How can I can I help my students become more active in class? Liu Hui, Guyuan Teacher’s College, Ningxia, P.R. China. June, 2004

Introduction:

 

“Action research is a name given to a particular way of researching you own learning. It is a particular way of looking at your practice in order to check whether it is as you feel if should be.” (McNiff, 2001)

 

It was two years ago that I first found out about educational Action Research with the help of Dr. Moira Laidlaw* in Guyuan Teacher’s College. I had just graduated from Ningxia University and become one of the department’s youngest language teachers. I found AR to be a particular way of improving practice that stimulated me to start my teaching career.

 

Jack Whitehead (1985) describes a basic action process as follows:

I experience a concern when some of my educational values are denied in my practice.

I imagine a solution to that concern;

I act in the direction of the imagined solution;

I evaluate the outcome of the solution;

I modify my practice, plans and ideas in the light of my evaluation.

 

This systematic plan implies that I, as a researcher and practitioner, should do some research on myself and reflect deeply on my work. I am now sure that was the right way to do it, and constantly bear in mind these words:

 

Action research is a systematic self-reflective scientific inquiry by practitioners to improve practice. (McKerab, J. 1991: 3-5)

 

I therefore reflected on my teaching situation first.

 

As usual, every head-teacher[1]waits for the freshmen to enroll in the college’s multifunctional hall in September of each year. It was last September that I first made an acquaintance with my students. Most of them came from the nearby countryside in the Xihaigu[2] Area. I noticed that quite a number of students seemed to be very timid, even with their parents. They followed their parents’ every move as they carefully pulled out money from inside pockets to pay the different fees for various departments of the school. I also noticed that these parents wore color-faded clothes; their faces were heavily winkled, maybe due to years of hard work in poor conditions. I fully understand how hard it is for the parents in Xihaigu, where the natural conditions are so bad, and people greatly depend on suitable weather to harvest corn for the whole family. Parents always place their hopes in their sons and daughters to change the poor situation by finding a good job after their college education. However, since the government policy of enrollment expansion five years ago, many graduates from universities as well as colleges are now confronted with a highly competitive job market. There are more graduates from universities each year. In contrast, the students from our college face an even gloomier situation because of the status of this place. How can we try our best to help students be self-supportive in this intensely competitive society? In answering this question, I feel a strong responsibility to help to develop my students’ self-confidence and arm them with knowledge. As I still remember, I was encouraged with slogans like “Knowledge is power”, “Knowledge is everything”, in my own educational experience.

 

My class consisted of a group 28 students who had just finished their high school and were now majoring in English Education. I’m not only their head teacher, but also their teacher for teaching the course – ‘Integrated Skills of English’ (Books I and II), compiled by Zou Weicheng. The aim of this course is to develop students’ abilities in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation skills. When I was teaching them, I found a lot of problems, such as students’ listening and speaking skills, their heavy reliance on the teacher, and their negative attitudes towards learning English.

 

Ma Huiling[3], my target student, is a quiet, frank but a rather introverted girl.

 

From the very first contact with this student, I found she was very poor in English grammar and pronunciation. In my class, when I was teaching, she seldom responded to me, except that I called her name and asked her to answer the question. Later, I got some reasons: Ma Huiling is from a special family, whose parents are disabled and her two elder sisters have got married. She cared for her parents while still studying in the school. But, because of her poor mastery of her English course in senior high school she fell behind. She felt English was quite difficult for her, and she felt sorry for her parents. So, I realised I should help Ma Huiling make improvements in her learning in order that she could comfort her parents by a good performance in college.

 

Bearing my students in mind, I started teaching by placing a significant emphasis on bringing knowledge to them. As the same time, I found my students were so poor in English grammar both in their homework and in their classroom teaching, I developed my original AR question: How can I help the first-year English majors with their poor English grammar?

 

Why I came to realize that I should do some changes in my teaching

The students themselves needed changes in my teaching.

 

I once came across Ma Huiling in front of my office; I asked how her parents were. She was glad to tell me they were well and thanked me for my caring. Then I invited her to my office and we had a relaxing talk. I found out that in fact, she wants to keep pace with my teaching, but she doesn’t have time to take in what I’m teaching and sometimes she finds herself drifting away into her own thoughts. It seemed that it was me who was controlling the students too much and not giving them enough space in which to develop themselves.

 

With my AR question, I focused my teaching on how much grammar knowledge I was teaching the students. Thus, it was me who did all the work, explaining everything and talking for 90% of the class time. The students took an increasingly passive stance in classroom activities. They become more and more reluctant to ask and answer questions. Even in their homework they still made the same mistakes that I had corrected several times already.

