Milagros Martínez: Action Research Project by Milagros Martínez

Introduction

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:48:32 UTC

I am going to research second language learners' only use of past simple tense in their stories in the Nuevo Siglo Institute English classroom.

General background

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:49:20 UTC

The classroom I am going to analyse belongs to Nuevo Siglo Institute. In the class, there were 14 teenage students from third, fourth, and fifth years. They were between 15 and 17 years old. They received English lessons on Tuesday and Thursday from 13:50 to 16:00. Even when their proficiency level of English was supposed to be B1+, different levels could be identified within the group. Also, they had different personalities; some of them participated orally more than others, but we tried to engage all of them equally. Then, the atmosphere in the group was positive because all of them got on well with each other. Finally, as they had lessons after lunch and after students being in the school since morning, sometimes, it was a bit difficult to get students to work.

Observed problems and possible causes

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:51:16 UTC

During the teaching practice, I identified that students only used past simple tense in their stories even when we had presented them with past perfect and past continuous tenses as well. Some possible causes for students using only simple past in their written productions can be various. First, their different proficiency levels of English. Second, an insufficient exposure to the language input so the chances of their interlanguage grammars to (re)acommodate to start acquiring the new structures were not enough. Third, students' total or incomplete understanding of the past perfect and continuous tenses and their uses and how their inclusion in stories can improve their productions. Fourth, teachers' lack of instruction for students to identify different past tenses in the beginning, middle, and end in the stories we worked with. Fifth, not having had enough time to conduct the peer-assessment session for their classmates to identify the use of only one past tense in their stories and for the students to go back to their stories and correct them.

Aims

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:51:24 UTC

The aim of this project is to address the problem of how I can help students from the B1+ level of the English group at Nuevo Siglo Institute include a variety of past tenses in stories.

Data gathering

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:51:54 UTC

To gather data to be able to answer the question of how to help students include a variety of past tenses in stories I will design a written questionnaire with the aim of identifying the reason why they have not included past perfect or past continuous.

I will give students their original stories together with the questionnaire for them to answer individually. After they read their stories, they will answer the questionnaire. There will be closed-ended questions for students to tick the option they prefer or to provide the answer if it is necessary for them. There will be 4 questions.

(1) Have you used a variety of past tenses in your story?

-Yes

-No

(2) If your answer to (1) is yes, what past tense have you used?

-Past simple

-Past perfect

-Past continuous

(3) If your answer to (1) is no, why haven't you used past tenses in your story?

-I used (an)other tense(s)

-I don't understand past tenses

-I don't know when to use past tenses

-I didn't feel like it

-I didn't have enough time to check my work.

-Any other:_____________________

(4) Do you know how to include a variety of past tenses in your story?

-Yes

-No

If your answer is no, state your reason: ______________________

Students will not be asked to provide their names so as not to expose them. I think a questionnaire like this one will help them reflect on the tense(s) they have included in their stories and may provide me with evidence to design activities to help them improve their stories.

Data analysis

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:53:03 UTC

The analysis of the data will depend on students' responses to the questionnaire and their capacity of metacognition when analysing their stories. The categories I will consider when analysing the data are the inclusion of past tenses in their stories, the reason why they may not have included them, and if they think they can improve their stories, using different past tenses. My prediction is that as most of them need to go back to their stories and improve grammatical aspects in relation to past tenses, most of the students will answer that they have not used a variety of past tenses in their stories. If that is the case, then I will need to pay attention to the cause why that has not happened (if the rules/uses are not clear, they need more practice, or they didn't want to use them) so as to design an appropriate activity to help them.

Theory research

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:53:17 UTC

I will quote some authors who support the idea that storytelling is a useful way of teaching narrative tenses to students because "setting up a story involves giving background, which often requires the past progressive before moving into a series of events, which require the past simple" (Savage, 2022) or because "it can increase the students’ scores more than teaching by using conventional method such as grammar translation method" (Fachraini, 2016, p. 9). Also, the Writing Process Approach which consists of five stages: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing (Faraj, 2015) may be useful for helping students' in their writing processes.

Possible solutions

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:54:41 UTC

The possible solutions depend on students' answers in the questionnaire. If most of the studens answer that they do not know how to use past tenses, then a consciousness-raising task can be used to help students analyse past tenses in stories so that they can come up with the rule of their common uses in different parts of stories. If most of the students answer they did not have enough time to check their productions, a writing process approach can be adopted or a peer-assessment session can be conducted.

If students need more practice with the different past tenses, different activities can be created, like a fill-in-the-gaps for them to provide the correct form of the verb, or looking at some pictures and create a sequence of main events for a story.

Conclusion

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-10-28 22:55:28 UTC

Having the chance to carry out classroom research to solve a problem that comes up in our classroom and sometimes we do not know how to solve appropriately because we do not know the actual reasons provides teachers with an opportunity to ask our students about the reasons why something may not go as expected and also to share with collegues solutions to problems that may occur in their classrooms as well.

Bibliography

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-11-04 21:26:58 UTC

Fachraini, S. 2016. "The effect of using storytelling technique in teaching grammar for EFL classroom". (An Experiment study at STKIP BinaBangsaGetsempena Banda Aceh). Getsempena English Education Journal , 3(2), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.46244/geej.v3i2.704

Faraj, A. 2015. "Scaffolding EFL Students' Writing through the Writing Process Approach". Journal of Education and Practice, 6(13), 131-141. ISSN 2222-288X

"Past vs. Past Progressive: And not Or" at https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2022/05/26/past-vs-past-progressive-and-not-or/ retrieved (November, 4).

Implementation

martinezmilagrosyamila — 2023-11-04 22:32:34 UTC

I will carry out a 1-week period of peer-assessment and proofreading activities. I will prepare some activities following the Writing Process Approach and peer-assessment. Students will analyse the stories they already have, so the steps of this approach that will be implemented will be 3 (revising), 4 (editing), and 5 (publishing). In step 3, students will reread their finished stories and share them with a pair of classmates who will check their classmates' work following a peer-assessment rubric, which will be the one we have created for the teaching practice but we have not finished using due to time limitations; however, I will make some slightly changes as regards the inclusion of a variety of past tenses. In step 4, students check their stories paying attention to their classmates' comments and suggestions from the self-assessment rubric. In step 5, students write a final version of their stories and hand them in to the teacher.

To check if the session of peer-assessment and proofreading has been effective, I will create another questionnaire and I will compare the responses of this last to the previous one. Students will be asked to answer if they have included a variety of past tenses in their stories and how much they have profited from peer-assessment work.