ISG Course MFL 2001
Portfolio Assignment: ACTION RESEARCH
Name: Claudio Colabianchi - Verona - Italy
‘PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR INCREASING MOTIVATION,
CREATIVE INTERACTION AND STUDENTS’ TALKING TIME BY VIDEO’
Observation Tools:
A) Teacher’s Diary,
B) Videocameras: 1st videocamera in the hands of a Student, 2nd videocamera in the hands of
2 different peer Teachers
C) 3 Questionnaires (N°1, N°2, N° 3)
D) Interviews
Duration: 1½ month
Class: third year of Scuola Media Statale “V. Betteloni”- Verona- Italy
Introduction
My concern focuses on a 3rd year of the Italian Scuola Media, the last class of a secondary high
school. The class is composed of 13 girls and 9 boys. This is a typical class with pre-adolescent
issues: those of discipline, especially due to infantile boys, and a general concern about orientation
for next year when the students have to choose a type of school according to their skills,
willingness, future job perspectives and other needs.
I realise that my lessons are hardly ever – or superficially – student-centred, due to disruptive
behaviour. I have to spend long periods controlling the class by scolding and asking for more
attention. As a consequence, students do not speak much English if not held to tightly guided
answers or questions. The opportunities for productive interaction among students are very few and
often interrupted. I try my best to deliver pleasant and enjoyable lessons, integrating the textbook
with audio and video, watching films or documentaries in English, or with the aid of computers. I
have also tried using other stimuli, such as teaching through songs, and even offering opportunities
for dancing. All these extra activities always require the students to perform tasks, e.g.:
questionnaires, filling grids, summaries, discussions etc. The students usually respond well, the
average student is bright and furthermore works quite hard at home. The best ones have a good
command of basic English phraseology ( i.e. greeting, apologising, asking for permission etc.) and
they use it when in the classroom and speaking to me; a few are language- gifted, but attention
lapses after a short time and discipline issues persist. Some students talk to each other, continually
making jokes and playing tricks, they make noises by beating/drumming pens on the desk or
moving/dragging chairs. Sometimes they show aggressiveness and, even if not seriously, hit their
partners. I realise that their attention and concentration is often addressed to other things. It is
becoming increasingly difficult to continue in this fashion. It is quite frustrating and stressing. I
have to interrupt to scold, threaten punishments like writing inefficacious notes to their parents.
Sometimes I simply stop talking and observe, in an attempt to relax. As a consequence of this and in
order to maintain a minimum of control over the class, the lesson becomes more and more teachercentred. ‘How can I change things?’ I often ask myself. ‘Do I have to change the activities? Do I
have to change my behaviour?’ – ‘Both’ is my answer. My thoughts are addressed to words like:
motivation, cooperation, group-work. As regards my behaviour, I need to think how to develop
better class management, a more humanistic approach and look more carefully at socio-affective
aspects.
The process
I present my concerns to the students and I inform my colleagues and the head teacher. I try to find
a colleague in the school to help me initiate a project of observation. All of them always seem to be
too busy. There is no match with their timetables or simply any belief or interest in experiments and
innovations like these. It is impossible. I think of external peers. I send a letter of invitation with
detailed information of my action research plan to a parent of a girl student, who is also a
committed teacher of English, belonging to an Italian association for the development of language
teachers: LEND (Lingua e nuova didattica).
The next step is to meet the students’ needs. I administer a general, anonymous questionnaire (N° 1)
to the students, based on a wide range of socio-affective elements related to school life and to the
syllabus. I think it can help develop a new way of communication; it encourages a deeper affective
rapport. It also helps me to be critical, objective and reflective on points, which, I realise, have
never been touched on in the past by other teachers. From the 18 questions (some are multiple
choice, some require a mark, and others are open-ended) I can retrieve information about
relationships, motivation, aptitudes, behaviours, willingness, enjoyment, attitudes and preferences
towards English, as well as fears, disapproval or even hate for some activities. Some questions
relate to learning styles, strategies and study skills. The first results I get from the data are that 90%
of the students enjoy creative activities, such as drama and group work best. Some would like to
have a native speaker of English to speak with in the class; others seem keen to read English
magazines.
