Sixth Intervention and Final Test

Retrieved from Google images on August 11, 2010

Today was the last day I implemented. At the beginning of the lesson, I instructed the students to take some notes of the vocabulary they needed to use during their conversations as well as writing the verbs in past tense. When we got to the multi-media lab, students automatically paired up with their usual partner and they rehearsed what they were going to say for a few minutes. Later, they recorded their conversations and saved them; there were no setbacks since I prepared the computers, the platform and the microphones 10 minutes before the class started.

While they were interacting, I noticed that they were enjoying the conversation (it was about a personal dilemma). Some of them actually used the grammar models without me telling them to see them. After they had finished, they saved the conversations in the discussion board and I instructed them to fill out the final survey.  When I told them to work with their partners to talk about their childhood memories, they said that they had already made that chat before, but I reminded them that the first one was the initial one. As homework, I assigned them to listen to their two test in order to compare their performances so they could assess themselves.

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.

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.