Instructor: Jackie Landau
Proposal of Action Research in the classroom
Research
Question: What is going on when students do not want to speak in English
classes?
There are some important values in my professional career. One of the
most important value is to persevere in learning process. I have to be active,
autonomy, curious about educational context, observing what is going on around my
students and me. In my opinion is very much appropriate to trace personal and
professional goals. One of mine is to improve my English performance and
teaching strategies. Any language is always changing, new words and expressions
appear and disappear constantly so I need to keep walking, researching and
enhancing my own language knowledge and obviously the teaching learning process
in communication. The main goal is to be able to interact with people from all
over the world. When I think about my professional goals, I always think about
my classes. To be a teacher is a huge challenge, a huge responsibility. Many
students are in “teacher’s hand” and the teacher can do them believe and
develop themselves or can do them give up. Because of this thought, another
mainly professional goal is to be a good teacher for my students, help them
open their minds, believe in their capability and develop their knowledge. For
this, I know I have to do my best. My classes must be planned with a large role
of procedures and focused in the important abilities and skills: as vocabulary,
pronunciation and spelling. It is necessary to integrate the four skills to
active the student’s interaction in authentic situation of communication. It is
also important to teach the students how to study, how to learn, how to take
good results and then they will feel well success with their progress and
probably will keep walking. In addition, I think teachers have to reflect about
what works and what does not work in the learning process. As teachers, we also
have to open our minds to challenge us in research why sometimes students are
unmotivated, do not learn, and what is possible to do to motivating them.
Traditional classes are still common in the Brazilian public schools. Classes
are usually much large and it is impossible to practice all the skills
appropriately. There are also different levels; some students are in a high
level, others in a middle and other ones in a low level and the teacher needs to
reach them. This is for me the most challenge. Teaching the four skills to
large classes with heterogeneous classes and reach all students to increase
their performance requires a lot of action research, require good strategies,
good lesson plans, good interaction between parents and their children and
school community.
II – Area of Focus
The question I am going to research is “What is going on when students
do not want to speak in English classes?” and what influences the students
language learning. What works in a class and what helps students to improve
their English language learning? This is a question that I want knowing with
the purpose to improve my way of teaching and the students out comes in their
learning and in their lives. The effective communication is the main goal. It
is necessary to active students in authentic language context.
III –
Data Collection Methods and Instruments
This research will be develop in six months, August to January. I am
going to collect data from three different techniques. The first is a
quantitative and qualitative questionnaire wherewith I want discover data
related with my students’ process of speaking English. This enquiring instrument
has open-ended questions and is made with eight varied questions. It will be
applied for sixteen students of 8th grade from. They will answer
this questionnaire in the beginning of second semester of 2013, about in the
end of September. Another data collection instrument is a survey with some
open-ended questions for student’s parents. It is important to discover what is
going on at home, what is the parents’ involvement with the learning process,
what parents do to help students engage in learning a foreign language. It is
going to be done in October. The last instrument is journals written by teacher
and by students. The aims of this data collection instrument are to observe how the
teacher interaction with the students affects their learning and what
activities better work to improve students learning in speaking skills. The
observation will start in the beginning of September and it will be done once a
week during two months. After each observation, the teacher/researcher and the
students will write a journal considering these points the positive and the
negative facts about the classes.
IV -
Ethical Considerations, Validity, and Reliability and Respect and Equity for
students, interviewers, colleagues
This action research will follow the principles of Validity, and
Reliability and Ethic discussed by Geoffrey E. Mills. The names of students,
parents, school are not going to be mentioned in this article. The researcher
has to talk less and listen more, does not interfere in the answers collected
by data collection instruments. It is important to reflect about the data
collected to connect with neutrality and honesty the results and to trace a
strategy plan to deal with the outcomes.
VI – Time
Line
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Aug/2013
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Sep/2013
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Oct/2013
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Nov/2013
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Dec/2013
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Jan/2014
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Action
Research Proposal Revision
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Academic
Articles Reading
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Writing
the theorical contribution
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Application of Data collection instruments
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Data Collection Analyze
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VII –
References
Speaking fluency: technology in EFL context or social interaction in ESL context?
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2011 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture
Liu,
Ngar-Fun and Littlewood, William. “Why do many students appear reluctant to
participate in classroom learning discourse?” Department of English, Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Hong Kong. System, vol. 25, n. 3, pp.
371-384,1997. Elsevier Science Ltda.
Mart, Çagri Tugrul. Developing Speaking Skills through Reading.. International Journal of English
Linguistics
2.6 (Dec 2012): 91-96.
Mills, Geoffrey E. Action Research – A guide for the Teacher Researcher. Fifth Edition. 2007 by Pearson Education.2.6 (Dec 2012): 91-96.Appendices
Data collection instruments
Students' Questionnaire
Parents' Survey
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