About 95% of the students say they feel comfortable in the English lesson, stressing the importance
of having a good class atmosphere; a few are indifferent, bored; some are a bit fearful when I scold
them. When the students have to speak, most think in Italian and rarely, unless they are very
confident on a topic, in English. Many consider understanding and speaking a prominent skill to
develop and grammar is considered as having the same level of importance. None of them like
studying poems or memorising verbs. I reflect upon the results and I realise that I have to work out
strategies to ameliorate my teaching methods in terms of increasing the amount of time that students
spend performing in the foreign language. It is actually easier to get quite a satisfactory amount of
written English from them, i.e. homework, written exercises and tests. By contrast, oral English is
often broken, interrupted and almost dismissed by the students. A common comment is “We are in
Italy, we are Italian… why should we speak English?”. I do not expect young students to speak
‘natural and spontaneous’ English, nevertheless I have to invent a new and effective strategy in
order that they enjoy speaking and perhaps ‘doing’ something in English. I am aware that, in order
to keep the motivation continually high, a fundamental factor is planning the lesson with a variety
of different activities and using different materials and media. I also want to try an experiment by
adopting/adapting a kind of ‘mantra’. It consists of inciting the whole class to say aloud several
times slogans, catchphrases and proverbs such as e.g. ‘We are clever’, ‘We are the champions’,
‘Simply the best’ etc. I discover that this trial is efficacious in terms of achieving a better
relationship and in creating a good feeling for the foreign language.
I encourage the students to discuss and to use English as much as possible. We decide to plan a
dramatisation in groups of short situational dialogues. I negotiate with them to form heterogeneous
groups (in terms of language competence) of four or five pupils, with a responsible group leader.
The focus of the main themes and tasks for the simulations concentrates on their age and lives and I
try to foster in them the concept of leaving space for imagination and creativity. The students show
enthusiasm and are provided with patterns to follow, though they are also free to invent a dialogue,
with roles for every participant, e.g: mini-presentations, interviews, sketches, news, TV
commercials, planning or speaking of past events (e.g: holidays, parties); predicting the future (e.g.
talking about horoscopes, forecasting the weather etc.)
First Attempt: The rehearsal
I go through the groups, facilitating and prompting to boost their confidence with the language. The
first rehearsal is not very successful. Some students hesitate a lot and speak in Italian; when they
fail, others remember their part in a scrappy, incomplete way. Some students in the audience often
disrupt the performance with laughter, speaking aloud, and making unhelpful or inappropriate
comments. I invite them to rehearse at home aloud in front of a mirror, or to their parents or
siblings, to prove whether they were really able to act; as a class we reflect on: “Thinking of being
able” doesn’t mean “really being able” to act, a mind gap that is often neglected or seen as a factor
that is only sometimes apparent or even an illusion.
In the meantime, I have started a process of self-observation by writing, almost every day, a diary. I
try to be objective and to write not only negative insights (which unfortunately I consider more
relevant), but also the positive outcomes of my lessons. Day by day, in this process of selfdiscovery, I notice that I can avoid some management errors e.g. I do not have to digress too much
in Italian or on insubstantial considerations. I have become more sensitive to individual issues of
different personalities; I call everyone by their first names (a big effort with 150 students); I also
treat those who disrupt with more sympathy and tolerance; I try to speak individually to individual
students, letting them express their opinions and justifications. I walk around more amongst the
desks. With a big effort, I try not to lose my temper, even with extremely bad behaviour. I maintain
that I do not have to demonstrate disruptive students’ behaviour by imitating them (although they
ask me “What did I do?” in an ambiguous and innocent tone). If I do, I convey the wrong message
and I reinforce behavioural errors. I can also reflect on the fact that I do not behave in the same way
in all my six classes; in some I feel more prone to smile, while in others I feel a little demotivated
by the boring sense of routine. I tell myself that I have to try to change my teaching habits and
behaviour, both for self-improvement and for that of the students.
