In this section, I will focus on the students’ performance during lessons. The data was collected from the observations by me and the two research peers, being 22 video recordings, 28 semi-structured interviews, and 22 teaching journals. Students’ performance in class, their self-perception in the interview, and their unstructured conversation with me were also taken into account.
The curriculum was designed based on Willis’ (1996) procedure which consisted of pre-task, task cycle, and language focus. I personally added the warm-up stage to motivate the students’ interest at the beginning of each class, therefore, the data was analyzed throughout this process. I will conclude the general findings of the students’ performance on EMI at the end of this section.
The warm-up stage. From my teaching reflection journals, students concentrated at this
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stage, as I provided games, photos, cartoon pictures, video clips, picture books, stories, and shared life experiences with my students. Some examples are listed as follows:
During the dice game, the class went smoothly, students showed positive attitudes to this game (TJ20190220).
Students concentrated at this warm-up stage. They chose the place they preferred by raising their hands (TJ20190222).
Students were interested when the teacher talked about her own traveling experience to Pingtung by showing them photos at the Taiwan Lantern Festival (TJ20190227).
Students concentrated on this activity because the photos shown was interesting, one photo was taken 10 years ago. They showed their interest by replying to the teacher’s questions (TJ20190306).
Students enjoyed seeing the trailer of “Detective Pokemon,” they were absorbed in the learning materials (TJ20190312).
Many students answered my questions today. When they saw the pictures I prepared, they were quiet and focused (TJ20190402).
At this stage, students concentrated and participated in the guessing game (TJ20190412).
Students were concentrating at this stage, they saw eight famous people, and they knew what to do in the task (TJ20190423).
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S5 found a mistake shown on the PowerPoint slide, which was a typo. The students were very focused when shown a video of themselves (TJ20190507).
As I noticed that most of the students were involved in the activities at the warm-up stage, I adopted interesting pictures like “the one hundred greatest places in the world 2018,”
teacher Tracy’s family photo taken in Australia 10 years ago, the up-to-date photos of the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Pingtung, and spot the differences pictures from the Internet. The research peer, Lulu, also approved that the pictures which I provided and the way I presented the course materials, including the grammar, were well prepared. Lulu wrote in her
observation form that “The teacher was well prepared with the teaching materials and the students were motivated” (RPL20190326). Christina also wrote: The teacher asked the students questions like “Do you play computer games every day?” These questions were close to the students’ everyday life, therefore, it was good to have this connection of the students’ experience (RPC20190326). I also adopted various games to raise the students’
interest, like the dice game, the categorizing game, the memory game, brainstorm, survey, and the miming or guessing game at this stage. Students were also very interested in movies and stories, I found most of them were attentive when I showed them the visual materials on the electronic whiteboard, and I had designed a lesson which was based on the future job they had chosen. Each student would say one sentence and I edited it into a short video then presented it in the next lesson as the teaching material in the warm-up stage. Those who had
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answered my questions at this stage were usually the high proficiency students. The low proficiency students also benefited from these warm-up activities. Evidence showed that the low proficiency students can be encouraged and they were able to have the chance to
experience success at this stage. One happened on March 15th 2019, as we were playing the memory game, a low proficiency student said at least five sentences which impressed me. I wrote in the journal: “Students were divided into two groups, each team took turns to memorize the previous sentence and added a new sentence, they were shy at the beginning and then some of the high proficiency students started to participate and there was a low proficiency student, S11, that spoke at least five sentences with the help of the team members” (TJ20190315). Another found on April 2nd, was a low proficiency student, S15, who was brave enough to come to the white board and participated. I had actually set the answer in the PowerPoint slide, no matter which grid the student picked, he would get the right answer. I still remember the smile on the boy’s face. Before this activity, he sat with his head down and his eyes were not looking at me. After he experienced this success, he became more engaged and less distracted during the lesson. In my teaching journal I wrote: “I asked S15, the low proficiency student, to come to the front and press the dates which represent
‘last weekend’ on the white board, he was not sure what to do, and when he got the answer right, he was happy and became more focused” (TJ20190402). In the interview with the homeroom teacher, who also thought that S15 was brave and had some ideas, however, he
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had some difficulty in expressing them. “He is a student with a positive attitude but needs extra help from the teacher” (IH20190521).
