I work for state specialised creativity school named after Ibrat.

Conducting lesson to small groups of ten pupils, who are mostly B1 level.

Learning outcomes, that by the end of the term students should have required result from monitoring tests. Requirement is getting better score, more than 71 percent, using grammar and vocabulary accurately during exam

Most of my students had the same problem in speaking and writing they say or write what they want.

Furthermore, as long as students use the words they learned, namely they could not say or write what they had in their mind.

As my pupils have different learning abilities , some of them wanted to perform their work orally by presenting, some preferred writing during lessons. In this case it made me think that make passive vocabulary more active.

My research focus became "Activating passive vocabulary by using suitable activities for my students that engage them in more practice"

My perception:

"What do I mean by activating vocabulary?"

"What do I think about why students cannot turn their passive vocab to active?"

My students' perception:

"What do my students think about what prevents them to use learned vocabulary in practice?"

My colleagues' perceptions:

"What do my colleagues say about the problems of not practicing vocabulary enough?"

"What do my colleagues think about my vocabulary activities - whether they activate students' learned vocabulary? "

My and students' behavior:

"What are my students` opinions about the given classroom activities?"
"What do I do when my students have difficulty in activating vocabulary?

Action Research Question: To what extent have my students improved their passive vocabulary ?

How did I gather the data?

• my own reflections 

• my students' reflective notes

• informal talk with some of the colleagues

• Students are expected to be active in the practice of the words they learned

• Initiate discussions, question the information

• Share the views and creative works they made

• Complete the integrated tasks related to their other subjects

My students` perceptions:

• my students suggested having more activities that let them talk, discuss and write about topics more

• students were not sure they were fully engaged in presentations or oral discussions

  
  

Behavior of my students:
Students seem not to use their words actively during the lesson:

• when I ask them to work individually

• when I assign speaking or writing tasks

CLIL and its elemets,4Cs,help teachers to motivate their students. 4Cs are (Coyle 1999 & Coyle 2008) :

• Content – progression in knowledge, skills and understanding related to specific elements of a defined curriculum.

• Communication – using language to learn whilst learning to use language.

• Cognition – developing thinking skills which link concept formation (abstract and concrete), understanding and language.

• Culture – exposure to alternative perspectives and shared understandings, which deepen awareness of otherness and self

Action research question: What is/are the most suitable ways of improving the language by choosing suitable activities for my students

Action 1

• Emphasize on self study activities that help students organise their practice of foreign language vocabulary by preparation for speaking and writing.

Reason: Students seemed to be bored in doing tasks individually; most of them wanted to have more and meaningful practice of language to activate their vocabulary.

Action 2

• Create more meaningful tasks: given tasks writing a story by using the phrases learned during English classes and sharing their insights they got while studying other subjects.  

Reason: students were not sure that we are doing enough activities to improve their vocabulary

Action 3

• Encourage students to use the learned vocabulary in various activities in the classroom.

Reason: Students should be aware of purposeful and active usage of foreign language that encourage them to use and activate more and more vocabulary they learned.

Data collection tools:

1. My own reflections on the lessons I conduct

2. Reflective notes of my students

3. Brief talk with students about their opinion on classroom activities

4. Observation of my students` behaviour

Students` answers:

-Students found integrating other subjects and writing stories in English classes are helpful especially when they are improving their level in English.

-Some of my students had problems with their speaking while they were good enough in listening . After the practice of integration and story writing they better performance in both: speaking and writing

-As some of my students mentioned discussing other subjects could be helpful to learn the foreign language purposefully and use it in their future job

-They tried either to give special term in other subjects by defining or find the original terms themselves

-Although writing stories is time consuming, students think its benefits outweigh drawbacks

-More discussions helped students to make more meaningful and beautiful speech

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I think the tools to have better research and taking my, my students' and others perceptions help us to have more objective conlusion about the discussion.

Besides, doing research by deviding it into two clear parts, exploration and action, were really helpful while I was doing my own explaratory action. research.

My students suggestions to activate more passive vocabulary were mostly related to this approach.

Student 1 asked more topic discussions that are related themes they know till this time. That is related to content.

Student 2 mentioned that he/she wanted to learn the language purposefully that would be more interesting. This was mostly about communication and cognition.