Generally speaking, writing a diary and reflecting on it day by day is strengthening my socioaffective relationship with my class.
Second Attempt: Trying a new technique
I think that one of my limitations in the past has been using video mainly or only in a receptive way,
i.e. watching it. I have used a videocamera at school to produce a video for a school presentation. It
was a lot of fun and enjoyable for all. I am thinking of re-appraising an old assumption/activity. In
the light of this positive experience, I decide to embark on a new venture by filming the students
while they are acting and then to show them the videocassette. With the aim of both improving the
students’ performance and also my behaviour, I think it is necessary to provide the class with two
videcameras in this action. One in the hands of a clever student who shoots the acting group in the
middle of the class and a second one in the hands of a peer teacher who shoots everything that
happens i.e. the acting group, the other students as audience, the student who shoots the group and
me from a rear corner. In this case, as above, the peer is a parent, the teacher of English in another
school. She has always been collaborative (and patient) and so as to add an element of further
observation and mutual reflection/ discussion, I get her to fill in two questionnaires (N° 2 and N° 3),
in which the profession of the teacher is analyzed. She observes my general management, my way
of dealing with errors, my way of encouraging and my gestures and gesticulation. This helps me
think more about everything I do and thus to avoid mistakes and continually to improve many
attitudes. The fact that someone is observing me with checklists keeps me tightly alert so as not to
fail and maximize my performance as a teacher at his best. As a consequence, therefore, the results
are generally positive as far as my behaviour is concerned. I notice that I do not exaggerate in
correcting (neither too often nor too much) or I correct only at the end of the performance, allowing
more time and space so that the students can develop their fluency. The positive outcomes are that
they now speak much more than before and they also make use of mime. Nevertheless, other
important elements that I have still to take into account in improving my teaching activities are e.g.
writing more notes for revision on the blackboard, summarising content or simply visualising
concepts with sketches. The last, but crucial, point is more regular checking of homework.
Unfortunately this issue, especially, remains often unresolved and neglected due to the shortage of
time and order of priorities.
At the moment students are quieter, more interested, more self-controlled during the rehearsals, they
make an effort to act well and they also gain good skills in using tone and pitch of voice and correct
posture. My role of guidance is related not only to verbal suggestions, but also to mime and gesture.
We then watch the video and I decide to conduct a sort of unstructured group-interview on feelings,
impressions and points of view. The students participate actively and their comments range from
correcting their own and (sometimes harshly) others’ mistakes to giving suggestions on how to be
more realistic (saying e.g: put yourself in the shoes of…), to paying more attention to the
videocamera. Others express a sense of embarrassment in front of the videocamera that records
everything and which, they say, can be shown to others. A student calls it the “Big Eye”; another
one calls it “Big Brother”. Some say they felt uneasy and a bit frustrated with a desire to give up.
We make a summary of the key points of the interview and hang it on the wall as a reminder, near
the students’ group composition and the themes and titles of the sketches.
From a first analysis of my organisational plan, I notice that there were a few things lacking in
terms of arranging space, allotting time and the order of performance. The instructions for the
setting of the scene were disorganised. Dressing-up and making-up were completely left to the
students’ own initiative. Some sketches have to be re-planned as they are too short, some have to be
expanded. We decide that some speeches need a bit of improvisation to be more realistic, since they
were completely memorised. Two or three gifted students act really well: their fluency and accuracy
are excellent, while pronunciation and voice pitch are almost perfect. Watching the second video
enables me to see my facial and body expressions, movements, rhythms, and other organizational
features that I can later correct and refine. Furthermore, I can see what is happening behind me and
all around the classroom. In a corner I see students rehearsing on their own, making a worthwhile
background noise, and I think that this type of extraneous noise has to be tolerated.
