ attitudes toward the proficient speakers.

English cannot be a measurement of intelligence, but a means to interact with others. I

witnessed so many people in Korea get overly daunted in front of the fluent English speaker

(either a native speaker or a non-native speaker), and can’t even open their mouth if they are

not sure. By having students have the proper view of what learning a language means in their

lives, students will be encouraged to try out their English with less fear of making mistakes. In

the long run, I want my students to love the learning process itself.

In terms of teaching methodologies, I was heavily influenced by my learning experience as

a language learner. I believe acquiring speaking and listening skills are the result of the

practice. I’ve partially agreed on audiolingualism specifically for the beginners, in which

speaking is taught by having students repeat sentence patterns and recite memorized key

expressions until they are produced automatically as learned chunks. Therefore, my lessons

for listening and speaking involve lots of repetition and drills followed sequence

of presentation-practice-production. The assumption underpinning the audiolingual method

A statement of teaching Philosophy

directly influences the way I do my lesson planning. However, I often witness that students

get easily bored of drilling and even worse, they are not able to use the learned sentence

patterns when they come to their real life situations. Even though they’ve got good grades in

writing quizzes on memorized sentences, it was not directly linked to their speaking skills.

What I’ve realized here is that it is important to provide students with the chances to move

from passive recipients to active creators of their knowledge by creating interactive learning

environments. To promote active participation, two main methodologies such as the Natural

Approach (NA) and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are usually implemented in my

classroom.

The Natural Approach is associated with the Input Hypothesis, and it emphasizes the

development of listening comprehension. NA classes allow students to respond in any way

that shows they understand. Just as in many natural conversations, a gesture or a simple

“yes” or “no” is seen as an adequate response.

NA is specifically appropriate for the students who are in beginning level and are easily get

intimidated by external factors. On the other hand, CLT encourages target language

response, and substantial use of negotiation of meaning is involved in pair- and group-work

in CLT. CLT teachers, thus do a lot of scaffolding. Once students get used to NA environment,

I move on to the CLT method for language teaching.

Since I have placed great value on being a professional wherever I work, I need to keep

trying to be a better teacher by focusing on these; first, I want to become open to new ideas

about language and language teaching. I hope to continue to learn more about language

teaching methodologies as well as to have new perspectives on everyday practice

throughout my career as a language teacher; second, I want to share my perspectives on

language learning and teaching with other teachers as well as assist less experienced

teachers in developing their expertise; lastly, I also hope to keep developing my second

language competence throughout my teaching career. It will benefit not only for myself, but

also for my students by having me as a positive role model.

A statement of teaching Philosophy

Certificate

The courses I’ve taken in MA TESOL

Discourse Analysis Creativity & Humanism

The course is designed to

provide students with a course in

the development

or enhancement of knowledge

related to the teaching of

speaking, by looking at speaking

from a discourse perspective.

Discourse analysis studies the

relationship between language

and the context in which

language is used.

This module studies useful

techniques and methods that

support young learners (12s and

under) to learn English as a foreign

language in a Korean setting. In

this module, early childhood

education theories and ESL/EFL

acquisition theories will be

reviewed as to understand the

rationales for using the activities

that have been widely applied in

young learners’ language lessons.

2012. Spring semester

Teaching Listening Teaching Reading

The course is designed to

provide students with a course in

the development

or enhancement of knowledge

related to the teaching of

speaking, by looking at speaking

from a discourse perspective.

Discourse analysis studies the

relationship between language

and the context in which

language is used.

This module studies useful

techniques and methods that

support young learners (12s and

under) to learn English as a foreign

language in a Korean setting. In

this module, early childhood

education theories and ESL/EFL

acquisition theories will be

reviewed as to understand the

rationales for using the activities

that have been widely applied in

young learners’ language lessons.

2011. Fall semester

The courses I’ve taken in MA TESOL

Special Needs in ELT classroom Internet-based Language Teaching

2013. Spring semester

Practicum 1 Practicum 2

The first of the Practicum is the

teaching component. Students

teach, under the guidance of a

TESOL MA faculty member. This course is seen as a real-

world review for the

comprehensive exams and a

practical application of all that

has been learned in the

entire TESOL MA program.

2012. Fall semester

Teachers working together with

learners of all ages in all

settings must serve students

who have

special educational needs.

The aim of this course is to

help teachers better

understand and serve learners

with special needs. Emphasis

will be placed on strategies that

they be used in the English

language teaching classroom.

This course provides a mixture

of computer assisted language

learning (CALL) practice and

theory.

While students in this class will

be exposed to and discuss

aspects of CALL theory,

opportunities will

be given to explore, critique, and

apply various Internet

technologies to practice.

This class revolves around the

design and creation of a teaching

portfolio. Here students will be

working individually to create a

portfolio which highlights their

skills and achievements as

teachers. An important part of this

portfolio which will link both

components of the course will be

an action research project which

the students will be doing

individually.

Students Needs Survey

★ Background information of the student

1. How long have you been studying English?

1) for three years (since grade 3) 2) for four years (since grade 2)

3) for five years (since grade 1) 4) more than six years (since kindergarten)

2. Have you lived in an English speaking country?

1) yes (country: _______year(s)) 2) no

3. I also learn English outside of the classroom. (if you answer ‘yes’, circle it)

1) no

2) yes (academy, private tutor(Korean), private tutor(native speaker), home-study

materials, parents, online learning)

4. I like English class in school.

1) strongly agree 2)agree 3)neutral 4)disagree 5)strongly disagree

5. I have my own cell phone.

1) yes 2) no

★ self-perceptions on English proficiency.

6. I am able to understand what the teacher says during English class.


7. I am able to understand the dialogues in the text book without the teacher’s help.


8. I want the Korean teacher to translate what the native teacher says into Korean.


9. I don’t (can’t) speak English well in front of the native speakers or native teachers

because of fear.


10. Choose the number which best describes your speaking skills.

1) I can speak English freely and express what I am thinking and feeling (without

hesitation).

2) I have no problem participating in speaking activities in class.

3) I can only speak the key expressions that I’ve learned in class.

4) I can only speak simple word-based utterances.

5) I seldom speak.

11. I have no fear of speaking English in front of the class.


Students Needs Survey

★ if you chose 4) or 5) above the statement, state the reason(s) why?

( )

12. Choose the number which best describes your reading skills.

1) I have no problems understanding the text in the textbook.

2) There are a few unknown words in the text, but I can usually guess them based on

context and past knowledge.

3) I have problems understanding the text because of lots of unknown words.

4) I only read easy and simple sentences. 5) I can’t read English text at all.

★The learning style

13. I can speak better when working in groups or in pairs.


14. I can learn best and effectively when

1) the teacher explains in detail to the whole class.

2) I work with group members.

3) I work with my partner.

4) I like to work alone.

15. Choose your favorite activity (activities) in English class.

1) Listen & Repeat (drill) 2) Songs and chants

3) Role-play 4) Games with PPT sildes

5) Games in groups or in pairs

6) Activities which I can move around the classroom

7) Using storybook

★ the preference on the specific language skills.

16. What is your favorite (most confident) language skill?

1) Listening 2) Speaking 3) Reading 4) Writing

17. What is your least favorite (most difficult) language skill?


18. What skill do you want to develop the most?


19. Fill in the rest part of the sentence.

For me, English class is ___________________________________________________.

I want to learn English because ___________________________________________ in

the future.

Report on Need Analysis

First of all, I was surprised by the result of the students’ needs analysis, which showed

quite different aspects to my observations and expectations. By conducting students’

needs survey, I had a chance to reflect on my teaching and perspectives on the current

students, which was critical for the future plans for the class. The collected information

will be usefully served as the basis for designing activities.

The subjects who took part in the survey are the 6th graders in public elementary school.

The class is composed of 13 boys and 10 girls. Overall, the class seemed to be lacking in

confidence, sometimes even unmotivated during the English class. Only a small number of

students volunteered to answer.

The questionnaire for the students’ needs analysis consisted of four parts.

The 1st part of the questionnaire was for collecting information on the learners.

29.2% of the students have been learning English more than six years. Only 26% of the

students have started learning English under the school curriculum, which means they’ve

learned since they were in the 3rd grade. Even though the students live in Kangnam area,

only one student has been in the Philippines for 1.8 years. 87.5% of the students are

learning English outside of the classroom. Mostly (67%), they’re taking English lessons in

private cram schools. No private tutoring with native speakers though. 56.5% of the

subjects responded positively about English class in school.

The 2nd part of the questionnaire shows the self-perceptions on their current English

proficiency.

43.5% of the respondents responded positively on understanding teachers’ speaking with

the help of gestures or body language. 65.2% of the students were positive on

understanding the dialogues in the text book. However, only 26% of the students didn’t

feel any needs for the Korean teacher’s help (translation or explanation). In terms of the

perceptions on their speaking abilities, 52.2% of the respondents stated that they only

speak the 2~3 key expressions that they’ve learned in class, still they were not confident

about communicative language use for the classroom activities. While 37.5% of the

subjects had confidence in text book- level readings (short dialogues/ 1~2 paragraph-long

story), 12.5% of the student answered they have difficulty in reading text (even words).

Meanwhile, 50% of the students responded they are able to read the text using

information from the context.

The 3rd part of the questionnaire was on the learning style.

69.6% of the students had more confidence in speaking when they work in groups or in

pairs than speaking in front of the class. On the other hand, students preferred the

teacher’s clear explanations on the language focus to learn from their peers. It showed

students’ lack in tolerance of ambiguity. 26% of the students prefer working alone. In

terms of activities, however, 34.7% of the students liked the games in groups or in pairs

and 83.3% of the class love the games using PPT slides. Even though the students have

had English class with native speaking English teacher, 52.2% of the students proved to be

still uncomfortable with speaking to people from foreign countries.

Last part of the questionnaire was on the preference on the specific language skills.

34.7% of the students were interested in speaking skills, and it was followed by

listening/reading (26% each) and writing (13%). Meanwhile, 52.2% of the respondents

considered writing skill as the least favorite (most difficult) skills among four language

skills. In addition, students wanted to develop speaking and grammar skills the most

(34.7% respectively). Surprisingly, grammar is not overtly covered in elementary English

curriculum, students were already aware of the importance of the grammar. It might be

due to second language culture in Korea; encouraging accuracy than fluency in English

test. At the end of the questionnaire, students were asked to complete the missing part

of the sentences, which were about; first, for me, English class is _________; second, I

want to learn English because _________ in the future. In the sentence completion test,

43.5% of the students answered in the affirmative, whereas 21.7 % of the students

responded negatively on English class. Among all, communicative purpose of language

learning ranked highest (39.1%). 17.4% of the students didn’t give any answers though.

Report on Need Analysis

Report on the students’ diagnostic assessment

The diagnostic assessment was conducted to get general information on students’

basic listening skills and speaking skills. The assessment task for the listening skill however,

was focused on understanding the classroom English such as directions for the activities

and the questions about the picture. It was implemented based on the result of the

students’ needs analysis and the class observation. Since the result of the observations as

well as the students’ self-perceptions of understanding the teachers’ direction during class

time seemed to be low, I needed to check out their actual level of understanding on the

directions for the successful class management and teaching.

The result shows 13 out of 23 (56.5%) students had fairly good command of

understanding directions and questions, which was quite different to the students’ self-

perception and my daily observations; they could follow the directions with no/ little

problems (11 out of 23); three of them could handle their lack in understanding with

simple scaffolding such as hand gestures. Meanwhile, nine out of 23 students understood

the direction and questions in short and simple forms when the teacher spoke slowly and

clearly with scaffolding. Most of this group of students had problems with wh-questions.

