Promoting autonomy through action research: a case study with undergraduate
translation students
Ana Maria da Silva Cravo
Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco - Escola Superior de Educação
anamariacravo@hotmail.com
Introduction
The ideas presented in this paper are derived from the research in which I was involved
for my Master of Education in Supervision for Nottingham University completed in
1999. It was a longitudinal action research project that was carried out with Translation
students from the School of Education of the Polytechnic of Castelo Branco (ESECB)
between 1996-1997 and 1998-1999.
In 1996-1997 German was one of two D languages for the Translation and
International Relations six-semester-degree-programme. With an average of 270
minutes per week to work with mixed ability classes of undergraduate students with
basic or no knowledge of German, I soon realized how difficult the task would be.
Internally we had decided to divide those 6 semesters in two different stages of
three semesters each. The first one would be for intensive language learning, trying to
go through the four skills of reading, listening, speaking and writing, without forgetting
grammar and what we might call a few exercises of pedagogical translation, the main
aim being to familiarize the students with basic resources they could use in the
documentation process, such as dictionaries, grammars and phrase books (both bilingual
and monolingual). During the second stage the students would be led to do internet
research and to work with specialized dictionaries as well as with parallel texts for their
translation project.
Dissatisfied with the way I was teaching German I thought that from all the
research methodologies used in the education field, that I had studied, the only one that
would suit my purpose of intervention and change was action research. I wanted to
promote the students autonomy and for that purpose I would have to reflect on my own
practice, to incorporate those reflections and subsequently to change my practice. Being
at the same time the teacher and the researcher I felt greatly inspired by the work of
David Hopkins, namely by his book A teacher’s guide to classroom research (1993).
The study was exploratory in nature and was developed simultaneously with two
case studies. It was a project of change based on reflection both of the teacherresearcher and the students which was designed, implemented and evaluated to assess:
1. The extent to which increasing responsibility of the students for their grammar
learning process would enable a better management of the language classes for reading,
listening, writing, speaking and translation practice;
2.The extent to which a greater increasing responsibility of the students for their
grammar learning process would lead to better results in language learning.
Four hypotheses were formulated. Three of them concerning the students’ route,
namely:
i. Shared responsibility between teacher and students in the process of German
grammar learning contributes for the improvement of the outcomes in German language
learning.
ii. A training route for autonomy in the field of German grammar learning leads
the students to identify themselves more with some grammar teaching strategies than
with others.
iii. A training route for autonomy in the field of German grammar leads the
students to become aware of the grammar learning strategies used to develop their
linguistic capacity.
Concerning the teacher-researcher’s route one hypothesis was formulated:
iv. Shared responsibility between teacher and students in the process of German
grammar learning contributes to a reduction of the time used in the classroom for the
explicit teaching of grammar.
These hypotheses were sub-divided into sub-hypothesis in order to facilitate data
collection.
The students we followed were observed for a period of four semesters, each
semester consisting of a cycle of action research. In each cycle a predominant way of
teaching German grammar was used, gradually requiring, from the students, a more and
more responsible and independent way of learning, and leaving more time to the
training of reading, listening, writing, speaking and translation inside the classroom.
Theoretical Background
Autonomy
There is an extensive literature on learning to learn, on developing independent learning
and on autonomy (see, e.g., Novack and Gowin 1984; Holec 1989; Dickinson 1987;
Wenden 1987; Ellis and Sinclair 1989; Rampillon 1989; Gick 1989; Prokop 1993;
Vieira 1994 and 1996; Esch 1996; Benson 1996; Lee 1996; Cardoso et al 1996; Benson
and Voller 1997; Nunan 1997; Harris 1997; Little 1997; Beresford 2003).
A route to autonomy in the context I was working meant preparing the
translation students to take responsibility in the learning process, allowing them to
recognize their strengths and their weaknesses in the German language. By tackling
different teaching and learning strategies they were induced to learn more about the way
they learned best, becoming involved in a cooperation process of learning, in and out of
the classroom, more and more without the teacher interference. They were induced to
use both cognitive and metacognitive strategies, because thinking about what we know,
what we don’t know and the reasons why, that is, thinking about our own learning
process and our learning difficulties may lead us to reach a higher level of our
intellectual capacities (Cruz and Valente 1993: 87, Peixoto 1991 and 1995, Rosário
1997).
Learning to learn is something that can be taught and trained. Wenden (1987,
159) talks about “blind training” and “informed training”. According to the author the
former leaves the trainees in the dark about the importance of the activities they are
being induced to use, while the latter places emphasis on learning to learn. Informed
training was one of the teaching strategies I used, because although linguistic
knowledge may be implicit what is defended in a pedagogy for autonomy is the need to
make that knowledge explicit - conscious and understood -, through reflection and
practice (Vieira, 1996: 45).
