行動研究報告_高二課堂分組報告

Initiatives: A) Increase fun & participation in classroom

         B) Acquaint students with pronunciations from different regions

         C) Measure students’ oral competence/ narrow down a general area to improve

                 D) Map out where and why students’ choose their report materials

Description of the three classes in this project:

The classroom usually has 40 to 47 male and female students aged between 16 and 17. They were all in the ‘science group,’ different from those who had decided to devote time in ‘humanity group.’ By comparison humanity group has up to 8 classes per week while the science group only has five hours per week. Teaching and learning English in school is predominately conducted via a one-way approach. With a chosen textbook, teachers conduct class by giving lectures while students take notes. Grammar details and vocabulary usages are the focus. Students’ feedback comes from written exams; teachers react to students’ performance accordingly. High scores in written tests are the sole indicator of “successful learning.”

Such an approach may make economic sense but would deprive students’ of opportunities to build oral fluency. As it has been pointed out by many scholars and studies, this one-way approach does not encourage students to speak out and consequently affect students’ future studies or careers that often ask them to make a sensible conversation in English. <citations needed here> This project, then, is an attempt to give more opportunities in a language class for students to practice speaking with the aid of a computer and the Internet. The second goal is to bring forth the vast diversity of accents of English to students, and break the myth of ‘good English accents’ that may have long hindered students’ willingness to open their mouth.

Paper exams do not allow speaking activities which happens to be the vital part in learning. Although they score high in paper exams, students graduated from Taiwan school system have been found to have a serious lack of oral competence in English. <citations needed here> Hence, the third objective here is to measure students’ oral performance and encourage them to speak out English with the help of a video clip and most important of all, with the urge from their peers and with the natural urge from within every student to speak out and to express freely.

The fourth objective is to map out subjects that students chose to present, in order to examine which subjects most attracted the class of 2012. School textbooks are well-structured but, through classroom observation, the subjects chosen in these prim and proper, button-up textbooks often fail to invite students to open them on their own merits. Why? What, then, would invite students to read or to watch? This project allowed students to freely choose and hence reveal their propensity and inclination in learning material. Once these areas of interest are identified and pinpointed, teaching and learning materials could be modified accordingly, and hopefully, students would become more engaged in class and their study.

Preparation: Setting up Criteria, Equipment, and Teaming up

Mapping out the details: Past experience as a teacher and experience from other teachers all emphasize the same principle: it is important to ‘go into and go through’ what students will be asked in a project in order to come up with reasonable requirements. Before this presentation, I made sure students could do what was required without running into trouble by making a video clip. The second step was making sure the equipment in the classroom – projector, speaker and other supportive gears- worked properly.  By doing so, I was able to provide a reasonable set of rules, minimum requirements for the class presentation, and suggestions if students should come into any problems following the process.

    Equipment-wise: Through this first stage of mapping out the project’s details, I found http://www.imsdb.com/ , a helpful websites that helps students find the script. A free software, YoutubeDownloader, is at http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/ and it helps students download the video file from Youtube.com. The Internet provided a vast array of choices of video clips. In school, students had access to a projector and a computer installed in class. More advanced software for editing video clips were available in computer lab, although a speaker and a microphone would meet the task requirement in this project.

Teaming-up: members were chosen randomly, mixing learners at different English levels.  This was so because the three classes had just been put together and in order to save time. This may allow students of different skills and abilities to form a group and pitch in where their individual and unique ability is needed. Later, this idea was put to test because both positive and negative results have been encountered because of this method of teaming up students.

Getting started: At the beginning of a new semester, this project was explained in class. Later, we found computers and space for choosing material and discussion in the school library.  This is because a language lab was and is non-existent in our school. A schedule was given but student team-leaders were free to pick a date to do their presentation. Incentives were added with a schedule that gave the first team a shorter required time for presentation. The last team to fill-in would be asked to present a bit longer. This design of rewarding the brave and fast ones gave students the momentum to come forward without much delay.

A Map of Students’ Choices

Accents/ origin of the video clip

If the equipment works properly, lines are read out correctly, a less well-received presentation could indicate a particular area where students find difficult and thus highlighted an area where more attention is needed.

Reflections: Familiarity, Preparedness and A Good Leader

Students the classroom are not just the receivers of curriculum content, some educators remind us that they are vital sources of learning materials. In this case, students who were not doing the presentation were also judges in this project. Their reaction and applause rated each individual presentation accordingly. The following section will list three factors that made this particular audience ‘tick’ or kept them at a distance.

1. Familiarity and a subtitle– With a Chinese subtitle, one video clip, Real Death Note, successfully drew the entire class’ attention; whereas a commercial that is brilliant in content and unique in its local accent failed miserably to encourage those who tried to follow.

That popular choice was a successful one because it had one of the following factors:    

1. Overlapping students’ interests (this theme is taken from a popular Japanese comic book, Death Note).

2. Word choice is simple and sentence length is comparatively shorter, simpler than those found in long commercials designed for native speakers.

3. A good introduction that utilized handouts, a short introduction made the audience open up their eyes and heart. With the audience’s prior knowledge in the familiar topic, unfamiliarity is reduced and the level of understanding is vastly increased.

was a less popular one which failed to convey its good intent for the following reasons: 1. the story itself is a completely unfamiliar subject; 2. with its fast-paced verbal sequence, it requires longer listening attention, and more listening strategies, because are subtitles for reference.  One presentation challenges students with solid background knowledge about a hard liquor producer. It also contained very distinctive local accent from England, which further intimidates viewing students.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y27vijCWxSg (without subtitle)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnSIp76CvUI (with subtitle)

These two examples would be a good comparison for students who have the same interest in doing this presentation.  When they choose a video clip for this type of classroom activity, they could benefit from this type of comparison, and hence make a more suitable choice that elevates their grade and viewers’ interest.