Only one student had a serious problem understanding the basic directions even when the

teacher spoke very slowly and articulated carefully. This student seemed to need L1 for

learning English.

The listening test for the directions and questions were followed by speaking

assessment. The actual speaking assessment carried out in two folds; first, students were

asked to answer the questions as they were taking listening assessment; next, students

were shown a series of pictures of an egg’s daily routines with 2 minutes for preparation

for their speaking. The preparation time was given to the students not only for minimizing

their test anxiety, but for organizing their thoughts before they started speaking. The

speaking assessment was analyzed by the rubrics which included six categories; amount

of information successfully conveyed, quality of language structure, flow, pronunciation,

word choice, and overall impressions.

According to European Language levels framework, the students were divided into 4

groups in their speaking proficiency level in general, which was equivalent to novice low

through intermediate low in ACTFL guidelines in my judgment. Six out of 23 students were

included in the highest level, B1, which could connect sentences in a simple way in order to

describe the series of the pictures; they were also able to narrate a story or relate the plot

Report on the students’ diagnostic assessment

of the pictures; their language flew smoothly and they were able to be easily understood

by the listener. Another six students fell into A2 group, which could use a series of phrases

and sentences to describe in simple terms; they expressed personal meaning by

combining and recombining what they know into short statements; their speech were

filled with frequent pauses. Next group of eight students belonged to A1 level, which

could use simple phrases and sentences to describe the pictures, however with frequent

inaccuracy in form; they were heavily affected by their L1 in speaking English. The last

group of three students were below A1 level, which means they could virtually convey no

information on the pictures; they conveyed very limited word-level information only for a

couple of the pictures; they were also extremely tense as they were speaking; they were

far below basic level as compared with their peers.

Overall, I need to lower the classroom anxiety to promote students’ participation during

class time. In addition, an activity which encourages interaction between students seems

to be crucial to develop their speaking skills.

Syllabus of Elementary English for Grade 6

2013. 1st semester

<Week 1~Week2> Where Are You From?

1. Aims We see foreigners often in various places, and as Korea becomes more global, students will have even more opportunities to interact with non-Koreans. In this lesson, students will learn how to communicate with foreigners that they encounter at the airport, exhibitions, and tour sites. 2. Objectives

Listening Students will be able to...

• hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about where one is from. •hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about how to spell a word.

Speaking

• verbalize expressions for asking and answering where one is from. • verbalize expressions for asking and answering about how to spell a word.

Reading

• read and understand dialogues with the expressions of asking and answering about where one is from and how to spell a word. • read and understand simple expressions for introducing friends.

Writing

• complete sentences with words or phrases. • write simple, short passages with an example.

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about where one is from. •hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about how to spell a word.

Speaking


Reading


Writing


<Week 2~Week 3> Where Is Anna’s Doughnut Shop?

1. Aims As the number of foreigners in Korea is increasing, we will have the opportunity to provide an English speaker with street directions more often. In this lesson, students will learn how to give precise directions in English to those who need help. 2. Objectives

<Week 4> Story Time – Heidi, Girl of the Alps

Objectives

Speaking/

Writing

Students will be able to... • naturally speak the key expressions that they learned while completing the story writing activity.

Reading

• read and understand the stories which have the key expressions that they have learned in the previous lessons.

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about where one is from. •hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about how to spell a word.

Speaking


Reading


Writing


<Week 5~Week 6> What Will You Have?

1. Aims Knowing how to ask someone what food he or she will eat and confirming what someone has said is very useful in our daily lives. In this lesson, students will learn expressions used in these situations and develop their communication abilities.

2. Objectives

<Week 6~Week 7> I Want to Clean the Window

1. Aims In this lesson, students will learn how to ask and answer about what they want to do, and how to accept a suggestion. Besides this, they will learn the importance of volunteering and cooperation in a volunteering situation at a nursing home. 2. Objectives

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about what they want to do. • hear and understand expressions for accepting a suggestion.

Speaking

• verbalize expressions for asking and answering about what they want to do. • verbalize expressions for accepting a suggestion.

Reading

• read and understand a dialogue which has expressions for asking and answering about what they want to do and accepting a suggestion. • read and understand a simple text about what volunteering work they want to do.

<Week8> Story Time – The princess and the Frog

Objectives

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for asking and telling what the date is. • hear and understand expressions for replying to ‘Thank you.’

Speaking

• verbalize expressions for asking and telling what date it is. • verbalize replying to ‘Thank you.’

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for prohibition. • hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about reasons.

Speaking

• verbalize expressions for prohibition. • verbalize expressions for asking and answering about reasons.

Reading

• read and understand sentences which have expressions for prohibition and asking and answering about reasons. • read and understand simple texts concerning school rules.

Writing

• complete sentences with words or phrases. • write short and simple texts.

<Week 9~ Week 10> Don’t Run in the Classroom

1. Aims In this lesson, students will learn expressions for prohibiting certain behaviors in public places such as schools or libraries, and asking the reason. Students will be able to learn further expressions for prohibition that they learned in their previous year and they will learn proper behaviors and attitudes in public places. 2. Objectives

Writing

• complete sentences with words or phrases. • write a short and simple text.

Speaking Students will be able to... • naturally speak the key expressions that they learned while doing role-plays.

Reading

•read and understand stories which contain the key expressions that they learned in the previous lessons.

<Week 10~Week11> My Birthday Is April 3rd

1. Aims We often ask and tell what the date is, and reply when someone thanks us. The aim of this lesson is to have students practice using these expressions while speaking and writing. 2. Objectives

<Week 12> Story Time – Beauty and the Beast

Objectives

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for telling someone to be careful. • hear and understand expressions for asking about factual information.

Speaking

• verbalize expressions for telling someone to be careful. • verbalize expressions for asking about factual information.• verbalize expressions for asking and answering where one is from. • verbalize expressions for asking and answering about how to spell a word.

Reading

• read and understand a dialogue which has expressions for telling someone to be careful and asking about factual information. • read and understand a simple text about the food chain.

Writing

• complete dialogues with words or phrases. • write a simple and short text about the food chain.

<Week 13~Week 14> What Do Frogs Eat?

1. Aims Elementary school students usually show much interest and curiosity about nature. In this lesson, students will develop their communicative abilities while learning to speak, in English, the contents of what they have already learned in their science classes. 2. Objectives

Reading

• read and understand dialogues which have expressions for asking and telling what date it is and replying to ‘Thank you.’ • read and understand a simple text about Arbor Day.

Writing

• complete sentences with words or phrases. • make birthday invitation cards.

Reading

• read and understand the stories which have the key expressions that they have learned in the previous lessons

Writing

Students will be able to... • write the key expressions that they learned while making rainbow books.

<Week 14~Week 15> I’ll Go to Busan by Train

1. Aims This is the closing lesson of the first semester. Students will learn how to ask and answer about their plans for summer vacation and how to say what kind of vehicles they will use to get to a certain place.

<Week 16> Story Time – The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

Objectives

Listening Students will be able to... • hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about their future plans. • hear and understand expressions for asking and answering about which vehicles to use.

Speaking

• verbalize expressions for asking and answering about their future plans. • verbalize expressions for asking and answering about which vehicles to use.

Reading

• read and understand a dialogue which has expressions for asking and answering about future plans and which vehicles to use. • read and understand a simple letter about vacation plans and weekend plans.

Writing

• complete sentences with simple words or phrases. • write their vacation plans.

Reading • read and understand the stories which have the key expressions that they have learned in the previous lessons

Writing

Students will be able to... • write the key expressions that they learned while making pop-up books.

2. Objectives

OO Elementary School

Instructor : Kim Namkyung, Christopher Nichols

Class Level : Grade 6

Class Size: 22 students (13 boys, 9 girls)

Class Duration : 40minutes

Lesson Plan Week 7

Unit What will you have ? (3/5)

Lesson

Objectives

read and understand a dialogue that has expressions for asking

someone what food he/she will eat and confirming what someone says.

read and understand a short advertisement for a restaurant.

read the advertisement fluently while participating in the ‘Relay

reading’ activity.

Target

Expressions

• What will you have? • I want ~ . / ~ , please.

• Are you sure?

Stage

(Time) Procedures

S: individual work SS: pair-work SSS: group work T-SSS: Whole class Material

Introduction

(5’)

• Greet the Ss.

• T introduces today’s objectives and activities to Ss. White board

Development

(25’)

• Read the Short Dialogue

-(S)Ss watch the monitor. T asks Ss about the picture.

-(S)Ss read the dialogue individually out loud. As they read, Ss

circle words that they don’t know or can’t pronounce.

-(T-SSS)T goes over the words with the class.

-(SS)Ss then practice reading the text with their partners while

switching out the red vocabulary words and phrases with different

ones from the blue boxes.

-(SS)Have Ss stand up and read the dialogues with their partners

in front of the class.

• (SSS)Ordering Activity (Advertisement)

-T distributes Ss the a set of paper strip.

-Each student in a group gets two strips of paper.

- Each S reads the sentences on the paper strip and read them

by themselves.

- Group members help each other to make sure everyone in their

group can read and understand the text..

-And then they put the paper strips in order.

-By asking Ts check the arrangement of the sentences.

-Once they got the right order, they can now move on to the next

stage.

• Comprehension Check-up

-(SSSS) Each S work on the CCQs in the textbook.

-Check the answers with their group members and Ts check each

group’s answers as they moving around.

Paper strips

Ss are

not allowed

to consult

the

textbook.

Stage

(Time) Procedures


Closure

(10’)

•Relay Reading Activity

- Once they finish all the activities, they practice for the relay

reading activity by reading the text out loud.

- the group of Ss read the text out loud until they can read it

fluently.

- T Time on each group’s reading.

-The group which read the whole text the fastest and correctly,

their monkey will go up.

Stopwatch

Reflective Journal for Week 7

1. Reflections on my lessons before the intervention

Throughout the last few weeks of class observations and videos, I found that only one

type of activity for a lesson was not enough for the students to get a chance for language

production. I realized that my lessons were quite teacher-centered and I talked a lot

throughout the whole class time; The teachers were talking and the students were listening

(hopefully). It was common place for the students to get bored during the lessons. It was

partially due to my approach to teaching; I stuck to the PPP lesson structure. As a result, my

students hardly had a chance to interact with each other. It may cause students’

demotivation in English class as well as hindered the development of speaking skills.

Now I’m moving from teacher-centered lessons to student-centered lessons. Even

though it might be seen as unorganized, noisy or messy to many Korean teachers, I’ve

already had a feeling of success on my intervention because the students are alive and

awake. Still, there are a few students who don’t engage in classroom activities, I’m sure

they will get better by participating in communicative activities and feeling responsible for

their group work.

2. Report on the intervention 1

The lesson for the 1st intervention aimed to understand expressions for asking what food

someone will eat and to use those expressions by doing a role-play. For the 1st part of the

lesson, I followed the ordinary lesson structures: talking about the picture before listening:

Getting general and specific idea on the dialogues by watching it: practicing sentence

patterns. I did this on purpose so that I could give enough time to plan and practice the

role-play in groups. Students were asked to use the target sentence patterns which they

have learned from the previous lessons for their role-play. As students were working on

their role-play, the teachers went group to group, monitored and helped them by their

requests. Some groups then volunteered to perform their role-plays in front of the class.