To have autonomous students we need to have reflective teachers (Vieira 1996,
Cravo 1999). As a higher education teacher, who had recently become responsible for
the teaching of a language D for the specific purpose of translation, I felt I had to
change. I needed to know what other teachers in the field were doing and I began
attending seminars on translation to try to learn from the experiences shared by other
practitioners. But that wasn’t enough. I had to become reflective of my own practices
and be prepared to adapt myself to different learning needs. On the other hand, I was
also taking my first steps in the field of research. It was like going through a double
training process at the same time: training myself as a higher education teacher and as a
researcher. Unlike the training I had done a few years before, in order to become a
secondary teacher, this time I would have to monitor my own teaching, because I was
not going to have a supervisor inside the classroom to observe and assess my practice.
That would have to give place to a lot of reflection about what I was doing, what I
intended to do and how I was going to do it.
To achieve these multiple education purposes, I needed a methodology that,
from the perspective of the teacher-researcher, could also work as a self-education
strategy (Cravo 1999). Therefore I decided to get involved in action research.
Action Research
Action research has been used in education for the past 60 years, and it is seen by many
(see, e.g., Ebbutt 1985; Kelly 1985; Kemmis and McTaggart 1988; McNiff 1988; Oja
and Smulyan 1989; Elliot 1991; Altrichter 1993; Hopkins 1993; Nunan 1993; Cohen
and Manion 1994; Moreira 1996; Silva 1996; Fueyo and Koorland 1997), as a powerful
tool both for researchers and practitioners. For researchers who want to understand and
describe what the practitioners do, and for practitioners who want to improve their
practices being prepared to change them through a process of continuous reflection and
action.
According to McNiff (1988: 1), action research is a form of self-reflective
enquiry. It encourages a teacher to be reflective of his own practice in order to enhance
the quality of education for himself and his students. McNiff isn’t necessarily talking
about higher education teachers, but I agree with Koogan (2001) when in his paper on
“Self-evaluation, education of teachers and quality in higher education” he says that
academics should begin to look seriously at recent work on learning and teaching
theory.
My study was a project of change based on my reflections both as a teacher and
as a researcher and the reflections of the students. I was aware of the importance of
promoting the students autonomy in language learning and to achieve that goal I knew I
had to be prepared to change my own practices.
One of the main characteristics of this process was the self-reflective, selfcritical and pro-active attitude of the teacher (Cravo 1999: 20). According to Vieira
(1993: 28) any teacher can supervise (monitor) his own practice. That’s what I have
tried to do. But it wasn’t easy to expose myself in such a way. I was not doing research
about what other people were doing. I was describing what I was doing, running the risk
of showing my weaknesses as a teacher who had just started to tackle the field of
translator education. Nevertheless, sharing my difficulties and the strategies I used in
order to overcome them could give rise to a discussion of different and hopefully better
solutions to the problems I would present. That alone, for someone who seriously
believes in the need for the education and training of higher education teachers, was a
very good reason to proceed with my work.
The theoretical framework for the design of the project followed four action
research cycles based in the model of action research described by Nunan (1993:). This
is one model, among many, but the reason why I chose it is the simplicity of the way it
is presented by the author. Simple, clear and effective. According to Nunan a cycle of
action research includes: 1. Problem identification; 2. Preliminary investigation; 3.
Hypotheses; 4. Plan intervention; 5. Outcomes; 6. Reporting.
Research Methodology
Subjects
The participants were students from Translation and International Relations - a sixsemester-programme that was replaced by a eight-semester Translation and Secretarial
degree programme in the 2000-2001 academic year. The whole class - a mixture of
beginners (71%) and false beginners (29%) -, was involved in the study. Nevertheless
we decided to focus our research on two case studies only: one was a false beginner (we
will call her Maria) and the other one a beginner (we will call her Cecília).
The project was longitudinal and I worked with the same group of students for 6
semesters. German was a Language D, always taught at beginners level.
The data I collected is from the first, second, third and fifth semesters. That is,
from the first stage of the programme – as I have mentioned in the Introduction -, and
from the middle of the second stage. Each of them consisted of a different action
research cycle. During the first and the second semester, classes met at the school for
300 minutes per week, from October 1996 through January 1997 and from March 1997
through June 1997. During the third and the fifth semesters classes met for 240 minutes
per week – from October 1997 through January 1998 and from October 1998 through
January 1999.
