THE DISTANT DELTA MARCH 2013

Reflection and Action

Stage 2

Kateryna Kirichenko
05-May-13
 Reflection and Action

Table of Contents

Section A: Background to Stage 1 and 2 ....................................................................................3

Section B: Reflection on teaching beliefs and practices ............................................................3

Section C: Strengths and weaknesses ........................................................................................4

Section D: Action Plan ................................................................................................................5

Section E: Data collection methods ...........................................................................................6

Section F: Word count and bibliography: ..................................................................................6

Section G: Appendices

Appendix 1..........................................................................................................................7

Appendix 2.........................................................................................................................8

Appendix 3.........................................................................................................................8

Appendix 4.........................................................................................................................9

Appendix 5.........................................................................................................................9

Appendix 6.......................................................................................................................10

2
 Reflection and Action

Commented [DP1]: A clear summary.

SECTION A: BACKGROUND TO STAGE 1 AND 2

I have been teaching since 2005 in various language schools in China, Indonesia and Vietnam; also in a mainstream
primary school in Indonesia. Currently, I’m with the British Council Oman.

In the OC I taught a low- intermediate monolingual class (Hungarians) a 60min lesson on reported speech focusing on
understanding the backshift issue.

Commented [DP2]: You’ve summarized clearly your beliefs

SECTION B: REFLECTION ON TEACHING BELIEFS AND PRACTICES
I believe acquisition occurs best when students have a natural context and a real purpose for communication.
In the class I often use guided discovery approach and task-based learning. My students appreciate the
freedom it gives them and have often commented that they remember better when they have time to
work things out for themselves.
I believe in promoting learners’ autonomy and always try to show learners how they can become more independent
about four different areas of teaching, making reference to your
experience and specific teaching strategies. A couple of your points
could be clearer:
(i) Task based learning could certainly provide “a natural context
and a real purpose for communication”, but it’s not clear how
guided discovery does this: it’s cognitively engaging, but it doesn’t
involve using the target language in a real context.
(ii) In your final point particularly, it will help in future to say
explicitly what you are comparing with, e.g. “Group and pairwork
increases the amount of student talking time compared with oral
interaction between the teacher and individual students” (to take a
contrasting example, in the case of writing, group writing can allow
less practice than individual writing).
(2f)

in their learning

From my experience, students who take responsibility for their learning make faster progress and
acquire skills that allow them to become less depended on teachers. Phonemic chart (apps online),
different ways of recording vocabulary, reading strategies – these are some examples of what my
students have found useful.

I like to personalise the language and make activities more student-centred

From my own language learning experience I found that it makes communication more meaningful.
When students can use the language to talk about things that are important to them and express their
personal beliefs they remember it better.

I believe in the importance of collaborative learning because I feel that it gives students more time to practice and
lowers affective filter

Group and pair work increases the amount of student talking time. Students feel less judged and are
more willing to experiment with language.

3
 Reflection and Action

Commented [DP3]: You’ve identified some relevant strengths

SECTION C: STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES and weaknesses in your teaching. It’s interesting to compare your
strength 3 (monitoring, dealing with emergent language) and
weakness 3 (lack of “feedback sessions”). These are linked, and you
Strengths: can think about how your strength in responding and giving
feedback to individuals while they are doing activities can feed into
feedback sessions after the activity/ for the whole class.
1. Contextualisation and personalisation (2a)

Showing language in context using texts or audio materials makes language more meaningful to students.
Personalisation helps them apply it outside of the classroom.

My students often say that it helps them understand the use of language and incorporate it in their active
vocabulary.

2. Variety of activities and interactions

I always try to incorporate a variety of activities in my lessons to keep students well-engaged throughout
the lesson. It also helps accommodating different learning styles of the students. They have often
commented our lessons are interesting and motivating.

3. Reactive teaching/micro-teaching

When monitoring, I always try to see what issues arise during the activities, react to learners difficulties
and deal with emergent language. Students appreciate help and feel supported.

Weaknesses:

1. Task/activity set up
During freer activities, the goals of the activities are often unclear to the students and this leads to
confusion. This discourages students to listen to each other and decreases their engagement.

2. I don’t use authentic materials in the classroom preferring to exploit textbooks

Due to time constraints, I use textbooks only, with an occasional text from the web (e.g.
onestopenglish.com). Students don’t get exposure to authentic, rich language and this inhibits their
language acquisition.

3. Feedback
From the feedback received in the OC it became obvious that I do not conduct feedback sessions in class.
During speaking and writing activities, I monitor closely and I am always available when needed,
however, my students miss out on evaluation of their performance (both praise and points they need to
improve).

4
 Reflection and Action

Commented [DP4]: You’ve made some suggestions for

SECTION D: ACTION PLAN
In order to maximise student involvement in tasks/activities I intend to
include tasks and activities’ goals and what students are supposed to be doing at each stage in my lesson plans
(‘...focusing on what the students do, we are likely to think more about actual learning... and create a lesson
that is genuinely useful.’ Scrivener, J).
improving the weak areas mentioned above, but these are still a bit
general. For the next stage of your PDA, identify some sources for
ideas in relation to each point, e.g. online articles about giving
classroom instructions or feedback, which will suggest specific
strategies to try.
(2b,e)
NB: On my computer this heading is isolated at the bottom of a
page; to avoid this, select the heading and open Format >
Paragraph> Line and page breaks > Keep with next.

experiment with instructions and task set up techniques across the levels and group to find the best way by Commented [DP5]: Usually you would put just surname and
date, plus page number if you’re directly quoting: (Scrivener, 2005,
recording my instructions and the following group interactions. p. X).

ask for specific feedback from observers

in the long term I will observe my colleagues, paying attention to different ways of activity set up techniques.