After the groups’ performances, the teachers and the students provided the groups with

feedback on their performances.

What worked well in the 1st intervention was first, most of the students were actively

engaged in their planning time. They tried not only to apply what they’ve learned to the

role-plays, but also to use the real language. While the students prepared their role-play,

they needed more language beyond the text-level in order to achieve their goals. They

looked for the expressions by asking each other or consulting the teachers; second, the

class had a chance to think about cultural differences between two countries, such as

calling on a server versus waiting for a server to come to your table. The cultural

appropriateness is actually regarded as an important aspect in CLT approaches.

What didn’t work however, were first, two or three groups were still not working

effectively according to the group members; second, many students were too shy to

present in public so the rest of the students hardly heard their voices, and they

consequently seemed to lose their interest in watching other groups’ performances; third,

waiting time for their turn was too long, and they were busy with preparing their

performances; lastly, many students still lacked creativity in making up their own dialogues

and they tended to copy the lines from the textbook.

What I want to change for the next intervention is first, assigning the specific roles for

each group member to solve the 1st issue. Next, I will have every group participate in the

presentation or assessment at the same time as professor van Vlack suggested. It will help

the students reduce their anxiety of presenting in front of the class as well as avoid idling

away.

3. Report on the intervention 2

When I first started thinking about AR intervention, I thought I needed to focus on only

the 1st and 2nd periods out of 5, which mainly cover listening and speaking skills in order to

apply communicative tasks. After careful consideration, I realized that communicative tasks

can be used for any language skill-focused lessons as long as I can provide the students

with interactional input and the types of practice that can be used in real setting with

English. Therefore, the 2nd lesson used for the intervention mainly focused on reading.

The objectives of the lesson for the 2nd intervention were first, having students read the

short dialogue in pairs and then create a new dialogue by switching the red word into the

new ones; second, reading and understanding the advertisement in the textbook, and

engaging in fluent reading activity.

The activities for the intervention were aimed to provide the students with chances to

interact with each other in the process of solving problems, and to have a feeling of

solidarity among group members by engaging in a relay-reading activity.

The first part of the lesson was reading a short dialogue in the textbook. The students

first read the dialogue in the textbook with their partner while switching out the red words

with different ones from the word bank. The next activity was designed for the group work.

I split the text, advertisement, into sentences and provided each group with a set of paper

strips all containing lines of the dialogue. As they read and understand each sentence one

by one, they were told to put them in order through decision making process. Once the

teachers checked their work, they were also asked to work on the CCQs in the textbook.

The students first, worked on them individually and then checked on their answers as a

group. The group then moved on to the next steps, which is practicing relay reading game.

Relay reading game was designed to develop students’ fluent reading skills. A group of

student was asked to read fast and correctly. At the end of the class, a teacher timed

them on their relay reading, and the fastest team got rewarded. One thing I highlighted

on rewarding a group was letting the rest of the groups to recognize the value of

cooperation; the group not only worked toward fast reading but also cooperated a lot

throughout the whole process.

What worked well during the 2nd intervention was first, students’ survey showed that

the students were actually learning how group interaction could contribute to their

learning(21 out of 23), and they found group work interesting (19 out of 23); second, the

students kept busy with doing activities during the class time. By giving instructions for

the whole process of the activities all at once, students didn’t need to sit around with

nothing to do. They actually controlled their pacing with the help of teachers. As Richards

(1996) pointed out transition time can be significant in language classroom, which

specifically focusing on communicative activities in pairs or small groups, I didn’t want to

interfere with the flows of the activities by moving from one activity to another. And it

worked well.

What didn’t work, however, were first, the instructions were too long, and it might put

a big burden on the students, albeit it has its advantages; second, the genre of the text

was not appropriate for the sequencing activity. Although I gave the students clues on the

answer, it still had many options to make the text sensible; lastly, the waiting time issue

was repeated as in intervention 1 because I didn’t apply the strategy that I was told on

Monday night (actually, it was videotaped on Monday).

What I want to change for the next lessons are first, I will write the order of the

directions on the board as I give them to the students so that they will be able to consult

them while they are working; second, I will take the coherence of the text into

consideration before I plan for the sequencing activity. It may be better to use the short

dialogue covered in the beginning of the lesson for the sequencing activity; lastly, I will

develop the short dialogue activity to be more communicative by encouraging them to

make up their own dialogue based on their experiences.

Reference

Bailey, K. (2005). Practical English language teaching: Speaking. Boston: Mcgraw-Hill.

Littlewood, W. (2007). Communicative and task-based language teaching in East Asian classrooms.

Language Teaching, 40, 243-249.

Richards, J.C. and Lockhart, C. (1996). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Richards, J.C. and Lockhart, C. (2006). Communicative language teaching today. From

http://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/teaching-listening-and-

speaking-from-theory-to-practice.pdf

Lesson Plan Week 9

Unit I want to clean the windows (2/5)

Lesson

Objectives

Students will be able to

• listen and understand expressions for accepting a suggestion.

• speak confidently what they have learned while participating in

'making a decision on their group performances' activity.

Target

Expressions

∙ What do you want to ~ ? / (Then) how about ~ ?

∙ I (don't) want to ~ . / I (don't) like~ . / I can (can't)~.

∙ That sounds good.

Stage

(Time) Procedures


Introduction

(5’)

•Greetings

• (T-SSS)Review

- T asks what students did last time.

- Ss review the expressions that they've used in the 'survey

activity'.

• Objectives of the lesson

- T introduces today’s objectives and activities to Ss.

Development

(30’)

•Preview the vocabulary in the dialogue(5')

-(SS) Distribute a word list to each pair

- T asks read and go over the meaning of the words on the list

with the partners.

- (T-SSS)Then check those words in the whole class.

• (T-SSS)Listen to the dialogue(10')

- Talk about the picture in the textbook.

- Listen to the dialogue part by part and elicit the target

sentences by asking questions.

- Listen to the whole dialogue.

• Making a Decision Activity (10')

-(T-SSS) Explains the context (upcoming field trip and decide on

the group performance program) and each group member is

asked to share their ideas and chooses one best idea among all

for their group performance.

- (T-SSS)Before the group work, the class talks about the

possible expressions which may be used during the group

discussion.

▸provide a

word list

contains

blanks in

order to

raise Ss'

attentions

on

the specific

words.

▸CD-Rom

Stage

(Time) Procedures


Development

(30’)

(T writes their answers on the board so that Ss can be consult

them as they work in groups.)

• (T-SSS)Share the results of the group discussion (5')

- The group reporters tells their decisions on the program to the

whole class.

- Then the class vote for the best idea.

- Based on the Ts' observations and the result of the poll, the

group monkeys go up or down.

Closure

(5’)

• Give feedback on the activity

- Based on the Ts' observations and the result of the poll, the

group monkeys go up or down.


1. The objectives of the lesson

The lesson was aimed to have students ask and answer about what they want to do,

and accepting suggestions.

The target sentence patterns that students needed to learn were; 1) What do you want

to do? 2) I want to ~. 3) That sounds good.

2. Reflection on the previous intervention

Based on the last intervention, I felt that I needed to reduce the complexity of the task.

In the previous lesson, the students were confused about the activity and the class did not

complete the task, probably due to the complicated nature of the tasks and unclear

directions. Therefore, I took these issues into consideration as I planned the current

lesson, and I focused on the task design and giving directions.

3. Purpose of the intervention

In order to improve students’ interaction and participation, I changed three things. First

of all, I provided a vocabulary list for each pair so that students could help each other to

preview the words in the list. Next, I changed the listening processes so that students had

more time to spend on the subsequent communicative task. Lastly, I tried to find a task

topic which would be relevant to student life.

4. Procedure and rationale for the intervention

The first stage of the lesson was listening. Before the students listened to the dialogue, I

distributed the word list to each pair so that they could help each other. Vocabulary

preview used to be done as a whole class before the intervention. I tried to provide words

as chunks rather than single words. The lexical view holds that multiword units

functioning as chunks or memorized patterns form a high proportion of the fluent

stretches of speech heard in everyday conversation (Pawley and Syder, 1983, as cited in

Lewis, 2008). This was followed by listening to the dialogue. In the past, the listening

stage proceeded as follows; talking about the picture, listening for the general idea and

eliciting vocabulary, providing questions on details before listening, listening and going

over the meaning line by line, then repeating the main expressions. The whole listening

process was slow and repetitive, and it took more than half the class time to complete. It

resulted in lack of time for the production stage unless I assigned extra class time for a

speaking activity. By modifying the listening steps, therefore, I tried to focus more on the

speaking activity.

What I’ve changed for the listening steps was first of all, listening to the dialogue part

by part instead of listening to the whole dialog over and over again. Since students easily

got the topic of the dialogue by talking about the picture in the textbook, I showed the

dialogue part by part to focus on specific information. The aim for listening for the current

lesson was drawing student’s attention to the target sentences for the subsequent task, I

asked the questions and elicited the key expressions after every part. By doing so, I was

able to save a lot more time for the speaking activity.

This Speaking activity was simpler than the previous one. Morley (2001) maintains that

tasks which are relatively simple need not be deemed any less authentic than more

difficult tasks. Instead of only using target sentence patterns in the textbook, however, I

decided to expand language use more by recycling expressions that they’ve already

learned for the activity. It was aimed to first, prevent students from forgetting what

they’ve learned; second, provide richer context for the activity. Students were asked to

decide one program for their group performance for the upcoming school field trip. The

reason I chose this topic was not only its relevance to their student life, but also to peak

the students interest. The students needed to negotiate with their group members in

order to make a decision, and the activity required more language than textbook-level.

Before the activity, therefore, the student and I talked about possible expressions for

making decisions. As some students spoke, I wrote their answers on the board so that

they could consult these phrases while they worked in their groups. In addition, by

mentioning some specific cases for moving up their monkeys, I tried to facilitate group

cooperation during activity.

5. What worked well

Previewing vocabulary with their partner was good in general, still some students

worked by him/herself. Listening to the dialogue part by part was good for finding specific

information even for the less confident students. Usually, I used to provide the class with

4~5 comprehension questions before listening to the whole dialogue so that the students

would focus on the specific information. However, I’ve always questioned how many

students would be able to find all the answers. By breaking up the dialogue into parts, I

tried to ease their work load.

6. The things needed to be improved

The students used a lot more Korean than the previous lesson. Since I found little

problem in terms of using target language from the last lesson, I overlooked students’ L1

use. I thought hard on this issue and concluded that it could be related to the amount of

the language needed for the activity; during the previous lesson, the task was complicated

but the required language was limited to only two or three phrases (e.g. What do you

want to do on Children’s Day?/ I want to ~ .). While the current task was pretty simple, it

needed a lot more expressions in order for students to negotiate with each other. Right

after the lesson, I found out I should have urged the students to use English during their

group work, and I did it for the next class by mentioning the reward system. According to

Horwitz (2008), CLT teachers do not generally accept answers in the L1, but if the student

offers a gesture or a phrase in the L1 as a response, the CLT teacher will help the student

formulate that idea in the second language. Thus CLT teachers do a lot of scaffolding.

The next issue was providing a warm-up step for the activity. Since the students did not

have enough time to think about their group performance, their responses were limited

to mundane ideas. If they had been given a brainstorming session, they might have been

more creative and more engaged in the task. Plus, If I had the student group together

whatever they want to, they might have been more engaged in the activity. One thing

that I want to change for the next lessons is giving specific direction for the pair work. As I

mentioned earlier, some pairs did not work together to preview the vocabulary. By simply

mentioning to take turns reading and to work on the meanings with their partners, I was

able to improve the situation.