The pre-task stage. I presented teaching materials and demonstrated the task we needed
to complete at this stage, and I had to spend sufficient time instructing what should be done during the task cycle. I found problems at this stage when explaining the grammar rules or abstract concepts and I observed that the students were also facing this challenge. It was straight forward to present the vocabulary, however, it is very challenging to present the grammar rules, as in the comparison between past tense and present tense. I modified each of my teaching lessons. I used an abundance of pictures and body language at this stage. I found pictures or films are much more effective than body language. The reasons could be the complexity in the sentence patterns, the course materials, and the TBLT curriculum design. In Give Me Five Book 8, the teaching goals aim to equip students with language ability for describing what happened in the past; therefore, I designed various tasks for them to practice the target sentences. The research peers and I observed the interaction between the teacher and students as follows:1. The use of native language to confirm meanings and complete difficult tasks. “Chinese was not prohibited during the class; therefore, they intuitively spoke Chinese to check if they offered the correct instruction” (RPC20190220). On February 20th, I asked students what is “yesterday” in Chinese and the high proficiency students answered
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(VR20190220). Students used Chinese to confirm the tasks, S13 said “Do we have to write the sentence?” in Chinese and I replied “No, only words” (VR220190223). For the difficult tasks like the job riddle game in which the player can only ask yes/no questions to guess which job they want. Students would use Chinese to say the sentences because they knew what to ask but they didn’t know how to say it in English. Two girls, S17 and S18, tried to speak in English for the questions most of the time, however, they found it difficult and then they told me, they spoke in Chinese when they were asking questions (TJ20190503).
2. The use of their background knowledge. “When I prepared the Bingo game in the textbook, I did not recognize I was wrong until a student said it was not right to choose the time instead of choosing the verbs” (TJ20190402). I wrote this down in my journal, I thought I was familiar with the Bingo game, and therefore, did not pay too much attention when I gave the instructions. However, a high proficiency student reminded me that I did it wrong because they were also familiar with the Bingo game. I had adopted a board game called “Alles Tomate” in another lesson. I was the only person who knew the rules, when I finished explaining them, I found the students did not understand how to play and I had to go over this seven times to demonstrate, I found it was a waste of time. “When I gave instructions for the game, I found the students did not understand what I had presented, I explained three times and let them try, and it was not until I went through
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each table, they finally understood how to play this board game” (TJ20190323). The research peers also gave me suggestions on the instruction of this particular game. “I could not understand your instruction, not until you played it in the group”
(RP20190326). Suggestions like using PowerPoint or the big flash cards to demonstrate the game would be better than only showing the small cards. The teacher should lessen the complexity of the board game and let the low proficiency students engage more to experience success. It was the teacher who did most of the speaking, whereas the students should have been given more chances to talk by asking them the questions at this stage (RP20190326). The other time was when I played a board game called “Ugly dolls,”
students used their background knowledge of playing card games similar to the matching game or memory game, they answered correctly and took away two cards. However, in the game “Ugly dolls,” students have to wait for the third card of the same vocabulary, they can tap the cards and say the word. Everyone in the team could tap on the cards to get the points, students misunderstood the rule, as in one team a group member said he would say it first and took away all three cards (VR20190501).
3. Asking peers or group leaders about the tasks. From the learning attitude survey question number six “would pair-work (talk to friends) help your learning in English?” 20 out of 27 answered yes. Two low proficiency students, S1 and S22, claimed that their friend helped them more effectively and they could understand better this way. This proved that
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talking to peers was helpful and students would rather ask their classmates than asking the teacher. In the beginning of the curriculum design, group discussion was not emphasized, especially as the group leader was chosen at the end of February after four lessons, the seats were arranged by the homeroom teacher and I modified the grouping by multilevel proficiency but I didn’t want to cause a problem when changing the seats, therefore, not many students needed to change seats. One fact I found during observation was that the group leaders played an important role in learning English. If the group leader is active, the team usually experienced success. Alternatively, if the group leader is more passive, the group usually ends up chatting or laughing during the lesson and could not finish their tasks. “If the group leader is not active, the group might be chatting in Chinese”
(TJ20190312). The homeroom teacher arranged the students’ seats randomly, not by their proficiency levels. However, he would consider whether the students can cooperate with the other group members, that is, take the interpersonal relationship into consideration.
Once the students became too talkative, he would change their seats. He also agreed that some of the leaders were not mature in leadership, and therefore, would not encourage the team to work (IH20190521).
4. Some of the low proficiency students experienced withdrawal symptoms. There were
seven low proficiency students in this class. S1 and S15 felt the stress was imposed by their classmates and therefore, they seldom completed the tasks. They were either not110
doing anything in class, or they were easily disturbed by other things. I observed S15 was not paying attention most of the time and even when I talked to him, he avoided eye contact with me. He was also disturbed by his group members and he tried to chat with others in Chinese. S15 said in the interview that he could not stay focused in class
because there was too much unfamiliar information and he was depressed that he couldn’t help the team to get points (ISS1520190510). The other student, S10, could not stay focused in class and was easily distracted by friends at the beginning of the semester, he also chatted with friends depending on the seating arrangements. I found classroom management very important at this stage. On April 2nd 2019, and May 3rd 2019, I wrote in my reflecting teaching journal:
“Two boys (S10 and S7) did not play the bingo game and ended up talking to me after the class, I found them to be not very respectful. It is hard for me when the students were not with me but acted against me” (TJ20190402).