 

I was aware that I needed some urgent adjustments to change the current situation. I also wanted to hear the students’ opinions about my teaching and what they wanted to change most in my teaching. Therefore, I conducted an “opinion poll”. I communicated with the students in the way friends might in order to find out what about my teaching, how I could help them, and what I should be worried about. I then asked them to voice their opinions. I asked each student to write down their suggestions and expectations for teaching and learning.

 

To my great delight, I accumulated valuable suggestions from their writing. Some said even though they had understood what they had learnt in the class, they couldn’t make use of it while doing exercises, so they wanted me to introduce efficient learning strategies for them; some hoped I could tell them some funny stories or sing songs at intervals in my teaching in order to avoid a boring atmosphere!

 

Zhao Caihua, a diligent girl wrote to me:

 

‘Miss Liu, I really feel you are a patient and kind teacher. Somehow I easily lose interest in your teaching. Could you help me?’

 

Some suggested to me that I should ask more questions to make them keep pace with my teaching; some asked me to trust them and give them keys to the exercise; they said they could check by themselves and so on. The students were also very kind and gave me many compliments as well. I felt so moved while I was reading their opinions as this was real communication and heart-to heart talk.

 

As soon as I finished reading their writing, I expressed my gratitude for their valuable suggestions. I read some of their advice and told them of my revised teaching plan according to their suggestions. In that moment, I understood more about how much the students needed to be respected, valued and encouraged, because I saw many students smiling happily with shining eyes when I read suggestions they put forward. They must have felt very proud of themselves. Furthermore it was their smiles that motivated me as well, just like the New Curriculum of English says:

 

“建立融合、民主的师生交流渠道，经常和学生一起反思学习过程和学习效果，互相鼓励和帮助，做到教学相长” 2 (The New Curriculum of English, 2002)[4]

 

Colleagues’ comments for improvements of my lesson

My colleague and teacher as well, Miss Liu, who taught a methodology course for grade three students, visited my lesson. She talked with me after her observation:

Miss Liu: I was very surprised you talked so much in the class. I found some students seem to be bored.

Liu Hui (me): When I found this passage (the teaching material I taught that day) was quite difficult for the students to understand. I wanted to explain it clear.

Miss Liu: But you neglect your students’ potentialities. You do all the work for them. But some you don’t need to. Would it be better if you ask the students to discuss about the passage, then you use different questions for different students to draw their attention to the language points? If we just work ourselves with a fret over the paraphrasing the passage, we would run the risk of failing to the ‘forest’ for the ‘tree’.

 

I affirmed the educational values I hold.

I am always thinking. I received 11 years of English language education. That should mean I could speak a very fluent and pure English. Actually, it doesn’t mean that at all. I still feel embarrassed when I can’t express myself completely with native speakers, and I still felt embarrassed when I couldn’t explain something complex with more clear, simple and understandable language in the class. I knew something about how to do this, so what was wrong? There was something wrong with my own ways of learning. I too am on a learning journey. There’s never an end to it, but there’s improvements on the way. Couldn’t it be the same for my students?

 

 

My planning actions

In order to help the students become more active in class, I made up my mind to give them learning strategies with detailed instructions, help them become confident with themselves and assign tasks based on the principles of cultivating cooperative learning spirit, self-study learning abilities and competence in language use.

 

Class Report

·     Ask the students to prepare a five minutes speech about any topics before my teaching started.

·     offer them a chance to show themselves

·     Build up their self-confidence by the way of speaking in public

 

Group work

Divide the whole class into 7 groups. Four students were to be in each group. Every group would have a group leader, who would check the students’ activities and take some records of their group’s work. The activities they were required to do were the following:

 

Class discussion: to motivate the students to speak more and share ideas

 

Oral homework: to encourage them to consolidate what has been practiced in the class and cultivate in them a sense of cooperation.

 

Checking written homework: to offer a chance for the students to find out the common mistakes by themselves, such as “He glance round the room to see who was there”, “He studies music plays piano well”. Then they were asked to hand their homework in.

 

Supervising retelling: ‘It is self-evident that language can take place when the learner has enough access to input the target language.’ (Hu Zhuangling, 2001). So, retelling, as one of the most efficient way to language learning is very helpful for student target language input.

 

Grammar teaching: each group was asked to prepare a grammar item and select a representative to make use evening class to give a lecture in 30 minutes and 20 minutes to feedback about teaching contents, teaching methods, teaching language and so on.

