There were some general findings from the survey and interviews among different proficiency groups. I would now like to discuss the findings and changes of their opinions toward EMI.
General findings from high proficiency students. First, the high proficiency level
students, six out of seven preferred 80% or more of English usage during the class, as S7 and S13 increased their percentage in English usage from 60% to 80%, and 80% to 100%,respectively. Second, seven out of seven thought they were involved in the class, but from my observation, S7 and S19, tried to chat or read books during class and they did not always participate. Third, six out of seven students did not feel stress during the class, and there were
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times when the research peer came and observed the class. S3 did not like to be observed by other teachers but he was fine with the video recording. S7 felt the stress was from the course materials. Fourth, all of the high proficiency students believed the paired peer conversation would definitely help them learn English.
General findings from the low proficiency students. First, five out of seven of the low
proficiency students preferred 60% of English language usage. This had changed since it was four out of seven that preferred 40% or less English language usage during class. Second, all of the students claimed that they couldn’t understand the course content and therefore they did not concentrate. From my class observation, S10, S11, S22, and S23, usually followed the instructions with the help of the team leader, and I would ask them to contribute to the lesson by instructing each team member a similar task. Third, the reason for the stress was from three different categories, the usage of English, the course materials, and the peers. The degree of stress was pretty high from 40% to 80%, but if we compare the pretest and posttest, there were three out of seven who had experienced 80% stress, and after adopting EMI, there was only one student who felt 80% stress. Fourth, five out of seven students claimed that conversation in English between peers would not help their English learning in the pretest, and five out of seven students believed it would help them learn through peer practice.General findings from the mid-proficiency students. There were 10 out of 13 students
that liked the EMI adoption, whereas only three couldn’t accept EMI as they thought the136
English class should involve Chinese translation to help them truly understand, others liked the activities the teacher provided, and therefore, liked the EMI adoption. Eight out of 13 students preferred 60% or more of English language usage during class in the pretest, and the number increased to 10 out of 13 that thought 60% or more of English language usage was appropriate in the posttest. The percentage of the degree of concentration and stress remained the same as it depended on each individual’s difference. Fourth, the opinions on whether peers’ conversation could help their English learning changed from one to three out of 13 students. S6 thought it was not as effective if the students were talking in Chinese, S21 claimed that the video recording had kept her from practicing in English, and only S4 thought it was because he didn’t understand the English instructions and therefore it was not helpful.
If we see it differently, 10 out of 13 claimed that it was helpful to practice with peers.
Findings of the curriculum design. It is interesting that when I interviewed the
students and asked what kind of activities they liked, 26 out of 27 liked games, and nine out of 27 didn’t like the worksheet. When I asked “Did the course materials help your learning?”the students who didn’t like to write or to finish a worksheet still believed that they were helpful toward learning English. S2 and S27 were the only students among the participants who didn’t like writing and thought the worksheets were not helpful at all. When I asked the students’ opinions about the type of activities they liked or disliked the most, their answers were varied and depended on each individual. The news reporting task and the story telling
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task were the most difficult in the designed curriculum because these involved multiple abilities like speaking, writing, and creativity. These activities were liked by the advanced students. The news reporting task was liked by S9 and S20; S9 was a high proficiency student and S20 was a mid-proficiency student. They thought it was fun and challenging. The high proficiency students also claimed that the tasks which needed multiple skills would improve their English abilities. The story telling task was on April 10th and there were two of the high proficiency students that held different opinions on the same task, S13 wrote that creating a story was the most impressive activity. On the other hand, S9 found it difficult and wrote that was the most unfeasible task to him. I recorded in my journal that on the day we created the story, I found that only the team leaders were writing. On the day the news reporting task was completed by the high proficiency students only. “Team leaders were doing the writing job, when I came to help only one or two students participated. The other two students, especially the one who did not like English started to do something else or started chatting during the discussion time” (TJ20190410). Classroom management problems might well happen if the task was too difficult for them. I also did story telling when I taught two story books about phonics, one was called “Leroy” and the other was the “Upside down Brown.” Both stories contain the phonics rules of the text book. We were looking at the “oy” and “ou” sound. S3 only liked the story in English and he wrote in the survey that it was helpful as he could listen to more vocabulary.
