Implementing Reading Tasks to Improve Students Oral Performance[1]

7/27/2019 Implementing Reading Tasks to Improve Students Oral Performance[1]

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Implementing Reading Tasks to Improve Oral Performance

Universidad de Antioquia

Escuela de Idiomas

Licenciatura en Lenguas Extranjeras

Natalia Mara Ballesteros lvarez

Implementing Reading Tasks to Improve Students Oral Language Performance

Action Research Report

Research Advisor & Thesis Advisor: Cristina Cadavid Mnera


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Implementing reading tasks to improve oral performance 2

Abstract

This action research project studied how implementing reading tasks can help students to

improve their oral language performance, through the use of authentic material, meaningful

and structured tasks and significant input. This project was carried out at Institucin

Educativa Normal Superior de Envigado with 39 tenth grade students. The use of authentic

reading materials encouraged these students to get involved in discussions and use the

foreign language to participate of them. Reading tasks allowed students to gain the input

they needed to apply it in a significant way. The findings of the project show that students

increased to some extent their oral production and language comprehension; there was as

well a positive influence on students motivation.

Key words for retrieval

Task- Based Approach, task, oral performance, reading, input.


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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank specially my family for all the support given and all the

efforts they have made for me through all these years and to my cooperating teacher and

10th grade students of Normal Superior de Envigado for being helpful and receptive with

my project and allow me to improve as a teacher and as a person.


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Table of Contents

Preface.5

Description of the context.......6

Description of the problem. ...9

Objectives..13

General objective..13

Specific objectives...13

Theoretical Framework....13

Plan and implementation of actions..........19

Data analysis.................23

Findings and interpretations of data..27

Conclusions and suggestions.30

Reflection......31

References.32

Appendixes ...33


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Preface

This paper is the result of my action research project carried out during the

practicum at the Institution Educativa Normal Superior de Envigado. I am an undergraduate

student in the last semester of a program in foreign language teaching at the School of

Languages at the University of Antioquia. This action research project besides being a

requirement for all the students to get the bachelors degree was the best opportunity for me

to apply all the knowledge I acquired during my years in the school of languages. Doing

this project allowed me to know in a better way what it means to be a teacher, a teacher

researcher and gave me a clearer perspective about education. In this project I chose to

explore reading tasks, in first place for the different needs I identified in the classroom I

observed, and in second place because I believe that providing students with meaningful

and comprehensible input is an effective tool to make an improvement in oral performance,

language comprehension and to foster students motivation.

.


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Description of the Context

This action research project was carried out at Institucin Educativa Normal

Superior de Envigado during the academic year 2008. This institution is a coeducational

and public school with an emphasis on pedagogical instruction in the last grades (10 th and

11th). Their philosophy is based on educating students under a holistic conception of the

human being and with excellent pedagogical bases. One of the characteristics of this school

and for which it is known, is that it prepares students to become elementary school teachers

in different areas. Students who want to become teachers must do a complementary level

called Ciclo complementario (complementary cycle) during two more years after high

school to get their degree as certified teachers. With this certificate, they are able to teach in

elementary school or they can continue with their studies at the university level.

The institutions mission is focused on educating students and future teachers with

high competences in the educational and investigative field, who believe in their profession

and who can apply the strategy of learning to learn. The principles of the school promote

respect to individual differences and responsibility as most important values.

Concerning the facilities of the school, it is a big building that counts with 25

classrooms. It is divided into three sections: the elementary school, high school which is in

the same location but in separate buildings and a third one called Institucin Educativa


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court. Besides, every classroom is equipped with a TV and a DVD. The classroom in

which I was carrying out the project was small, for 43 students. In it there was a TV and

DVD set, posters (some of them in English), garbage cans, a regular chalkboard and some

elements for cleaning the classroom. Students were organized in rows and there was a little

space to walk among them.

The students of this school are children and teenagers who live (most of them) in

the same neighborhood in which it is located, Los Naranjos in Envigado, Antioquia. The

schedule of the students in the morning goes from 6:10 am to 1:00 pm for the high school

students and from 7:00 to 1:00 for the elementary students. The group I worked with was a

tenth grade with 43 students, 36 girls and 7 boys between 15 and 17 years old. They had

three hours of English per week, divided into two class periods.