As I’ve implemented the AR intervention, issues have been constantly coming up. All

the issues have arisen from overlooking seemingly small details, and I need to be more

careful in every single moment when I design a lesson. Even though the output from the

class has been disappointing, I believe it will be the way I develop my teaching skills and

broaden my perspectives on teaching and learning English.

Reference

Horwitz, E. (2008). Becoming a language teacher: A practical guide to second language

learning and teaching. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Lewis, L. (2008). The lexical approach: The state of ELG and a way forward. Hove: Language

Teaching Publications.

Lesson Plan Week 11

Unit Story Time . The princess and the Frog (1/2)

Lesson

Objectives

Students will be able to

• listen and understand the story.

• compare the original story with the fabricated story by listening.

• make up their own story.

Target

Expressions

∙ What do you want to do? ∙ I want to ~.

∙ Don’t ~ ! ∙ Why? ∙ Because ~

Stage

(Time) Procedures


Introduction

(8’)

•Greetings (1')

• (SS, SSS) Motivate the Ss for today's lesson (6')

- Distribute envelops which have six picture cards in them,

one envelop for each group.

- T posts the same pictures on the screen with corresponding

numbers.

- Each group puts the cards face down on their table. One

pair picks one card and describes it to the other pair without

showing it.

- The other pair chooses the number of the picture from the

screen after listening to the description.

• Objectives of the lesson (1')

- T introduces today’s objectives and activities to Ss.

<1> Read the story

<2> Listen and detect the differences

<3> Make-up a story.

▸envelop

with the

picture

cards

Development

(31’)

•(T-SSS->SS->SSS) Read and Listen to the original story

✐ Check on the vocabulary (2')

- T wirtes the list of the key vocabulary on the board and goes

over it with the whole class.

✐ Read and check the comprehension (7')

- T Distributes a whiteboard to each pair.

- As a whole class, go over the CCQs before the reading.

- Ss read the story with their partners and write the answers on

the given board (The person who find the answers first have to

ask their partner to answer)

▸whiteboard

▸markers &

erasers

Stage

(Time) Procedures


Development

(31’)

✐Check the answers with the whole class as they watch the story.

- T pauses after every line that contains an answer.

• (T-SSS->SS)Listen to the fabricated story (7')

- Ss are told to close their books before this step.

-Ts tell the fabricated story to the students. Whenever Ss detect

any differences, they write them down on their whiteboard.

- The groups share the differences they discovered with one

another. Then, share as a class.

Q: How many differences did you find?

• Watch the story again and correct the fabricated parts of the

story back to the original. (it can be skipped according to time left.)

• Read the story line by line (2')

- As Ts reads the fabricated story line by line, Ss read after the

teacher with the original story.

• (SSS)Make up a story (13')

- Based on the story in the book, each group switches some

parts of the story and makes up a new story.

- They are encouraged to assign their roles to read it.

- Only one pair in each group goes to a different group and

shares their story.

- A couple of groups volunteer to introduce their group's story.

As Ss

working in

pairs, Ts

circulate the

groups and

check on

the

pair/group

work

▸CD-rom

▸Script for

the story

▸PPT

slides

T

encourages

Ss to be

creative

when they

make up a

story.

Closure

(1’)

•(T-SSS) Inform the next lesson and assign homework (1')

- T tells Ss that they are going to do a role-play next time.

- As a group, they are asked to revise the original story in the

textbook so that they can do a role-play.


1. Rationale for the intervention

The current intervention was based on the characteristics of CLT and the idea of

learning through meaning-focused output (Nation & Newton, 2009) and ZPD in

sociocultural theory. Brown (2008) defined the CLT as use of language techniques where

learners are engage in the pragmatic, authentic, and functional use of language for

meaningful purposes. Spontaneity is presented in the CLT classroom and students are

encouraged to deal with unrehearsed situations under the guidance of the teacher.

According to Nation and Newton’s (2009) learning through meaning-focused output

strand, the learners’ main goal should be to convey their message to someone else. In

order to do this, learners need to use communication strategies, dictionaries, or previous

input to make up for gaps in their productive knowledge. Also, students should be

provided ample opportunities to produce. Also, sociocultural theory states that students

are their own best teachers when they collaborate with each other in order to improve

the learning environment and move beyond their current level of mastery (Vygotsky,

1978).

In this regard, students were to use the language productively and receptively in

unrehearsed context throughout the lesson. The major techniques that I’ve used were as

follows; first, describing pictures to another pair in their group so that they could find the

pictures by listening to the speakers; second, instructing group to make up their own

stories by switching out some parts of the words and characters.

2. The purpose of the intervention design

Since my intervention for the action research is now heading toward the end, I wanted

to see any signs of improvement in their motivation and participation from this lesson.

The activities for the current lesson involved all four skills based on the short story in the

textbook for their productive use of language. I also tired to concentrate more on the

sequence of the activities based on the feedback from my professors.

3. The objectives of the lesson

The lesson was aimed to first, use the language they already know by describing

pictures. Second, read the original story and compare it to the fabricated one by listening.

Lastly, make up their own story by switching out some parts of the story.

4. Procedure and rationale for the intervention

The first stage of the lesson was motivation. In the past I used to start the first activity

for a story time with guessing the title by using pictures from the story, or by listening to

the story as a whole class. This time, however, the story, ‘The Princess and the Frog’ was

not only well-known to the students but also the pictures from the story were too obvious

to infer the title, so I changed the activity type to group work. One pair was asked to

describe a picture to the other pair without showing it so that they could find the picture

on the screen as they listened. The reason I paired them up for this activity was so they

could help each other with the vocabulary. Since almost all students were paired with

different levels, they were able to fill the gaps in vocabulary successfully. Many students

were, however, producing a minimum level of English rather than utilizing their full

language resources in the describing picture activity. It was already pointed out as one of

the concerns in implementing CLT and TBLT in a second language classroom (Littlewood,

2007). In spite of the deficiency of vocabulary, most students were actively engaged in

this activity and they were fully motivated. They seemed to be enjoying the opportunity of

using English as a means for delivering their own message. Also, even low level students

tried to find the words for the pictures and they were asking for help from their partners.

The next activity was reading the story in the textbook. After going over the vocabulary

in the story, I provided the 5 CCQs for the students before they read it. They were then

asked to write the answers on a mini-whiteboard as they read as a pair. In order to

prevent a higher level partner finding all the answers by him/herself, the person who

found the answer first was told to check the answer by asking their partner. Only when

both answers matched, could they write the answer on the board. After the pair activity,

the class checked the answers as they watched the story. As the story went, I paused after

every line that contained an answer and asked the question again so that students could

double check their answers. Even though there was no line by line translation, students

seemed to understand the story pretty well. In addition, they needed to write their

answers on the whiteboard, they were under more pressure to find the answers and most

students were actively finding the answers from the story. Based on this reading stage, I

am now confident of the fact that a teacher doesn’t necessarily need to be the sole source

of knowledge in a classroom. Indeed, students can the best teachers for one another, and

they were able to learn by themselves with the help of each other, which is one of the

main aspects of sociocultural theory.

The reading stage was followed by listening to the fabricated story. Each pair was asked

to write down any detected differences on the mini-board as they were listening. This was

supposed to be followed by sharing their findings with their group members, but I forgot

to do this. We checked the differences by reading line by line. As the teachers read the

fabricated story line by line, the students read after the line with the original story.

The last activity for the lesson was making up a new story. By modeling how I made up

my story through the opaque projector, I tried to make the students feel at ease in this

activity. Actually, my story was made up by switching some parts of the story. The

students were really engaged in making up their own story. I was honestly surprised by

their active participation.

Once I believed my students were totally unmotivated, and indifferent to learn English.

However, they were changing gradually. Even though there were a few ongoing issues for

improving lessons, I am glad to see my students change in their attitudes toward English

class.

5. What worked well

I liked the lesson in that first, all language skills were integrated into one lesson:

speaking and listening reading listeningand writing. Next, the students were fully

engaged in the activities throughout the lesson because they were using language for

meaningful purposes. In addition, there was a lot of interaction between pairs, group

members, and the teachers. Lastly, most groups seemed comfortable working together.

The mini survey after the lesson showed that most of the students felt positively about

their group work (21 out of 23 thought their group members worked collaboratively. Only

two people answered in neutral).

What I want to keep working on after the intervention is first, facilitating pair/group

work so that they can learn from each other and the students have more responsibility for

their own learning. Secondly, designing communicative tasks so that students use the

language for meaningful purposes and they work with appropriate challenges, which

means not too hard, not too easy.

6. The things needed to be improved

1) Considering teacher’s role in the classroom

As I circulated the groups, I found out one student was dominating group discussion.

Amazingly, he was one of the lowest level students not only in the group, but also in the

class. However, he was fully motivated and actively engaged in the story making-up session.

The problem was the language that he was producing didn’t make any sense. It was the

last step of the lesson and I was also in a rush because time was almost up. Therefore, I

abruptly stopped him speaking in order to give other students a chance to talk. If I had

enough time, I wouldn’t stop him in that way. Albeit time was running out, I should have

implemented other strategies for shifting turns from him to other students. After analyzing

the video, what I found was that I need to be more aware of the teacher’s role and I have

to be more considerate for each student when I give feedback or scaffold the activities.

2) Building up vocabulary

As I already mentioned in the reflection for week 10, increasing vocabulary has become

the issue since I’ve been applying communicative tasks. Before students reach the

threshold level, there will inevitably be a lot of limitations not only for designing tasks as a

teacher but also completing tasks as a student. A lexical approach (Lewis, 2008) in

language teaching is based on the belief that the building blocks of language learning and

communication are not grammar, functions, or notions, but lexis. In the classroom,

therefore, I want to keep working on building up students’ vocabulary knowledge even

after this action research. I believe learners’ proficiency with words and chunks can be

developed through reading and then using newly learned vocabulary in meaningful way.

The most challenging thing for this matter is how to plan the tasks for reading, and how to

combine those plans with English curriculum in harmonious way, which I want to work on

for the next action research.

Reference

Brown, H.D. (2008). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy

(3rd Edition). White Plains: Pearson Education, Inc.

Brown, H.D. (2008). Principles of language learning and teaching (5th Edition). White Plains: Pearson

Education, Inc.

Lewis, L. (2008). The lexical approach: The state of ELG and a way forward. Hove: Language Teaching

Publications.

Littlewood, W. (2007). Communicative and task-based language teaching in East Asian classrooms.

Language Teaching, 40, 243-249.

Nation, I.S.P. and Newton, J. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL listening and speaking. New York: Routledge.

This is a well-structured well-planned out lesson. You are really moving forward in

getting students to do more group work in the class. I think you have run into the

classical problems that teachers face in trying to do this. Directions are always tricky.

You will need to try different ways to get them to understand what it is they need to do.

Multiple modes of delivery is a good idea but make sure that students are paying

attention when you are giving directions. They may not be really paying attention or

might have difficulty following. Also, think about the connections between tasks. How

does one task lead into the next. The trick for things like the final task is to make sure the

students are well warmed up and ready to share their ideas. That entails the presence of

ideas. The previous tasks should have worked as a kind of brainstorming so they have

had some time to think about these issues, otherwise it can take a really long time to do

something that seems simple. Also think about the amount/number of topics. Each

group does not have to have its own topic. A topic can be shared by two different groups.

