What I have found from the initial coding process

Image retrieved from Google on January 15, 2011

I just finished discriminating the data from all of the conversations and I found that the results vary depending on each of the students' commitment to their learning process and how much attention they paid to their peers' comments in the forum. For instance, Johana and Fabiola were the students who devoted more time to listen to their partners' conversations and they also had some time to reflect upon their own performances. This caused an impact in terms of progress in the construction of accurate utterances in the past tense especially with Johana who was always demanding with herself throughout the process. On the other hand, Fabiola did great during the fist five conversations, but then in the last two her performance in constructing accurate utterances waned. She told me that she felt tired and she had lots of things to do at her work and that had an influence in her outcomes. Claudia had little change; I can conclude that in spite of improving sentence construction especially at the predicate level as well as the Subject + Verb agreement, she still had problems implementing the verbs in past tense.

Diana and Andres showed no progress at all throughout the process. They did not manage to raise awareness on the importance of constructing accurate full-length utterances. Their comments in the forum were just too shallow (especially Andres's) and they did not consider their partners' advice in order to improve their performances.

Coding Procedure and Update

I have been detecting and categorizing  the most salient features of my students' speech in terms of accuracy, peer/self correction strategies and the new findings that may become future further research. So far, I have noticed improvement in most of the learners mainly because they have raised awareness on their most concurrent errors and they are starting to refrain them or they are still in the process of correcting them.

The procedure that I am following is to highlight each one of my students' speaking performances according to the five main categories (hits, misses, self-correction, peer-correction and other types of errors to be analyzed in further research). This is what I have been doing so far.

Sixth Session Student Assessment Report

These are my final thoughts about each of my students' performances:

Johanna: Even though the recording was shorter than the other ones due to technical problems, Johanna was more accurate and fluent at the same time. She has overcome the Subject + Verb agreement and she uses more regular and irregular verbs correctly.


Example:

• I went to the shopping center and I bought some things and some food and some clothes, when I was paying in the cashier, the clerk undercharged me.

Fabiola barely spoke during this conversation due to time constraints and technical problems. However, she was highly accurate in both affirmative as well as in asking questions. She did not use any negative statements in this conversation.


Examples:

• And how much did you receive?

• The majority of men was more opportunity for to promote or a better job or for a better area.

Definitively, Andres’s learning process in terms of improving the use of the past tenses during the implementation process show strong signs of fossilization. This shows that a negative attitude and lack of autonomy had a direct influence in Andres's final learning outcome. Gabriel also noticed what I did.

Andres did not comply with all his homework assignments and he did not use the course’s learning community in order to do some independent work.

Diana did not only suffer a backslide but she also seems to have stagnated in terms of accuracy. She only used some verbs in past tenses, she missed out all of the auxiliary verbs in past when she asked some questions and she did not organize her ideas accordingly. Mayi noticed that Diana was not being accurate when she asked questions

Claudia is still struggling in implementing the new irregular verbs into her conversations, but she has improved in constructing negative statements  though Fabiola thinks she did a great job in this.

Sixth Implementation Session Feedback

Based on what I agreed with my Action Research teacher (Liubava) and my Thesis Director (Valeriya), I will only focus on the five students who lasted the entire implementation stage. This means that I will mention about Johanna, Fabiola, Andres, Diana and Claudia's performances in the last recording session. I have seen that there has been a positive and negative performance patter depending o the students' believes and attitudes towards the system and their autonomy I employed to help them overcome their problems in terms of accuracy using the simple past and the past continuous. Curiously, the three students who were new at the Colombo at the beginning of the process did better than the ones who had taken other courses with other teachers before they started taking the Skills 1-3 courses with me. That means that only Johanna, Claudia and Fabiola were the ones who had faith on the system and learning from their partners' comments in the online forum plus they did a lot more than the others outside the classroom such as doing all their home work assignments and doing some independent work in the online community I set up at the beginning of Skills 3. However, Diana and Andres who started taking the English course three or six months before felt that the system was not too reliable in terms of learning from their peers' comments in the online forum. They thought that it was better that the teacher to intervene in the error correction stage rather than peers. However, it seems they have forgotten that I provided them with rubrics and feedback on their general performances not just during the implementation sessions, but with the regular classes on a weekly basis.