Concerning my Cooperating teacher (C.T) and the one who helped me in this

process, she holds a degree in foreign language teaching with an emphasis on English and

French from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and a specialization in Planeamiento

Educativo from Universidad Catlica de Manizales. She has experience working as an

English teacher for 23 years and at this school she has been working for eight years. She is

the homeroom teacher of one of the 4 tenth grades in the school and she is in charge of

teaching English to all tenth and eleventh grades. Besides she is in charge, with the rest of


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and creativity of the students so they could see that English was for more than developing

dialogues in the classroom or doing drills.

Regarding the area of English, the syllabus is mixed or multi-strand, since the

program is divided into competences, notions, grammar, vocabulary, and tasks or activities.

All the components of the syllabus are oriented towards a holistic education of the students

regarding the linguistic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic competences and the four language

skills: speaking, writing, reading and listening. Although all the skills are mentioned in this

syllabus the oral skill seems to be more favored than the others since most of the objectives

and activities to be developed involve this skill. However, students showed some

difficulties to participate in class using English. They argued that the lack of vocabulary

and bad pronunciation were two fundamental factors that affected their oral performance.

As one of the students stated: Para mi el Ingls siempre ha sido difcil y es un poco regular

mi desempeo, trato de hacer lo posible para mejorar, la pronunciacin es buena pero no s

vocabulario. (Questionnaire 1, June 12, 2008). [For me English has always been difficult

and my performance is low, I try to do the best to improve, the pronunciation is good

though, but I do not know vocabulary]. That is why I considered reading tasks as a way to

provide students with the input they needed to develop their communicative abilities and to

encourage them to give their opinions, favoring both the presentation of new input in


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Description of the Problem

Throughout the different class observations and information collected from the

questionnaires and interviews mentioned before, the different documents of the school such

as the syllabus, Manual de Convivencia (a document every school must have in which all

the rules, obligations and rights of students, teachers and general personnel of the

institution are stated), Proyecto Educativo Institucional (P.E.I) and the information

collected in my journal, I identified certain problems in the group I observed, especially

concerning their oral performance. Although speaking was the ability more likely to be

promoted, since the most important area objectives and activities pointed to oral

communication, students had lots of difficulties to express their ideas. Actually, when

students were asked in questionnaire number one (See appendix A) if they felt comfortable

speaking in English 23 said not, while 16 said yes. Low oral performance can occur for

many reasons, feeling uncomfortable might be one of them. However, in this particular

case, based on students answers on the first questionnaire, they stated that one important

issue regarding their oral performance was the lack of vocabulary and structure. One of the

questions was: How do you consider your language proficiency and why? To which all the

students answered different things that I categorized into 4 categories:

A.CATEGORY 1= No es bueno porque no entiendo muy bien el idioma y tengo problemas de vocabulario yi i 23 [It t d b I d t d t d th l d I h i ti d b l


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found that the input presented to the students and the contents in the syllabus and the

activities for applying the knowledge acquired through that input were not clearly

connected. For example, there were several objectives that did not include the vocabulary

required, like: Realizar exposiciones acerca de las diferentes universidades que tiene el

area metropolitana. (Syllabus 10th and 11th grades). [Students will do a presentation about

the different universities in the urban area]. For this objective there were not activities or

vocabulary in the syllabus and vice versa, for some activities there were no objectives. .

This affected students oral performance in the way that, there was not consolidation of the

knowledge from the theory to the practice. If students receive input from a given topic but

they are asked to talk or do activities about something different, for which they didnt get

enough input, they are probably going to fail or have many problems trying to do it the best

way they consider. In this class students obtained input from sources like videos, listening

material, pictures, posters and readings and the CT tried to involve students in activities in

which they had to use their creativity, like big books, bulletin boards, etc. In the case of the

big books, they had to create a story, illustrate it and then present it to the class for

example. With the bulletin boards they had to design a big poster to represent a current

celebration in the country, to give information, etc. But they were not related to the contents

all the time, so there was a gap between the knowledge, and its application and


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modal verbs and therefore there was not a clear connection between what they were

learning and what they had to produce, students performance was full of mistakes,

because they were never given the model of how to do it correctly. As it can be seen, every

activity on its own was good, but in conjunction they did not seem to have a coherent

sequence and connection, and as a result oral production was affected. There was no

previous knowledge or input to ask students to produce something orally. Studying the

modal verbs students talked about recommendations and suggestions but presenting an

artist, his song and the message of it did not necessarily involve the use of modals.