Don’t over complicate matters.

Feedback on Reflective Journals from Professor van Vlack

Week 8

Week 9

Your plan is interesting and inventive in many ways. I particularly like the different

ways in which you try to get the students to deal with the reading text. I also like the

way that you are clearly using the reflective process to help you move through the

different stages of your teaching (before during and after). This is very good and I’m

sure it’s helping you in the whole process. I am, however, a little confused about a

couple aspects of your lesson. Firstly, they were asked to read the text five times and

the times were recorded on the assumption that they would be able to read faster each

time. I’m just wondering if they had different goals for each time they read because

simply having them read the same thing the same way five times may have somewhat

limited results. It may also be bogus insofar students may not really be reading

carefully but just glancing over words and not really understand the text better through

the process if they’re more focused on time than comprehension. I like the idea but

again if you’re going to do this you may give different small, very small objectives for

each of the different readings so that not only they getting faster but they’re also getting

better at achieving objectives. My last concern, or area of interest relates to what you

were doing with the running dictation. In your reflection you don’t really mention

anything about this so obviously I’m very curious. I have also used this many times in

my class and it is generally successful but of course the trick to the success of this is the

text that is being used. So, obviously I’m very curious about the text both the level of

difficulty within the sentences and its relation to the previous reading text. Was it the

same text that was cut into eight different sentences? How were the different sentences

placed on the wall (distance, sequence in relation to the text)? As you can see there are

lots of different variables that apply when trying to set something like this up and make

it work. As a result I’m really just very curious about how it didn’t work and how you

did set it up because I think the great task that can really be fun and very useful for

learning as well.

Week 10

Your lesson seems well constructed and you have good reflection as well. I think you

have really hit the nail on the head when you identify vocabularies the main issue for

our learners. I think it is always there but it’s much easier to see their lack of vocabulary

when they are trying to use the language in real time. Lack of vocabulary can be very

frustrating indeed motivating for students, especially when they want to do a task but

realize they can’t because of their lack of vocabulary. What you did in your class seem

to be quite effective. Repetition, when introducing new items, is of course important. It

is also good to use pictures and, in fact, as many other means as possible to try to get

them to encode and recode the vocabulary items for better storage, and later access. It

seems like you’ve done quite a good job with this. I’m wondering a little bit about the

theme of your class (prohibitives) and even though students may enjoy, in some ways,

going over the things that they are not allowed to do at home, it could also be

interesting to try to link these two specific types of contexts other than just the home. I

just feel that maybe the issue is something that may upset certain students. Adding a

more defined context (Such as things you shouldn’t do in the jungle) may make this

more useful and also more enjoyable. As you found with your students as well this type

of function is often best approached with the idea of do’s and don’ts. In the use of do,

though, you need to be somewhat careful because it is used as an intensifier. The use of

expressions like “do study hard” is constructed in response to some outside entity. In

that way it is different than just “study hard”. Overall very good job.

Enhancing class dynamics and interaction through the application of communicative activities

1. Introduction

1.1 Reflections on the initial stage of the class

At the beginning of the school year, I observed that most of the students did not

show any interest during class time; they gave little response to any kinds of requests

from the teacher; only a few students volunteered to the questions; many of the

students did not pay attention to the teacher. The students’ attitudes toward English

class seemed to me that they were totally unmotivated and indifferent to learning

English in general. However, the result of the pre-tests, which included needs analysis

and a diagnostic test for listening and speaking skill indicated that my assumption

could be bias against the students’ actual performances and their attitudes. Analyzed

data from the pre-tests showed better outcomes than I expected in terms of students’

perceptions of learning English and of their general proficiency level in English. In

addition, the result of the class observation and videos analysis for the first few weeks

raised several issues from my lessons as well. The first thing was the lessons were

quite teacher-centered. I talked a lot throughout the whole class time and the students

were mostly listening and answering only when they were invited. It may due to my

approach to teaching. I stuck to the PPP lesson structure in order to improve their

accuracy. It was much easier for me to manage the students and to follow the textbook

structure. The textbook which is used in my school isolates target language patterns or

sentence structures so that it can be learned by repetitive drills. The students were only

allowed to use well-formed and structured communication patterns rather than

natural interactions when they participated in the activities. Second, the nature of the

classroom activity was totally decontextualized. Most activities that I used in my

classroom were for practicing and memorizing the patterns in the textbook until the

students could say it automatically. In this type of learning atmosphere, the students

had little or no control on their own output. The problem is however, even though the

students were seemingly well trained and got good grades in their writing test, they

could hardly speak in real-life situations, such as talking with a native teacher. What

they have learned and drilled was hardly transferring to their language proficiency.

Lastly, most activities that I implemented encouraged competition between groups or

pairs rather than cooperation among students. As a result, more competent students

avoided working with less proficient students because they wanted to win the activity.

This tendency was noticeably increased when the students had a choice to select their

conversational partner. Under these circumstances, cooperation and negotiation of

meaning hardly occurred. Driscoll and Hitz (1989) argue that when teachers use

rewards to create inviting environments, the results may be counterproductive. Based

on the reflections that I made for the past few weeks, I realized that I could not entirely

put the blame for the students’ low motivation and behavioral problems on the

students themselves, but the learning atmosphere was culpable as well.

1.2 The general information of the class

The study took place in an elementary school in Kangnam, Seoul. The class initially

consisted of thirteen boys and ten girls in the sixth grade, but one of the girls

transferred to another school in the middle of the intervention. Besides having had

English education in public school since they were in 3rd grade, the majority of the

students (67%) in the class have been taking extra English lessons in private institutes,

but many of the students were not confident in listening and speaking in English based

on the pre-tests. Most of the English learning relies on rote memorization for the target

sentence patterns or grammar rules. The tasks and textbooks which are used in

Elementary school offer formulaic phrases to use with dialogue. The tasks are far

removed from the students’ own knowledge, interests, and experiences in terms of

topics and objectives.

1.3 Background information on the students

According to the students’ needs analysis, less than half (47.8%) of the students

responded positively to understanding English directions when they were given with

gestures or other visual aids. 69.6% of the students have more confidence speaking

English when they work in pairs or in groups than speaking alone in front of the class.

Even though most of the students have had a native English-speaking teacher in the

past, 52.2% of the students responded that they are still uncomfortable speaking

English with foreigners. In terms of general view of English class, 43.5% of the

respondents answered in the affirmative, whereas 21.7% of the students viewed on

English class negatively. On the purpose of learning English, 39.1% of the respondents

ranked communication the highest.

The diagnostic assessment on students’ basic listening and speaking skills was

implemented based on the results of the students’ needs analysis and the result of the

class observation. During the first few sessions, most students in class did not seem to

understand the teacher’s instructions, and only few students reacted to the teacher’s

requests or questions. Therefore, I assumed that they had low proficiency in listening

and speaking area. The result showed, however, 56.5% of the students had fairly good

command of understanding simple directions and questions. Meanwhile, 43.5% of

students need the teacher’s careful scaffolding in understanding L2 directions. The

subsequent speaking assessment was analyzed by the rubrics including six categories;

amount of information successfully conveyed, quality of language structure, flow,

pronunciation, word choice, and overall impressions. According to European Language

levels framework, the students were divided into four groups by their speaking

proficiency level in general. 4 out of 23 students (17.4%) were included in the highest

level, B1, which could connect sentences in a simple way in order to describe the series

of the pictures; they were also able to narrate a story or relate the plot of the pictures;

their language flew smoothly and they were able to be easily understood by the listener.

Six students (26.1%) fell into the A2 group, which could use a series of phrases and

sentences to describe in simple terms; they expressed personal meaning by combining

and recombining what they know into short statements; their speech was filled with

frequent pauses. The next group of nine students (39.1%) belonged to the A1 level,

which could use simple phrases and sentences to describe the pictures, however with

frequent inaccuracy in form; they were heavily affected by their L1 in speaking English.

The last group of four students (17.4%) were below A1 level, which means they could

convey virtually no information on the pictures; they conveyed very limited word-level

information only for a couple of the pictures; they were also extremely tense as they

were speaking; they were far below basic level as compared with their peers.

Based on above findings, I decided to change the approaches in order to enhance

class dynamics and interaction through communicative activities. The intervention span

continued for 6 weeks. In this study, therefore, I wanted to examine the effect of

communicative activities on classroom dynamics and students’ participation.

Research question for the action research was “How can communicative activities

affect different level of students’ motivation and participation in learning English?”

3.1 Overviews of the AR intervention

3.1.1 Creating cooperative classroom environment

First of all, I’ve started my actual intervention from creating cooperative classroom

environments. The first change I made for my classroom environment was changing the

title of the back board from ‘class competition’ to ‘outstanding teamwork’, which aims

to encourage cooperation rather than competition among group members.

2. Research questions

3. Intervention

The underlying theory of my intervention is Communicative Language Teaching

Approach. According to Brown (2007), CLT is related not only to the organizational

aspects of language but also to the pragmatic aspects. However, the central focus of

CLT is on developing linguistic fluency and functional use of language for meaningful

purposes. To accomplish this, students in a CLT class are encouraged to construct

meaning through interaction with others. Students are, therefore, expected to be active

participants. Learner-centered, cooperative, collaborative learning is emphasized in a

CLT class. It is believed that language learning takes place when learners work

collaboratively in order to achieve their goals. Based on this rationale, shifting power

from the teacher to the students by encouraging cooperation became the first priority of

the intervention in my action research project.

Next, I changed the reward system. Before the intervention, I made my students

constantly compare to each other by rewarding for ‘the fastest’, ‘the most’ or ‘the best’

works. As a result, students were forced to compete against one another. By changing

the reward system with the monkey chart, I hoped many students would appreciate the

value of team work.

The Last thing I brought up into my classroom was changing on grouping strategy.

Initially, I had applied mixed strategies for grouping, which means I formed

heterogeneous groups for most students. Because two to three lowest level students

seemed too low in their English proficiency level to get help from their peers as well as

had behavioral problems; when they sat in the back of the classroom, they did not only

pay attention to the lesson, even worse, they interrupted their neighbor’s work.

Therefore, I had used to put them in the same group and had them sit in the very front

row of the class so that I could directly help and control them. What I found from this

group setting was it was hard to manage the whole class; I missed the rest of the

students in the class; I was actually seeing a tree, not the forest. Therefore, I scattered

them to each group: next to the ‘best’ students. Besides, by assigning specific roles for

each group member, I expected the students would be able to help each other in the

near future.

3.1.2 Intervention Plans

The research question for my AR is “the effect of the communicative activities on

different level of students’ motivation and participation”. Ellis (2003) maintained that

TBLT is at the center of CLT. The use of tasks is at the core of language teaching in

TBLT. Skehan (1998a) defines task as an activity in which meaning is primary; there is

some communication problem to solve and relationship to real-world activities with an

objective that can be assessed in terms of an outcome. Ultimately tasks lead learners

beyond the language classroom to real-world context.

Based on this idea, several techniques and activities were carefully designed for my

intervention.

Week Topic Objectives Tasks Focus on

task design

1

What will

you have?

(2/5)

• listen to and

understand

expressions for

asking what food

someone will eat and

confirm what

someone say

• listening for the general and

specific idea on the dialogue

• practicing sentence patterns

• doing a role-play using the target

sentence patterns

- providing cue card on situation,

and the characters

- based on the cue card, each group

doing a role-play

•applying the

expressions that

Ss learned from

the lesson

throughout the

role-play

•knowing

cultural aspects

between countries

2

What will

you have?