Procedures and instruments
Teaching German in a mixed ability class with beginners and just a few false beginners,
I believed that unless I began to work towards the promotion of the students’ autonomy
in language learning, I wouldn’t be able to do much in a period of three years time in
such a context. To reach that goal I felt that something in the way I was teaching had to
change.
I decided to keep written notes of everything I did in the classroom, willing to
understand the amount of time I spent with the presentation and training of each of the
four skills as well as with grammar.
After a few weeks and as I was going through my notes, I realized I was
spending too much time with grammar. I thought that one first step to reduce the time
used with grammar would be to introduce the new contents in the classroom (explicitly)
and to ask the students to do the exercises at home. This way I thought I would be able
to dedicate more time to the practice of skills that would enable the students to use
German in real situations of oral and written communication.
With that aim in mind, I organized a collection of grammar exercises for the
students to do at home, leaving the correction to be done in the classroom. This was my
first grammar teaching strategy.
At the end of the semester I realized I had been able to dedicate more time to
other components. Yet, going through my daily programming notes, I realized I was
still using too much time with explicit grammar teaching .
As I was starting my second action research cycle I thought that if I gave the
students not only the grammar exercises, but also the key, they would be able to correct
them at home and more time would be left for the practice of skills that would enable
the students to use German in real situations of oral and written communication.
Therefore, during this cycle new contents were explained (explicitly) in the
classroom and instructions were given in terms of which exercises had to be done and
corrected by the students at home. The contents that had not been understood could be
explained by the teacher in the following class. During this cycle the students were
submitted to three formative grammar tests about all the grammar contents they had
studied. During this cycle they were also asked to reflect about the results of each of
these three formative tests. The strategies used were both cognitive and metacognitive.
This was my second grammar teaching strategy.
At the end of the semester I realized I had been able not only to dedicate even
more time to train other components, such as reading, listening, writing, speaking and
translation, but also to spend time with the use of metacognitive strategies to help the
students learn how to learn.
So, I decided to go one step further in this training route for autonomy in
grammar learning. I thought that if the students organized a personal file with rules,
examples and exercises about the grammar contents of the third semester, before the
teacher introduced them explicitly in the classroom, they would be able to develop their
research skills with grammar books, grammar exercise-books and dictionaries.
Moreover, I thought that if I could conciliate the use of explicit and implicit grammar
teaching strategies the students might get better results.
In the third action research cycle, during the first half of the semester, there was
no explicit grammar teaching in the classroom. Classes were used for reading, speaking,
writing, listening, and translation - using bilingual and monolingual dictionaries of
general and specialized language. Meanwhile the students were given a list with the
grammar contents they would have to study and were asked to organize their personal
files. During the second half of the semester, after the files were organized, some time
was dedicated to explicit grammar teaching. The exercises done at home were corrected
in the classroom by the students and for that purpose I used transparencies with the key.
This was my third grammar teaching strategy.
At the end of the semester the students had had the opportunity to improve their
research capacities. One of the implications of the second
hypothesis formulated for
this cycle was the change in the way students were assessed. Instead of the former two
written tests per semester the students were now assessed through six different tests:
reading comprehension, listening comprehension, speaking, writing, grammar and
translation.
At the end of the third action research cycle I interviewed the students and I
thought that if they became responsible for their grammar learning process I would be
able to start focusing more and more on translation. This was my fourth strategy.
During the fifth semester there was no explicit grammar teaching. Several
strategies were used in order to train the four skills and the students were involved in a
translation project. At our school, one of the Physical Education teachers was
implicated in International Projects with more than one institution in Germany. That
teacher didn’t speak German, but he had to read several papers of which there was no
translation into Portuguese. So, the challenge was to involve the students in the
translation of a ten-page paper entitled “Das mobile Klassenzimmer” von G. Landau.
As a teacher it was my first experience with a translation project of this kind
and by then I didn’t know much about the way scholars such as Gouadec and Kiraly
were working. Since the level of German of the majority of my students could not be
considered above intermediate, the final product wasn’t but a first draft of the
translation. The experience was considered positive and as a result more people are
becoming interested in this strategy in our school.
Findings
Two case studies is obviously a constraint which makes interpretation of the results
limited. This longitudinal action research project, being exploratory in nature, could
never lead us to draw any general conclusions. Anyway, and going back to the
hypothesis presented in the introduction of this paper I will try to summarize some of
the most important issues. I will start with Maria – the student with previous knowledge
of German -, then the true beginner Cecília and finally the teacher-researcher.
Maria
From the four strategies I used to teach German grammar, Maria identified herself
strongly with the one used during the second cycle. She was responsible enough to
solve the exercises without looking at the key. And for her, having the key was very
important, because she could have immediate feedback, as she admitted during the
interview.