In order to introduce more authentic materials in the classroom I intend to

read widely on selection and effective use of authentic materials in language classroom

start using authentic materials in my classes, experimenting with levels and tasks using texts, audio and video
materials.

use guided discovery approach and reading strategies to help students make the best use of the materials

keep record of the materials and activities in order to evaluate their usefulness and students’ reactions to
them. Re-view my records and, in the long term, create a bank of supplementary resources for different levels

In order to provide students with effective feedback I intend to

research different feedback techniques and experiment with them in the classroom to find out which work best
for my students

conduct students’ surveys to ensure that my feedback is useful and relevant to the students

integrate feedback sessions into my lesson plans and start doing it in my lessons

use task-based approach and include teacher-led review stages to highlight issues students have failed to
notice or use correctly (Willis, J 1996).

ask my colleagues to observe my lessons focusing on feedback and its effectiveness

5
 Reflection and Action

Commented [DP6]: You’ve mentioned a variety of ways of

SECTION E: DESCRIPTIONS OF DATA COLLECTION METHODS gathering data about teaching, relevant to specific weaknesses
mentioned above. The choice of instruments is appropriate and
1. Student surveys (Appendices 3 and 5) you’ve chosen simple, practical formats which should help you get
useful information (you would need to make sure students
I will design students’ questionnaires and conduct complementary guided interviews in class to ensure that the understand what “feedback” refers to). You also show awareness
of the advantages of each type.
data is quantifiable (questionnaires) and that the students can express their preferences and explain their
choices (interviews) (Wallace, M. 1998). Although you mention audio recording instructions, none of the
materials in your appendices seem to focus on this (e.g. an
2. Teacher’s journal (Appendix 4) observation sheet could focus on instructions and the effect of
To save time and stay focused I will keep a critical incident journal (Wallace, M 1998). I will only describe the these on the success of an activity).
(2c,d)
key incidents that derive from field notes. However, as A. Burns points out “Journals and logs are unlikely to
used by themselves” (Burns, A. 2010 ),it will be supplemented by the questionnaires and interviews.
3. Observation templates (Appendix 2)
I will design a focused observation sheet to help the observer concentrate on the areas I need to improve.
4. Self observations (Appendix 1)
This will help me to see more clearly what goes on during the activities in the lesson. Using spatial observation
schedule (classroom map) will allow me to do real time self observation without having to spend too much
classroom time.
5. Audio recordings
I will record my instructions for an activity and record one group’s interaction doing the activity to see how
successful I was in setting it up.

SECTION F: WORD COUNT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Word count:
Section A: Background to Stage 1 and 2: Word Count: 53

Section B: Reflection on teaching beliefs and practices: Word Count: 218

Section C: Strengths and weaknesses: Word Count: 259

Section D: Action Plan: Word Count: 299

Section E: Data collection methods: Word Count: 201

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 1062 (including headings) Commented [DP7]: NB: Be careful with word limits: if future
assignments are even slightly over the maximum limit, they can be
returned to you unmarked. (1g)

Bibliography:

Burns, A. 2010 Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. Routledge

Scrivener, J. 2005 Learning Teaching. Macmillan

Wallace, M. 1998 Action Research for Language teachers. CUP

Willis, J 1996 A Framework for Task-Based Learning. Longman

6
 Reflection and Action

SECTION G: APPENDICES
Appendix 1 Classroom map
Activity: _________________________________________________________________________________________.

Goals: ___________________________________________________________________________________________.

Student Student

table table
Student Student Student Student
1 2

Student Student

Student Student

table table
Student Student Student Student
4 3

Student Student

Legend:

? – confused  - engaged, on task  - not participating at all !!! – needs help

7
 Reflection and Action

Appendix 2 Observation tasks template (teacher’s feedback)

Stage After/During Feedback Students’ reaction Observers Comments
_____ (activity)

Types of feedback: implicit, explicit, open class, individual (cards), positive, negative,

Appendix 3 Students’ survey on feedback

1. Do you think feedback is useful? Tick a box and explain your answer briefly

Yes, because_________________________________________________________________________________

No, because _________________________________________________________________________________

2. Circle what types of feedback you think is most useful for you:

a) with the whole class on the board

b) individual (cards)

c) teacher asking students to correct mistakes

d) teacher explaining what’s wrong and how to correct it

8
 Reflection and Action

Appendix 4 Use of Authentic materials (teacher’s journal)

Date Lesson focus Materials used Purpose Students reactions
(skills/systems)

Appendix 5 Students’ survey about use of authentic materials in the class

Today we used ___________________________ to ____________________________________________________.

Do you think it was (circle ones that apply):

useful difficult

enjoyable/interesting easy

Boring a waste of time

What have you learned from it?

Grammar: ________________________________________________________________________________________

Vocabulary: _______________________________________________________________________________________

Content: __________________________________________________________________________________________

Would you like to have more activities using similar materials?

Yes No

9
 Reflection and Action

Appendix 5 Beliefs questionnaire

10
Reflection and Action

11