Initial test (May 19)

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

Today's recording experience was both sweet and sour. I am happy with the fact that now I have 12 students in my class and the group is now officially opened (their names are Maritza, Michael, Diana, Juan Pablo, Johana, Fabiola, Claudia, Javier, Marcela, Adriana and Leina). There is a student named Andres and he did not show up today so I guess I have to start with him during the first recording session. The other good news is that everybody in the group managed to record their conversations, but on the other hand, a couple of groups forgot to save their recordings and there was one group that forgot to plug in the microphone and they talked during 10 minutes without realizing it. At the end, this group just talked for about 2 minutes before the bell rang. There were a couple of students who did not take the activity seriously (Maritza and Michael) because they were giggling all the time and they would stop the recording at least every 2 minutes to listen to what they were saying. This group did not manage to save anything at the end of the task. If I had the chance of piloting the test last week or so this wouldn't have had happened. Too bad I couldn't find anybody from any skills courses to help me.

When I heard all the conversations the first thing I noticed was that they all had serious mistakes in using the past tenses such as not knowing the past tenses of many verbs, confusion between "was/were", omission of "did" in question forms, incorrect pronunciation of regular "ed" endings and shifting aspect between simple and continuous. Another relevant factor I noticed was that most of the students barely self and peer corrected their mistakes while they were speaking.

First day of class (May 18)

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

Today I met my new group. At the beginning of the class I felt dissapointed and nervous when I only saw 2 students and I thought that my class might be cancelled again to my misfortune. Luckily, 6 more students arrived later and I felt more relieved. However, I have to wait until tomorrow to see if I got more students (hopefully). After I welcomed the student, we talked a little bit about ourselves, the course's objectives, rules and regulations and finally, we created our learners' profiles and action plans for the three month course. Later, I explained what the project is going to be about, I handed out the invitation letters and after they finished reading them they filled out the consent letter. I was happy because everybody agreed to be in the project.

At about 7:15 am we all went to the AVM lab to do the online survey and the initial test. Some people did not have any problems filling out the survey, but there were some that had trouble with the connection, but most of them managed to do the survey before the bell rang. After they had finished, they were going to do the initial test but time ran out. Students managed to sign up to Voxopop on time so they will be able to do the test tomorrow morning. I have already requested a spot at the AVM lab for this. I expect a couple of more people to show up to the course so I will have to tell them to sign up to the discussion board first so they will be able to do the test and then for homework they will do the survey.

Drawbacks and Progress

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

I have good and bad news. The good one is that my boss approved the invitation and consent letters for students and parents. The bad one is that my Skills 1 course, in which I'm going to be implementing; was cancelled due to lack of students. My boss told me that she would be helping me get a course at 6 am which is the best time to implement. I'm not so concerned because I still have one last chance to implement on time. Fortunately, Valeriya (my project tutor) understood my situation an she told me to make sure to implement no later than next month otherwise...... I'm working on my paper for the time being.

Pedagogical intervention action plan

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

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

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

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

Retrieved from Google images on May 30, 2010

 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

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.