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Students’ preferences toward the same task can be very different and the tasks played a contrasting role. Take the task of the video recording on April 24th as an example. I designed an activity that each student had to say a sentence about their dream job as “I want to be…” I designed the task because I thought it was straight forward in that everyone said one sentence and I could edit the video clip, and then show it to the whole class in the following lesson as teaching material. I could ask “true or false” questions about each student based on the video we made and I thought that they would like it. S17 and S26 didn’t like this kind of task and they said it made them stressful. Both were mid-proficiency students and they never
complained about talking in front of the class, therefore, it was because the camera made them stressful. S15, liked this particular task, as he said although he knew he would make mistakes, he tried to say the sentence because he thought it could be a good chance to practice his speaking skills.
The worksheet was another example that students did not like, however, they knew it could be helpful if they accomplished the task. S7, S11, and S23, had chosen the worksheet as the most disliked task, and S2, and S27, told me they didn’t like the worksheet when I interviewed them. S11 told me in the interview that “I don't like worksheets but I would look up information in the dictionary and finish it” (ISS1120190510). S7 also didn’t like the worksheet as he did not like to write but he knew it was helpful for English learning, and therefore, he would still finish it thereby gaining an advantage. S2 and S23 were honest that
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most of the time they just copied if there was no clue, no pictures, and only words on the worksheet.
When I designed the curriculum, I thought the pictures and films were the helpful tools, it was not until the research peers reminded me that the information from the films were too much for the students to learn and they could miss the target (RPL20190423). Most of the students liked the films and thought they were helpful for their understanding. However, S1, S3, and S15, claimed that when the speech rate was too fast, and without the help of a
Chinese explanation, they couldn’t understand the theme of the film and therefore it could not help them learn.
Pictures and films were not very helpful because I needed to confirm it with my friends, I needed to guess about the pictures and the content of the film, by watching their movements as it felt hard to guess the meaning of the film and therefore I cannot learn this way. (ISS1520190510)
Games like card games, board games, and competitive games, were the most popular choices that the students suggested for the teacher to adopt more in the curriculum to help them learn. However, from my observation, there were times the students were chatting and not completing the tasks. I wrote in the journal about the times I needed to teach each team individually and once I walked away, there was not much English heard in the group. As I considered that competition might affect one’s willingness to learn, there was only one
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student that didn’t like the competition. S1 said he thought the other students had better English skills compared to him (ISS120195010). In a later interview, the homeroom teacher approved that S1 was a student who would hide his weakness, although he performed as a high proficiency student in other subjects, but was actually a low proficiency student in English listening and speaking (IH20190523).
Difficulties found from the teacher’s perspective. First, the abstract concepts were
hard to teach by either explaining in English or body language. Therefore, as I want to explain the meaning of “on Sundays,” I used a calendar to present the activities we did in a week. For example, I searched the Internet on Sundays, and I presented the pictures in the Sunday columns. The research peer, Lulu, approved that this was a good way to present the materials as she wrote in the observation form that “The calendar was organized and well structured, so the students should be able to understand” (RP20190402). To achieve the teaching goal without speaking in Chinese took a great deal of preparation time and I considered it a very time consuming task.Second, Chinese was used due to the time restraint, the course content, and the students’
perceptions. I was forced to speak Chinese to confirm about the students’ understanding of the assigned homework. For example, on April 12th, I wrote in the teaching journal “There wasn’t enough time for the explanation, I am concerned the students won’t understand what I said as it was time to go home, I assigned their homework in Chinese” (TJ20190412). I had
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to admit that the homework instructions was another time consuming task. When there were abstract course materials, I would use Chinese. On May 3rd, I found facts about jobs were more abstract when compared to the other course content. In the journal I wrote:
Today, I used more Chinese to explain the facts about occupations, because they were more abstract. There were many things we could talk about like salaries, working hours, workloads, and requirements for a specific job in Chinese; however, it would have been difficult to talk about these interesting facts in English, as the students would not answer.