 

Notes for group work: the group members were changed every 3 or 4 weeks. At the end of the last period of group work, students and teacher will have a meeting to evaluate each group’s work. Then, the best cooperative group would be awarded with 4 gifts, financially supported by the combined contributions from the class itself.

 

Creative drama:

As the New Curriculum of English suggests,

“设计探究式学习活动，促进学生实践能力和创新思维的发展”. [5]

 

I guided students to adapt the teaching materials to the plays, and encouraged them to act in order to, on the one hand, practice their writing with sound understanding of the text, and on the other hand, to enjoy themselves with humorous acting. Meanwhile, the students were required to take notes and give comments for each group’s performance. As a result, I hoped students would become more confident about themselves and have a sense of achievement.

 

Western Cultural Knowledge Competition

In order to motivate every student know about culture knowledge, I reorganized the group work and ask 28 students to make up four teams. Here are the rules:

·     Work out a rule for competition.

·     Over two week’s time, have a knowledge competition of western culture, which every group can prepared in advance.

·     Find the top group and provide also the single prizes for the other three groups.

 

Teacher’s assistant

·     Before the new teaching unit begins, students in each group will work together, preparing a review note of what they have learned in the last unit.

·     Each group will take over some responsibilities from the teacher and prepare a mini lesson in 5 minutes or more to help their classmates review the lessons effectively.

·     Every group leader has to give the teacher group’s feedback for the teaching.

Much help made my Action Research possible

As Montaigne the French writer said:

 

‘No wind blows in favour of the ship that has no port of destination.’

 

Without the Experimental Center for Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching at Guyuan as our strong support, we would not have become involved in this practical research. Many excellent teachers in the department are helping me with my work.

 

Dr. Moira Laidlaw helped me in formulating my AR question and gave me valuable suggestions about collecting data through a journal. This helped me take my work in the right direction. Her visit to my class not only motivated me a lot, but also encouraged my students to be confident. When she had finished her observation of my class, she told my students they were excellent. She really understood what they said, and also gave me 5 A4 pages of notes with suggestions for my improvements and her assurance of my work. (See extracts from her notes in the next part.)

 

Ling Yiwen, an English teacher with 16 years of teaching experience, often led me to insights into my teaching and students’ feedback. On May, 15^th she and I talked about my responses to her teaching after I had observed her. She told me that she was surprised to see that one of her students asked her a question after he had finished answering the teacher’s question. It was quite rare for a Chinese student to take the initiative in this way. This context raised the level of the language-transaction between teacher and student. Her remarks reminded me of the same thing in my class.

 

Li Jin gave her class report on 8^th May directly after our May holiday. The moment she had finished speaking, she turned to me and asked, ‘Miss Liu, how about your holiday?’ I felt a little surprised. Actually I would rather share details about my holiday with the students after the class report. But I had neglected the students’ willingness to communicate with me and missed a chance to encourage my students. After the talk with Miss Lin, I don’t think I would miss the chance again to encourage my students to speak to me.

                                                                     

Tao Rui, who taught the same course with me for the Grade-II students, kindly allowed me to observe her lessons. She showed me a widely-used questioning method in her teaching. Here are some of my notes on her teaching:

 

‘You show the students your questions after they make sure they haven’t questions. I like the way you use here, because on one hand, you draw something important out of the text, on the other hand, you promote the students’ skill of asking questions.’

 

AR meetings offer me a chance once a week to share views with colleagues and a chance to learn. When I found my students were becoming active in class, but they were still poor in mid-term-examinations, I doubted whether the data I collected to show my students were improving, could be convincing to anyone else. I told my worries to Miss Zhao Xiaohong in AR meeting on a Thursday afternoon. She patiently gave me suggestions:

 

‘Your data shouldn’t just be connected closely with students’ scores in exam papers. Your question is how to make your students become active in class. The active students mustn’t have been the students who are good in exams. So, your assessment should focus on the learning process with your question and gather information on daily basis in order to understand individual student’ learning and needs, namely, language assessment should place emphasize on formative assessment.’

 

At that moment, I knew I had made a mistake in the way I had evaluated my students. I almost neglected the process of students’ active involvement in language learning, which is also in line with New Curriculum.

 

How will I ensure that any judgments I make are reasonably fair and accurate?

As my action plans goes on, I’m trying to collect data, and here is the evidence:

 

Notes of individual and group performance to my focus of question.