Probably they could have learnt something different from the alternate activities as well,

but there was not consolidation of knowledge since they were expressing something they

were not prepared to do. Therefore, the output they were asked to produce was not in

agreement with what they were studying since they could not use their previous knowledge

or connect it to previous examples or experiences.

This situation in the class could be in part explained for the lack of clear

connection between objectives, topics and activities that the same syllabus had. The

syllabus as I mentioned before, was divided into competences, notions, grammar,

vocabulary, and tasks or activities, but there was not a clear order and connection among all

of them, thats to say, not all the topics corresponded to the objectives and activities and


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students did not have the opportunity to consolidate their knowledge (contents) and talk

clearly about it, since there was not an adequate process of input acquisition of those

contents, in which they were able to understand it, ask questions or do an activity related to

it to practice, and then be able talk about it. Although the syllabus was not my main

concern and it could be another issue to be studied, I just wanted to make some clarity

about this as a possible factor that was affecting students oral performance.

Taking all these aspects into consideration, I saw that there was a root problem that

was affecting students oral performance. They were acquiring some input, but it was not

being correctly directed towards activities that allowed them to improve or develop their

oral abilities. Thats why, keeping in mind those observations, I considered that having

students working through tasks and reading could be a very good alternative to help them

improve their oral performance, since through reading they could get the input and

vocabulary they needed and through tasks they had to work on specific related activities in

which for every new activity they needed the previous knowledge from the last one,

facilitating the comprehension of the topics, their consolidation and giving students more

confidence to participate.

Thus, reading tasks appeared as a very useful way of applying the task based

approach in this case, since it could be possible to have students getting the input and the


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Main Objective

To improve 10th grade students oral performance through the use of reading tasks

Specific Objectives

1. To provide students comprehensible and meaningful input through the readings,according to their characteristics and interests.

2. To provide students with the environment and opportunities necessary to developand improve their oral performance.

Theoretical Framework

The focus of this action- research project was to implement reading tasks to improve

students oral performance. In this section I will try to explain the key concepts related to

the research such as task, task-based approach, oral performance, input hypotheses and

reading, as supported by different authors.

Task and Task- Based Approach

Task- Based Approach (TBA) and more specifically the task has been defined by

numerous authors from different perspectives. However, most of them have similar ideas

regarding the most important characteristic that must be included in the definition of task.

A task is defined as a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending,

manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is


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task. Estaire and Zanon (1994) differentiate tasks between communication tasks and

enabling tasks. The first one refers to an activity in which the principal focus is the

meaning rather than the form, while enabling tasks refer more to activities that involve

structure and grammatical issues.

Tasks (enabling or communicative) promote communication and interaction among

students, and in this way facilitate the setting up for real communicative situations in

which, through cooperation, they must find the solution to a given problem or question

following different steps or procedures. According to the authors mentioned before, tasks

promote the use of language and the development of communicative skills in a natural way,

which is one of the characteristics that TBA supports. The task-based approach focuses on

the process and at the same time on the results because it is also goal oriented; but mainly

on the way in which that process is carried out. Students in the tenth grade of La Normal

Superior de Envigado that I observed did not have much interaction in the classroom; the

implementation of this approach was a possibility to provide learning opportunities in

which they could interact and work cooperatively to solve a question or problem related to

the topics studied in class (See appendix C). According to Nunan (2004) the tasks are

divided into four components: the goals, the input, the activities derived from this input,

and the roles implied for teachers and learners. The role of the learner is very important


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guide and must orient students work to help them get to the final goal, but especially he

must provide the opportunity to solve a problem. Summarizing, the teacher provides the

tools and the opportunities to solve a question and students, working in teams, find a

solution.

