My Action Research Project by Claudia Ñancucheo

Bibliography

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

Follow this format:
a) Books:
Brown, H.D. 1994. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. London: Prentice Hall Regents
b) Articles and chapters from books:
Harmer, J. 1996. "Is PPP dead?" Modern English Teacher 5/2
Bowler, B. & S. Parminter. 2002. "Mixed level teaching: Tiered tasks and bias tasks" In: Richards, J. & W.
Renandya. Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. pp. 59-64

b) Web pages:
"Stages of adolescent development" at: www.kidsgrowth.com retrieved (date)

Conclusion

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

Round off your project by saying what you have learned from this way of carrying out
classroom research.

Implementation

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

Say how and when you are going to implement the proposed solution. Also mention
how you will evaluate whether the solution has been effective or not. Include sample activities.

Possible solutions

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

List all the solutions you can think of. Of all these you will design the
implementation stage for one of them.

Theory research

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

Data analysis

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

Once I have finished collecting all the information, I will analyse the data from the observations and questionnaires together with my colleague who helped me observe the group of students. The qualitative data from the observations will be examined to identify patterns in students’ engagement and oral participation across different types of pre-listening activities. These results will help me have an insight into which factors may influence a student's participation in each activity. In addition, the observation guides related to teachers’ attitudes will provide us with information about the strategies teachers use to approach each pre-listening activity.

Finally, students’ answers to the questionnaires will be analysed to compare students’ reported interests, reasons for participating (or not), and their self-assessment of their oral performance.

Data gathering

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

I will use different instruments to collect data for this study on how to improve students’ engagement and oral participation in pre-listening activities. First, I will gather some data through classroom observations in which six different pre-listening activities will be carried out. Two of these will be done with the whole class, two in pairs, and the other two in small groups. The purpose is to observe how students behave when pre-listening activities are organized differently and how the teacher’s attitudes vary across each of the activities. To do this, I will invite my classmate, with whom I carried out the teaching practice, to help me note down as many details as possible using observation guides. Secondly, at the end of each lesson, students will complete a questionnaire that includes ten questions. This will ask students about their general interests in the topics, their own reasons for being more/less interested in participating orally in each pre-listening activity, and they will evaluate their own speaking performance.

Aims

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

To gain a better understanding of the pre-listening activities that give students the tools to develop their listening skills and engage more meaningfully with new input.
To investigate other possible reasons why some pre-listening activities may not be effective enough to help students activate prior knowledge.
To reflect on the guiding questions used and see how effective they are in helping students engage with new input.
To explore more strategies for designing pre-listening activities that promote meaningful oral participation during the lesson for students to develop their speaking skills.

Observed problem and possible causes

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

During our teaching practice, I observed that many students struggled to engage effectively in pre-listening activities. This was noticeable because their oral participation was limited or seemed forced, and most students relied on their more proficient peers to answer teacher’s questions during this stage.

One possible cause of students’ lack of engagement and participation is the design of our pre-listening activities or the teacher’s guiding questions which may not always help students predict or activate prior knowledge related to the main content of the lesson. Another possible factor is the group dynamics, which do not always encourage participation from all students. Finally, another possible factor can be the lack of exposure to activities that allow them to develop their speaking and listening skills.

General background

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

The group of students to be analyzed belongs to ESRN 355, a secondary school in General Roca, Río Negro. It consists of 23 students who are currently in their fourth year. They have a two-hour English lesson once a week, which takes place on Fridays from 10:30 to 12.30. This means that their exposure to the target language is limited.

In terms of proficiency, the group has diverse characteristics. Some students have shown greater confidence when participating orally in class because they also attend English institutes outside school. The rest of the students participate less actively in speaking activities and tend to rely on their peers with higher proficiency to answer the teacher’s questions. In addition, there are two students who are in inclusion who usually work on adapted activities.

Introduction

claunancucheo05 — 2025-09-02 01:43:50 UTC

I am going to study how to improve students’ oral participation in pre-listening activities for better input comprehension, since pre- activities serve as a central bridge between what students already know and the new content they will encounter, contributing to more meaningful lessons.