“Today’s lesson was more challenging; the low proficiency students did not participate today” (TJ20190503).
The researcher’s peers also observed that the low proficiency students switched off when the instruction time was too long. “When the activities were more challenging, the students would have a difficult time concentrating, since the teacher spent an abundant amount of time giving instructions, especially when the flashcards could not be seen clearly, as they
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could not be attached to the electronic white board, I found two boys in front of me chatting in Chinese during this stage” (RPC20190402). S10 said in the interview that he couldn’t learn through EMI and he thought the teacher was responsible for not letting students understand the whole sentence (ISS1020190508). S15 told me in the interview that he couldn’t understand and therefore did not pay attention to the instructions (ISS1520190510).
The task cycle stage. I would go to each team at this stage and check if they understood
how to complete the task on time. It was during this period, I had less control and the students performed differently from time to time. Some teams could be “off track” and some teams followed the instruction well. From the results of the learning attitude surveys, students said that they found it hard to concentrate because of the following reasons:S3: If the course content was too hard, I couldn’t concentrate.
S7, S14, S24, S26 and S27: Some of the topics were not interesting.
S19: I would rather read my book.
S6: The materials were too easy.
S21, S22 and S28: We were too excited during the break; therefore, we could not concentrate during the class.
S1, S2, S10, S11, S15 and S23: I couldn’t understand the meaning, and therefore I could be disturbed by my friends in class.
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From the previous results, the survey, and the interviews with the students, there were some findings I would like to discuss. First, the low proficiency students S1, S2, S10, S11, S15, and S23, claimed that the reason for not concentrating in class was because they could not understand. Furthermore, from class observation, these are the students that I found to be less contributive, and sometimes they gave up doing anything in the group. However, from the speaking test, S23 actually knew all the vocabulary we learned in the text book, she could point to the right pictures and placed the object card in the right place. She had a low self-esteem in English learning. On the day we were sharing the places the students had been to, S23 had her photo but she was too shy to stand in the front of the class and I let her sit down.
The other students,S1 and S10, did not prepare their photos and the task was incomplete within their groups. I wrote in my teaching journal on March 6th:
Some students did not prepare photos and therefore they were late to join in the
conversation. I noticed they still used Chinese when sharing experiences. Students with less confidence, like S23, did not want to share their pictures in front of the class.
(TJ20190306)
S22, a low proficiency student, however, held a more positive learning attitude, by participating in the group.
Second, the same material can cause various feedbacks that not only the high
proficiency students held different ideas to the challenging game, but also the low proficiency
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students could not participate. S13 and S9 were both high proficiency students in the class.
S13 wrote the activity of creating a story as his favorite, and S9 found it was the game he felt the most challenging and disliked the most. I also wrote in the class observation on April 10th that most of the students could not cooperate in this particular activity, the course content was too hard as the whole class needed to create a story together without the help of visual aids, they needed to use their imagination and creativity in this task. In the teaching journal I wrote:
“Team leaders were doing the writing job, when I came to help, only one or two students participated. The other two students started to do something else or started chatting during the discussion time” (TJ20190410).
Third, the performance of the participants with high or mid-proficiency could also be affected for various reasons, such as the level of the learning materials, the interaction between their group leaders and classmates, the activity during the break, and personal interests. In the interview, S24 said there was some fun during the break which made her concentrate less in class (ISS2420190513). S19 said she couldn’t stick to the lesson because she wants to read books (ISS1920190513). S25 thought the teacher should speak with more intonation and be more energetic. She noticed that the teacher had a flat intonation which made her lack focus and she would fall asleep sometimes (ISS2520190513). This situation however, contradicted with my observation in that S25 was always involved in the activities I
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provided. S7 said he was not serious about the course during the class because sometimes the learning materials were boring (ISS0720190509). Another example of personal preference was that 24 of the 27 students told me in the interview that films and pictures were helpful for their understanding of the topic. However, there were students who did not think it was helpful to learn from a film. No matter what their proficiency level, they replied with similar reasons. The three low proficiency students, S1, S3, and S15, told me in the interview that they experienced difficulty when watching a film as the oral communication was too fast, and when they did not have any clue what the film was about, they had to guess the meaning, and therefore, they think that films would sometimes not help them understand the course
(ISS1520190510). Students with different proficiency levels held the same ideas of the teaching materials. Students said they needed further explanations of the pictures since they could be misleading and the students could have misunderstood the content. S15 was a low proficiency student and S17 was a mid-proficiency student, both told me in the interviews that some pictures needed explanations to help them better understand the theme. I also found students wrote the wrong Chinese meanings from the test results. For example, they wrote
“singer” as a “super star” or “famous people” in the Chinese translation in the listening comprehension quiz.