Concerning the goals in TBA, according to Clark (1987), states that they are divided

into communicative, socio-cultural, learning-how-to-learn and language and cultural

awareness. These goals imply that the learners learn not only the language, but through it,

how to solve situations in the real world, how to work in groups, how to contrast their

own culture with a foreign one, how to find strategies to cope with different situations.

Tasks allow students to get close to a situation that they would experiment in common life

in an English speaking environment, fostering this way language and culture awareness,

unlike the regular situations in the classroom tShat are settled to accomplish a linguistic

purpose and do not occur in a natural way. Regarding the last component of the tasks, the

input, refers to the base or strategic point of departure (Nunan, 1989) to develop the task.

The input represents the success of the task to a great extent, since it gives the students the

tools to cope with different situations; it is the bridge between the knowledge and the

student and it will become part of his/her future reference to conceive a specific part of

reality and therefore part of his mental structure. That is why the input is, by far, one of the


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term their oral performance through reading tasks, since the last step of the tasks after the

process of getting input, working in groups and solving the questions is an oral presentation

or discussion in the group. The ultimate goal of the input is facilitating tools to students for

their oral performance.

In view of the importance of the concept of oral performance in this research

project and considering that all the elements as input, tasks and reading aim to facilitate it, I

will try to explain what it means in this context.

Oral performance

Oral performance as task and many other educational concepts has multiple

connotations and uses that are given to it in different contexts and from different

perspectives. However, one commonality among those different views is that performance

is involved in the acts of communication people carry out in a specific situation. The first

author who began to talk about performance was Chomsky in 1965. He gave a definition of

performance in contrast to that of competence that was another ambiguous concept used by

linguists. In order to differentiate both concepts Chomsky (1965) stated: We thus make a

fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker- hearers knowledge of the

language) and performance, the actual use of the language in concrete situations (p.4).

Language performance involves the way in which a person uses the language more than


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this matter, Lyons (1966) affirms that language performance is the production and

understanding of utterances in particular languages (p. 12).

For this action research project, oral language performance refers to those specific

communicative acts to be carried out by students in the classroom. Besides, it is necessary

to consider not only the act itself but the whole process of acquisition and its elements.

That is why, reading, tasks and input play such an important role; they represent the

process. The input acquired through reading and consolidated through the development of

tasks are the basis for acquisition and the basis to develop a solid oral performance. The

effectiveness of the oral performance depends highly on the understanding and

consolidation of the language students achieve through the process.

Input Hypotheses

Another important concept for this project was Input. This concept was studied by

Stephen Krashen and it is part of a second language acquisition theory that contains five

other hypotheses. He asserts that humans acquire language in only one way: by

understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985, p.2) He

argued that we learn in a natural progressive way, in which adding new related input to our

previous knowledge we get to progress. He says: We progress along the natural order

(hypotheses 2) by understanding input that contains structures at our next stage (Krashen,


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as the basis for acquiring knowledge and to develop the different language skills, as the oral

skill. The kind of language to which students are exposed to represents the input. For that

reason, the input must be comprehensible to facilitate the acquisition of structures and

meaning and a good oral performance. Speech cannot be taught directly but emerges on

its own as a result of building competence via comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985, p. 2)

That is why, given the importance of the input to learn a foreign language and to develop

all the abilities implied in that process, I took reading as the source of input that, combined

with task based approach, allowed students to get the structure, content and practice they

needed to develop their oral communication ability.

Reading

Reading is generally defined as the ability to get meaning from the printed page

and interpret this information appropriately (Grabe, W and Stoller F, 2004, 1). Reading

implies processing and decoding information and it has been considered from the Top-

Down and Bottom- up approaches. In Bottom-up approach, reading means a linear

process by which the readers decode a text word by word, linking the words into phrases

and then sentences (Gray and Rogers 1956 in Villanueva 2006, p. 8). The Bottom-up

approach refers to reading as finding the form and the structure of the text, in contrast to

Top- Down approach that is focused on the meaning that the reader obtains by linking


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to solve a specific situation or question. Considering reading from this approach, I tried to

select material that could follow a progressive degree of difficulty in terms of

comprehension, but always around the same topic, so students could use their previous

knowledge and achieve a better understanding of the topics studied to talk about them.