When I asked these students to whatever happened to their learning autonomy which is part of the Centro Colombo Americano's principles, they answered back with the same excuse as always: they did not have any free time to complete all their homework assignments, check their partners' comments in the online forum, do extra work in the learning platform I had set up for them four weeks ago and so on. When I also asked them if they devoted enough time to study during the weekend, the three of them said that they hardly did any independent work because they had other plans with their friends and family members. It is my opinion, that learners' believes about traditional methods on how to teach and learn a second language hindered their progress.

Last Day of the Course and Conclusions from the Implementation Stage

Retrieved from Google images on August 13, 2010

I felt that this final course (Skills 3) went smoother than the previous one because I did not only set  action plans for the implementation stage but also for solving the problems that arose with some students during the three-month cycle. It is important to reflect on what happens in the classroom on a day-to-day basis and to intervene as soon as possible in order to take the proper measures to improve the teaching practice. This is the reflection that I would take with me from the implementation stage. As far as what I used to improve my students accuracy in the simple past and the past continuous tenses, I still need to analyze the data that I gathered during this stage. Then I would surely know if what I did actually helped them or not. I must say that it was an interesting process with its ups and downs. I am sure that if I were to do a second cycle with this experiment I know that it would be much better since I have learned from my mistakes.

Fifth Session's Student Assessment Report

This is what happened with my students' performance during the fifth recording session:

Johanna improved accuracy in this conversation in terms of constructing affirmative and negative statements. She was much more attentive to what she said and to how she organized her utterances. She followed the models I wrote on the board (and she also wrote them down in her notebook). It seems that this helped her raise awareness in accuracy in affirmative statements since she did a practice round with Fabiola before the recording. This was one of her best recordings during the whole process. Andres suggested Johanna to learn more irregular verbs in order enrich her stories. I noticed that she still has some problems asking questions, but she has improved in constructing negative statements.


Examples:

• My mother is a generous person. I admired her because she has been working in a business at home since she retired from her work.

• What did she do last week?

Fabiola: Although she did not talk as much as the other times, Fabiola committed less mistakes than the previous conversation. She barely made errors in constructing affirmative and negative statements, but she still had problems asking questions not in terms of structuring but in employing accurate vocabulary. She learned a wide range of irregular verbs and she is improving in terms of pronouncing the ED endings.


Examples:

• Who is in your life the most very important person?

• What did she work in Bucaramanga?

Andres has showed signs of stagnation when he is trying to convey meaning in the simple past tense. He has not made any effort to learn new irregular verbs, improving the pronunciation of the ED endings and to construct complete ideas. At this point of the process, most of the students notice his incorrect use of grammar whenever he talks to other people.

 In this conversation, Diana suffered a great backslip. She was not focused in the S+V+C agreement, verbs in past tenses, organizing predicates and so forth. She seemed more focused on getting her message across rather than finding a balance between meaning and accuracy. She went back to square one. Vicky noticed that she was not using the verbs during her conversation.
 

Claudia had a backslide in this conversation especially in three aspects: using the irregular verbs, conjugating subject + verbs and organizing the predicates.

 

Fifth Implementation Session Feedback

In this session, I noticed that some of the students (the ones I feel believe in the system) showed great improvement in terms of accuracy in both affirmative and negative statements as well in formulating questions whereas the ones who are still skeptical on having their classmates correct their own errors instead of the teacher are the ones who are falling behind especially in learning the irregular verbs in past. I think that it does not matter what system is used to learn a foreign language, but if a student does not believe in it I think that he or she will not progress. Not all the methods and approaches are made to fit every sigle student. I also believe that adult learners should be the ones who should take charge of their own learning processes and not the teacher. Most of them haven't taken the time to study new verbs or have taken risk to use new ones during the different conversations or to prepare their conversations beforehand to see how to include new vocabulary or tenses for their upcoming interactions. That's my conclusion.

Fourth Session's Student Assessment Report

These are my impressions from each of my students' performances during the recording sessions:

This was Johanna’s weakest conversation in terms of accuracy in the use of affirmative statements. There was an evident backslide because she seemed to have forgotten many verbs in past even though she had prepared her conversation beforehand in class before going to the multi-media lab. However, she improved the construction of negative statements and questions. Her most significant drawback was that she made the same type of errors at the predicate level and Subject + Verb agreement. I believe that she did not monitor her oral production that time. She only self-corrected a mistake once.


After having reflected upon her previous performance, Johanna admitted that she was careless throughout the entire conversation. She told me that the night before she had to stay up to late hours in her office and that this could have affected her performance

Examples:

• We say my parents I got married in March (Past tenses).