Anyway, it was with the strategy used in the third cycle that she got her best
results in grammar (98,5%). Therefore it was not using her favourite grammar learning
strategy that she was able to get a better mark.
Her best final marks were obtained during the first and the third cycle (90%).
One of the cycles in which Maria obtained one of her best final marks (the third one –
90%), was the cycle in which she had her best results in grammar.
During the interview which took place at the end of the third cycle, Maria stated
that she believed she had a good visual memory, and that she learned better by using
tables produced by herself to memorize the declensions. She also believed she could
memorize word gender better by using the code of colours suggested by me (pink for
female; blue for male; yellow for neuter and orange for plural). Maria felt it was by
doing many exercises that she learned best. And as far as the her personal file was
concerned she said she organized it in such a way that whenever she had a doubt she
would be able to rapidly find what she was looking for.
Strategies such as clarifying, verifying, memorizing, practising and monitoring
seemed to be important for Maria.
Cecília
The strategy used during the third action research cycle, was Cecília’s favourite. And it
was in the third cycle she got her best results in grammar (88,5%) as well as her best
final mark (80%). So, with Cecília the cycle in which she obtained her best final mark,
was the cycle in which she had her best results in grammar using her favourite grammar
learning strategy.
During the interview Cecília stated she was not responsible enough to solve the
exercises without looking at the key. She preferred to correct the exercises in the
classroom with the teacher. That way, she would be able to clarify her doubts
immediately. But the strategy she liked best was that from the third cycle. The
organization of her personal file pleased her very much. She realized she is fond of
doing research, going through different kinds of resources.
Strategies such as clarifying, verifying, practising and monitoring seemed to be
important for Cecília. Cecília, unlike Maria, seems to prefer strategies that keep her
more dependent from the teacher.
From what I have just said it is possible to see that each of the students traced
her own route to autonomy in German grammar learning through distinct choices and
preferences in terms of teaching and learning strategies.
As we used both cognitive and metacognitive strategies, the students were able
not only to try different learning strategies, but also to identify those they preferred.
And they also seemed to have understood that preferring a learning strategy doesn’t
necessarily mean that using it will lead us to learn better or to obtain better results.
Concerning the students route to autonomy in German grammar learning three
hypothesis were formulated in the introduction. And after going through data analysis I
would say that shared responsibility between teacher and students in the process of
German grammar learning seems to contribute for the improvement of the outcomes in
German language learning; that a training route for autonomy in the field of German
grammar learning may lead the students to identify themselves more with some
grammar teaching strategies than with others and that a training route for autonomy in
the field of German grammar may lead the students to become aware of the grammar
learning strategies used to develop their linguistic capacity.
The teacher-researcher
Although the teacher and the researcher were the same person, I would like to analyse
the outcomes separately.
I understood that to help my students to become more autonomous in grammar
learning, I would have to think about what I was doing in my classes and to change the
way I was teaching. I had to become critical about my work and be prepared to change
and use different strategies in order to achieve my purpose. Reflection before, during
and after action was imperative. I had to think about several things. What am I doing?
Why am I doing it this way? Are the materials I am using adequate to the aims I have
in mind?
As a researcher I became aware of the power of action research in educational
contexts whenever a teacher believes he can do something in order to improve their
practices as well as the outcomes of their students.
Concerning the teacher-researcher’s route one hypothesis was formulated in the
introduction. And after going through data analysis I would have to say that shared
responsibility between teacher and students in the process of German grammar learning
contributes to a reduction of the time used in the classroom to the explicit teaching of
grammar.
Final Comments
McNiff (1988, 4) said that “applied to classrooms, action research is an approach to
improving education through change, by encouraging teachers to be aware of their own
practice, to be critical of that practice, and to be prepared to change it.”
In the past 60 years action research has played a very important role in
education. The interest in the discussion of the formation of higher education teachers
seems to have become an important issue in the past few years (see, e.g., Reimão 2001,
Leclercq 2001, Cachapuz 2001, Dias 2001, Patrício 2001, Ambrósio 2001, Kogan 2001,
Veiga Simão 2001). I do believe that higher education teachers involved in translator
education or translator training may find in action research the support they need in
order to improve their practices.
Suggestions for future research
As a result of the findings from the research reported here, and as a consequence of the
limitations of the study, there are several issues which are worth considering for future
research.
The study I reported here took place between 1996-1997 and 1998-1999. Those
were my initial efforts to deal with teaching a foreign language for the specific purpose
of translation. Although it was a language D, I did and I still do believe that something
can be done in order to improve the students’ outcomes. While promoting their
autonomy in grammar learning the implications went further beyond the strict domain
of grammar. But it would be interesting to get a closer look at those implications.
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