Results and some conclusions

It's been a while ... okay, all the holidays. Tomorrow the next term starts! So I'm finally putting down what I got from the semester's work on reducing the number of transfer errors and possibly even preventing some fossilization.

I took two pieces of end-term evidences to review the results. The first was the final draft of the research paper, which supposedly was written with a lot of time given to planning, research, and feedback. 22 students handed in their research paper; two of these were plagiarized and so they were not included. The second evidence was a sheet of paper that contained final thoughts about the course, including their self-evaluation. I used this evidence as it was more likely to be something the students wrote without planning and without much revising; thus it was more likely to produce errors that had not been thought about or corrected, and also more likely to show exactly where improvement might be found. 18 students handed in their final thoughts, including the two students who had plagiarized their research paper.

The points I concentrated on were the ones we worked most on in class. They were words and structures that are commonly misspelled or written wrongly. During the semester we worked on spelling lists 8 times, occasionally changing or introducing new words; we worked on "false friends" four times; we did direct work on understanding the use of "it", and we did work on transfer errors four times. At times I gave "extrinsic motivation" by giving chocolates/lollies to those students who got all the spelling correct in a day's quiz. I had also given explicit and individual feedback about words and structures that were often repeated in a piece of work, via the feedback form which had become so laborious by the end. Thus, the words and structures we worked most on were:

• Spelling: ability, consequence, tourism, environment, government, system, enough, through, communicate, writing, business, Mexican (or any other nationality or language), complete, language, which, with, recommend, beginning, committed, consciousness, slipped, referred, dissatisfy, unnecessary, disappointed, exciting, foreign, excellent, written, opportunity, possibility, official
• "False friends": compromise/commitment, actual/current, assist/attend, approve/pass, career/course, studies, major; direction/address, population/people, costumes/customs, execute/carry out, embarrass/pregnant, scientific/scientist, politic/politician
• Transfer: know/meet people, learn too much, as me/like me, get relax, [object] likes [subject]/[subject] likes [object], difficult (as a verb), [subject] are millions, the first time + present tense, for improve or to improving, ask to someone, on + month/date, misunderstoods, stablish, mayority, other/others, people is, plural adjectives, the use of "it", subject+verb+indirect object+direct object, placing the verb before the subject (eg. exists a problem)

Apart from reading through for enjoyment (first) then evaluation purposes (second), I then read them through specifically looking for these words or points of structure. I confess I probably didn't pick up every use of the word "with", and I didn't note every correct use of the subject-verb construction. However, it was obvious that, at least on these points which we had worked on several times during the semester, there was marked improvement in the majority of those actually used. A number of structures or words, such as "slipped", "referred", "get relax" and "embarrass/pregnant", were not used in either text and so could not be evaluated in any real way.

With regard to spelling:

• 9 students wrote "consequence" correctly; there were no misspellings
• 1 used "tourism" correctly; no misspellings
• 6 used "environment" correctly; no misspellings
• 3 used "government" correctly; no misspellings
• 2 used "system" correctly; no misspellings
• 3 wrote "enough" correctly; no misspellings
• 1 wrote "through" correctly; 2 misspelled it
• 1 wrote "communicate" correctly; no misspellings
• 10 wrote "writing" correctly; no misspellings (it is worth noting that at the beginning of the semester, 6 wrote it incorrectly in their first piece of writing)
• 3 wrote "business" correctly; no misspellings
• 10 used the capital letter for nationalities and languages such as Mexican and English; 3 did not use the capital letter. In this case all three students produced both correct and incorrect examples of it.
• 3 wrote "language" correctly; no misspellings
• 5 wrote "which" correctly; no misspellings
• I noted that 3 people wrote "with" correctly, although the word may have occurred correctly more times and I didn't notice it; 1 student misspelled it three times.
• 2 wrote "recommend" correctly; no misspellings
• 6 wrote "beginning" correctly; no misspellings
• 1 wrote "committed" correctly; no misspellings
• 2 wrote "unnecessary" correctly; no misspellings, although 1 student wrote "unneeded"
• 3 wrote "excellent" correctly; no misspellings
• 2 wrote "written" correctly; no misspellings
• 4 wrote "opportunity" correctly; no misspellings

With regard to "false friends":

• 1 used "commitment" correctly; 1 used "compromise" wrongly
• 2 used "current" correctly
• 1 used "major" correctly
• 2 used "people" correctly

With regard to transfer:

• 1 used "like" correctly; 1 used "as" wrongly
• 1 used "in + month/date" correctly; 2 used it wrongly with "on"
• 3 used "other/others" correctly; 2 used it wrongly
• 1 used "people is" wrongly
• 2 used the plural adjective correctly; 2 used it wrongly (negatives effects)
• 2 used "learn a lot" correctly 
• Every student produced correct examples of the verb + subject; 6 students produced incorrect examples, including 1 student who repeatedly wrote the subject before the verb (10 times)
• 1 student used the incorrect structure of subject+verb+indirect object+direct object.
• 10 students used "it" correctly; 9 students used "it" incorrectly. 7 of these 9 also used it correctly.

From all this data, I see that in general there was a marked improvement in spelling and structures that reflect transfer issues, and some possible improvement in the false cognates. There was only one student who produced more errors in his work than positive points, not including the student who produced 10 errors of the same type (subject-verb).

