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MODULE 1 ASSIGNMENT: CRITICAL REVIEW

This action research paper was carried out at a university in north eastern China and it aims
at looking for meaningful speaking activities that increase the students’ motivation and
improve their ability to speak in English. These students were asked to identify their
language learning needs and objectives so that they could next design themselves the whole
course and plan the activities that would be done to practice their oral skills in English.

This research included sixty students who were studying a degree of automobile construction.
They had a two-hour oral English class per week during 18 weeks. They were all non-native
speakers of English, as their first language was Chinese. Also, this research took another group
of students from the same teacher as the group of students mentioned before, who had more
traditional oral English classes.

All these groups took a test at the beginning and at the end of the course as well as a self-
evaluation form in which students could record their own progress from the beginning to the
end of the course. However, the group of students who received a more traditional teaching
approach did not do the self-evaluation form. It is also worth mentioning that, in this study the
authors have used a mixed-method approach, as they collected both quantitative (test) and
qualitative (class observation and self-evaluation forms) data.

The study says that many students feel reticence to speak in English in class and participate
in activities that involve discussion, giving opinions or simulate situations. This lack of
participation in the class is due to many factors such as the fear of making mistakes, the
inability to understand what the teacher has said and to be seen as incompetent among
others. As a consequence of these factors, students tend to sit at the back of the class in
order to go unnoticed by the teacher or they just choose to stay silent when they are asked
something in English. Also, the authors remark the importance of output when learning a
language because students who are eager to speak English and participate in class will make
more progress than the ones who are passive and shy.

It is worth mentioning the behavior comparison that the authors make between Asian and
European learners when they are in class. It is widely said that Asian learners have a passive
and shy attitude as they are stereotyped as “obedient listeners”, however it is not always
like this. Asian people have different ways of dealing with people and in this case, dealing
with the teacher, who is seen as a disciplinarian person that has a benevolent role and
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provides knowledge to students. Moreover, Chinese people tend to protect their self-image
and feelings and this can become a negative factor when participating in discussions, giving
opinions or share decisions in the oral English classes.

In order to carry out the study, the authors firstly asked for the students’ opinion of the
course and to think about the progress they made while learning, as well as their objectives
and needs. Afterwards, they were asked three relevant questions which they had to discuss
in groups of four. While the students did so, the teacher walked around the class listening
to them and at the end of the discussion, the students presented a summary of the ideas
they came up with. In addition to this, the authors mention how important is for students
to identify their own needs and objectives when learning a language as it provides them
motivation and self-esteem according to Graves (2005) and Williams and Burden (1997).
Actually, making students aware of their needs and objectives when learning to speak a
language is something that we, as teachers, do not normally pay attention to, and is very
important for them to make progress and improve their skills.

Secondly, after identifying their needs, the students came up with some ideas such as
learning strategies that could help them improve their speaking skills not only inside but
also outside the classroom. They did this by means of group discussion and had to analyze
the advantages and disadvantages of these learning strategies. And how could they know
it? Through practice. This involved trying these strategies and see if they were effective or
not; a fact that favored students’ motivation to learn.

Finally, the students were ready to decide the activities they wanted to implement in the
course as they were the responsible designers of the course. These activities could either be
done in groups or individually and as the authors say, by letting them decide for the speaking
activities, the class became more communicative and students were more motivated and
their speaking skills were improving.

As I have mentioned before, this study was done by means of self-evaluation forms in order
to compare the students’ progress in their speaking skills and the level of participation of
the class. Moreover, observation was also employed by the teacher during the study in order
to observe the student’s behavior and attitude when speaking English in class. Another
instrument of evaluation was used apart from the ones mentioned above. Speaking tests
were done by the students both at the beginning and at the end of the course. They were
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assessed in pairs through interviews and peer interaction. This test was done by the students
who designed the course during the second year and by other students who did not design
the course.

To sum up, I would say that by letting students decide and design their own course, helped
them in increasing their motivation, willingness to speak English and lose the fear of making
mistakes or speaking in front of the others in class. Therefore, the results of the study
showed that students made a big improvement in terms of attitude and implication in the
class, as at the beginning of the course they felt insecure and reticent in speaking English.
However, at the end of the course they were able to discuss topics and they became more
self-confident and motivated.

Paying attention to the quality of this article, I would consider it not fully reliable because
the students that have been taken to do the research are university students from China,
but maybe the results would vary if we did this research using ESO students from another
country. So, what I mean with this is that, the characteristics of the students and the
academic level may influence on the process and the results of the research.

As for validity, I would consider it to be a valid action research paper, as the experimental
design is well structured. The goals and objectives of the research were clearly defined from
the beginning and, the expectations of the students were written down. Then, the
assessment measure was matched to the goals and objectives of the research. Finally, the
students were all the time involved in the study and the results were compared at the end.

From my point of view, nowadays the problem of learner reticence in the speaking classes
is very frequent and most of the times we do not know how to deal with it. Therefore, this
research could be interesting to be carried out in a secondary school in order to see if it
would work with students of secondary school and how they would react to it.

Bibliography

Zhang, X. and Head, K. (2009). Dealing with learner reticence in the speaking class. ELT Journal,
64(1), pp.1-9.