Action Research:

Using Talk about Osaka

Four Skills Integrated Teaching for High School Students in Osaka

Oral Communication SIG

All Osaka Senior High School English Teachers' Association

Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG) is a group of senior high school English teachers in Osaka. OCSIG did Action Research involving a class of eleventh graders, a practitioner (this writer) and ten observers (senior high school English teachers in Osaka). Forty senior high school students were instructed using a textbook Talk about Osaka edited by OCSIG. The group set up a hypothesis; four-skills integrated activities in this textbook will motivate learners, resulting in improving the learners' all-round English abilities. Parts of the interactions in class were videotaped and the group analyzed them. For the analysis, the group developed a checklist and collected scores according to it. Questionnaires to grasp the preferences and confidence of students to discuss particular topics about Osaka were administered. Pre and post-proficiency tests were used to evaluate students' improvements in proficiency.

1. Introduction

This paper is to report Action Research conducted by Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG) in 1999 and 2000. Some English teachers seek practical hints without any kind of theoretical framework, believing that theory is useless in the classrooms. The group acknowledged the significance of Action Research for the purpose of bridging the gap between theory and practice.

2. Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG)

Oral Communication Special Interest Group (OCSIG) is a group of senior high school English teachers in different schools in Osaka. Since the courses of studies by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture implemented Oral Communication in 1994, the group has been working to contribute to English education. In 1998 OCSIG compiled a textbook that was used for this Action Research.

3. Textbook: Talk about Osaka

The textbook which OCSIG compiled aims at enhancing students' confidence in communicative use of English. OCSIG members tried to include the successful lesson plans in actual class situations in the textbook. It consists of six main lessons and deals with familiar topics in Osaka as in Table 1. Each lesson contains four-skills integrated activities as follows: (1) vocabulary, (2) listening, (3) model dialogues, (4) pair work, (5) short passage reading, and (6) guided writing. Some lessons have information gap type exercises, interview and survey type exercises and free compositions based on brainstorming.

Table 1. Contents

4. A Rationale for Action Research

Carr and Kemmis offer the following definition of Action Research:

a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which these are carried out(Carr and Kemmis 1985:220-1).

OCSIG basically accepted this definition while putting it in educational settings.

The group also supported Nunan’s (1989:102) five core principles as a rationale for Action Research.

1. School-based: Strong bonds should be forged between the research and practice.

2. Experiential: Theory and principles should be tested out in practice.

3. Problem-centered: Problems exist in real classrooms. Teaching and research should be conducted towards the identification and solution of such problems.

4. Developmental: Teaching is a complex human undertaking. Teachers are at different stages of development.

5. Open-ended: Professional development is unending, continual and lifelong.

5. Action Research Cycle

Action Research involves small-scale investigative projects and consists of a number of phases which recur in cycles. The group set up the following eleven phases for Action Research in Figure 1, adapting Wallace’s (1991) idea.

1. Received Knowledge: To help identify the problem, already received knowledge should be utilized. OCSIG had already administered questionnaires to English teachers in Osaka two times.
2. Problems: OCSIG members discussed the questionnaire results to identify problems as well as they brought the problems from their own classrooms.
3. Previous Experiential Knowledge: To set up a hypothesis, previous experiential knowledge was utilized. OCSIG members had more than fifteen years of teaching experience.
4. Hypothesis: OCSIG set up a hypothesis to solve the problems.
5. Pre-investigation: Data were collected by administering a questionnaire.
6. Pre-test: Data were collected by administering a pre-test to assess students' proficiency level.
7. Practice: Lesson plans were made and put into practice.
8. Reflection: The effects of action were assessed by using a checklist. Points for improvement were discussed for the next action.
9. Professional Competence: Reflection phase contributed to raising the participating teachers’ (the observers as well as the practitioner) professional competence.
10. Post-investigation: The hypothesis was tested by administering a questionnaire.
11. Post-test: The hypothesis was tested by administering a post-test to assess students' improvement of proficiency level.

6. Problem identification (1. Received Knowledge and 2. Problems phases)

OCSIG administered two questionnaires in 1994 and in 1996 to the teachers in Osaka. The purpose of the questionnaires was to investigate how Oral Communication classes were conducted and to help discuss what problems teachers were facing. The group examined the questionnaire results and the problems from their own classrooms were considered. The following problems were pointed out to initiate Action Research.

1) Different System: Japanese language is distant from English in terms of phonology, syntax and culture. This creates difficulties in implementing oral practice in class and getting active participation from students.

2) Lack of Motivation: Students in general know they can live comfortably without learning English. Teachers acknowledge that students think they have no need to study English.

3) Declining Learning Abilities: In most educational occasions students tend to easily lose concentration. The same instructions and explanations sometimes must be repeated over and over so that the teachers can ensure students understanding. Even teachers with much experience share the same problem and it seems undeniable that students’ over-all abilities in academic fields are in decline.

