The junior high school project

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Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages, Taiwan

The junior high school project

John Ginther Duxbury

Doctor of Education

This study grew from a cooperative industry-academic project between Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages and Feng-Jia Junior High School, both in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. In the spring of 2010, Feng-Jia Junior High School obtained government money to contract three Wenzao teachers two hours per week for 17 weeks. The course aim was to increase the English ability of 58 chosen junior high school students in the Fongshan area in Kaohsuing County. The students were chosen from two criteria - good English class scores and a brief interview by English teachers at the junior high school.

As a teaching philosophy, I try not to blame students for difficult or uninteresting classes. Instead I reflect on whether I could improve on the style, method, and material I employ. By about the third week I had become frustrated with my class' lackluster interest. After trying several activities and still being frustrated, I decided that it was time to ask myself some hard questions. This concept of facing some hard question was well elucidated in Lane's article [16]. My questions were different than hers, but still hard: Am I doing something wrong as a teacher?Do I want to carry on teaching in a mediocre fashion? Do I want to spend a lot of extra time devising new lessons for every class? Do I want to take the chance that all this effort might be a waste of time and of no value? I chose to try and make a positive change by including the class in the decision, by taking action to improve a situation [26] and to study and solve my own problems [7]. As discussed by Calhoun [5], I took time to explore ideas in the research and compared them to my own situation. I then made changes and observed the effects on myself, the students, and other stakeholders. I employed the cyclic process first introduced by Lewin [17, p. 206] of planning, action, and then factfinding the results of the action. The Third Class

I used material from one conversation book [18, Unit 1. Making Friends]. According to my perception, the students were bored. Whether their disinterest derived from the material itself or from my presentation, I could not determine. Either way, I was not able to elicit the students' interest with this material. It appeared that more and more students were talking about irrelevant topics in L1 and more and more students were not concentrating on the assignments. I discussed my disappointment with the other two teachers and they said that their classes were doing fine. It was possible that my impressions of my class were too subjective and I was being oversensitive. Still, I was not comfortable with this lesson and I believe that teachers need to trust their instincts. The other two teachers gave me the freedom to try anything.

Kramsch [15], in her book Context and Culture in Language Teaching, talks about how language students only enjoy language class in the beginning because classmates talk about each other and their daily lives. As class progresses, topics derived from books become less and less related to students' personal lives. For the next class I choose a book which claimed to offer “topics that matter to teenagers” and exercises that encourage them to “express their own ideas” [8, p. 4]. The Fourth Class

On this day I used material from the ESL conversation text Impact Intro [Ibidem, Unit 3. My Pastimes and Unit 12. Small World], but I felt that again students were disinterested. This class was similar to the week before in that I felt like I had lost their interest and I was spending most of my time reacting to their disinterest rather than assisting and encouraging their language learning. I consulted with the other teachers, but they had no suggestions. They said that their classes were fine with the material. I made the decision to try something different for the following week. Classes Five through Nine

Since the last two classes had not been going well, I used some material from outside sources and some I had created. The students appeared more interested. The class was better because students interacted more in English and were more creative. Also, I felt that the class atmosphere had improved a great amount and students appeared more interested in learning. However, I was not completely. Some students, although polite, showed disinterest. The class never really seemed excited about what they were learning. I decided to ask the students what they wanted to learn. They said they wanted to learn more about other countries.

In the meantime I had been reading several articles about the successful use of short videos in class, especially with the younger generation who were referred to three different terms, iGeneration, generation Y, and millennial generation. I will use the term the generation Y. Warren and Vontz [24] claim that this generation has a desire to make a difference in the world and educators can inspire them by presenting multimedia of actual current events:

Generation Y students' minds are pregnant, ready to give birth to an explosion of innovative and creative ideas for how to solve the world's problems. If we can give them a starting place for motivation and encouragement along the way, there's no limit to what they can do [Ibidem].

They have compassion for problems in the world right now, not exercises in a text book. Generation Y wants to be engaged with the world. Gebhart [11] talked about students' positive reception to movie trailers. The use of YouTube was reported as advantageous to learning in Taiwan [14].

Only one room in the school had equipment that would display YouTube videos from the internet. It was assigned to the Russian woman and I asked her to use it. In class nine, I showed them several TV commercials from YouTube and had them give descriptions of the commercials with their opinions of the products. This activity was not directly relevant to cultural aspects, though it did create some conversation. I was mostly trying different things to catch their interest and attention. After witnessing my class' reaction to the videos, I made arrangements to switch rooms with the Russian woman more frequently. After this class, I went back to my office and found some world maps (both blank and geo political).Classes Ten through Seventeen

For the following lesson I tried to discover the students' knowledge of the world and their interest in particular countries. The students showed an interest in Japan, Canada, and their own country Taiwan. I proceeded to create lessons for those three countries. Each country took more than one week and material was derived from websites and the YouTube. There were also two other lessons included in the last half of the semester. These included a lesson on hip-hop dance and a lesson on survival on a tropical island.