Third Attempt: Tuning the new technique
Now almost all the students seem to be enjoying the project with a greater sense of fulfilment and
more enthusiasm; they want to try more every day: the horoscope, a TV commercial, the interviews
with the band, the ‘Lollipops’, with Britney Spears, with some famous footballers, with friends
reporting about Halloween parties. They learn more lexis spontaneously and they feel more secure.
They bring music and fancy dress from home. In spite of being in front of a stranger (the other
teacher present), even the most reluctant and the weakest do not over-hesitate and can produce quite
long chunks of language, which never happened before. This activity is lively, dynamic, interactive
and stimulating. The benefits are: the students’ longer talking time, increase of fluency and
accuracy, more extroversion and confidence, not only in terms of the foreign language. They
improve with a general refinement of their expressive abilities and through modelling new ways of
learning. A few, almost spontaneously, also use some paralinguistic devices (e.g. eye contact, etc.),
surprising me positively.- ‘Real actors!’- I say to myself . They feel more at ease. With this process
we are building a stronger and firmer relationship based on mutual respect. Nevertheless, a few
students in the audience still disrupt because they chat and laugh: they are very excited and
profoundly involved. When I scold them, another student suggests shooting the scene only with the
‘actors’. I do not agree. I want to involve the whole group in an ongoing process of mutual learning,
and furthermore I do not know who could look after the other students in another classroom. With
the aim of adjusting some behavioural shortcomings and organisational flaws and also to get a class
observation from a different slant, I decide to repeat the previous action with some little, important
changes. This time the camera operator, who films the whole class, is a teacher of Physical
Education, a friend of mine. He is very fond of video production and quite skilful at montage. The
results that I get from his questionnaire reveal that the teacher friend is stricter with me (definitely
less aware of my vulnerable position) and more objective (probably because less influenced) than
the teacher-parent in judging my behaviour.
Thanks to these results, I become still more sensitive on some points that I neglected before. I now
maintain that being more definite and precise in alloting the time and the space for the various
activities is fundamental for optimum organisation
I accept his suggestion of filming with the videocamera directly connected to a television monitor.
All the students can see themselves in real time. In the beginning, as long as it is a novelty, I think
this is another additional factor of disturbance because a lot of students cannot help laughing out of
embarrassment, but once they get used to it, it serves as a good device for monitoring self-control.
One of the cleverest students suggests involving the whole class simultaneously in a “class quiz
show” to include interviews, songs, dance and commercial breaks. We all accept this brilliant idea
that is now part of the agenda of our future projects which are to be realised next spring (2002).
Conclusion
This project has helped me recognise and become aware of some characteristics of my classroom
management and of my behaviour that otherwise would have remained hidden and obscured. The
backwash is that as a result I changed some important aspects of my teaching practice. I take into
consideration the students’ linguistic and affective needs with more care now, I am more patient
towards bad behaviour, I am tolerant with errors and I promote self-correction. I have improved my
way of giving instructions and negotiating objectives, which, I am sure, are clearer now, and which
the whole class shares. I maintain that with the right techniques we can learn a lot from our learners
and thus become better teachers. I am aware that even if it implies taking risks and making
mistakes, experimenting revitalises our profession in a continual process of growth. The positive
outcomes include: the students’ progress in recognising their mistakes and thus in self-correction; in
improving their ability to express themselves in English and in communicating in general, also
through the use of physical expression; and not least, an increase in their motivation and
collaboration. The students’ efforts in providing useful material for the scenery and even two
videocameras was of great help and essential for this project, since our school is not fully equipped.
The cooperation of a particularly clever student who took responsibility for the filming helped to
give me improved direction and management of the acting groups. The best performance was the
‘Horoscope’. In this sketch, the fortune teller speaks about genuine adolescent themes of romantic
life, love and luck. The findings of this process are very encouraging. They have enhanced my
professional competence and I will certainly continue this reciprocal (i.e. from the teacher to the
students and vice versa), ongoing learning process with other classes.