4) Gaps of Abilities in One Class: In a worst case scenario there would be a few students who don’t know the alphabet and a few students who want to take proficiency test outside school in the same class.

5) Difficulty in Improving Proficiency: Some students study only for the test. After the test is over they apparently forget almost everything that was taught. It seems quite difficult to raise the level of students’ English proficiency in the long run.

7. Hypothesis (3. Previous Experiential Knowledge and 4. Hypothesis phases)

How these problems could be solved was discussed. After the discussion OCSIG set up the following hypothesis.

Four-skills integrated activities with familiar topics to discuss in this textbook will motivate learners, resulting in improving the learners’ all-round English abilities.

8. Plan (7. Practice)

The practitioner taught 40 students using the textbook from November 1999 to January 2000 with an interval of winter vacation for two weeks. In total 14 consecutive class hours, each of which consisting of 50 minutes, were conducted and some scenes were videotaped. To cover one lesson, average two class hours were spent. Classroom English was used as often as possible by the practitioner. There were some occasions when students had difficulty in comprehending what they were supposed to do. In those cases, Japanese was used. When students needed to ask questions as for the meaning of (a) word(s), example sentences were given by the practitioner. In addition to the practitioner’s English, students had chances to listen to the native speakers’ recording accompanied with the textbook. A couple of supplementary worksheets were prepared for each lesson so that activities could be performed easily.

9. Checklist Analysis Watching the Video (8. Reflection phase)

OCSIG members watched the video to analyze the instruction. For the analysis of the instruction, a checklist with the following categories in Tables 2-5 was prepared. Each instruction was evaluated by eleven observers including the practitioner on a 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) scale utilizing this checklist.

9.1. Warm-up and Readiness

At the beginning of each lesson, the practitioner always prepared a warm-up activity. Jazz chants like rhythm practice, flash-cards, two types of listening activities; 1) cloze-type listening reviewing the dialogue and 2) listening that utilizes students’ writing were used for warm-up activities. 4.02 points were marked in Table 2 - 1.

9.2. Grasping Students’ Comprehension

As you can see in Table 2 - 2, in this category, how much the practitioner grasped the students’ understanding was assessed. The evaluation was based on subjective judgments by the observers.

9.3-8. Input Related Techniques during the Instruction

In the categories in Table 3, how effectively the input related techniques were utilized during the snstruction was evaluated.

3. Visual Aids: The textbook included colorful pictures and illustrations. As a matter of course clear images were successfully presented to students without elaborating extra visual aids.

4. Topics: Main themes were all familiar to students.

5. Vocabulary: Vocabulary was effectively presented through warm-up activities and matching activities. To review the previous lessons, mini vocabulary quizzes were occasionally used.

6. Information: Instead of word-by-word translation, transferring information was emphasized. For this purpose, the semantic aspects of individual lexical items were more significantly treated than syntax. Enough time was secured for vocabulary learning at the beginning of each lesson, so there were no major pitfalls in this category.

7. Explanation: In explaining the meaning of lexis students did not know, example sentences were used by the practitioner. Most of the time students enjoyed guessing the meaning from the example sentences or contexts given. Only when they had difficulty in reaching the correct meaning, their first language, Japanese, was utilized.

8. Instruction: Generally every lesson was consistent in organization. In the first lesson, the practitioner had to exactly tell students what to do and often repeated the same instruction. Even after elaborating the way of instruction, major points had to be summarized in Japanese. However, as they continued to study the following lessons, there was no need to add instructions in Japanese except for moving into completely new activities.

9.9-12. Four Skills

As you can see in Table 4, to what extent four skills were practiced in each class was evaluated. In comparison to the ordinary English teaching in Japan, more listening and writing activities were conducted.

9.13-16. Activities

The purpose of the activity was checked and the results were shown in Table 5. In the categories of variety and accuracy, the instructions were highly evaluated. However in the categories of creativity and fluency, it was less highly evaluated.

10. Preferences and Confidence Questionnaire (10. Post-investigation phase)

Questionnaires to grasp the preferences and confidence level of students to discuss the following particular topics about Osaka were administered two times, before and after the instructions.

Ten topics:

1) fun spots, 2) festivals, 3) dialect, 4) art (Rakugo, Manzai), 5) sports, 6) food, 7) personality of the locals, 8) figures in history, 9) future, 10) problems in Osaka.

The results of the pre and post-investigations were compared in Figures 2 and 3. The student answered on a 1 (strong no ) to 5 (strong yes) scale. 1JS means that on the topic 1) fun spots in Osaka, the student wants to speak in Japanese. 1CS means that the student is confident in speaking in English. 1CW means that the student is confident in writing in English. For the lack of space, the results of one concrete topic, fun spots in Osaka, and an abstract one, problems in Osaka, are shown in Figure 2 and 3.

