Key Words:
Paraphrasing; Action Research.
Action Research, in other words, is practitioner-led
or practitioner-based research. It involves you thinking carefully about what
you are doing, so it is also called a self-reflective practice In action
research, researchers do research on themselves in company with other people,
who are also doing the same. Action research involves learning in and through
action and reflection. Action research is a form of practice, which involves
data gathering, reflection on the action, generating evidence from data and
drawing conclusions gradually through various evidences. To do action research,
first, we should have our own questions, and then we should stick to the
questions and research step-by-step to get an improvement with evidence. Action
research goes through a cycle of planning, acting, observing, reflecting and
planning again.
As a teacher, after my study of
AR, I began to use the theory and approach in my teaching under the guidance of
Doctor Laidlaw, my AR tutor. The following are the steps I have carried out in
my field.
1.
What is the
aim of AR in teaching field for teachers?
In teaching, AR could be used to help teachers that
they are able to study AR theory practically both for their own further
research and study, and their studentsÕ skills of learning and learning itself.
Each AR researchers should have a root question, which is deeply considered and
related to his/her current study and teaching. The final goal for researchers, as
I have mentioned, is to help students improve their skills of learning and
learning itself.
2.
How do I
learn AR in teaching?
(1)
AR, as a
theory but very practical, is to have a precise research on teaching and
learning procedures in order to find out both the weak points and good points,
hence we can make good use of the latter as an opportunity to further develop
our teaching and studentsÕ learning in terms of quality and methodology, and
avoid the first. The weak points should be seriously concerned. Actually, for
our research, they are the very points we will take into consideration. Those
are just what I have mentioned previously as the root questions we all will
have respectively in our activities. For instance, my question is the weak
point I have in my teaching, hence: How can I improve my ÒparaphraseÓ so
that I can help my students improve their skills of learning and learning?
Then as researchers, we should pay more attention to
the questions as periodic research with related questions, and put them into
effect while teaching. To my personal understanding, AR is also a communication
between teacher and his\her students. Closing door and making-up research will
never solve the real problems. We have to keep in constant touch with students
both in the class and out. Gradually, we are able to solve the problem with
different small questions appearing and solved. What we have to know is we
should never jump to the end and say I have found the resolution and my
students and I are improved. We should prove them with very sound evidences.
Evidence is very important. If there is no evidence, there is no resolution.
Evidence always sounds louder than groundless speaking.
(2)
Keep deeply in mind that questions we
have should never be forgotten and changed if we have not really solved them.
In addition, what we should keep in mind is that we should find a question,
which is really concerned in our teaching. The question we proposed will never
influence our reputation. That is to say, please donÕt be afraid that the question
might low down our character at the presence of the students and colleagues as
well.
(3)
What is my
question and how have I acted in my research?
(4)
How
can I improve my ÒparaphraseÓ so that I can help my students improve their
skills of learning and learning?
Why do I choose the question?
I feel in my teaching, that I often have troubles in
explaining some long and complicated sentences in English. I can paraphrase and
explain, but they are not precise and proper as a language educator's should
be. Before my participation in the AR group, I worried a lot about it, but I
didnÕt find a correct resolution to the question. Working in the group, I began
to take my question into consideration. As a matter of fact, at the early
beginning, I didnÕt take evidence into consideration, and I just took it for
granted. After a short time of study and research, I thought that I should have
improved. The fact is far from that (how did I know? Because I still had the
problem of dealing with difficult sentences). I only kept the question in my
mind and seldom put it into effect and I didnÕt always communicate with my
students. Sometimes, although I had some ideas, they were very subjective.
(2) How have I been doing my research?
In other words, my question should have
been ÒHow have I been working on my question--- How can I improve my
ÒparaphraseÓ so that I can help my students improve their skills of learning?
At the early stage, I wrote my question on the blackboard and told them
that I was doing some research on paraphrase so that, all together, we improve
together. After a short introduction of AR to my students, they were also very
interested in it. (How did I know?)
Evidence: They quickly noted down my words and asked me how they could help me
(At that time, I was teaching Class 2,Grade 2 students). Hu Guomei wanted to
borrow some books about AR. I told her to read a particular magazine as there was an article about it.
Following how Doctor Laidlaw did her Action Research
(Laidlaw, 2001,2002), I chose 4 students (Bai Liang, Hu Guomei, Ma Caixia and
Ji Jianjun who are in different levels) from the class to help me. After each
teaching for this class, I kept a journal of my problems, my improvement and
their reflection.
How did I get the reflection? After my
teaching, I asked them some questions related to the materials they learned in
the text. If they were able to give me the correct answer, I could say my
paraphrase, only in this unit of teaching, I got an improvement, or I would
explain more and afterwards, marked the failure of my teaching through their
response and thought over about it till they knew the answer. I carried my plan
in a series of half a term.
