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.

Third Implementation

Image retrieved from Google Images on June 23, 2010

Today I implemented for the third time. It was smoother than the other two times because students are familiar with the exercise's procedures. As the other two previous times, students worked with their usual speaking partner because this way is easier to code each student. The only difference was that I insisted students to record their comments in Voxopop, but students did not have time to listen to their classmates' comments nor they did not have time to write their comments in the forum. I have noticed that not all the students have been disciplined writing their reflections so I guess that I will have to start giving them face-to-face feedback when I turn in their rubric right after each recording so they know exactly how they have progressed or to inform them what extra work they need in order to improve the usage of the verbs in simple past and past continuous.

A couple of my students helped the new student (Vicky) to open her Voxopop account and to inform her how the activity works.

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.

Skills 1 implementation conclusions and action plan

Image retrieved from Google images on June 16, 2010

During this first implementation stage, I learned that it is important to tell students what to expect from the project that they are being involved in. Although they have told me that the approach to help them improve their accuracy in the simple past and past continuous tenses, they still have problems giving that feedback to their partners because they are not used to correct others actively while their conversation partners speak and even worse when it is an asynchronous activity.

Another lesson I learned was to get students to prepare the vocabulary and language they need before they get on with the speaking activities even for virtual tasks, this way, they know what to use during their interactions having less probability to make mistakes in the tenses I am expecting them to improve.

Students told me that even though the system is quite creative, they have problems identifying the people they have to peer-correct and to find the comments in the discussion board. They also stated that they cannot find the time to do all the process at their homes and they suggested me to do it during classtime.

Second Implementation

Image retrieved on June 15, 2010 from Google images

Last Friday I implemented for the second time. After checking homework, I told students to prepare their conversation so they looked up their dictionaries to find the vocabulary they needed for the conversation and the pronunciation of each word. They also looked up their notebooks to find the verbs in past tenses they needed for the communicative event. This time, I considered the timing so we went to the audio-visual multi-media room for over an hour in order to have plenty of time to go over the entire procedure. At the multi-media room, I paired student with the partner they had the previous time.

I instructed the students to check the microphones and to do a sound check so they would not have any surprises after they spoke. Students were able to speak for the entire ten minutes and they also saved the recording without any problems, something a couple of groups had problems with during the last implementation. After the recording, students were assigned to listen to other conversations from other pairs and to take notes on their mistakes using the simple past and past continuous.

I had noticed during the last intervention that students did not record any comments on their partners' mistakes nor listened to the few that were recorded by some students so I decided to let them write their findings in the forum. For the next time, students will listen to their own recordings and to comment comment in Voxopop about their partners' mistakes. Another aspect I also need to consider is for students to write more comments regarding the usage of simple past and past continuous. There were some comments that were aimed at vocabulary or they were too vague.