Top-down reading approach, as well as the input hypothesis and TBA consider

that all new knowledge must be linked to a previous one to achieve understanding and

knowledge. They propose a progressive coherent process to provide students with a good

learning environment in which previous knowledge promotes students understanding

within the context of a carefully planned and structured process. That is the reason why I

decided to implement them in my project since they fit very well for the objectives I had for

the students in the tenth grade group in La Normal Superior de Envigado.

Plan and Implementation of Actions

The plan of actions for this research project was divided into two stages. In the first

one, from February to June, I collected the information from the school, students,

cooperating teacher and area curriculum through several techniques as observations and

questionnaires, in order to know the context of the school, the dynamics inside of it, to have

a better approach to the education system as a teacher researcher and finally to identify a

problem in the area of English in which we could involve ourselves and the rest of the


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group. The tasks were a set of reading activities oriented to the same objective: achieve a

level of understanding of the topic and get to be able to talk about it in a group discussion.

The topics that we studied through the tasks were: Global warming, big cities, top health

risks and choosing your career. The tasks that involved group discussions were applied to

all students, but for data analysis purposes, there were 4 key participants (students with

different proficiency levels) who, besides the group discussions, participated in two

interviews. The rest of students participated through a questionnaire.

To develop every task students had a set of reading activities, connected to the same

topic. The activities started with a reading about one of the topics. The reading could be

repeated, modified or used through the rest of the activities, since all of them were based on

it. The initial reading and the further analysis about it was done using different pre -

reading strategies like brainstorming, predicting, previewing, skimming ; some while-

reading ones like scanning, reading aloud, reading silently, shared reading; and post-

reading activities like analyzing fragments of the text, relating paragraphs, answering

specific questions, comparing and contrasting ideas inside the text, among others. The task

was completed when several activities and readings about the same topic were done and

helped solving a question or creating a discussion inside the group. In order to illustrate

better how I worked with the reading tasks I will describe one of them. The content for this


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see what it was about; finally we read aloud in order to have students listen to the right

pronunciation of the words and start involving the oral component of the task. Then I

asked to students specific questions with specific answers that they could even find in the

text, with the purpose of facilitating the comprehension and acquisition of input.These

strategies were used in the first class to approach the text. Then in the second class I took

pictures that illustrated what we have been reading about and I encouraged students to try

to describe what they were seeing in the pictures which showed the effects of global

warming for human beings and nature. Once again we went back to the reading they

looked for specific chunks of information that could help them describe the pictures. Also, I

encouraged students to formulate questions to their partners based on the information of the

text, so they could answer and start building their own concept about this content. At the

end I gave them a questionnaire (See appendix C) that they needed to solve in groups. In a

different class using the information of text, students had to create a poster with

recommendations to prevent global warming. Yet in another class students had to design

and apply a questionnaire to their classmates in order to know their opinions about this

topic, etc. In all the classes students needed the initial text or another one if, depending on

the topic, we used more than one, to develop the activities. So in many of the classes at the

beginning I used one of the reading strategies mentioned above to progress in the text, and


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more complete answers, with better knowledge of the vocabulary, structures and the

content itself. Following these steps for all the tasks, using different materials and activities

I tried to provide students with the opportunity to enrich their oral performance. However,

the reading materials were not the only sources of input for the students, since I tried to use

visual and listening material as well like videos, posters, and pictures to consider the

different learning styles of the students. These kinds of actions were planned for the whole

semester and particularly two of them were used to evaluate students oral performance and

analyze data: The task for global warming and the task for big cities. Contents selected for

these tasks were chosen according to the school syllabus (See appendix D). At the

beginning I selected the topics and then I tried to negotiate them with students from the

options we had from the syllabus so they could feel involved in their learning process and

have a more active role in the classroom. I took to the classroom authentic material (articles

from the Internet, videos from youtube about the specific topics) and material adapted by

me with the aim of facilitating students understanding and the development of the

activities as well as providing them with different kinds of input in which they had to use

different levels of analysis and comprehension, in which they could get cultural

background form different points of view and finally material that they found accessible to

get vocabulary and that triggered the development of their oral communication abilities.


