Action Research Objectives

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

Based on the research question, I started to wonder about the outcomes I would like to achieve by the end of the implementation stage. I realized that I wanted students to raise awareness of their own mistakes (Edge cited by Harmer, 2007) so they could consciously avoid them in future conversations. I am also curious about the effects of Krashen's Monitoring Hypothesis and I am aware that in order to improve accuracy there must be certain conditions that have to be met during face-to-face interactions (Krashen cited by Brown, 2007). Finally, I haved used a voice message board called Voxopop to assess my students' individual speaking performances in terms of fluency, but I had never considered it as a tool to improve speaking accuracy during authentic communicative events. Therefore, I wondered how this asynchronous application could help students raise awareness on their own mistakes as well as their classmates. At the end of this reflection process, I came up with the following objectives:

General:

To measure students’ progress in constructing accurate full-length utterances in the past tense by using message voice forums.

This was just the beginning. I also want to go further and find out the impact that the monitoring strategies have in accuracy by means of the voice message board. Therefore, I must identify and describe changing behaviors that is why I would like to reach the following aims:

Specific:

• To identify learners’ problems when constructing full-length utterances and to set up an action plan to help them improve speaking accuracy through monitoring strategies.
• To identify key monitoring strategies used by students in order to improve speaking accuracy.
• To describe how self and peer-correction have an effect on the accuracy in the use of past tenses through the use of the Voxopop voice message board.