A WIN-WIN Situation: Exploratory Language Learning and Teaching in a Foreign Language Classroom - Action Research Perspective

Jacek Wasilewski, Poland

Jacek Wasilewski has been an EFL teacher for more than 20 years now. He is based currently at the University of Podlasie in Siedlce where he teaches conversational English. His main interests are: practical phonetics, linguistics, spoken discourse and research methods in ELT. E-mail: jackwas@interia.pl

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Introduction
Defining action research
Possible puzzles in classroom
The description of the study
The identification of the problem
Solving the problem
My observations
Reflection
Conclusion
References

Introduction

My interest lies in improving the relations between teachers and learners which can be achieved by by bettering the face to face interaction in class through action approach. I familiarized myself with the notion of action research a long time ago when I took my TESOL studies at one of the British universities in the years 1996 and 2005. At that point I happened to gain wide experience in using this classroom-centered research with my international students. A deep insight into this type of a methodological inquiry allowed me to considerably strengthen my knowledge and belief regarding a practical usefulness of this scientific action and its beneficial effects. Today it helps me solve various problems my learners encounter in class when learning an English language.

The objective of the current article is to appreciate a role a foreign language (FL ) teacher plays in the process of a language training. The article underlines that bigger emphasis should be placed on reflection in teaching foreign languages. Moreover, it highlights that a contemporary lecturer –teacher has the right to become a practitioner research in their own class, should be autonomous as much as he can, which means assuming full responsibility for the process of education and negotiating that with their learners concerning a teacher’s and students’ role in class.

The article sets out to encourage both experienced and novice teachers of foreign languages to display their initiative in order to solve different problems learners are faced with while learning. Besides it shows various forms of actions performed by a teacher and provides an insight about action research –AR.

Defining action research

Action research, in other words, is practitioner-led or based research. Through careful thinking about what you are doing with learners in class, it is frequently called a self-reflective practice. Cohen and Manion (1994:186) describe action research as small-scale interventions in the functioning of the real world and a close examination of the effects of such an intervention. This is tempting to argue that such inquiry is connected to the contexts in which it is carried out, it may sometimes involve the cooperation of teachers with other researchers and is self-evaluative. They outline eight stages in the action research process:

1. Identify the problem
2. Develop a draft proposal
3. Review what has already been written about the issue
4. Restate the problem or formulate hypotheses
5. Select research procedures, methods and materials
6. Choose evaluation procedures
7. Collect data, analyse it and provide feedback
8. Interpret the data and evaluate the project ( adapted from Cohen and Manion 1985:220-1)

Since this inquiry aims at solving the problems in class it seems reasonable to agree with the definition provided by Richards, Platt&Platt (1992) who treats AR as an attempt to understand the learning and teaching process by conducting an empirical measure and making changes in it. Altrichter et al. (1993:4) adds that the action investigation is not used to describe or analyse. It does not provide any interpretation either but it consists in taking the action in the situation which requires improvement.

Also, one should mention Carr and Kemmis (1986 ) who argue that action research is a form of self reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations to improve justice of their own practice. They emphasise the ongoing cyclical nature of this activity which is shown by the below diagram:

Fig 1. Model of Action Research ( Kemmis &McTaggert: 1988)

As can be seen the first step is to develop a plan to improve what is already happening. The second move is to implement the plan and to observe the results in the context. The final step in this cycle shows critical reflection on the process and then plan a second round of the enquiry.

Possible puzzles in classroom

Teachers encounter a wealth of problems in their teaching environment. For some of them the problem of discipline , motivation or the learning process itself seems to be a big challenge, others find lack of actions and passiveness of students or reading and listening problems quite unbearable.

A lack of communication with teachers or even avoidance of interaction with them appear to be a stumbling block in the process of a language training. Such problems occur in maintaining communication in dialogues between a teacher and learners for example, while asking questions, waiting for answers or carrying on a spoken discourse. Such experience may turn out to be demotivating and frustrating for both sides.

The question arises then: what makes learners be so unwilling to communicate with a teacher and other peers? Why do learners become passive participants of the learning process? It seems that the answers to these issues remain open and teachers themselves have to find the necessary responses.

The description of the study

To find the answers, a small scale inquiry with two groups was carried out in two places.

Group A

The first study involved two classes of a secondary school in Wegrów and encompassed 40 persons. The main objective of the learners was to prepare for the school leaving oral exam in English- ‘matura’. So the students focused on a spoken discourse using their background knowledge they had gained in the previous years. The teacher got deeply involved in the discussion and interacted with learners.

The teaching materials which included FOR and AGAINST text for the discussion on ‘Drugs legislation’ ( Cieślak :2003) were passed on to learners. The level of the group was classified as intermediate.

The identification of the problem

While performing an oral task a serious problem was observed. It was found out that almost all of the learners had difficulty with getting a spoken message across, had no idea about how to conduct a discussion in English, their language was poor in phrases and lexical chunks which might help carry out a typical English conversation. It seemed obvious that the learners did not know anything about communication strategies or interactional gambits. All of them felt unsure about their utterances. There was no real interaction between them and the teacher.

Solving the problem

The above observations allowed me to start thinking about the reasons of this situation and prepare the solutions to sort the problems out. My objective therefore was to make my learners become proactive, felt more confident in what they wished to say and be familiar with the art of an English way of speaking. The learners had one week to master the material.