During these eight weeks I looked forward to going to class. The students would begin asking me questions as soon as I came into the room: What are we doing today? What videos do you have? Can we watch the Japanese one again? They would be sitting up in their chairs and they all seemed taller. Most of the students asked me these questions, not just the extroverted ones in the front. I found myself being involved in the class rather than trying to “push” the class into activity. Methodology

Action research methods of evaluation provided a systematic and rigorous means of determining the overall performance of the 17 week project. In the last two classes, my colleague and I collected data from the students using a questionnaire that included 9 scale questions and 2 open ended questions. We also made use of a bilingual Wenzao teaching assistant to interview three students from each class. There were five questions written in both English and Chinese, plus we asked the director of English at the junior high school to give a questionnaire to four staff members asking for a comparison of the three classes. Since we could not be truly neutral and objective [23], we chose this triangulated multiple perspective. It offered more accuracy because of the many perspectives of the students, teachers, and stakeholders at the school [9; 19]. Along with these evaluative procedures, I included my own personal observations in the discussion as an active participant and a “reflective practitioner” [21].

Results

It was decided to give the classes the names of animals to distinguish one from the other - Leopard used technology whereas both Lion and Tiger did not. There are several phenomena that are significant in the results of the students' questionnaires. First, many students marked Neither agree nor disagree, especially in the two classes which did not use technology - Lion and Tiger groups. In the Leopard class 23% of the students marked this category whereas 43% marked this category in both the Lion and the Tiger classes.

Another significant result is the amount of positive scores in the Leopard class in contrast to both the Lion and Tiger classes. This comparison is for students who either agree or strongly agree with the questions. These questions were also put in both English and Chinese in the questionnaire. The results can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1.Comparison of the three groups

A third significant phenomena is that while most students indicated they learned a lot of vocabulary and learned new information about other countries, most of the Lion and Tiger groups did not indicate that they liked the course, nor did they indicate that the course met their expectations. Also both these groups did not indicate that they preferred foreign language teachers to local teachers, nor did they like the material. Also of significance is that students in the Lion and Tiger groups did not indicate that their English had improved. Only 25% of students in the Lion group and 24% of students in the Tiger group indicated that their English had improved. This is in comparison to 70% of the students in the Leopard group.

There were two more questions in this questionnaire, both open-ended - numbers 10 and 11. All students who filled out the questionnaire answered Question 10: “What do you like most in the class?”. In the Leopard group eleven students liked the videos and four liked learning about other countries. Two students liked the class about dance. There were other comments attributed to one student each: games, group work, dialogue, talking to a foreigner. As far as the Lion class, ten students liked discussion and two liked learning about other countries. Other comments were as follows: relaxing, nothing, don't know, looking out the window. In the Tiger group, five students liked the Power Point, three liked the relaxed atmosphere, and two liked learning about other countries. Other comments were as follows: games, reading funny, nothing, nice teacher.

All fifty seven students also answered Question 11: “What did you like least in the class?”. In the Leopard class five students said it was difficult to understand and two of these students specified that it was the videos they couldn't understand. Two students said they couldn't speak Chinese and two said that other students were noisy. Other answers were one each: too hot, the dead mouse, time is too short, boring, bad classroom. Twelve students in the Lion group said “nothing”, four said “the lectures”, and two said it was “boring”. One said that the teacher spoke too fast and one said “I don't know”. Concerning the Tiger group, three said “nothing”, three said “boring”, and two said other noisy students. Other comments were tests, textbooks, couldn't understand, writing, rules, and don't know.

We hoped to get more specific information about why students rated the Leopard class higher in regards to satisfaction. Hence we made use of a bilingual Wenzao teaching assistant to interview three students from each class. There were five questions written in both English and Chinese. The questions asked why they liked or did not like the course, teaching material, and teaching styles of their particular class. We also asked why the course did or did not meet their expectations. In addition we had them rate their own motivation in studying English. The Leopard class rated themselves a little higher in motivation with an average of 8.3 (1 = I don't care / 10 = highly motivated). The other two classes both had 7.3.

Concerning the question why they liked or did not like the course, material, and style, three students from each class were interviewed and they all tended to comment positively. In the Leopard group they liked the foreign stories, the games, and all three talked about the class encouraging them: brings us more desire to learn, teacher always encourages us, and increases our interest. The Lion class students mentioned that the discussions were good:hear the funny answers from our classmates, he has sense of humor, and had group discussions. The comments from the Tiger class concerned learning about foreign cultures: provides us with foreign culture, learn a foreign language, and the foreign teacher is fresh and new to us.

