Leaners’ Reactions

In addition to the two findings described above on the speaking test performance, qualitative data analysis of classroom observation showed that learners were more willing to speak in class. Through the classroom observations, it was found that the number of learners who volunteered to speak in class has increased throughout the school year.

In the first class observation, most learners remained silent and passive when the English teacher assistant proposed questions in class. At the end of the semester, compared with the reactions in the first class with ETA, learners were more eager and excited to answer the questions. Interestingly, they became more willing to interact with the teacher, and they even expressed their feelings.

The number of times for raising of hands by students in two different class observations was recorded. The findings showed a slight increase in the number of learners who raised their hands in class. In the first class observation on March 13, 2015, only 1-2 learners raised hands to ask or respond to teachers’ questions. On June 15, more than half of learners raised their hands to ask or give responses. They even expressed that they wanted to answer the questions to get the points for their team. In the following transcript, the learners showed increased motivation to participate in class.

ETA: Who wants to be the volunteer? Your team can get extra point.

Learners: … (silence).

ETA: Ok…(wait a minute.)? No one! That’s fine. Let’s draw lots.

(March, 13, 2014)

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ETA: Ok! Any question about the rule? No, then…(give learners a look.) Learner A: I want first one.(raised hands)

Learner B: Me, volunteer, me me me …(screamed and raised hands) Learner C: Teacher, teacher, here, here, (wave his hands)

(June, 15, 2014)

Another example of students showing their willingness to interact with teacher actively:

ETA: Anyone who volunteer to be my helper, I’ll give them extra 3 stars.

Learners: (silence for a while)…

ETA: Well, you broke my heart. OK! I’ll just call someone to help me.

(March, 20, 2014) ETA: Anyone wants to share their favorite dishes?

Learner A: Me. I want to share.

Learner B: It’s my turn. Please, call me. Call me. (yelling) Learner C: Group 2. Hi, teacher, here.

Learner D and E: nah…teacher! We need extra points. Call we. Call we…

(June, 18, 2014) Students were remarkably willing to respond and volunteer at the end of the semester. Compared with the silence in the beginning of the semester, the excitement to interact with ETA was obvious. Students liked to respond to teacher actively even without extra rewards. In Yen (2016)’ study, students were shown their interest in native speaker teachers’ class. Some learners expressed their eagerness to talk to ETA because they were very interesting. She investigated the impact of ETA on students’

learning motivation and found their motivation of English learning raised after being taught by ETA for half of year. In the previous literature, the better learning

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motivation resulted in better academic achievement (Jakobovits, 1970; Csizér

& Dörnyei, 2005). Therefore, the improvement of students’ speaking ability might be related to their increased motivation and participations.

Furthermore, not only did the number of times for raising hands increase, so did the frequency of learners’ active responses. They even got used to using target

language to ask questions or communicate with teachers. It was also observed that the number of learners who were reluctant to answer questions declined. In the beginning, when a question was assigned to a learner by the ETA, many of them used their L1 to say the answer, and some even maintained silence to avoid the question. However, later on in the school year, this phenomenon had been slightly improved. Whenever a learner was assigned a question in class, he or she would try to respond regardless of the difficulty or anxiety he or she might had. At the end of school year, no matter their answers were right or wrong, most of the leaners were able respond to teacher

confidently and loudly.

Besides, learners’ willingness to communicate could be also observed outside of classroom. They actively initiated the conversations with EATs and sometimes showed their interests in western culture. The conversation occurred during the break time, one student wanted to share her lunch box with ETA.

Learner: You can eat with me. My mom made it. Delicious!

ETA: Oh! You wanna share your lunch with me?

Learner: Of course.

ETA: Nice! I trade my egg for your veggie. How about that?

Leaner: Yes! I love eggs! And… I love you, too!

(April, 22, 2014)

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Interestingly, the sentence produced by learners become more complete and clear in the end of semester. After being taught by ETAs for a semester, they were able to produce longer speech run or even some formulaic sequences. The following example came from a specific student whose fluency improved in communicating with ETAs.

ETA: You have ten seconds to find your partner! I’m going to count down.

Ten, nine, eight….

Learner E: Time … more…, time…, please ETA: You can do it. Go, go, go!

Learner E: 太短了了啦。( He expressed that the time was too short) (March, 3, 2014) ETA: Does anyone have a question?

Learner E: May I ask a question?

ETA: Yes, please!

Learner: May I go to the bathroom?

ETA: Yes. Please remember to come back. (laugh) Learner E: Ok! Ok! I’ll be back quickly…soon.

(June, 28, 2014)

Compared to the reactions in the beginning class, the learners were able to use simple expression efficiently rather than speaking in Chinese. Instead of chunking together, which was the an obvious feature of nonfluent speaker (Riggenbach, 1991), the sentences that learner produced were longer and complete. The use of formulaic sentences might showed the relation to leaners’ gain in the temporal variables in the speaking test, which was in the line with Segalowitz and Freed’s study (2004). The learners were into a study abroad learning setting, and their fluency improved because they used large number of formulaic sequences. Even though the setting of ETAs’

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classroom was different from the setting of studying abroad, the exposure to native speakers was much more than the class taught only by local teachers. However, Wood (2009) noted that the experience of L2 and the contact with native speakers could facilitate the development of speech fluency. It was unlikely that learners’

performance in temporal variables in test could be contributed solely to the ETA program, but learners’ attitudes toward language learning in the class were more positive. In the classroom observations, the communication with ETA was more intense and the interactions between ETAs and leaners were also closer and intimate.

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CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION

The ability to speak English has received increasing attention in Taiwan in recent years, and the effectiveness of inviting native English teacher assistant to English classrooms has become an interest to researchers (Firth & Wagner, 1997). This study preliminarily assessed the influence of English teacher assistant on two junior high school classrooms, and the findings have provided us tentative evidence on the positive influence of English teacher assistant. Most previous literature examined the impact of ETA by collecting questionnaires from learners; however, limited research has investigated the actual impact on performance through tests. The purpose of this study is to investigate junior high school learners’ improvement in terms of temporal variables in the speaking performance. These learners had received weekly training from ETA throughout for semester.