Summary of the Findings

To answer the two research questions regarding the common characteristics of classroom activities conducted by ETAs in co-teaching classrooms and the potential benefits ETAs’ classroom activities bring, a qualitative data analysis was performed to analyze and examine different types of annual reports obtained from stakeholders, including ETAs, LETs, and teaching advisors who participated in a multi-year ETA program across different regions in Taiwan. Several themes were found that

manifested the main characteristics common to classroom activities carried out in ETA-led co-teaching classrooms and the potential benefits that ETAs’ classroom activities might have for elementary school students.

One such theme was that ETAs endeavored to implement a contextualized approach to authenticate language learning materials in a variety of ways. The integration of English words and sentence patterns into classrooms seemed to be much more natural due to the ETAs’ creation of context, such as the use of a Taiwan map to demonstrate climates, a pen-pal project to give the students an opportunity to communicate with foreigners in written form, the sharing of past family trip

experiences, or food-tasting activities. These created learning situations that students were familiar with were established to help students relate English learning to their life experience; this teaching behavior seemed to successfully arouse greater student willingness to engage and participate in mechanical learning tasks. This finding has

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corresponeded to the early work of Shrum and Glisan (2015), which points out that a contextualized approach makes English learning more meaningful.

A deep exploration into the ETAs’ teaching process has revealed other different features specific to ETAs’ employed classroom activities. Unlike traditional EFL classrooms that often display a strong orientation toward textbook-based teaching (Storey et al., 2001), the incorporation of game-like activities into the ETA-led

co-teaching classrooms appeared to afford the students ample opportunities to practice language skills they had learned in a less stressful learning environment (Hadfield, 1985), where students seemed to be able to apply sentence patterns and verb phrases that they had practiced; the reinforcing effect of game-based teaching on students seemed to be effective. The LETs thus realized that game-based learning could be another way to bring pedagogical benefits for students and motivate them to sustain their effort and interest in learning English (Wright, Betteridge, & Buckby, 1984).

Another significant finding from examining annual reports was that the ETAs integrated multiple cultural elements into the classroom activities in terms of English lessons. In contrast to traditional English classrooms, they attempted to provide students with an unusual experience. For example, the ETAs strived to foster a

cultural atmosphere on Halloween by means of pretending to be one of the characters, using facial expressions, body languages, and realia to immerse the students in the culture. As such, students experienced what the textbooks talk about, instead of only reading texts regarding the various holiday celebrations. In addition, the ETAs injected their distinctive cultural backgrounds, for instance, Hawaiian and Greek culture, into students’ English learning to acquaint students with culture-related conventions and how common holidays are celebrated in different ways. Because the ETAs were cultural representatives, and because they brought genuine materials or objects to contextualize students’ cultural learning, this authenticity made their

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cultural introductions much more intriguing than those of the LETs. Not only did the ETAs facilitate students’ understanding about history, celebrations, and customs of foreign festivals, the ETAs also enhanced students’ knowledge about their native cultures. The various culture-related activities fostered students’ international perspectives and foreign cultural knowledge. In addition to internalizing explicit cultural facts and behaviors, the students were familiarized with implicit cultural values and systems, even though this can clash with their existing cultural beliefs, for instance, different perspectives about the use of eggs to celebrate Easter and the practice of eating cranberry with turkey at Thanksgiving for most Americans. These cultural practices and stimuli seemed to help students to gradually become more open-minded about world knowledge and also equip students with the appropriate attitude to appreciate and respect cultures that are different from their native cultures.

It has also been found that ETAs employed a variety of audio-visual teaching materials and resources to address the needs of language learners with different learning styles. This finding of the present study has been in agreement with Brown’s (2007) suggestion that students need to be provided with a learning environment with sensory input to stimulate all five senses. CDs, songs, and YouTube videos were utilized by ETAs for auditory-oriented students to sing along while practicing specific sentence patterns and conversations; these teaching practices seemed to successfully stimulate the students’ learning interests, as they showed active engagement and enjoyed singing along with CDs. Auditory- and visual-oriented students acquired vocabulary words more easily through the ETAs’ use of pictures, images, YouTube videos, and PowerPoint presentations. Drawing activities could be a way to stimulate kinesthetic-oriented students to learn sentence patterns because students were able to describe what they had drawn during the drawing process. Hands-on activities such as dying eggs, making gingerbread, making fruit salad, and baking cookies were

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culture-related activities that seemed to exhibit the same function of accommodating kinesthetic-oriented students’ learning styles and give them an experience of how different festivals are celebrated. Furthermore, hands-on activities afforded students a more practical learning experience and created a genuine context to assist students in learning English. Therefore, students seemed to be especially enthusiastic about learning from hands-on activities.

The last common finding obtained from analyzing ETAs’, LETs’, and teaching advisors’ annual reports was that the importance of teaching accurate pronunciation to students was strongly emphasied by ETAs; this was thus practiced in co-teaching classrooms. Namely, the ETAs utilized their strengths to demonstrate how to pronounce English sounds accurately to students and corrected students’

mispronunced words. The ETAs usually attempted to integrate pronunciation instruction into classroom activities so as to help students acquire more native-like pronunciaition, provide immediate interactional feedback to make students aware of the gap between the correct pronunciation and their mispronounced words, require students to repetitively and constatntly practice accurate pronunciation, and employ strategies to steadily improve their pronunciation. The students thus improved their pronunciation, modified the way they pronounced English sounds and words, and

noted the slight differences between English vowels under the ETAs’ guidance.