Apparently some of them switched off and felt bored. (TJ20190503)
Furthermore, I would speak Chinese when I found the students falling behind and could not start their tasks. In the first stage of the action research, I tried to give hints to the group leader, gave them a piece of paper which included the steps of each task in English. I thought I could probably teach the group leader or have a leadership meeting before each class in Chinese. However, although it would not meet my teaching goals that every student learned through EMI so I decided against using the hints. instead, I demonstrated when I explained the task and I asked them to do the same in the group. I would use Chinese vocabulary to help them but not in full sentences. Sometimes, the grammar was harder to teach in Chinese and student perception to the subject “English” would also have an impact on the understanding of the grammar points. “It was difficult to finish the class on time, especially when I wanted to explain the grammar rules. Students with little or no ability of English words would find it
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hard to understand even when it was explained in Chinese” (TJ20190402).
Third, the opinions held between myself and the research peers were different on the course design and teaching process. The research peers were experienced teachers, however, they were not familiar with the concept in TBLT and the procedure. Due to a lack of
communication, I was in a situation that we had different ideas about the course materials from the very first period, I tried to brainstorm as many jobs as possible and provide plenty of inputs to the students, however, the research peers both thought I should focus on the
vocabulary and sentence patterns in the textbook. Lulu wrote “The teacher had introduced plenty of jobs, but did not focus on the vocabulary. The teacher could adjust the percentage of the new words” (RPL20190423). Christina also suggested “The teacher was not focused on the new vocabulary and sentence patterns during this lesson. The lesson should be planed according to the main content. The teacher had spent too much time on the jobs or vocabulary which were not the course content (RPC20190423). Furthermore, I tried to ask the low proficiency students to say a word they had learned in the first period, and they actually pronounced the vocabulary correctly and answered my question, however, the research peers thought the students should answer in the correct sentence pattern. The research peer wrote
“Because the teacher did not actually explain the sentence pattern, the students couldn’t use the correct sentence to answer” (RP20190423). I showed a video of different children who said the sentence “I want to be a teacher when I grow up” repeatedly, and I believed the
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students understood this main idea. I gave the students some time for group work and introduced more jobs and wrote them down on the white board either in English or Chinese.
The activity was completed and the results were impressive for me. When it came to the proposal part, I knew some of the students were not listening. I did not count each group’s answer immediately, because first, I didn’t want to waste time and I wanted to do it after class. Therefore, I only asked the presenting student questions about the interesting answers.
Second, I knew that this was a process of brainstorming but not the results. However, both research peers wrote “The teacher should give the students a reward immediately after counting their scores” (RP20190423). I struggled with this idea as I thought that some of the low proficiency students might be facing challenges when the activity was more competitive and the teacher rewarded the students not by their improvement but by their performance. It was my teaching philosophy that giving each individual a chance to succeed and I found giving points based on the number of answers were not my teaching goals, as my objective was for them to contribute in the group, and therefore, I would give the team with more answers two points, and those who did not have that many answers one point. However, I had actually neglected the advantage of a competition that could actually make my students respond, as S12 mentioned, if there was a competition, he would become more active (ISS1220190510). I felt disappointed when the research peer wrote “The course was boring because there was no competition or interesting games going on, and the teacher did not score
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the team right after the presentation” (RP20190423). As these diverse thoughts between the two research peers and myself, I reflected on the importance of a positive reward system. I should give them rewards or positive encouragement immediately on the board where it is a symbol of the achievement by each group. That was the day the homeroom teacher and I thought the students were doing well and concentrated most of the time. I would take this consideration into my course design, and therefore, the reward system will be well organized in the future.