We also pursued the third means of evaluation - the stakeholders. We asked the Director of the English Department at the junior high school to give a questionnaire to four staff members asking for a comparison of the three classes. The questionnaires had supposedly been given to two administrators and two home room teachers, but they were all written in the same hand writing, plus each staff member had given the same answers to each question. In other words, there were four papers and each paper said the same thing:

Did the students say anything about the English classes? Yes, they did.

What were their impressions? Not interesting.

Which classes did they talk about? The classes are all not interesting.

Were their opinions good or bad? Bad.

Did they mention anything specific about the classes? No.

I asked the Director of the English Department to help me find these administrators and home room teachers. I talked with two of the home room teachers and one of the administrators. One of the home room teachers said that some students came to him and complained. They could not understand their teacher in the Tiger group. They had given up trying to understand and they spent their time on other homework during the class. He did not know about the other two groups.

The other home room teacher said that she had heard the program was not interesting. I asked if the students had told her this and she said “No”. She had heard it from another teacher or maybe an administrator. She then left and got three students, one from each class, and asked them about their classes. These three students were different from the students interviewed earlier. The student in the Leopard Class said that his class was interesting. He then talked about using worksheets during the videos and he also said the teacher made him think and use his imagination. The student from the Tiger class said that the class was “not bad”. When we asked her to explain, she said she didn't really remember, but it was okay. The student from the Lion class said that his class was “so-so”. He explained that the vocabulary was difficult and he did not understand sometimes.

The Director and I then found one of the administrators. She said that she had not talked with any of the students this year, but the program the previous year had been better. I asked how she knew that. She said that the students the previous year told her. I reminded her that she had not talked with any students this year so it would be difficult to compare. She said that it was obvious; the teachers last year were more active: they played games and sang songs.

She could see that they were having more fun when she walked by their classrooms in the hall way. We were not able to find the other administrator. Discussion

Most of the students indicated that they learned a lot of vocabulary and learned new information about other countries. However, only in the Leopard class (the class that presented the YouTube short videos) did the majority of the students like the course, felt that the course met their expectations, indicated that they often talked in English, mostly understood the teacher, preferred the foreign teacher to their local teacher, liked the teaching material, and felt that their English had improved.

In the five-question interview of three students from each class, it appears that the students were not unhappy with the Lion and Tiger classes. In fact, if we can make presumptions, it could be that there were things they liked in their respective classes. The difference is that the Leopard class seemed to inspire students to learn, or possibly it increased their interest in learning.

Another interesting aspect is the perceptions of the stakeholders - administrators and home room teachers. Possibly because of their busy schedule, some of them gave opinions according to hearsay or cursory observation. It may be true that junior high students are more interested and learn more in an active class. To see students singing and playing games is interesting for an observer. However, I believe that surveys and interviewers could give more accurate information when used along with the observations. Also, the stakeholders may have not known what is going on in the classrooms.

Using some multimedia seems to make the difference between junior high school students only passively accepting a language class and junior high school students becoming engaged with content, being excited about what they are seeing, and being inspired about what they are learning. Interest is a good motivator and should be considered when planning a course [22]. Most schools in the developed world have access to multimedia equipment and labs and, if nothing else, arranging for classes to use multimedia entertainment once a week may help peak students' interest in a subject. To watch movies and long videos in a class, I believe, is a misuse of multimedia. Videos of short duration seem to work the best as long as they are accompanied with class activities relevant to the topic and courses [10; 11; 14; 25].

I went through three transitions while teaching this class. First I used the traditional ESL books that most classes use. Then I tried using some of my own ideas. Finally I asked the class for help. In other words, I began the course by using material from a third person authority. I moved onto using my past knowledge and my creativity. I then used the collective “we”. Getting ideas from “our” classroom group had a much greater potential for creativity and for success. The result of this group interaction in the ninth class was much more successful as a whole than any one of us (teacher or students) could have come up with individually. Roberts [20] studied the value of this social synergy in a school setting. He talked about how the potential for community can enhance the college environment through the use of diverse members. Cooperation between teacher and students can make a classroom rife with possibilities for improved learning conditions.

Generation Y wants to be active and involved. They are accustomed to information and images moving quickly [24]. This mode of stimulation may not have been advocated in our generation, but it is a reality in theirs. We have a responsibility and we are paid to prepare them, not only for the outside world, but for the outside world in the future. For their world to make sense, it is better that it is brought into the classroom and studied. It is better that this virtual world is studied with us, the educators, people who have experience and training looking objectively at information and stimuli, people who have had experience with research methods, and with the concepts of action research - planning, acting, fact-finding [17, p. 206], and reflecting [21].

It is possible that my teaching style, the students, and/or some other factors influenced these findings. A similar study could be done to replicate these results, or a teacher could evaluate the first half of his course with no multimedia, and the second half of his class with multimedia. Different types of multimedia can also be tried. In particular there is research being done on the use of sophisticated virtual games in class [1; 22].

junior school project language

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