10. 1 Concrete Topic

Figure 2. Preferences and Confidence/Fun Spots

On the topic of "fun spots in Osaka"

1JS: willing to speak in Japanese

1ES: willing to speak in English

1EW: willing to write in English

1CS: confident in speaking in English

1CW: confident in writing in English

In the pre-investigation, this particular group of students preferred writing better than speaking in English. They felt safer in writing because time is secured in writing. In comparison to the score of 1JS(speak in Japanese about fun spots in Osaka), there is a remarkable decrease in 1ES(speak in English about fun spots in Osaka).

In the post investigation, a remarkable increase was seen in 1ES(speak in English about fun spots in Osaka). In this category the score went up from 1.7 to 2.8. This means that more students became positive in speaking in English after the instruction.

10. 2 Abstract Topic

Figure 3. Preferences and Confidence / Problems

On the topic of "problems in Osaka"

0JS: willing to speak in Japanese

0ES: willing to speak in English

0EW: willing to write in English

0CS: confident in speaking in English

0CW: confident in writing in English

In Figure 3, the questionnaire results concerning one of the abstract topics, problems in Osaka, is displayed In the pre-investigation, in all the categories except for 0JS, the score was less than 2 points (no). In each category, the score was much lower than that of a concrete topic.

In the post-investigation, a small increase in 0JS(speak in Japanese about problems in Osaka: from 2.4 to2.6) and 0ES(Speak in English about problems of Osaka: from 1.6 to 1.9) was seen. On the other hand, there were a small decrease in EW, CS and CW. Actually, they produced a larger number of sentences in the latter chapters, but the impression that they had to write on abstract matters seemed to influence the questionnaire results negatively. The findings in Figure 3 show it is more difficult to deal with abstract matters.

11. Pre and Post proficiency Test (6. Pre and 11. Post-test phase)

To evaluate students’ improvement in proficiency, pre and post-tests were constructed based on the third Grade Step test administered by the Society for Testing English Proficiency, Inc. Each test was adapted so that students could take the test in fifty minutes. Pre-test was administered before the first instruction in September and post-test after the last instruction in January. They consisted of the five test item categories in Table 5 and the difficulty level of each test was roughly maintained at the same level according to the data of the previous test takers.

In order to compare the results of pre and post tests, a T-test analysis was used. The results were in Table 5. The T-test results indicated the significance of differences in the categories of conversations (p<.005), ordering (p<.10), comprehension (p<.10) and total scores(p<.025).

Table 6. Pre-post proficiency tests (Number of students=35)

12. Discussion (9. professional competence)

The Reflection phase contributed to improving professional competence of all the teachers who participated in this Action Research. The practitioner himself realized points for improvement by watching the video. Unless he had watched the video, he would have not noticed these points. Three main self-reflection points by the practitioner are as follows.

1) On some occasions the practitioner missed the chance to control the class. He should have given a concrete command to discipline the class.

2) Information which should be written on the chalkboard should be reexamined. Sometimes too much information was presented at one time.

3) When using classroom English, the practitioner sometimes spoke too fast.

The practitioner also raised his competence as a teacher because observer teachers pointed out merits and defects of the instructions, which he would have not realized. From the observers many comments were presented, which can be summarized as follows.

1) At first, students were less motivated because they thought English is a completely different language from Japanese. In the course of the lessons, the class atmosphere gradually turned into a lively one.

2) In comparison to the traditional grammar translation type instruction, there was more active participation of the students and higher levels of concentration and involvement were attained.

3) As for declining learning abilities, there were some occasions when some students were not able to follow the instruction for pair work. There is a need to improve how to demonstrate before pair work.

4) If more time had been allotted, writing in small groups could have been incorporated. More effective use of group work may provide an answer to the gaps of abilities and class size problems.

5) The fact that t-test indicated the significance of differences in the categories of conversations, ordering, comprehension and total scores partially supports the hypothesis.

13. Conclusion

This Action Research was the first collaborative teacher-researcher type attempt by OCSIG. The group tried to maintain flexibility of the research so that it would not give the class and practitioner too many burdens. Though a clear-cut proof of the hypothesis has not been attained, all the participants learned a lot from the reflection phase. The writer especially benefited by getting constructive criticisms from the observers. Finally the group would like to suggest that more teachers should have a teacher-researcher mind in order to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Action Research surely can help teachers grow.

Reference

Carr, w. and Kemmis S. 1985. Becoming Critical: Knowing Through Action Research, Victoria: Deakin University Press.

Nunan, D. 1989. Understanding Language Classrooms Prentice Hall.

Richards, J. C. and Lockhart, C. 1994. Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wallace, M. 1991. Action Research for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.