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journal, field notes, informal talks with my cooperating teacher, 2 questionnaires to

students and 2 interviews to the key participants composed by 4 students with different

levels of proficiency.

When I had collected enough information from all the sources that I could analyze,

compare and contrast, I decided to separate them one by one and start analyzing them

individually to see what patterns or differences they had. Below, I will describe how I

analyzed each of the sources.

The first source to collect data was the journal. Through this instrument I wrote

observations of the class during the whole year and my reflections about these observations.

They were made from February to June in the first stage and then from June to July in the

second stage when I applied the reading tasks. In this process, I collected information

regarding the classroom dynamics, the attitude of students towards the different activities in

English, the cooperating teacher methodology, my own methodology when I started

teaching the class, my role as student- teacher, the effects of reading tasks applied to the

class and on students oral performance and in general about the participants in this

research. Once I had several observations I started reading them one by one and getting

categories from each. Then those categories were grouped into similar broader categories

that contained them all. The former categories that I found were for example, students


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use of structures, and comprehensible input . The strategy I used to come up with these

categories in all the instruments was the use of recurrence and appearance charts.

Then I continued with the questionnaires (See appendixes A and B ) in which I

found similar categories like influence of reading tasks and materials on students oral

performance and attitude, oral participation, students attitude towards English, lack of

vocabulary, among others. Both questionnaires were applied to 39 students in the class.

In questionnaire 1, applied at the end of the first semester, the purpose was to know

students perceptions about their class, the English subject, their own performance, among

others. In questionnaire number 2 (see appendix B), that was applied finishing the process,

after the implementation of the tasks, the categories were related to influence of tasks on

students oral performance, input through reading material, class participation and language

comprehension. The purpose of the second questionnaire was to allow students to express

their opinions about the reading activities and tasks carried out in their classroom, the

results were the following:

The questionnaire applied to the students consisted of 6 questions in which they

could choose from a range of options, which one described better a situation in the class

QUESTION # 1RESULTS:a. Algo: 19b. Mucho: 5c. Un poco: 7d. Nada: 7

QUESTION # 2RESULTS:a. Algo: 15b .Mucho: 7c .Un poco: 7d. Nada: 9

QUESTION # 3RESULTS:a. si: 33b. no: 3c. poco: 2

QUESTION # 4RESULTS:a. si: 25b. no: 7c. un poco: 6

QUESTION # 5RESULTS:

a. si: 21b. no: 11c.un poco: 6

QUESTION # 6RESULTS:

a. si: 29b.no: 9


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presented in a previous section of this paper, I could see that students perception regarding

the English class and their performance had changed. At the beginning they thought that

their level was bad and they didnt have many positive things to say. After the

implementation of the actions, although they recognized the change had been little, they

kept in mind more what they could do rather than what they could not do. Students also

said through their answers in the questionnaires that the readings had been a very valuable

source of information that has helped them in many aspects, like vocabulary, grammar,

pronunciation (when we read aloud)and comprehension. Finally, the last source was the

students interviews. The interviews were just applied to the 4 key participants. Through

the interviews it was possible to have clear evidence of students performance, use of

vocabulary, correct use of some structures and in general a visible improvement in their

oral performance. In the first interview, the topic was global warming, there were 8

questions, three of them were divided into other two, (since they had to ask and answer). In

the second interview about two cities (London and San Francisco), there were 7 questions

in which they had to answer using more than one idea. In order to evaluate these interviews

I created an oral performance rubric that included these categories: syntax, intelligibility,

structure and correct word choice. To evaluate students answers I applied the criteria in the

rubric to every one of their answers. I examined if they achieved them or not and according


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the aim of giving validity to the results I obtained, I did the evaluation to one of the two

pairs of students who were interviewed along with the cooperating teacher. Between her

evaluation and mine there was a slight difference regarding the positive and negative

answers, but in general there was an agreement concerning the evaluation those two

students achieved the criteria.

Findings and interpretations

According to the data gathered through the different instruments, at different stages

of the process, with the help of the students, the cooperating teacher and the information I

recorded in my journal, I found some aspects that I will discuss in this section, regarding

the effects of using authentic reading material, (which in some cases I adapted to facilitate

students comprehension process), regarding the influence of reading tasks on oral

performance, the effects of comprehensible input on students language acquisition and

motivation and interaction in the class.