That is why I decided to put forward the following changes :

• Introduce discourse strategies
• Introduce interactional gambits including attracting attention, asking for explanation, expressing a need, marking a problem, giving a reason, offering a solution, breaking the news, expressing opinion, drawing inferences, expressing reality, changing the subject.
• Introduce features of interaction (phrases like fillers mmm.. and… er..)
• Phrases - well, in fact, let me see , as a matter of fact , etc
• Features of turn-taking and backchannel signals like uhhuh,mmhmm, yeah. (Hatch:2000)
• Rising intonation used in discourse
• Positive and negative feedback-phrases
• Communication strategies –code-switching from L1 to L2
• Paying attention to informal , slightly formal and formal use of language

Besides students were provided with a big number of cohesive and coherent devices to name just a few:

first of all, hence , furthermore, I disagree, on the one hand, in general, in my view, to sum up, etc. ( Mączka:1998).

My observations

After a week or so my lesson focused again on the same subject and the aim was to check whether a considerable change was created. To my great delight, I noticed that the proposed changes caused a great improvement in the way my students conducted the panel discussion. This time they seemed to know how to start, maintain and finish their conversation. It looked like they felt more comfortable in English., However, they were not fluent speakers of English yet a positive impression was made on me because of a friendly atmosphere and quite a spontaneous interaction carried out in class.

Group B

The second group of students who were also observed while practising conversational English involved 40 students – II year of the Russian faculty at the University of Podlasie in Siedlce. It is worth highlighting that both the learners of the secondary school and the students had the same problems with a spoken discourse. The university students had an English class once a week during which they were taught how to talk in English easily and confidently. Their level of English classified as pre intermediate.

At the beginning of the academic year- 2008 the students showed that they knew nothing about specific features of an English conversation. They could not converse in English in a comfortable way.

During the whole year 2008/09 the students were provided with proper conversation oriented lessons in English which abounded with interactional gambits , idioms and various phrases (Keller & Warner:2002 , Kleparski&Pietrzykowska:2005). At the end of the semester they were requested to share their own comments and opinions in writing about the influence the new material might, if any, have on the students’ linguistic and communicative competence.

The majority of the students’ opinions were positive and expressed their content with the implemented materials. Here are some of their comments:

Student 1

I think conversation gambits contributed to the improvement of my conversation because it became diversified- it is no longer so monotonous or “ flat”. I can express my thought in various ways.

Student 2

Conversation gambits-they are important for me to make my language look more natural in a conversation. Thanks to them I can begin , continue and finish off my utterance without any problems. The gambits are used to make our dialogues more fluent and be carried out at a certain level.

Student 3

Conversation gambits helped me take advantage of many useful and practical phrases used in every day interaction between people in different emotional states. I started to use a spoken language more confidently.

Student 4

Interactional gambits gave us a chance to broaden our wealth of vocabulary, we know more phrases, possibilities of naming them in various contexts and expressing something we wish to say. What we already know from our previous learning (Expressions) can be replaced by new ones without changing meaning and intention.

Student 5

Using gambits facilitated my communication in English. Dialogues became much easier for me and more comprehensible. I noticed that an interaction in class sounded a lot natural and flexible. Thanks to our gambits communication resembled a real talk between classmates.

Reflection

The above small scale inquiry –action research conducted in this case pauses me to deeply reflect on a serious treatment of a spoken discourse in the teaching process. What matters is the fact that a teacher not only concentrates on the language structures and lexis (declarative knowledge) but also draws students’ attention to cultural values embedded in the language e.g. expressing politeness in English. The problems in communication with a teacher in class and other users of the language in future may be caused by lack of sociolinguistic competence on the learners’ part. Keeping in mind a contemporary communicative teaching approach, it seems therefore necessary to highlight the growing importance of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence in the process of the language training.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the size of the sample is of course low including 40 learners and 40 university students altogether and it is essential for me, therefore, to point out that its generalizability may be guestionable. However, the most significant finding is the perception of the value of research carried out in class. It is encouraging to note that virtually every one from each of the two groups saw action research as a positive thing, tool or an exploration.

Such an investigation also called pseudo –research appears to be an excellent promotion of both a novice and an experienced teacher who want to be a teacher as researcher. It is worth mentioning that it gives a lecturer a chance to become autonomous in the teaching process in their own social environment (class), which makes teachers heighten awareness of becoming reflective in action. Action research simply empowers lecturers to make necessary changes in their teaching style. There fore, their work becomes more effective and efficient. To sum up, I am tempted to argue that Action Research should be a sine qua non in foreign language teaching.

References

Altrichter, H. (1993). Teachers investigate their work. An introduction to the methods of action research, London: Routledge.

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical. Lewes: Falmer.

Cieślak, M. ( 2003). Repetytorium Tematyczno-Leksykalne 3 . Wagros –Poznań.

Cohen, L. and Manion, L. (1994). Research methods in Education (fourth edition). London: Routledge.

Hatch, E. (2000). Discourse and language education. CUP.

Keller, E. and Warner, S. ( 2002). Conversation gambits. Thomson Cooperation. Heinle.

Kemmis, S. & McTaggert, R. (1988). The Action Research Planner ( 3rd edition) Geelong, Australia: Deakin University Press.

Kleparski, G. and Pietrzykowska, A. (2005). A Thematic guide to English interactional gambits.

Mączka, T. (1998). Let’s discuss it. Testy pomocnicze dla wszelkiego typu egzaminów ustnych z języka angielskiego. Harald G. Dictionaries.

Richards, J.C., Platt, J., & Platt, H. (1992). Dictionary of language teaching & applied linguistics ( 2nd edition). Essex: Longman.

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