Pedagogical intervention action plan

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This is my updated version of my action plan for the implementation and data collection stages:

• Needs Analysis through Voxopop (test) (May 18, 2010)

• Initial survey through Survey Monkey (May 18, 2010)

• Artifacts (Voxopop) (May 18 until August 11, 2010 -six interventions in total)


• Transcripts (July, August 2010)

• Mid term and final surveys (June 28 and August 10, 2010)

• Research journal through Blogger (March 26, 2010- starting date)

Data Collection Tools

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These are the data collection tools I chose to employ during the intervention stage of my Action Research Project:

• Needs Analysis through Voxopop (pre and post test): This test will help me detect the problems students have when they use the past tenses and it will also help me to see the final results in terms of students' improvement in the use of the past tenses.

• Initial, mid and final surveys through Encuesta facil:  It will help me determine the population that I am going to intervene as well as to know what are their beliefs in their use of English, their opinions about their progress and the implementation in general. At the end of the process they will draw a final conclusion if they felt that the approach actually helped them to improve their accuracy and up to what extent.

• Artifacts (Voxopop): These are all the speaking activities where students get to peer and self monitor their accuracy of past tenses. This will be also used as the means where learners do six speaking tasks with the purpose of implementing the strategies and progress will be shown.

• Students' reflection log (Nabble): This application has the specific objective of getting students to reflect upon their partners' problems and progresses in the use of past tenses.

• Transcripts: These will show the progress students have made in using the past tenses as well as the use of the monitoring strategies (peer and self-correction).

• Research journal through Blogger: Here is where I write about my impressions about the implementation process. It is also a tool for reflection and planning the next steps.

• Rubrics: This tool will give me (and my students as well ) a more concrete idea from my students' real progress in terms of the improvement of accuracy and the implementation of the self and peer correction strategies.

Action Research Constructs

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 I have reflected upon the learners' problems to communicate accurately when they get to a pre-intermediate level. I have chosen to make emphasis in accuracy when students use the past tenses basically because this is one of the most troublesome aspects of L2 that learners have to deal with during their learning processes. I have read that most of the time that fossilization occurs when the listener accepts the speaker's utterances without making any necessary corrective feedback on their errors and/or mistakes (Virgil & Oller cited by Brown, 2007); therefore, I suspect that listeners can also contribute to the speakers' progress in terms of accuracy if properly trained. Krashen (2007), on the other hand, believes that learners should monitor or edit their mistakes until they have thoroughly acquired the concept; this could be either done by peer or self correction. However, people do not generally correct each other grammar errors during a face-to-face interaction because they mainly focus on meaning and also because they do not want to seem rude in front of the speaker. As a consequence, speakers think that they are being accurate because such feedback is non-existent.

Since I usually work with voice message forums mostly for fluency, I have come up with the idea of implementing one of these applications a monitoring tool to improve accuracy in the past tenses during communicative events. The following are the constructs in which my research is going to be based on:

• Speaking skills

(accuracy)

• Monitoring strategies (peer and self-correction)

• Message voice forums

Action Research Objectives

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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.

My Research Question

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Being a teacher requires to master certain competencies such as knowing how to deliver knowledge to students taking into account the different teaching approaches and methodologies available to support students' learning processes, a teacher has also got to be aware of his/her students learning styles and learning paces. Considering these aspects that are embedded in the learning process (plus many more!), the teacher has to  notice a sense of progress in his/her students as well as the students. At the beginning of this learning process, it is easy for students to understand and perform the basic concepts that were taught in each lesson (especially during the basic stages in English learning) . However, there comes a time when students start fossilizing mistakes of certain verb tenses and I have noticed that this starts happening when students get to the pre-intermediate courses. I have seen that many of these learners are not able to control accuracy when they use the past tenses during speaking activities. The problem starts to appear when students have difficulties shifting aspects from simple past to past continuous. This has caught my attention since I see that it is a constant in the pre-intermediate levels. Therefore, the following question arose:

What are the effects of the voice message forum Voxopop on speaking accuracy of A2 learners?

Stament of the problem

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Problem:

The overall objectives of the Skills 1-3 block is to enable students to use English as a way to expand their already existing knowledge, to collaborate among classmates to reach specific tasks effectively, and to consolidate what they have already learned in the six previous courses. Students are expected to use grammatically appropriate discourse to talk about the topics that the textbook (Top Notch 2) has to offer.

I have noticed from my experience as well as other teachers' who have taught the same courses that many of the learners from the Skills block  (CEF A2/B1) tend to present difficulties in speaking accuracy especially constructing full-length sentences in Past tenses (Subject + Verb + Complement order) in affirmative negative statements and yes/no and information questions. They also show difficulties shifting aspects (e.g. from simple past to past continuous). They are also not aware of correcting their own speaking production in order to improve accuracy and this generally leads to fossilization and stagnation. The aforementioned issue concerns me because these learners are most likely to reach an early learning plateau in their learning process quite prematurely due to lack of awareness of correcting their own mistakes especially during communicative events.