Concerning the effects of using authentic reading material, I observed through

students oral performance and through their attitude that they enjoyed for example learning

new words and their pronunciation, as this student expresses, Gracias a las actividades de

lectura desarrolladas en clase he conocido nuevas palabras y que antes no saba cmo

pronunciar [Thanks to the reading activities developed in class, I have learnt new words


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material gave these students an excellent source of input that combined with the different

activities allowed them to consolidate their knowledge on a specific topic and be able to

express it. This was observed in the interviews and class participation where their oral

performance was improving.Regarding the influence of comprehensible input on their performance, I found that

students achieved a clear understanding of the topics and were able to talk about it or do

different activities in which they had to display what they knew, since the readings they

had and the way in which they were studied were clear for them. They expressed their

ideas using the same information they found in the readings The sea level would

riseThe melting of glaciers, the greenhouse effect. (Transcription from the interview 1

on Global warming) and those ideas came to be part of their mental structure and

perception of the world since those were the references they used to explain a concept to

themselves and the others. As Krashen (1985) stated, people learn in a progressive way

adding new knowledge to the previous one. That is why, it is so important to provide

students with comprehensible input from which they can get clear meanings and

structures, regarding the language and the content. The input is the basis for learning a

language, and what is learnt today will influence what will be learnt tomorrow. I could see

all this evidenced in my project, when students no longer used the ideas they had at the


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mistakes, as in this example, it was visible that they incorporated the vocabulary and the

contents to their background and they felt more confident to express it in the foreign

language. I also found that reading tasks were an effective strategy because students

consolidated their knowledge in a progressive way, going from saying simple ideas tomore elaborate. In addition,what I found using this approach was that, offering studentsthe knowledge in a sequence of activities around the same content but with different

purposes, linked to the initial reading, they had the chance to use their previous knowledge

for every activity and they reinforced their ideas about the contents, the vocabulary, the

structures and the particular expressions of it and at the time of expressing any idea, it was

easier for them.

Finally, regarding motivation and students answer to the tasks, the interactions in

the group and the relationships among students and teacher, I found that giving the

confidence to students to make mistakes and have them understand that it is part of the

language acquisition process, lowers their affective filter and gives them another attitude,

more positive and confident to participate and to take risks in the class, as this student

stated when asked if she felt comfortable participating in English: Si, ya que la maestra

nos da la confianza de equivocarnos y poder participar asi no sea de la forma adecuada.

Ademas es importante hacerlo para ir mejorando dia a dia [Yes, because the teacher gives


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threatened is a good possibility to achieve not only an improvement in students oral

performance but in their process of language acquisition in general.

Conclusions and Suggestions

The most important conclusion that I can draw from this action research project isthat the work with reading tasks and authentic material, helped students to improve their

oral performance and participation in class and also to modify their perception of the

language as evidenced in their attitude towards the fact of making mistakes and taking risks

to participate in class. Also, I can point out that the use of authentic material in the class,

allowed an effective learning process with positive results. Through the use of authentic

materials students were exposed to a rich linguistic input that allowed them to acquire more

and varied vocabulary and structures to improve their knowledge of the language.

Regarding the comprehensible input, it was the basis for students process of learning and

consolidation of contents, as it was from there, that they started building their own

knowledge. The use of reading tasks and authentic material worked effectively to help

students improve their comprehension and perception of the language and it worked

partially to improve their oral performance because that is a process that needs more time.

Additionally, I can conclude that the process of teaching and learning in the classroom was

positively affected by the fact that students felt that the student- teacher gave them the


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meaning in class even if they do not produce accurate answers, so that they have the chance

of being corrected until they achieve the expected goal.

Reflection

Looking back at this process I can only say that it has been quite a learningexperience in my life. I have learnt a lot about being a teacher and a teacher-researcher. I

enjoyed the whole process from getting to know the students, the cooperating teacher and

the institution and then sharing with them in the classroom; observing at first the dynamics

of their classroom and how could I help them, to apply the plan I designed and be their

teacher. I feel very grateful to the students, the CT and the institution La Normal Superior

de Envigado, for letting me do my project there and for all the collaboration that I got while

I was doing it. During this project I had the opportunity to apply all the knowledge that I

acquired in the school of languages for many years and I had the opportunity to confirm,

clarify, and discover many things about being a teacher and a researcher.