• I plan to when since December for to March (Coherence and cohesion)

Fabiola: This performance was quite similar to the initial test in terms of accuracy. In this conversation, Fabiola produced 50% of the affirmative statements correct and the other 50% incorrect. She was careless in terms of monitoring her production in the use of the regular and irregular verbs (she used the present form) and this also affected accuracy in the construction of negative statements (Vicky also noticed this). On the other hand, she improved her performance in terms of asking accurate questions. Fabiola also showed problems when trying to implement the past continuous. She knows the form, but she does not know when and how to use it.


Examples:

• She had another baby and this baby is beautiful.

• Is very hard

Andres had a great backslip in this conversation. He barely used any irregular verbs in the past tense and he did not make any effort to improve the pronunciation of the ED endings. He also did not conjugate the subject and verbs throughout the conversation. In this conversation, Andres had problems in verb TO BE + Subject agreement when asking questions.


Juan also noticed Andres’s underperformance especially in not constructing full-length utterances. He also heard that Andres was inaccurate in using the verbs in past tense. Andres is doing some parts of his homework but he is not studying to learn the verbs in past tense.

This has been Diana’s best performance to date. She used more irregular verbs accurately as well as asking well-structured questions. Curiously, she did not use any negative statements in this conversation. She also decreased the mistakes regarding Subject + Verb agreement. She also bettered the construction of predicates.


Diana told me that she has had some time to study at home by looking at her textbook and catching up with her workbook. Michael focused more on Diana’s mistakes rather than acknowledging her advances.

Fourth Implementation Session Feedback

In this recording session, I noticed that Fabiola suffered a great backdrift. When I asked her what had happend, she told me that she did not have enough time to prepare her topic the day before because she had a lot of duties at her work. Fabiola had a slight improvement but she has been experimenting with new verbs and the use of the past continuous more than before. This also happened with Diana. Andres was another student who suffered greatly in terms of using the irregular verbs, but he told me that he does not have enough time to study at home. This shows that learner autonomy is an essential variable in terms of learning and implementing new concepts. I observed that most of them went back to the Subject + Verb Agreement problem but they have advanced in learning new irregular verbs and they are more aware on pronouncing the ED endings in the regular ones.

Starting Skills 3

The final course started and there are four new students aboard (Alejandra, Mayi, Diana and Gabriel). Three students did not continue; one of them dropped out because of personal issues (Adriana) and two decided to postpone the course for a month (Maritza and Michael). I told students to accept the invitations to their learning community and to join the diffirent groups. I also instructed them to do a learners' profile in order to set up specific learning objectives according to their individual needs and to start a self-access portfolio where I can check their out-of-class process. I also told them that there are going to be surprise quizzes to check on the verbs in past tense and I instructed them to check the wiki's forum so they can see my comments regarding their discusion board's performances. The four new students read and signed the consentment letters.

Skills 2 implementation conclusions and action plan

Image retrieved from Google images on July 12, 2010

This cycle was particularly difficult to deal with in terms of involving students to become more autonomous in spite of being adult learners. Most of them would not do their basic workbook's assignments and they would show up late to class. Moreover, the peer-monitoring work in the use of the past simple and past continuous was too general  and the students' comments did not help their counterparts notice what their real problems in using these two aspects. All the students suggested me to quiz them daily so they can internalize the vebs; however, I have noticed that they know many verbs in simple past but they are not aware of implementing them properly during the conversations. I will do what they wish, but I will also intervene during the classroom conversation tasks by signaling them when to use the verbs in past. This method might raise awareness of accuracy but this only shows that there is a conflict between competence and performance. Tho ones who are actually using the peer and sel-correction strategies aret he ones who are really making progress.

I intend to start a learning platform where students can practice the skills they are having problems with since it is probable that some students might like to consolodate concepts outside the classroom. I will also include a link to a Voxopop talkgroup so they can practice the simple past and the past continuous tenses more intensively outside the classroom setting. I just hope that they will join the group and to actually take action without depending on me too much.

Third Session's Student Assessment Report

This is what I noticed about my students' performances during the third implementation session:

Johanna has improved a bit in the use of affirmative statements especially in conjugating the Subject + Verb agreement but she had more problems producing the regular and irregular verbs because she took more risks in implementing new ones in this conversation. She also omitted the auxiliary DID when she formulated some questions. However, she has improved the use of the verbs TO BE in past although Juan noticed that she still had problems using them during some passages of the conversation. Therefore, I believe that Johanna is starting to raise awareness of this aspect. She still needs to work on negative statements and asking questions.