(3/5)

• read and

understand

a dialogue, and a

short advertisement

• reading a short dialogue in pairs

and then creating a new dialogue

by switching out some words

• ordering activity

- advertisement

- providing each group with a set

of paper strip

• practicing relay reading activity

- time each group’s

performance

•generative use of dialogue by making up their own dialogue •reducing transition time by giving instructions for the whole tasks • decision making Process for sequencing the text •developing group cohesiveness •developing fluent reading skills

3

I want to

clean the

windows

(1/5)

• listen and

understand the

expressions for

asking and

answering about

what they want to

do

• ask and answer

what they want to

do

• previewing vocabulary

-using vocabulary list, each pair

guesses the missing word and fills

in the blank

• watching the dialogue as focusing

on the key expressions and

practicing those

• the survey activity on 6 categories

- group whole class

• Report on the survey results

•assigning roles

and perform their

roles

•Providing word

list as chunks

•giving clear

instructions for

the activity

•productive use

of selected item

Week Topic Objectives Tasks Focus on

task design

4

I want to

clean the

windows

(2/5)

• listen to and

understand

expressions for

accepting a

suggestion

• express their

opinions and

negotiate for a

decision making

•Previewing the vocabulary in

pairs

•breaking up the dialogue into

smaller parts and listen for the

questions

- to save more time for the

speaking activity

- focused listening

•making a decision on a program

for a group performance for the

upcoming field trip

•reporting the result of each

group’s decision

•improving Ss’

interaction and

participation

•changing the

listening process

•selecting a task

topic – relevant to

the student’s life

•providing

simple tasks

5

Story Time

(The Princess

and the Frog)

•read and

understand the story

•detect the different

part between two

stories

•make up a story as

a group

•Motivation

-describing pictures: by listening to

the other pair’s description, finding

the picture

•reading and listening to the

original story

•Listening to the fabricated story

- find the different part between

original and fabricated story

•Making up a story

- by switching out some words

•sequencing of the activities •focusing on utilizing all four skills based on the reading material •using language for meaningful purposes •maximizing the interactions •autonomous learning

6

Story Time

(The Princess

and the Frog)

•adapt each group’s

own story and add

more lines for a play

•perform a ‘Three-

Act

Play based on their

script

•Review

- matching the dialogue to the

character

•Motivation and introduction the

aims of the lesson

- showing video

•adapting narrative part to dialogic

form – add more characters

•miming activity

•practicing a role-play in normal-

slow-high speed

•performance and evaluation

•rewrite the story in dialogic form •providing plenty of opportunity to speak throughout a ‘Three-Act Play’ •maximizing interaction and participation between the students

3.2. The process of the intervention

The first intervention for my AR was focused on using learned expressions

throughout the role-play. Each group was given a cue card which contained a situation

and characters. Based on the given information, each group planned their lines and

practiced their roles. As the students prepared for their role-play, they needed a lot

more vocabulary and expressions beyond the textbook-level. There were also cultural

aspects to deal with. The underlying concept of CLT is ‘communicative competence’,

which is the ability of language learners to interact with other speakers to make

meaning (Richards, 2007; Savignon, 1991). Under the CLT approach, learners

participate in cooperative activities rather than the individualistic approach to learn.

According to Littlewood (2007), when the learners are engaged in interaction and

meaningful communication through relevant, purposeful, and interesting activities,

students develops their communicative competence. In this regard, role-play was a

meaningful task for the students. However, some groups were not working effectively.

It may have been due to unfamiliarity with this type of group work. It actually was a

transition period in the classroom environment from teacher-centered to learner-

centered. Based on this issue, I designed the activities which would help facilitate group

cohesiveness for the subsequent intervention.

The main tasks for the second intervention were the ‘ordering activity’ and ‘relay

reading activity’. I split the text into sentences and provided each group with a set of

paper strips all containing lines of the advertisement. As a group, they read and

understood each sentence, then they put them in order through a group decision

making process. Once a group got the right order, they worked on the CCQs in the

textbook, and then the group moved on to the next step, which was practicing for the

relay reading game. Since the class was told they would be timed on their relay reading

at the end of the lesson, students were actively and voluntarily engaged in reading the

text. The mini survey after the class showed that students were actually learning how

group interaction could contribute to their learning (21 out of 23), and they found group

work interesting (19 out of 23). Another focus of this intervention was giving

interactions. Basically, most of the activities I designed for the interventions were pair-

or group work based. Bailey (2005) suggested three principles for teaching speaking to

beginning learners. One of the principles is “creating opportunities for students to

interact by using group work or pair work” (p.38). Pair work and group work have

been widely used in CLT classrooms. By working in pairs or in groups, students get

more individual talking time than when working in teacher-centered classes, and they

also get more feedback other than the teacher (ibid. 2005). In addition, I’ve realized that

the notion of CLT is linked to the cooperative learning strategies. Cooperative learning

occurs under the instructional use of small groups in order to achieve common learning

goals via cooperation (Dornyei, 1997). The problem of pair- or group work in a

classroom was, however, each group worked at a different rate of speed; some groups

finished early, while other groups took more time on a task. As a result, the groups that

finished earlier than others had to wait for the next step. Therefore, this time, I gave the

instructions for the whole process of the activities all at once. By doing so, students

didn’t need to sit around with nothing to do. They actually controlled their pacing with

the help of the teachers. However, the whole process was made up of numerous small

steps, therefore, the instructions were too long to remember. Consequently, the students

kept asking about the next step while they were doing the task at hand. What I found

after finishing this lesson was the importance of giving directions effectively and clearly;

breaking up the task into smaller activities so that no group is sitting idle between the

activities. The strategies for improving these issues were as follows; first, posting the

order of instructions on the board or providing written instructions on slips of paper for

each group; next, breaking the task into smaller steps with specific time limits. By

presenting a timer on the screen, the students could be aware of completing tasks

within the given time. Another recursive issue from the intervention was the waiting

time as each group presented in front of the class. In order to minimize the waiting time

during the group presentation, I applied a different technique, which is sharing the

result of the group work with other groups first before they present it in front of the

class. After having small group presentations, the students or the teacher choose one or

two groups to present in front of the class. This technique was applied throughout the

rest of the intervention.

The interventions for week 3 and 4 were closely linked together. The unit for week 3

and 4 was aimed at having students ask and answer about what they want to do. Schmidt

(1990) has drawn attention to the role of noticing in language learning. In order for

language development to take place, the learners need to take part in activities which

require them to try out and experiment in using newly noticed language forms. Therefore,

I planned the survey activity for both periods so that students linked the target sentence

patterns to the real life situation. While the 1st period had a limited number of sentence

patterns for the survey activity, such as “what do you want to do on (in) (special day)?”, “I

want to ~”, it had many steps to achieve the final goal, which was conducting the survey on

one topic for the whole class, then reporting the result to the whole class. To do this, each

group had to start from an individual writing activity, then group survey, and finally whole

class survey on different categories. Even though the survey activity had its own advantages,

the students were confused about the process and the class failed to complete the task.

Therefore, I took this issue into consideration for the subsequent task designs. I focused

on simple but meaningful tasks and thought about giving instructions effectively as I

planned for the next lesson. Also, I kept considering student interaction and

participation. First of all, I provided a vocabulary list for each pair so that they could

help each other to preview the words on the list. Next, I changed the listening processes

so that the students had more time to spend on the subsequent communicative task.

Lastly, I simplified the task. Morley (2001) maintains that simple tasks also can be

meaningful and authentic. Instead of limiting the number of target sentence patterns as

in the textbook, therefore, I designed the activity so that students expanded their

language use by recycling expressions that they have already learned. There were a lot

of interactions among group members, but the students used a lot more Korean than in

the previous lesson. It may due to the amount of the language needed for the activity.

Compared to the tasks in the previous intervention, the current task was pretty simple

but it required a lot more expressions in order to negotiate with each other, which was

selecting one program for a group performance for their upcoming field trip. According

to Horwitz (2008), CLT teacher should help the student formulate the idea in the second

language through a lot of scaffolding. If a warm-up step was given before the decision

making activity, the student might have used the language in a more creative and

meaningful way. Also, I learned that I should urge the students to use English

whenever I put them into group or pair work.

For the last two weeks of interventions, I took all these findings into consideration,

and I wanted to see any signs of improvement in the students’ motivation and

participation regardless of their level of English. The underlying approach of the

intervention for the AR is CLT. Therefore, the activities were designed to keep learners

meaningfully engaged in language use. In order to do this, all the activities involved

plenty of interactions between pairs, groups, and the teachers. I also tried to concentrate

more on the sequence of the activities as a whole. The last two interventions were based

on a story from the textbook. The objectives of the lesson were as follows; first, use the

language they already know by describing pictures; second, read the original story and

compare it to the fabricated one by listening; third, make up their own story by

switching out some parts of the story. When the students were doing the describing

activity, they were not only actively taking part in the activity, but also enjoying the

opportunity of using English as a means for delivering their own message. Moreover, in

spite of the deficiency of vocabulary and insufficient speaking skills, they had a feeling

of success because the listeners eventually identified the described pictures. It terms of

reading the story, students seemed to understand the story pretty well, even though

there was no line by line translation. They were also much more actively finding the

answers for the CCQs as they worked in pairs as compared to when I controlled

everything. Based on this reading stage, I realized that a teacher doesn’t necessarily

need to be the sole source of knowledge in a classroom. Indeed, students can be the best

teachers for one another, and they were able to learn by themselves with the help of

each other, which is one of the main aspects of sociocultural theory. One thing that I

want to highlight on this aspect is providing proper types of tasks. By having each pair

write answers for the CCQs on an individual mini-board, they had fun; at the same

time they felt more pressure to find the correct answers.

The subsequent intervention was closely linked to the previous lesson. Based on the

story each group made up, students performed a ‘Three-Act Play’. By applying the

findings from the previous interventions, such as providing written instructions, setting

specific time limits for each step, performing the role-play in small groups, giving clear

guidance on expectations of the final performance, I was able to manage time

effectively. During the last two interventions, I found most groups were comfortable

working together. There were a lot of interactions between pairs, group members, and

the teachers, and they were using language for meaningful purposes. The survey

showed that most of the students felt positively about their group work. 21 out of 23

thought their group members worked collaboratively, and responded that they were

learning from their friends.

This section reports the students’ changes in attitudes toward English class by

comparing and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data.

4.1. Research question

“How can communicative activities affect the motivation and participation of

students of different proficiency levels?”

4.1.1. The results of mini-survey

In order to investigate the students’ motivation and participation for each

intervention, mini-surveys were conducted after every intervention. The initial

questionnaire was composed of two closed-ended questions and one open-ended

question, which were about the students’ preference on the activity, and the degrees on

their confidence in speaking the target expressions. It was based on the assumption that

if students are confident in their speaking, and they are interested in what they are

doing, then their motivation and participation will grow. One open-ended question was

about the reason why they were (not) interested in the activity. However, in the middle

of the intervention, I added two more questionnaires to get the students’ perceptions on

their own contribution and others’.