I enjoyed having the opportunity of carrying out a project like this one and

discoverer that many things can be done if the teachers put their efforts into it. In addition,

it was a great experience for me to actually try to apply theories about foreign language

acquisition, that I had been studying during my whole process as languages student and

discover their advantages and disadvantages, their benefits and limitations. I enjoyed the


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language comprehension and how this can be a strategy that can be fostered in classrooms

to allow students and teachers enrich their linguistic and cultural knowledge.

References

Burns, A. (1999)Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers...Cambridge University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1965)Aspects of the theory of Syntax.Cambridge, Mass: MIT press.(4)Retrieved July 7, 2008 from: http://books.google.com/books?id=u0ksbFqagU8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. 3- 63.

Clark, J. (1987) Curriculum renewal in School Foreign Language Learning. Oxford:.Oxford. University Press. Chapter 1

Estaire, S., and Zanon, J. (1994) Planning Classwork: A Task- Based Approach. Oxford:

..Macmillan Heinneman,

Grabe, W., and Stoller, F. (2002) Comparing LI AND L2 Reading. Teaching andResearching.Reading 40-63. Longman- Pearson Education: England.

Gray, W.S., and Rogers, B. (1956) in Villanueva de Debat, E. (2006) Applying currentApproaches to the Teaching of Reading..English teaching forum. 1, 8-15.

Krashen, S. (1985) The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Retrieved July 7, 2008 from :http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm

Lyons, J. (1996) On Competence and Performance and Related Notions. Performance andCompetence in second language acquisition, 9-33.Cambridge University press.


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Appendixes

Appendix A Questionnaire # 1

DATE:

SEX:

AGE:NAME (OPTIONAL):

This questionnaire has as objective clarify the causes of students lack of oral proficiency in one ofthe groups of 10th grade in the School Institucin Educativa Normal Superior de Envigado..

1. OPEN- ENDED QUESTION: Answer the next question and justify your answer: How do youconsider your oral language proficiency? Why?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. CLOSED QUESTIONS: Answer yes or not to each one of the questions which are in the nextcategories.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ORAL LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY YES/NOTa) Do you like to participate in English?b) Is your oral proficiency good?c) Do you prefer using Spanish to speak in class?d)Do you consider that your English proficiency is good for your level?

TEACHERS METHODOLOGY YES/NOTa) Do you like the methodology for this class?b)Do you feel the activities are appropriate to promote your oral proficiency?c) Do you think the activities in this class allow you to participate orally?d)Do you feel motivated to speak in class?e) Do you consider that the topics of the class are clear and understandable?

STUDENTS ATTITUDES/PERSONALITIES YES/NOTa) Do you like English?


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Appendix B Questionnaire # 2

Appendix C Task activity on Global warming

QUESTIONNAIREDATESEXAGE

NAME(OPTIONAL)Este cuestionario tiene como objetivo evaluar hasta que punto las actividades de lectura han contribuido a mejorar su comprensin y

desempeo en el idioma, especialmente en la produccin oral.

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS

1. Consideras que las actividades de lectura desarrolladas en clase te han ayudado a mejorar (algo, mucho, un poco o nada) tudesempeo oral en la lengua extranjera? SI/NO , Por qu?

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Consideras que las actividades de lectura desarrolladas en clase te han ayudado a mejorar (algo, mucho, un poco o nada) tudesempeo en la lengua extranjera? SI/NO , Por qu?

______________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Consideras que con actividades de lectura se facilita tu participacin oral en clase? SI/NO Por qu?___________________________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Consideras que ha mejorado tu comprensin del idioma con las actividades de lectura? Si/No, Por qu?___________________________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Te sientes cmodo participando en Ingles? SI/NO , Por qu?___________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Consideras que la lectura te ofrece el input necesario para mejorar tu desempeo en la lengua extranjera? SI/NO Por qu?____________________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________________


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Documents

Implementing Reading Tasks to Improve Students Oral Performance[1]