During the last tutorial I had with Valeriya we agreed along with my teacher Liubava to only take into account those students who took the three courses. That means I need to analyze the following students' conversations: Johana, Fabiola, Andres, Diana Salamanca and Claudia. Even though Juan Pablo was with me during the entire course, he did not make this group because he only did four recordings out of the eight ones (including pre and post test recordings. During the interventions he was either absent for various reasons (business trips basically or during the first intervention his microphone did not work). I also took into consideration the students who recorded at least six times including the two tests. The rest of them did not make the analysis group because they either dropped out before (Leina, Marcela, Adriana, Maritza, Michael and Javier) or the ones who came into the course later (Victoria, Gabriel, Mayi, Diana Rodriguez and Alejandra).
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Analytical tools for my project
Image retrived from Google images on October, 2010
The following are the tentative analytical tools I can use during my data analysis stage:
QUESTIONING
• Helps me probe
• Helps me develop provisional answers
• Helps me think outside the box
• Helps me become acquainted with the data
• Helps me observe frequency and patterns
• Helps me to synthesize, theorize, guide and provide direction
COMPARISONS
• Helps me notice the obvious
• Helps me find relationships and differences
• Helps me categorize and to differentiate categories
• Helps me define incidents when they are not easy to detect
• Helps me clarify concepts and increase understanding
• Helps me theorize
• Helps me bring out properties and dimensions
• Helps me examine incidents one by one
WAVING THE RED FLAG
• Helps me go beyond biases, assumptions and/or beliefs that affect the analysis
• Helps me wonder why things happen
• Helps me define just how often an incident occurs
• Helps me avoid becoming accepting with a partial truth
LOOKING AT LANGUAGE
• Helps me see grammatical patterns especially in the accuracy of the simple past and past continuous tenses.
• Helps me realize why learners are committing the same errors over again during the implementation stage.
LOOKING FOR WORDS THAT INDICATE TIME
• Helps me find out if they are becoming aware of the past time expressions in order to use the verbs in simple or continuous aspects in the past tense.
TIMELINES
• Helps me detect the performance level of each student who participated throughout the entire process.
References
- Burns, A. (2010). Doing action research in English language teaching. New York: Routledge. pp. 107-140.
- Corbin, J. &Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage Publications, Inc, 3rd edition. pp.45-64.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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
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.
Monday, August 30, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, August 13, 2010
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.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
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.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
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.
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.
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