4. Results

【Table 1. The self-assessment on the activities】(N=23 N=22)

statement week Strongly

agree agree Neutral Disagree

Strongly disagree

1. Today’s activity was interesting.

1 7 9 6 1 0

2 9 10 4 0 0

3 7 11 4 1 0

4 10 6 6 0 0

5 10 12 1 0 0

6 9 8 3 0 0

2. I can speak today’s key expressions confidently.

1 11 8 2 2 0

2 10 11 0 2 0

3 7 13 3 0 0

4 9 7 5 0 0

5 10 8 3 1 0

6 11 7 4 0 0

3. I participated a lot during the group (pair) work.

4 9 7 5 0 0

5 8 10 3 1 0

6 9 10 3 0 0

4. My group members participated actively during the group (pair) work.

4 6 9 5 0 2

5 9 12 1 0 0

6 8 11 2 1 0

Table 1 shows that the students perceptions of their contribution to the group (pair)

work were generally positive. Still, there were slight discrepancies on the perceptions

of their contribution to their groups and the perceptions of their group members’.

Overall, students thought positively of communicative activities and their speaking.

The positive feedback on the communicative activities (group/pair works), which

were provided by an open-ended question were as follows; “there was a lot of interaction

between friends”; “I liked to work collaboratively”; “I liked to move around the classroom to

share ideas”; “I liked to know what other friends thought about the topic”; “it was good to

express myself”.

Interestingly, most negative feedback was from higher-level students. They stated

as follows; “the task was too complicated”; “the classroom was too noisy”; “some of my group

members got sidetracked and it was annoying”.

This self-assessment on the activity was compared to subsequent class observation

analysis to justify each finding. In addition, the findings were backed up by

subsequent group interviews.

In order to examine the students’ changes in their participation, the researcher used

the behavior checklist. The numbers of the participants were tallied according to the

activity types the lessons went on. It was done by either video-analysis after the lessons

or in-class observation during the class. Since pair work or group work was done based

on the assumption that everybody would be involved in the activity, the students who

did not participate or interrupt others during the activity were mainly observed and

numbered.

【Table 2. The results of behavior checklist】(N=23 N=22)

Task type Whole-class activity Pair work or group work

Number of the students Participants participants Disrupter

Before the intervention 4~5/23 0/23 8 or more/23

Intervention 1 5/23 23/23 1/23



Intervention 4 13/22 19/22 1/22

Intervention 5 18/22 22/22 0/22

Intervention 6 17/22 22/22 0/22

Table 2 indicates that participants in the pair or group work were far more than

the ones in the whole-class activity. However, the results also showed that although

they worked in pairs or in groups, the number of the participants could be different.

In addition, the participants for the whole class activities also grow as the

intervention progressed. The results of the students’ self-assessment of the

participation and teacher’s in-class and video analyzed observation coincided.

In order to investigate the students’ general views on the communicative

activities, students’ post-intervention survey responses were analyzed. For the first

questionnaire, however, in order to retrieve students memories on the teacher-

centered class, I showed the video which was recorded before the intervention. The

students’ survey was composed of seven close-ended questions.

As seen in table 3, data on students’ perceptions on the use of group (pair) work

for learning English were very positive. However, 9% of students felt their group

members still needed to improve their contribution to their pair (group) work.

Students were slightly more generous about their own participation than that of their

peers’. Even though one third of the students withheld their opinions on teacher-

centered lessons, it was proved that it did not necessarily mean that they did not like

group (pair) work, they were able to learn well both in teacher-centered and in pair

(group) works. The result of the subsequent survey supports on this issue. Despite

their unbiased perspectives toward group (pair) work, no one wanted to have teacher-

centered English class. In order to identify the benefits or the challenges felt by the

students as they were participating in the intervention, open-ended questions were

given to the students. It was about their views on positive/ negative changes of their

own and their classmates’ throughout the new format (student-centered) of English

class. The responses from the students were mostly positive. However, some students

pointed out some challenges of the communicative activities. Here are some of the

comments on the group (pair) work from the students; “I’ve got a confidence in speaking

English”, “English is fun”, “Now I actively participate in the activities”, “Learning English is

not difficult”, “My partner helps me a lot”, “I love leading my group members”, “Some of my

students changed their attitude in a good way”, “We helped each other“ (positive feedback);

“The classroom was too noisy”, “I didn’t like my partner, and I didn’t want to work with him”,

“My group members still did not participated in the activity, I cannot see any changes in them”

(negative feedback).

【Table 3. Students self-perceptions on communicative activity】 (N=22)

Statement Yes Neutral No

1. I actively participated in the traditional English class. 6 11 5

2. I actively participated in the new type of (student-centered) class. 16 6 0

3. I contributed a lot during the group or pair work. 15 7 0

4. My group members contributed as much as I did. 12 8 2

5. Group (Pair) works were useful for learning English. 19 3 0

6. I prefer group (pair) work to teacher-centered lesson. 15 7 0

7. I want my teacher to go back to the traditional (teacher-centered) way. 22 0 0

Three students expressed their frustrations with their partner or group member’s

behavior, and one student did not like the noise during the activities. However, most

students perceived the group work as helpful for improving their confidence and

interests toward English class.

In order to examine whether communicative activities affect students differently

based on their level of proficiency, interviews with three different groups were

conducted. The groups were as follows; a high proficiency group, low proficiency

group, and an introverted group. They were asked to give their opinions freely on the

traditional English class and the communicative activity driven interventions.

【Table 4. Interview with the higher proficiency level group】

Before the intervention

(Teacher-centered approach) During the intervention

(Student-centered approach)

Good Bad Good Bad

Quite classroom - I was able to pay easily attention to the teacher

Peers’ behavioral problem (low participation) Boring lesson Only limited number of Ss participate in the lesson No improvement in my speaking Worry about others’ view on me

Everybody participates in the activity Change in classroom atmosphere (lively) A lot more chance to speak Have fun I like help other Ss

Put much burden on me (pay a lot more attention) Hard to manage someone who did not participate Some Ss did not do their role Sometimes group members digress from the topic

Before the intervention (Teacher-centered approach)

During the intervention (Student-centered approach)

Good Bad Good Bad

Korean teacher’s translation help me to understand - Easy to understand

no chance to speak (no improvement in listening and speaking) Boring lesson didn’t try to listen to English instruction only teacher talked (it was a lecture)

Everybody participates in the activity We cooperated with each other I actively participated in group work I had a lot more chance to speak There was a lot of interaction.

One of the student s disturb others It was hard to reconcile ideas (My idea was not accepted)

【Table 5. Interview with the lower proficiency level group】

As seen in above tables, all three group’s responses on both English classes had a lot

in common in many ways. In terms of communicative tasks, they expressed a lot more

opinions for both positive and negative aspects of those activities. It may reflect the

degree of their engagement in class. In traditional classroom, most of the students were

passive learners, whereas the students became active learners during the current

interventions. Therefore, they were assessing the process of learning as well as their own

performances. Most of the comments from the group interview coincided with the

previous data, such as mini-surveys, post-surveys, and teacher’s observations.

Lastly, feedback from the peer teachers was collected to get an objective perspective.

One was from the native co-teacher, and the other was from a Korean English teacher who

taught the current intervention subjects last year. Feedback from the teachers supported

the results of the other data. The native co-teacher viewed communicative tasks positively

in most parts due to the increased participation and dynamics of the class. The co-teacher

stated on the intervention as follows; “Before the intervention the students’ attitude

towards English class was one of listlessness and apathy. Students were forced to sit still

and listen to the teachers during most of the class…….Many students lacked the confidence

to participate because they would be speaking in front of 20 other students and two

teachers…...After the intervention there was a noticeable difference in the students’

attitude toward English class. Once the activities became student centered many more

students were willing to use the language and speak the language themselves…….Activities

that were used during the intervention were much more engaging for students, and allowed

them to use their creativity and follow their own curiosity”.

【Table 6. Interview with the introverted group】

Before the intervention (Teacher-centered approach)

During the intervention (Student-centered approach)

Good Bad Good Bad

None

There were no chances to speak Boring lesson I did not pay attention to the teacher I had a chat while the teacher talked I was sleepy

Members became closer I like to help each other I learn from my friends I have a lot more chance to speak

It was hard to coordinate different ideas I’m afraid of making mistakes (My group members might be making fun of me)

The Korean English teacher observed two of the interventions and mostly stated the

positive aspects of the lessons with communicative tasks. She was aware of the potential

for communicative classroom in fostering students’ participation, because she was easily

able to spot the students’ changes in their attitudes based on her previous experiences

with them. She commented on the class as follows; “When I taught the same students

last year, I was in misery after each lesson not knowing what to do…. The class was the

battle between me and the students who kept talking to each other or lying on the desk

helplessly.…… After observing Mrs. Kim’s class with the same students, I realized that

the problem was in me… For these unmotivated students, she made them do something on

their own…..For each step, they needed to discuss with their group members to finish their

activities. The level of each activity was mixed properly and had its goals to achieve so

every student was able to participate actively. Even the students with low level were excited

to create their own stories and eager to show them off to the teachers and other

students……”

However, the Korean English teacher also pointed out the challenges of the

interventions, mainly the students’ dependence on Korean during group (pair) activities

and having too many activities in one lesson. It will be discussed in the subsequent part,

conclusion and implications.

5. Discussion

By analyzing the mini survey data, which was collected right after each intervention, I

examined the students’ preferences of the activity and their confidence in speaking as

well as their self-assessment on the participation of themselves and their peers. The

findings from the mini survey showed students felt mostly positive about learning

English through communicative activities. As the intervention went on, students in

neutral position in terms of participation seemed to move toward an affirmative position.

It may be due to increased group cohesiveness and to an awareness of their roles. As the

intervention continued, specific roles were assigned to each group member, and this

could be one of the factors that affected their participation. In addition, the different task

types could enhance students’ motivation and participation; tasks with less complication

and more relevance to the students’ life; well-sequenced activities in a lesson; new type of

tasks which students never met before can affect positively to increase students’

motivation and participation.

The findings from the teacher’s observation also reflected the same results as the one

from the mini survey. Before the intervention, only a few students participated in the

whole-class activities. In this module, the teacher was mostly explaining things in the

textbook; there was no point for the students to participate unless they volunteered for

the questions. As a result, there were a lot more bystanders and disrupters during the

lesson. However, as the lessons changed from teacher-centered to student-centered, most

students were encouraged to take part in the activities in order to achieve their goals.

Consequently, the numbers of participants surged and bystanders disappeared. Still, one

or two students who were reluctant to join group work. For these students, most other

disrupters started being engaged in the group work with the active intervene from their

group members. Interestingly, as the teacher-centered whole-class activity turned into

student-centered, students’ participation in the whole class was also increased. Many of

the students volunteered to give answers as well as contribute their ideas. It could be due

to changes in their attitudes toward learning English from passive listeners to active

speakers.

At the end of the intervention, a post-survey was conducted in order to explore

students’ general views on the intervention and their own attitudes toward English. The

result coincided with the previous data analysis. According to students’ responses in table

3, students drastically changed their attitude on English class and group activity after the

intervention. 6 out of 22 (23.3%) respond positively on their participation before the

intervention, this number increased to 16 (72.7%). In addition, 5 out of 22 initialy

responded negatively on their participation, they disappeared after the intervention. Still

23.3% students remained in a neutral position, which implies the importance of task

design for the teacher to get their attention. By facilitating interaction through

purposeful and interesting topics or types of activities, the teacher should find the way to

move the students in the neutral area toward the positive area. As seen in table 3,

students were generally felt positively toward learning English through interaction

between peers, and strongly desired to keep the students-centered language classroom.

The result suggested that teaching English through communicative activity should be

continued throughout the whole school year.