6^th April: In today’s TV talk show, to my surprise, Ma Huiling acted as the hostess of the program. She’s always a good listener! Maybe she was just interested in the topic, however, because something significant happened. I wrote this in my journal:

 

15^th April: My observation on Ma Huiling in-group discussion: she argued with Wang Yongshou (a relatively good student) about the structure of a certain sentence and believed herself right. Then they wanted my judge. I asked each of them to show their own opinions and the answer was on Wang’s side. But Ma didn’t nod until she asked me twice of explanation.

12^th May: Ma volunteered to show her own understanding when I asked the students’ help to Wang Yongling’s question. Though her answer was not complete. But I do believe she was thinking and trying to participate the class discussion. I can also see she is confident enough. (See ealier for her photo and the other photos of students’ activity in a class discussion.)

 

Students’ oral homework

As I assigned the oral homework for the students, they would bring their creative adaptation of teaching materials and act out something in the class. They took some simple stage props; they changed expression in the acting to demonstrate their feelings; they made costumes for their dramas, which Moira sang high praise for in their performances when visiting my class on 21^st April, 2004. (See Appendix II for students’ rewriting of the text.)

 

Students’ written homework also represents some answers to my questions.

After a month, with the group checking their homework, I asked the students to hand in their homework to me directly. I found some general mistakes, which I had corrected several times in class, were now occurring less frequently. For example, “A grandmother and grandson stand at the rail wait (and wait or, waiting) for someone.” “ He taked (took) the umbrella when she went out in the morning,” and the like were seldom seen in their written exercise. I believe, with the help of each group’s teaching grammar knowledge and checking each other’s homework, the students began to be more responsible for their homework and were learning actively rather than passively.

 

Students’ notes for group work

In each class, if there were groups’ performances or students’ own prepared teaching, I would give each group several minutes to show their comments or suggestions about the work they had done. And also the group leaders were required to take notes about the discussion. Then after 3 or 4 weeks, there was a meeting for selecting the best cooperative group. I collect the data in this part mainly from the regular evaluation- meetings for group work. The group-leader showed their self-evaluation and peer-evaluations as follows:

 

·     Group A (16^th March): We group almost finished our assignment well, especially our group’s grammar teaching work (Present Tense) not only benefited our classmates, but also offered ourselves a chance to be a teacher.

·     Group B (16^th March): We think the Oral homework in our group is the best. We four are so fond of this way to review what we’ve learned in the class and prepare for the new. But our retelling work was not good. We should improve accuracy and fluency.

·     Group C (18^th April): In our group work, we found we spared much time than we learned by ourselves. We enjoyed with exchanging our views and what we got from group discussion was impressing.

·     Group D (28^th May): We four debated several times in the process of group work on the analysis of sentence pattern. Though all of them were solved in the class, our group cooperative relationship started with quarreling and ended up with quarreling.

·     Group E (31^st May): Evaluation for the other groups’ prepared teaching: Lu Wenji’s voice is loud and clear enough and she also corrected the students’ mistake in pronunciation in time. Wang Yongshou can kindly point out the students’ mistake, but as a teacher, he should be more serious. Because we saw he was always smiling. Ma Lingfang’s teaching is very clear and knowledgeable, she can teach us something we didn’t know, such as the phrases “complain of sth., remind sb. of sth. and congratulate sb. on sth.”

·     Group F (31^st May) Evaluation for the other groups’ prepared teaching: Group II should give students enough time to read the exercise by themselves. They also should correct the mistakes and explain the reasons clearly. Group IV made a good use of blackboard, but their writing is not very clear. We group like Yang Xiaoxia’s teaching best, because she asked us to practice with the key words in the passage.

Dr Moira Laidlaw’s comments on my teaching

I invited Moira Laidlaw to visit my classroom to see how my actions help the students to become more active in learning? Her note included these comments:

 

“As I walked around the class, I was impressed by the level of activity of the students. Each one of them was deliberating about the task and talking it very seriously indeed. They were arguing and discussing actively, many of then in English too, which is very impressive.”

 

“Your students are eager to share your knowledge and their knowledge with you. I can see this through their facial expressions, their smiles, their diligence (Note the noun form)* and their assiduous taking of notes.”

 

“In this lesson I have seen evidence of an active class, in which mistakes are tolerated, evaluation is increasing owned by the students, chances to try are prolific-reading, speaking, writing, listening, critical thinking, emotions recognized and respected, and the atmosphere is one in which students can rather than can’t do something.”

 

During the process data collecting, I also got other information. I often had a chat with my students when we take a ten-minutes’ break.

Wang Youshou: I feel I have to do a lot homework, which takes most of my spare time.