2. Preparedness vs. passiveness

    One particular presentation won applause and literally surprised the audience because the team decided to use technology as an aid. Instead of taking up the microphone and reading the lines in class, this team chose to pre-record the video section and duped it with pre-recorded readings from an MP3 recorder. One team-member then used Power-Director to put together a neat presentation. Benefits of doing so? By going all digital and prepared well, they avoided the typical downfalls that some teams ran into: stuttering while lip-syncing with video on the projector screen.

    The other team in contrast is a team that needed to be reminded again and again about preparing equipment, and having a discussion with the teacher before they presented their work. This team’s performance was lackluster and the audience wasn’t markedly entertained. For some, this class activity was seemed as a hassle and therefore it was difficult for them to make a presentation as scheduled. For the sake of grading, I asked each team member to come to my office and simply recorded their part in the selected movie title; when they came into my office, each member felt relieved because they had trouble coming up with a schedule, a common title to begin with. This could result from a factor identified below.

One key factor identified here is a team spirit, which could have sprung up from some combination of friendship, cooperation and willingness within each individual. A willing team makes this presentation a waltz – fun and enjoyable. On the other hand, an unwilling team makes things a drag. What is behind this? The teaming up process was a random one. This could save time but could also create an awkward atmosphere if a team’s members were not that familiar with others.

By comparison, one successful team didn’t encounter such problem. Instead, they proceeded quickly to setting up a timeframe for each step. Tasks were divided among team members after ample discussions. A spirit of cooperation was visibly present throughout the show simply because, whether by chance or by design, this particular team's members were or had become good friends. A friendly atmosphere and constant flow of communication were conducive in their effort.

3. Good leadership

In another class, a male student, who had been unobtrusive and quiet, surprised his teammates not just with his willingness to share responsibilities, but also with his ability to coordinate team efforts. This male student’s tireless effort in checking up computer files and classroom equipment safeguarded a near-perfect presentation. His team members, after the presentation, all gave him a thumbs-up for his active role in their well-received presentation. This seems to tell teachers all over the world that, when given a chance, students will demonstrate surprising abilities other than performing well on written exams. 

The benefit for each individual student in this classroom activity could be people skills. With a team presentation, each student needs more skills that are required in a paper exam. Cooperation, communication and organization kills are also needed to ensure a successful presentation. Moreover, a student who is willing to act as a leader, a coordinator and helpful teammate, is a guaranteed indicator that this team will achieve more and faster.

The Dead Terrorist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdTfhzZMCAw

Death Note Parody http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj53SIdTJMw

Suggestions:

1. It is always a good idea to align a presentation's topic with the interests of the desired audience. The more we know about our audience, the better choice we could make in picking out a video clip that would deliver its message and win applauses and accolade. Video clips that contain unfamiliar topics and accepts may put a fast distance between the audience and the presenting team.

2. If the whole class knows why a teacher asks them to make such presentation, or better yet, if they could see how they could benefit from the team presentation - learning 'people' skills and showing their true voices, the whole class will devote their heart and soul to achieving the goals set by the teacher. Otherwise, in a culture where written exams dominate and dictate, it is difficult to ask students turn their attentions from their exams.

3. High school students’ interest, or even participation in the process of making “learning materials”, ought to be mandatory. <citations needed here> A textbook in itself is the embodiment of society expectations and scholastic assessments; it carries moral lessons and indoctrination from adults who think this ‘should be this way.” Students’ choices, on the other hand, are often free from such expectations and moral bounds; this may be frowned upon. A practical solution, or compromise, would be to allocate certain portion of classroom hours for students’ presentation. With an experienced teacher on site to help students extract what is often emphasized in exams.

Obstacles found:

1.      Time limits: Rigid schedule set by school often force both teacher and students to put aside this classroom activity in order to get better grades that would ‘really count’ in the college entrance exam. The follow-up act-it-out project in the second semester was terminated because the school curriculum in the following semester gave a more strict demand in the volume of textbooks.

2.      Classroom equipment: The absence of a language lab makes it almost impossible to record students’ reading/lip-syncing in advance. A home video camera could only record average sound data and makes analysis quite a challenge. Were a language lab present, students would benefit from handy access to computers, resources on the Internet.

3.      Collecting and analyzing general & specific shortcomings of pronunciation:  This is especially difficult for our school has no language lab or any related software to help record, transcribe and pinpoint global errors in these classes.

Works quoted:

Tapping on High School Students’ Conception of English Conversation: Survey Results from 2000 NTNU English Camp. Shau-Ju Chang, National Taiwan Normal University

https://www.google.com.tw/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&ved=0CE8QFjAH&url=http://www.eng.ntnu.edu.tw/download.php?filename=55_853429fd.pdf&dir=publish&title=%E5%85%A8%E6%96%87%E4%B8%8B%E8%BC%89&ei=G5ToUajsEIbYkgWV8ID4DA&usg=AFQjCNE_5KsSL_v-kno_b9XHXDBgh_B6pA

http://asian-efl-journal.com/quarterly-journal/2013/06/03/efl-learners-studying-abroadchallenges-and-strategies/#thethe-tabs-1-4

Taiwanese students' perceived English oral proficiency in relation to communication strategies, http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll127/id/595591

http://www.wretch.cc/blog/juliajuly/15897732

台灣學生英語學習成效不佳－問題來源  http://www.shs.edu.tw/works/essay/2009/11/2009111504104712.pdf

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