Examples:

• No one was hurt/ We were at the hospital (Verb TO BE in past)

• The police picked up the body? (Question)

Fabiola improved her performance compared to the previous one. She was more careful in using the irregular verbs and switching tenses (from past to present). She also tried to use new verbs in past tense and she had some of them right. Although she did not use many negative statements during the interaction, she was completely accurate when she used these structures. She struggled in asking accurate questions in the past tense, but I consider that she was still in the awareness raising stage. She suffered a slight backslide in terms of conjugating Subject + Verb, but she made fewer errors in using the irregular and regular verbs. She started to pronounce the ED endings more accurately.


Examples:

• I don’t have anything accident in my life.

• I was staying for two hours.

This was Andres’s best performance in terms of accuracy. He used the irregular verbs more accurately, he formed full-length utterances and he also used the negative auxiliary verbs accurately most of the times. Andres’s main problem still is formulating accurate questions.


Johanna mentioned the opposite in terms of using the verb To Be and the past auxiliaries incorrectly.

Diana showed a little progress in terms of being accurate in using some verbs in the past tense. She still needs to learn more verbs in the past tense and to pronounce the ED endings in order to minimize her mistakes. Finally, Diana needs to organize the parts of speech when she constructs complements. Maritza noticed the same as I did.

In this interaction, Claudia managed to use more irregular verbs correctly and she was more coherent in organizing complements. She has also managed to reduce the number of mistakes when she conjugated the Subjects with the Verbs.


Andres pointed out that Claudia had some problems between the use of WAS and WERE

Third Implementation Session Feedback

In this session, I was surprised that most of the students had improved in the use of the verbs in past tense, although I also noticed some stagnation and backdrift in other ones. For instance, Johanna, Claudia, Andres, Maritza, Adriana and Michael have considerably improved in constructing affirmative sentences in past tenses. However, I observed a significant backdrift with Fabiola and stagnation in the cases of Diana, Leonardo and Juan. Johanna, Andres and Claudia told me that they have made an effort in studying for the daily quizzes. Whereas for the rest, they have informed me that they do not have time to study since they have other responsibilities during the day. The majority of the students are still having trouble using the auxiliary verbs in simple past when they are constructing negative statements and questions. Most of the students have become more aware of conjugating the subjects and verbs since they have confessed they tend to translate a lot so there is an overgenerlization of not using IT when referring to objects or abstract nouns. I will train students to use the finger correction technique to keep track of of each part of speech when they are employing negative statements and questions.

Worries and concerns

Image retrieved from Google images in June 25,2010

I have had problems with this group in terms of autonomy. For most of them it is really difficult to do their basic homework assignments from their workbooks and even coming to class early. They argued that they do not have enough time to do their homework assignments even on weekends (which I consider a big excuse). I have constantly talked to them about autonomy and its implications in adult learning (andragogy). It is quite difficult for them to set up their own learning goals and to take action in order to improve their skills. This issue also affects my research project because most of them are not using the disscussion board to listen to their partners and to leave comments there. I even changed the system by allowing students write their comments in Nabble, which is an embeddable forum, but some of them do not post their comments, or if they do, they tend to be too broad as they do not especifically point out what their partners' problems are. Since they are too teacher dependent, they expect me to do this type of feedback through the forums or by telling them something about their progress during the weekly assessment (that is the time when I turn in the rubrics). I have had some issues with a couple of my students (Michael and Maritza) because their expectations regarding progress is too high and their committment towards autonomony and in implementing the strategies has been too low.

I have been reading about fossilization lately and there is one author (Han, 2004) who says that there are two linguistic phenomenons in the SLA process called "learning plateau" and "backsliding". The first one refers to the slowing down their learning processes due to some determining factors such as brain plasticity, learning styles, pedagogical beliefs, autonomy and the implementation of more sophisticated learning strategies which help them upgrade their linguistic skills. "Backsliding" means the "reemergence of deviant forms that seemed to have been eradicated" so it is only natural that learners are going through an acquisition stage that demands more from them than the teacher himself. As it is only obvious, these students are not taking these considerations for granted and in my opinion they are trying to take the easy way out by blaming me that there has not been a "dramatical" progress in their learning process.

