Fifth implementation

Image retrieved from Glogle images on July 23, 2010

Before going to the multi-media lab I wrote some grammar models in the simple past and past continuous in affirmative, negative and question forms so they could follow them during their interactions using the voice message board. During this implementation the students who had been in my group did not have many problems engaging into the activity. As usual, they got together with their activity partner and they reheased what they were going to say. It took some time for the new learners to get into the activities because first I needed to explain them how the implementation, the voice message board and the wiki worked. Then they had to sign in to the Voxopop web site and do the initial test. Finally, they worked on the conversation assigned for the day which was about a very important person in their lives. Some students had problems recording their conversations because they had some problems with their microphones. They did not check if they were on or plugged in the CPU. When most of the students finished, they wrote their comments in Nabble. I noticed that they were still too superficial and they do not really help their peers to improve the target structures.

Action plan follow-up

Image retrieved from Google images on July 23, 2010

After quizzing students for a week and listening to them speak during the in-class conversation tasks, I have found that students have learned more verbs in simple past and that they are self-correcting their mistakes more than before during the speaking activities. I just hope that they will do the same next week during the fifth intervention. I have noticed that even adult learners need to be gradually let go as well as being constantly graded and informed about their work until they will eventually become more autonomous. That was supposed to be their previous teacher's job, but it seems that I had to do this process all over again and it is working.

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.

Fourth Implementation

Image retrieved from Google images on July 12, 2010

Today's conversation topic for the implementation was about a life experience. These were either positive or negative. As usual at the beginning of the lesson, I instructed my learners to write down the verbs in past they needed for the conversation as well as the words they did not know, so they looked up the words in their dictionaries or the gadgets they carry with them. Later, we went to the multi-media lab and they followed the instructions in the wiki. The students know how to do the entire procedure without getting me involved and this really makes me happy. Some of the students felt that they are not advancing as the way they should and I asked them why. They said that even though they knew some verbs in past, they usually forget to implement them during a spontaneous conversation. I told them that they needed to keep insisting in peer and self- correcting each other in order to raise awareness of their mistakes so they could avoid them in future conversations. When I asked them if they were reading their partners comments in the Nabble forum, some of them told me they had and others said that they either forget to do it or they think that my comments are more valid than a fellow classmate. In the next few classes, I will work on more controlled practice in order for students to produce utterances in simple past and to follow language models that they will write down in their notebooks so they could follow them in the susequent conversations. I also feel that they need to support each other in giving more feedback to their partners because most of them are still more concerned in getting their message across without paying attention to their performances. But not everything is dark as it seems, I am quite happy that they know how to use the wiki without depending on me and I have noticed that particularly Johana and Fabiola are improving their accuracy and they are self-correcting more than they used to! At the end, students filled up the mid-term survey and went home. Claudia missed this session.