ELT STUDENTS’ INTERNSHIP IN THE SELF ACCESS CENTER (SAC): BENEFITS

OF THE PRE-TEACHERS AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE STUDENTS WHO

ATTEND SAC.

THESIS PROJECT

Students’ name:

Mora Ángeles Rosa GuadalupeSacapala Ficachi Nayeli

Supervisor’s name: Mariza Méndez López

Type of research:Qualitative

OBJECTIVE(S)

1.-The objective of this thesis is to identify the positive and negative effects for students of ELT who are doing their internship in the Self Access Center

2.- Another objective is to see the impact the pre-teachers have over the students who attend the SAC.

3.-The last objective is to see how beneficial is for pre-teachers to do their internship there and for the students who regularly attend the SAC to complete the hours required by their English teachers.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

RQ 1. Does it have a positive effect doing the internship in the SAC?RQ 2. What techniques do the pre-teachers use when they plan speaking corners?RQ 3. Do the students who attend the SAC learn better with pre-teachers of the same age?RQ 4. Do they feel that pre-teachers are well-prepared?RQ 5. What are the differences in attitudes towards learning English across majors?

VARIABLES OF THE STUDY

1) The English level of the students who are doing their internship at the SAC. Not all of them have the same knowledge and performance, although most of them are taking the same English course.

2) The English level of the students who attend the SAC. The ones with an introductory level need an instructor who can help them to improve their speaking skills. On the other hand, some other students have an advanced level and if they feel that the person in charge of the speaking corner does not have an advanced level, they will not help them to improve their skills.

 3) The different majors of the students who

attend the SAC. Some of the students are less interested in English and do not want to participate in the speaking corners because English is only a compulsory subject for them for the reason that they are from different majors.

 4) Techniques and methods used in the speaking

corners. According to the degree program at English Language Teaching of the Universidad de Quintana Roo, by fifth semester, ELT students have already studied about the different theories and methodologies of education; in this case, they will be making use of that knowledge in order to provide successful speaking corners and good tutorials since they are now in seventh semester.

 

5) Teaching experience of ELT students doing the internship. Some students start working as teachers when they are studying the first semesters of the major. In these cases, it is easier for them to face a group of students than for inexperienced students who are starting from scratch this experience.

Literature ReviewIn order to do this research, we would like to

point out some information related to the topic and some interesting findings about self-access centers, the relationship between students and teachers, some experiences of beginning teachers and the methods and strategies used by them when planning their classes.

MethodIn this project, we are going to base our results in several instruments which are open-interviews, surveys and observations. The participants will be students who are doing their internship at the Self-Access Center in the University of Quintana Roo, campus Chetumal.

ParticipantsThe participants of our research have an

English level between intermediate and advanced. Some of them have taught English before so we would like to compare the differences and similarities of this experience from both sides (the ones who have taught English before and the ones who have never done that).

Instruments or materials

The data of this research will be collected through open interviews, classroom observations and a survey to be answered by the students who attend speaking corners at the Self-Access Center. - The open interviews will be for the students doing their internship at the SAC.- Observations refer to attend the speaking corners of these students at different levels and see which methods and techniques are used by them.- The survey will be focused on what the students who attend the SAC think about the students who help them in their self-learning activities at the SAC.

ProcedureIn order to have reliable results, we are planning to observe pre-teachers of the Self-Access Center (SAC) in the University of Quintana Roo because we want to see what techniques the pre-teachers apply and how they manage the speaking corners. Also, we are going to do open interviews to six of the pre-teachers and ten students who attend the SAC.Also, we are going to use some surveys in order to measure the performance of the teachers and techniques used.

Data analysisThis thesis will analyze the qualitative data through observations, recorded open-interviews and surveys; we are going to look patterns, differences and variations in the data in order to categorize the data.

REFERENCES Academia.edu (2012). An Investigation of Experienced and

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REFERENCES

REFERENCES

Habash, Y., Gudiño, L. (2010). Causes of failure in the English courses from the students’ perspective: the case of the 2004 generation of the English Language Major at Uqroo.

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REFERENCES

IEEE Xplore (2012). A Study of the Effect of Self-access Center on Non-English Major Students' Listening Ability. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5232505&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5232505

 International Institute for Science, Technology and

Education (2012). Students' Motivation for and Attitudes towards Self-Access Language Learning Centre. Retrieved from http://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/JEP/article/view/1163

REFERENCES

Matos V. Sairy. Factors affecting the independent learning : the case of the B.A. in English Language Teaching, Chetumal, Quintana Roo : El Autor, 2002.

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(2010). Self-Access Centers: Maximizing Learners’ Access to Center Resources. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 1(2), 100-114. Retrieved from http://sisaljournal.org/archives/sep10/mcmurry_tanner_anderson/

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Professional Growth Among Preservice and Beginning Teachers. Review of Educational Research Summer 1992  62: 129-169. Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/62/2/129.short  

Richmond, V., Gorham, J., McCroskey, J. (1987). The Relationship between Selected Immediacy Behaviors and Cognitive Learning. En Instructional Communication.

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Velasco A. Rafael A. Teaching writing experience in teachers of the language center of the university of Quintana Roo, Chetumal, Quintana Roo. : El Autor, 2010.

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