Another problem I had this week is that Adriana, one of my best students, had to drop out because she has had some family issues that prevent her from continuing the course. This was a sensible loss since she has been making real progress and she believed in my approach to help her improve speaking accuracy.

Second Session's Student Assessment Report

The following are my impressions about each of my students' performances:

Johanna reduced the number of errors a little because by that time she was just beginning the awareness raising process. During the first conversation she was not aware of using the verbs in past tense. Although she has not improved in the usage of the irregular verbs in the second conversation, she has tried to improve the regular verbs in spite of having problems pronouncing the ED endings. She also improved using the negative statements in past but she still has a lot of problems constructing questions accurately.


Johanna was able to raise awareness in the Subject + Verb agreement and experimenting with new irregular verbs successfully such as SAW, WON, TOOK and ATE. She also self and peer corrected a couple of times during the conversation.

Johanna did use the past continuous but the sentences were mostly inaccurate.

Examples:

• You lean about your behavior. (Possessive adjective)

• How much did you paid for this trip? (Formulating questions)

Fabiola continued monitoring the use of the past tenses though she made a few more mistakes than the previous conversation. She used the negative statements and asked questions correctly most of the times. In this conversation in particular, she did not have any problems conjugating the Subject with the verbs in past tense, but it was evident that she needed to learn more irregular verbs and the use of auxiliary verbs in questions.


Examples:

• Where was did you go on your last vacation?

• Because I sell a lot of Decameron hotels and they give me a prize.

Andres demonstrated once more that he is not making any progress at all in learning any irregular verbs in the past tense and in improving his pronunciation of the ED endings with the regular verbs. However, he improved a little in terms of using negative statements although he was accurate 50% of the times and inaccurate in the other 50%. What surprised me was that he was more accurate in formulating questions.


Leina also noticed that Andres was highly inaccurate in using the verbs in past tense in both regulars and irregulars. Andres is not doing a lot of the homework I assigned him during this cycle.

In this conversation, Claudia took more risks and produced more utterances than the previous interaction. Although she still makes mistakes in using the regular and irregular verbs, she managed to raise some awareness in the proper use of some of these verbs.


I noticed that she used the auxiliary verbs correctly in order to make negative statements, but she had problems using them when asking questions. Andres noticed that Claudia had some problems with some irregular verbs.

Second Implementation Session Feedback

There was a major participation in the second forum. Students maily focused on their partners' errors while they interacted with their classmates. They noticed errors in some irregular verbs and in the construction of negative statements and questions. I have noticed that they all have problems pronouncing the ED ending in regular verbs and they hardly ever use the past continuous to tell their stories. I noticed that Fabiola, Maritza and Michael master many irregular verbs they still has problems pronouncing the ED endings. Although some students are still struggling retrieving the verbs in past participle, most of them have succesfully managed to experimenting with new ones, but they still forget to use some of them or sometimes they implement them correctly and other times not. Most of them have problems in terms of conjugating the subject + verb agreement especially with the pronoun IT. For the next upcoming sessions I will have to quiz students in the use of the verbs they are supposed to know by now but they are not using properly during the recorded interactions as well as the new verbs they have been exposed to during each lesson in order to compare the levels of learning and acquisition (Krashen, 1983).

Starting Skills 2

I started the new course today and there were few changes in terms of population. Three students who started the course had left because they had problems with their schedules (Leina, Marcela and Javier). However, there is a new student in the group and she signed the consent letter (Victoria). She will take the initial test this week.

Training process report

Image retrieved from Google images on June 7,2010

The students in the Skills 1 course have been working on the strategies I mentioned in my previous entry before they engage in a communicative event. Before the speaking activities, I trained students on how to use one strategy before they start speaking. The procedure has been the following: first, I elicited from them expressions that would be useful for the conversation and I wrote them on the board; if one of the students made a mistake, partners would correct one another or they would go to the board and correct the expressions. They also resorted to the conversation models in their textbooks, they opened their notebooks or they reviewed their notes and the substitution tables for the lesson's target grammar. This way, they would verify the grammar models before they began their conversations. Finally, I did a demonstration with a more skilled student so the rest would follow the model. As they were speaking, I noticed that some students were looking at their notes or at the board in order to monitor their own language production (Fabiola, Johana, Diana, Adriana, Juan Pablo, Claudia). The rest of the students did not follow the instruction and they just spoke disregarding the models or the previous preparation for the communicative event. I noticed that the students who were aware of looking at the models were more accurate than the other students in spite that both types of students managed to convey meaning clearly.