The results of the group interview implied various factors to be considered when the

teacher implemented communicative tasks in a language classroom. Interviews suggested

that most of the high achievers were particularly goal-oriented and they were concerned

about task completion. In addition, the students in the higher group tended to take major

roles in their group; this explains why they felt a lot more pressure on the group work

than the rest of their group members. Despite these negative views from some of the

higher-level students, others viewed the pressure on them positively; rather than seeing

the bystanders or disrupters as bothers, they thought they could learn more by helping

them. The challenges on difficulty in negotiating different ideas, which was raised by

both the lower-level group and the introverted group seemed it is not the matter of

English itself, but the matter of their social skills. This is one of the virtues of using

communicative activities in language learning. Skehan (1998a) claimed a task should

contain a problem to solve and relationship to real-world activities. By learning English

through communicative tasks, students will be able to develop social skills such as

pragmatic competence as well as language itself. Interestingly, the students in the lower

group worried a lot less about making mistakes. It was equally applied to the introverted

group; they enjoyed having a chance to speak in a small group without worries of their

mistakes, which would be more difficult if they had only the whole-class activity.

Therefore, the communicative activities seem to have a positive affect on both the lower

level and the introverted groups. In addition, the students in the introverted group stated

that they liked the communicative activities because they were able to build close

relationships with their friends as they worked in groups or in pairs. It motivated them to

be more engaged in the learning processes.

The data from the teacher feedback also coincided with other findings. However, as

seen in a Korean English teacher’s comment, the excessive use of Korean should be

improved throughout the rest of the school year if communicative tasks are going to be

used in the classroom. Feedback from the teachers imply the importance of class

dynamics through group or pair work. From the collected data, learning English through

communicative activities should be an ongoing process throughout the whole school year.

The findings of the present study suggested that the use of communicative activities

in learning English facilitated students’ motivation and participation regardless of their

level of English proficiency.

According to Richards (2007), the goal of CLT is teaching communicative competence.

Communicative competence is viewed as “the ability of language learners to interact with

other speakers to make meaning as distinct from their ability to perform on discrete-point

test of grammatical knowledge” (Savignon, 1991:264, as cited in Bailey, 2005). Under the

CLT approach, learners have to participate in classroom activities that are based on a

cooperative rather than individualistic approach to learning. When the learners are

engaged in interaction and meaningful communication through relevant, purposeful and

6. Conclusion and Implications

interesting activities, students will develop their communicative competence (Littlewood,

2007). Throughout the 6 week-intervention, most of the students were actively engaged

in their pair or group work. As students did the role-play in the 1st intervention, they tried

not only to apply what they’ve learned to their role-plays, but also use the real language.

While the students prepared their role-play, they needed more language beyond the text-

level in order to achieve their goals. They looked for the expressions by asking each other

or consulting other sources such as the teachers or the web dictionary. As the intervention

proceeded, the students have realized how group interaction could contribute to their

learning English. The mini-survey after the 2nd intervention showed 21 out of 23 students

felt that learning in a group was helpful and enjoyable. Once the group cohesiveness

started building up, I designed the activities which could facilitate language intake.

Schumidt (1990) has drawn attention to the role of noticing in language learning. He

maintained only intake can serve as the basis for language development. In order for

language development to take place, therefore, the learners need to take part in activities

which require them to try out and experiment using newly noticed language forms. Thus,

by providing various activities based on students’ previous experiences, interests, topic

familiarity, and their real lives, the students were motivated to learn English, and they

were able to actively participate in the English class. In addition, regular experience of

success and a feeling of contributing to their group work helped learners increase their

self-confidence, which was backed up by Dornyei’s (2001) study.

Once I blamed my students for their attitudes toward English class, however, I found

that they were changing gradually through a different approach. The results from all the

different sources helped me to conclude that communicative activities facilitate a

different level of students’ motivation and participation in learning English. Even

though issues have been constantly coming up as I have implemented the AR

intervention, I was able to improve my lessons gradually by applying new strategies and

techniques from findings through the reflective journals. It will definitely be ongoing

processes throughout my teaching life.

What I really want to focus on after the current AR is increasing vocabulary. The

students’ limited vocabulary knowledge has been a recurring issue throughout the whole

period of the intervention. Students’ lack of vocabulary knowledge caused a lot of

restriction for not only designing tasks as a teacher but also completing tasks as a student.

According to Commins’ (2000) threshold hypothesis, a minimum threshold in language

proficiency must be passed before a second-language speaker can reap any benefits from

language. Albeit f luency should take on more importance than accuracy in a CLT

classroom, Brown (2008) noted that fluency should not be encouraged at the expense of

clear, unambiguous, and direct communication. Considering accuracy can be developed

by vocabularies as the building blocks of language and communication (Lewis, 2008), it’s

high time to work on building up students’ vocabulary knowledge. I believe learners’

proficiency with words and chunks can be developed by encountering new words through

reading, and then applying those words in meaningful way. Therefore, it will be my job to

provide an environment for their use of language in the classroom. The most challenging

thing for this matter is how to combine these plans with the English curriculum in

harmonious way. This issue will definitely be my next action research topic.

References

Bailey, K. (2005). Practical English language teaching: Speaking. Boston: Mcgraw-Hill. Brown, H.D. (2008). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (3rd Edition). White Plains: Pearson Education, Inc. Brown, H.D. (2008). Principles of language learning and teaching (5th Edition). White Plains: Pearson Education, Inc. Commins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Dornyei, Z. (1997). Psychological processes in cooperative language learning: Group dynamics and motivation. The Modern Language Journal, 81(4), 482-493. Dornyei, Z. (2001). The psychology of the language learner. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Driscoll, A., and Hitz, R. (1989). Praise in the classroom. ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education Urbana IL. 1-6. (ERIC identifier: ED313108) Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language teaching and learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horwitz, E. (2008). Becoming a language teacher: A practical guide to second language learning and teaching. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Lewis, L. (2008). The lexical approach: The state of ELG and a way forward. Hove: Language Teaching Publications. Littlewood, W. (2007). Communicative and task-based language teaching in East Asian classrooms. Language Teaching, 40, 243-249. Richards, J. (2007). Communicative language teaching today. From http://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/communicative- language-teaching-today-v2.pdf Savignon, S. (1991). Communicative language teaching: State of the art. TESOL Quarterly, 25(2), 261-278. Schumidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 129-159. Skehan, P. (1998a). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Appendix A

Mini- Survey for each Lesson (English Version)

★ Rate the following statements on a scale of 1 to 5.

(1=strongly agree, 2=agree, 3=neutral, 4=disagree, 5= strongly disagree)

Q1. Today’s activity was interesting.

1 2 3 4 5

Q2. I can speak today’s key expressions confidently.

1 2 3 4 5

3. I participated a lot during the group (pair) work.

1 2 3 4 5

4. My group members participated actively during the group (pair) work.

1 2 3 4 5

Appendix B

Post Student Survey after the Intervention (English Version)

★ Rate the following statements on a scale of 1 to 3.

(1=agree 2=neutral 3=disagree)

Q1. I actively participated in the traditional (teacher-centered) English lesson.

1 2 3

Q2. I actively participated in the new type of (student-centered) group or pair work.

1 2 3

Q3. I contributed a lot during the group or pair work.

1 2 3

Q4. My group members contributed to our group work as much as I did.

1 2 3

Q5. Group (Pair) works were useful for learning English.

1 2 3

Q6. I prefer group (pair) work to teacher-centered lesson.

1 2 3

Why? ___________________________________________________________________

Q7. I want my teacher to go back to the traditional (teacher-centered) way.

1 2 3

Appendix C

Behavior Checklist Sample

Actual use of the behavior Checklist

Student Survey Samples

Student Work Samples

Peer Evaluation on Role-play

Survey Activity on Holidays

Feedback from Peer Teachers

Before the intervention the students’ attitude towards English class was one of listlessness and apathy. Students were forced to sit still and listen to the teachers during most of the class. Before the intervention not only were the opportunities for students to use the language few and far between, but also all speaking opportunities were in front of the whole class. Many students lacked the confidence to participate because they would be speaking in front of 20 other students and two teachers. In addition, when students would speak in class they usually spoke in quiet mumbled voices because they were afraid of making mistakes. After the intervention there was a noticeable difference in the students’ attitude toward English class. Although there were still times when students struggled to be actively involved in class, the small group activities encouraged and produced a level of participation that was not seen before the intervention. Once the activities became student centered many more students were willing to use the language and speak the language themselves. Also, since students were often in small groups it eliminated the tepidness with which they approached the language before the intervention. Instead of talking in front of a group of twenty people, they were able to speak in groups of three or four, which significantly reduced their anxiety. Activities that were used during the intervention were much more engaging for students, and allowed them to use their creativity and follow their own curiosity.

Christopher Nichols

Feedback from Peer Teachers

When I taught the same students last year, I was in misery after each lesson not knowing what to do. It felt like all of the energies that I had were drained from my body. They were excited only for the activities that they liked (usually games) and the rest of the class was the battle between me and the students who kept talking to each other or lying on the desk helplessly. I tried many things to change this situation, giving them positive reinforcement or punishment but none of them worked. I had no fun in teaching them and in turn, students had no interest in learning. I guess I blamed for the students who were not motivated at all after all of the efforts that I made. After watching Mrs. Kim’s class with the same students, I realized that the problem was in me not in the students. I stuck to the teacher-centered teaching method assuring myself that they needed the teacher-centered teaching because their level was low. If they don’t listen to me or do anything, however, what’s the point of keeping the same old method? In her class, everything was student-centered. For these unmotivated students, she made them do something on their own. For instance, they were asked to describe some picture cards to their group members, find the differences after listening to the fabricated story, and create a new story. For each step, they needed to discuss with their group members to finish their activities. The level of each activity was mixed properly and had its goals to achieve so every student was able to participate actively. Even the students with low level were excited to create their own stories and eager to show them off to the teachers and other students. There were no pressures of being perfect or shames of not being good at English. If they had some problems, group members helped each other. What mattered was to be cooperative not competitive. The problems that I noticed was that they used Korean quite a lot and sometimes they didn’t know what was happening because there were quite a lot of activities. During the class hour, the energy of the class was active and alive, which made some students overly excited and noisy but as long as they participated I don’t see any problem. Thanks to her student-centered teaching, I felt I needed to improve myself to be a better teacher not

keeping the old-fashioned way of teaching. Hyunin

Class Photos

Before the Intervention

During the Intervention

Class Photos

The effect on communicative activities in the classroom

My journey is finally coming to an end. It has been a very, very, very long journey.

Everybody in my hometown will be waiting for me. I really miss my family – my beloved

husband, my sons, and other family members. I really miss my friends, too. Without my

family’s sacrifice and support, I would never successfully accomplish my journey.

Whenever I was exhausted and in hard times, my husband encouraged me to keep going

on; my two sons always cheered for me. How could I have made such a long journey

without them? Therefore, I would like to dedicate all the souvenirs I’ve got from my travel

to my husband and sons.

When I look back on my journey, there were always many people on the road. They

were all warmhearted and wonderful people. They always offered help when I was in need.

They shared their experiences and wisdom when I was in trouble; they provided warm

soup and a soft and comfortable bed when I got hungry and sick. All the people I met

became my friends, my teachers and my mentors. I will never forget them for the rest of

my life.

Now I am really happy to end my journey. BUT, I know my sweet home will not be

the final destination. Someday, I will pack my bag again, and begin my voyage toward the

road I have never travelled. When the time comes, the precious experiences that I’ve

learned from this journey will definitely be the cornerstone for my next steps.

Epilogue

Thank You!

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