Unfortunately,
I was changed to give lessons to other class (Cl3, Gr2) in second term, and my
work was stopped on the way. But it didnÕt trouble me a lot. In this class, I
explained them in the same way as I had done in the previous class, and I made
it go on with my new class. And the result is acceptable. The following is my
note at the beginning (observing):
Step1: My
question is not changed, but my research goes into the question itself in more
detail. I have changed the research-question and my own actions in order to
deepen the knowledge which can emerge from it.
Notes: (why it goes into details)
1.
In the early
stage, I focused only on the question on the surface, and I didnÕt understand
what I should really do to reach the aim of improving my students and I, our
skills of retelling the sentences in the texts.
2.
After several
weeks of experimenting and communication, I understood that paraphrase should
be carried out from small pieces of words to whole sentences, even whole
paragraphs. I started my research from the very small point---word retelling
(ask students to tell me with some other words they have learnt to replace the
new or difficult ones).
Evidence: I chose some sentences to check their
understanding and improvement:
Example 1:Her style is restrained and understated
(unit 9, Integrated skills of English Book II): styleÑway of singing. Be restrainedÑbe
limited. UnderstatedÑbeing simple and easy (They can answer even though not
very correctly).
Example 2:Markets in dead wildlife
reward its killing, foster its private ownership and manipulation, spawn
disease and are open to corruption (unit 12, Integrated skills of English
Book III)
Example 3: I relax and curl deeper
beneath the blanketsÕ warmth (unit 2, Integrated skills of English Book IV)Ñcan you tell me another word to explain
ÒrelaxÓ? Can you mime ÒCurlÓ of your body in bed? What is the part of speech
for ÒwarmthÓ? what is the adjectival form of ÒwarmthÓ? Can you tell me more
examples for Affix of Adj.+ th-----N?
Result: Gradually, my students got used to my requests
and were able to find some simple related words to replace the new and
difficult ones, but they were not very precise and proper.
Evidence: Students were very active to
participate and answer my questions if they were able to. (Question I still
had: this work is complex, so I could not quickly draw a conclusion. In some
simpler text, they could do as I asked, but in some difficult sentences, they
were not happy to tell me. It actually is a life-long for studying English).
Often, before my explanation of the
sentences, I gave them to my students, and I gave them more time to think and
find out the words and sentences to explain. Sometimes they were able to do
that together with their classmates if they were easy in terms of lengths,
structures, and grammatical points and so forth. But in some difficult sentences,
although they could explain some single words, they were unable to retell the
meaning of the whole sentences because of the complicated sentence structure,
grammar, tense and some special English expressions etc. Later, I gave them a
new question: What are difficult for you to understand English sentences?
Answers: a. too many new words (they felt difficult to
remember them and use in practice); b. very difficult sentence structures (too
many clauses one sentence).
My resolution: I quickly corrected my understanding of
Òparaphrase.Ó It doesnÕt mean to retell some difficult and new words only,
complicated sentence structure and direct English understanding of the sentence
should also be concerned.
What should be dealt with in a sentence?
a.
Can they
definitely understand what are in a sentence Such as new words, tense, clause
etc.
b.
Can they use
their words to explain a sentence?
c.
Can they
translate the sentence if necessary?
Conclusion for step 2 (reflecting): in the
early time, they felt I was wasting their time, these should be explained by
the teacher. What they should do is to get the answer from the teacher. Later,
they were more active and they became quite interested in the activities and
they were trying to explain, translate and understand the meaning of the
sentence however difficult they were.
Evidence: I had a survey: They wanted to try by
themselves or were given an answer by the teacher. They chose the first option.
After this circle of research, I have
learnt the way to do AR, but there are still more questions I havenÕt solved in
my research and teaching. In other words, I have to say that I should progress
to a further research to resolve my question. What is my new plan? How can I
better my research and solve my problem? I shall find it in my teaching.
As AR learners, on our way doing the
research, we will have some unexpected problems existing on our way. For me, in
the first round, I have met some problems. 1. I could not find the real question,
and I wasted a long time to do it. 2.I wanted to find a resolution and jump to
the conclusion nervously without specific evidence. 3. Because of various
excuses, I was lazy in fulfilling my task. 4. I didnÕt have objective evidence
and sometimes I took them for granted so that I wanted to make up some evidence
with which to draw a conclusion. 5. Sometimes studentsÕ reflections were far
from my expectations and I was disappointed. 6. I subjectively thought I was
getting a great improvement but this was not always the case.
AR is not a short task to find a quick and
achievable work. Patience and careful research is very necessary. Whoever, in
whatever field, can use it to deal with the problems appearing in the work. Any
jump to an end it is not acceptable. A long-term task and circular planning, acting, observing, reflecting are
the basic requirements to carry the work out.
McNiff, J., 2002. http// www.jeanmcniff.com
McNiff, J., 2002. Action Research: Principles and
Practice. London and New
York
Whitehead, J., 2002. http://www.bath.ac.uk/edsajw
or http://www.actionresearch.net