When we did a reflection about the use of the models, the ones who used them felt more confidence and at the same time they felt that they were using the language properly. The other students said that they were not used to follow models because they were more concerned about getting the message across, but they admitted that following them would make their English more accurate. As an action plan, they promised to follow them for the next speaking task and they also suggested me to give them a sign (such as a post it) to remind them to look at their notes or at the board.

I know that it has been three weeks since I started the course, but I feel that most of them are becoming aware of preparing the speaking activities beforehand as well as following models in order to improve their accuracy in the past tenses.

First Session's Students Assessment Report

After having heard each of my students' conversations these were my reflections from each one of my students' performances:

Johana was not aware of the use of the irregular verbs but she was able to improve construction of affirmative statements compared with her initial test performance. This happened because she started to implement the accuracy strategies immediately and she also started to study more irregular verbs in her free time. Johanna was also more careful constructing predicates since she had problems such as confusion in the possessive adjectives, object pronouns and adjective + noun agreement. She is a committed student because she turned in her homework on time and she did some independent work at home by means of some web sites that I recommended the whole class.


Johanna admits that she still needs to work more on learning more irregular verbs, pronouncing the ED endings and using auxiliary verbs in simple past when she uses negative statements and questions. She is also aware that she needs to improve the use of articles.

Examples:

• Is far to Rodadero (Subject + Verb agreement)/ wrong preposition

• I try sierra fish. (ED ending)

Fabiola has some prior knowledge about constructing accurate affirmative utterances, but she lacked of accuracy in the use of negative statements and question forms. In the first conversation she managed to correct some of the problems she had concerning these issues. She also controlled the use of the past tenses (both regular and irregular). She informed me that she devoted some time everyday to study these verbs and to write some sentences using them. She has very few problems with the Subject + Verb agreement and she knows how to construct complements accurately.


Examples:

• I don’t have a lot of time. (Past tense)

• I eat fish and rice with coco. (Past tense)

Andres: This student in particular showed problems structuring Subject + Verb + Complement patterns from the very beginning of the course. He tended to not complete his ideas; he mainly used single words or incomplete utterances to convey meaning.


The student had poor background knowledge in the use of the irregular verbs in past tense and he mainly used verbs in present to express finished actions in the past tense. Another of his weaknesses was that he did not organize the parts of speech at the predicate level and this also affected his overall performance in the first conversation.The student in his reflection note admits not studying at home to improve his performance.

Diana is a high-risk taker. She usually expands her conversations without caring about accuracy. She does not know many verbs in the past tense and she barely conjugates the subjects with the verbs especially with the subject pronoun IT. She also uses a lot of verbs in present tense first person to express actions that happened in the past.


She was also somewhat inaccurate when she asked questions and when she constructed negative statements. Diana had also problems organizing predicates.

Johanna and Fabiola noticed that Diana was combining WAS + DID in the question forms. However, I noticed that this happened a few times.

Claudia did not do so badly in her interaction. She has some background knowledge of some irregular verbs. Just as like her other classmates, she does not know many irregular verbs, she does not pronounce the ED endings, there are problems conjugating the Subjects and the Verbs and she has problems organizing predicates. She tends to translate too much (L1 interference) while she is speaking.

Feedback on First Implementation Session

It was unfortunate that not all my students posted their comments in the forum. Most of them argued that they did not have any time to do so due to lack of time. I think I took too much time doing the pre-activity stage and I believe it is better to let them prepare the conversations beforehand in the classroom. I also think that they need to publish their comments once they have already finished listening to their partners. This actions will take place during the following sessions. As far as the comments go, I am pleased with reflections made by Adriana, Fabiola and Johanna. They seemed to have seriously reflected upon their perfomance. On the other hand, it is my opinion that Andres's comment was a bit too shallow although I must admit that he is really aware of his weaknesses using the language and his attitude towards spending more time studying the verbs in past.

After having listened to all the conversations, I noticed that all the students had problems implementing the regular and irregular verbs in past tense except for Fabiola who seems to have a strong background knowledge on the topic especially in the construction of affirmative and negative statements. Johanna also showed some understanding on how to construct accurate questions in simple past. As for the rest, they all showed difficulties remembering the verbs in past and remembering the forms for constructing accurate questions and negative statements in the past tense. I believe that the next step is for the students to follow grammatical models and to use them during controlled practice and less controlled practice exercises in order to internalize these patterns.