Lu Wenji: “I am fond of doing some acting. But the language in the acting isn’t challenging. We mainly express our ideas by body language. Can I improve my speaking by this way?”

Cheng Yabing: “You encourage us to ask questions of the text, and don’t do further explanation if we haven’t questions. But I don’t feel safe. I prefer to explaining the passage sentence by sentence.”

Dr. Moira Laidlaw: “They are so delighted with what they are seeing. Let’s use this delight in helping them learn more. Use this youthful energy for their development…In terms of making the students more active, I think you can extend the use of the following: self-evaluation (in more detail, with you giving guiding questions to help them); getting the students to ask you questions, rather than the teacher-centered method of you asking all the questions; what about some reporting work back? For this you will need to give them a structure: what to look for in a performance- for example, intonation and pronunciation; clarity of expression; acting skills; vocabulary- especially new and appropriate vocabulary; structure of ply; accuracy of the story according to the passage (if this is relevant for exercise); and finally, perhaps, what have the student learnt from their classmates’ performance? This structure will help the students extend their experience and become more active in evaluation, writing, listening and watching skills. It will also increase their ability to collaborate, which is important in the New Curriculum.”

 

So far, my action plan is still ongoing as I start this report and some aspects of it still need to wait in order to gauge the influence on the students’ learning. Thus I haven’t yet developed a comprehensive sense of my own living educational theory yet (Whitehead, 1989). As this research has helped my students become active in learning, however, it also has raised some new questions for me, such as: how can I help my students become much more active in learning? How can I help them develop their self-study ability? How can I help them with skill of asking questions? How can I help them to improve the conversational skills. These will become the beginning of my new action enquiries from which I will develop my own living educational theory.

 

Bibliography

New Curriculum, (2003), National Education Bureau of P.R.C

McNiff, J., ( 1996 ), "Action Research for Professional Development", London

McNiff, J., with Whitehead, J., (2002), "Action Research: Principles and Practice", Routledge, London and New York.

Laidlaw, M., (2002), "A Handbook of Communicative Methodology", Guyuan.

Hu Zhuangling, Lingustics, Peking University Press, (2001)

 

Appendix I (Unit8, Secret Messages to Ourselves, Integrated Skills of English, Book II)

“He dreamt that he had been captured by a tribe savages whose king threatened to kill and eat him unless he could build a perfect sewing-machine. When he tried to do so, Howe ran into the same problem as before. The thread kept getting caught around the needle. The king flew into a rage and ordered his soldiers to kill Howe. They advanced towards him with their spears raised. But suddenly the inventor noticed something. There was a hole in the tip of each spear. The inventor awoke from the nightmare with a start, realizing that he had just found the solution to the problem. Instead of trying to get the thread to run around the needle, he should make it run though a small hole in the center of the needle. This was the simple idea that finally enabled Howe to design and build the first really practical sewing-machine.”

 

Students’ Play Sample:

Narrator: (Xie Juan) An American inventor called Elias Howe is working all night on the design of a sewing-machine, but he runs into a very difficult problem.

Inventor: (Zhou Peng) What should I do? What should I do? How can I get the thread to run smoothly around the needle?

Narrator:(Xie Juan) For a moment, he doesn’t know how to solve this problem. Then he falls asleep.

King: (Ma Jia) Come here! Come here! I order you to go to catch that modern man.

Follower:(Chao Boxiao) Yes, your majesty.

Narrator:(Xie Juan) For a moment, a follower comes around Howe.

Follower: (Zhao Boxiao) You! Follow me!

Inventor: (Zhou Peng) What’s wrong with me? Why I should I follow you?

Narrotor:(Xie Juan) The follow catches the inventor to the king.

Follower: (Chao Boxiao) Your majesty, please look at this guy you want!

King: (Ma Jia) Very good! I command you to design a sewing-machine for our use in three days.

Inventor:(Zhou Peng) Three days?

King:(Ma Jia ) If you don’t finish it in three days, I’ll kill you. Kill you! Go away!

Inventor:(Zhou Peng) Yes, Sir, I’ll try!

Narrator:(Xie Juan) Three days later, the inventor can’t design a sewing-machine, because he meets the same problem as before.

Follower:(Chao Boxiao) Have you finished?

Inventor:(Zhou Peng) I can’t. I don’t know how to get the thread to run smoothly through the needle.

Follower:(Chao Boxiao)What? I ‘ll kill you!

Inventor:(Zhou Peng) Oh, Oh, I know! I know! I know how, …how , how to get it through…