1.     Finding something that you are not happy with and want to improve or change  

à  A secondary school teacher identifies a problem in her classroom, “I spend a lot of my class time explaining grammar rules to my students, but they continue making a lot of grammatical mistakes in both oral and writing tasks.

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2. Preliminary investigation   

à   What’s going on?

       Observe several lessons and interview some different levels of students.

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3. Hypothesis 

à The teacher used a lot of Chinese to explain grammar. The students take a lot of notes but they could not remember the rules when they need to use them. 

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4. Plan intervention  

à Teacher limits her explanation of the grammar points in Chinese. Instead, she provides more context-based oral and written activities for students to use the target language with peer assessment tasks. This was done regularly for 3 months.

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5. Data Collection   

à Post tests in both oral and written are given and interviews with some students are carried out to find out how students feel about such kind of teaching.

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6. uating outcome 

à Better results in test scores by students and more confidence for student to do oral and written tasks in English.  Most of them say that they don’t need to mechanically remember the rules. They find English more interesting and easier to learn. 

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7. Reporting  

à Presentation to other teachers in school.     

Article to be published in language teaching journals

 

Task 5  Ways of collecting and analyzing data               

1.  Diaries: Teacher diaries / Learner diaries

2.  Photographic evidence         

3.  Tape/video recordings and transcripts 

4.  Using an outside observer   5.  Interviewing     

6.  Questionnaires            7. Document analysis

8.  Profiles                   9. Triangulation   

 

Task 6 Start your action research

l     Find a research question: What do I want to improve in my teaching?

¨     A problem that you are interested in finding answers  

to

¨     A problem that you find difficult to solve in teaching

¨     A problem that you cannot understand or explain

¨   The status quo or teaching situation that you would like to change

¨     Some inconsistencies between what your planned and

what you practiced

¨     Some inconsistencies between the current teaching situation and your intended goals of teaching

¨   Some inconsistencies between students’ views and teachers’ views

l     Think：

Why am I concerned about it?

What do I believe in or what should be my educational values?

l     Analysis of the reasons:

What are the possible reasons behind the problem?

Teacher’s problem(s)?

Students’ problem(s)?

Problem(s) due to the course book or the context?

Can I do something to change the present situation?

l     Preliminary investigation：

Let’s find out what is going on.

Observation?

Reflection?

Interviewing?

Questionnaires?

Diary writing？

l     Restatement of the research question(s)

l     Planning your research:

What can I do to make my teaching consistent with my beliefs?

l     Implementing your action plan

l     Data collection:

l     Analyzing and discussing data

l     uating the results

l     Writing reports

 

Task 7  A case-based example

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Is there an area that you would like to improve in your teaching?

You should pick just one area of your teaching that concerns you, and make sure it is not too big or too general. For example, you would like how to increase classroom interactions among students. So, one possible research question might be: How can I improve my grouping skills to involve more participation from my students?  

 

 

Why am I concerned about it?

This question is important because it helps you understand what it is that matters to you about your chosen question-How can I improve my grouping skills? Knowing why something matters to us can help us become clearer about what we can do to improve it. Why do you want to improve your grouping skills and why do you want to make your students participate more?  Whatever the reason, knowing them will help you structure your research more effectively.

What are the possible reasons behind the problem?

Is it because I rarely use pair or group work? Is it because the way I group my students is not motivating for some students? Is it because my students do not like to work in pairs or groups? Is it because the tasks I give for pair or group-work are too simple, too difficult, or too complex? What is happening?

How might I improve it?

After some investigation, you find the main reasons for the unsuccessful organization of the pair/group work in your class. Then, you might accordingly think about how you can group your students in learning activities and why you want to do so in the way you want: weak with weak, strong with strong, or weak with strong? You may also think about letting students work in pairs and then join another pair to compare their answers. Secondly, you might want to examine the tasks you give to your students to see if they are suitable for the age group, their language level, their interests, etc.. You might study the way different teachers do it and work out which methods would work best for you. You might practice using different groups for different tasks and asking your classmates and teachers for feedback.

Who can help me and how?

Perhaps your fellow teachers/colleagues could give you some tips on how to tackle the problems you face. They could tell you which type of your grouping is best organized and most suitable for the purpose of the tasks and how you can improve the ways that students are grouped and tasks are designed.

 How will I know that it has improved?

There are lots of ways you can tell if your grouping skills have improved. Your students' learning will be clearer and they will benefit more from cooperative learning and understand better in learning. Perhaps their class performance will improve. They get more chances to speak or work together. They will be more ready to help each other.  The important thing is that you need evidence to prove that your action has worked or has not worked and make decisions accordingly in your next step.

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Concluding remarks:

Action Research － a method or an approach?

ACTION RESEARCH: Definitions

Action research might be described as an inquiry conducted into a particular issue of current concern, usually undertaken by those directly involved with the aim of implementing a change in a specific situation. 

                    (Hitchcock & Hughes, 1989:7)

Action research is a type of applied social research differing from other types in the immediacy of the researcher's involvement in the action process.  (It is) more concerned with the immediate application rather than the development of theory. It focuses on a specific problem in a particular setting. In other words, its findings are usually judged in terms of their application in a specific situation. (Verma & Beard, 1989:20) (Teachers) subject themselves and their practice to critical scrutiny; they attempt to     relate ideas to empirical observation; they attempt to make this process explicit to themselves and others through the written word. Their prime concern is to improve their own practice in a particular situation from the standpoint of their own concern or worry. For them, action research seems to be a practical way forward given their concern in that situation. They use and/or design aspects of their action as teachers to find out more about effective teaching and, in our view, they do so rigorously.       (Hustler et al eds. 1986:3)

Action research is a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social (including educational) situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of (a) their own social or educational practices, (b) their understanding of these practices, and (c) the situations (and institutions) in which these practices are carried out.

            (Kemmis & Taggart,1982:5)

The linking of the terms action and research highlights the essential feature of the method: trying out ideas in practice as a means of improvement and as a means of increasing knowledge about the curriculum, teaching and learning. The result is improvement in what happens in the classroom and school, and better articulation and justification of the educational rationale of what goes on.  Action research provides a way of working which links theory and practice into the one whole: ideas in action.                         

Carr and Kemmis (1982, in Nunan, 1990a:63)