I was pleased to see that a lot of the correct spelling was actually produced in the final thoughts and not just in the research paper. This seemed to indicate that even when not concentrating so hard on producing a correct document, many of the rules of spelling and avoiding transfer had sunk in to a good extent. I consider that the student who wrote "whit" 3 times in the one text probably has fossilized in that spelling item, and the student who produced 10 errors of "verb+subject" may also have fossilized, although she had improved in other areas of spelling.

It seems to me that the feedback form I used, while tedious for me because of the number of students in the group and the number of texts used with it, was extremely useful for the students; and I imagine that some (although not all) may even go back to these in the future in order to keep working on those points even more. No-one complained that I was being too harsh; in fact one said that I should "be more rude". I think that students in an advanced situation, looking at possibilities of studying internationally, are really seeking useful feedback on their work, particularly when, as I mentioned in a previous post, "I understand" (because I speak Spanish and I know what you meant to say) "but I don't like it" (because that's not how it should be said in English) - not because "I don't like you", but because "I like you and I want you to improve".

I consider that motivation is still a key factor in students' improvement, and I also think that the feedback form is a way of keeping the students motivated, because they enjoy finding out what was good and not-so-good about each piece of work they produced. It's a bit like getting a letter in the mail. Even students who, at times, did badly on a particular text, might have been disappointed with themselves, but they didn't get discouraged enough to drop out; on the contrary, some worked harder at the end to bring their score higher.

That's all for now. If I can think of other observations I'll put them in the comment section of this post. :)

Over halfway through

It's just after the Easter holidays and the writing students have now, on top of the earlier tasks, also posted on the blog, and written a TOEFL-type exam essay, a fictional biography, a poem or two, and an essay comparing an aspect of Australia with Mexico. Next Tuesday they'll also be handing in a book report and an article analysis. That's pretty much it until the research paper is handed in at the end of May, although there will be some more smaller creative writing tasks.

The only difference I've made in my correction/feedback process is to colour-code the corrections and use a few abbreviations (SP, SVA, PL). Punctuation problems are marked in purple; transfer errors in green; and non-existent words in blue. The rest is in pink. I think this is helping them identify their own errors more, but also see what type of error they're making more frequently. Today, I handed back their biographies with feedback, and having read through them, they then had the chance to re-read their comparison essays and making any corrections (based on the things they especially need to work on) before handing them in to me.

About a week before the Easter holidays we did some work on transfer errors, which I've also referred to since. I used a lot of material that M used last year, although I changed a number of the examples to make them more relevant to this group of students, and removed some that were a little ambiguous. I began with giving them a list of sentences that all appeared to come directly from thinking in Spanish, and asking them to identify what they all had in common. Unfortunately a number thought I wanted them to correct each one, so rather than read them all through quickly (it was meant to be a fast activity) they started at the top and worked their way down the list. I must make sure to make the instructions very clear here.

The next activity was to try to translate sentences written in Spanish, into English. This was quite difficult but worked well to give them familiarity with the differences between the two languages.

In a separate class, they had to choose (a or b) which sentence was correctly written in English, from the Spanish sentence. They had problems with the following:

• Mr. Fuentes is an English teacher, like me. (They chose "as me")
• In January 1990 they came to visit us. (They chose "On January")
• What's the longest river in the world? (They chose "of the world")
• This is the first time he's driven an automatic car. (They chose "he drives")
• Ever since he was a child he enjoyed riding horses. (They chose "Since he was a child")
• They thought he had died in a car accident. (They chose "on a car accident")

Finally, in small groups, they had to identify the correct of two sentences and then draw what the incorrect sentence actually means - especially what a native speaker might understand by what they said. Some of these were easier than others. The ones that were difficult were "Which are his ideas?" and "Her work was translated into 25 idioms". Most just couldn't really draw anything concrete from these two, unfortunately. I also had five other options down the bottom for them to choose one and act out - this being because some students had asked for more kinesthetic type activities in class. Unfortunately, two things happened: first, there was little time to really devote what each group needed to act it out; and second, I don't think those "kinesthetic" students attended that day, as no-one actually wanted to do it. However, they were able to explain the problem in each one verbally rather than acting it out. Still, I think it might be a useful activity if each group had more time and more inclination to do so.

The main question is: Have these activities been helpful to stop/prevent the students from making the same errors in the future? I'll be able to see a little with the comparison essays they've handed in today; and also with the book reports next week. I'm hopeful that the feedback I've given them is getting through to them.

Continuing to use the feedback form

I'm about 5 weeks into semester and the Writing students have handed in a number of writing tasks - the Curriculum Vitae, cover letter, a process analysis, and a 3-paragraph essay on an aspect of the UNAM. Next Monday they'll be posting their opinion on their blog as well. For my part, I think the feedback form is working well. I've used the same format for each one: some general rubrics that spell out different criteria for each writing task, and a feedback form giving general comments, what they did well, and what they can work on. So far there have been no formal complaints and I notice they all read what I write and go through the corrections I make. I plan to get some more formal feedback from them next week about how they feel about what I write. I must say that the great majority of them do very good work and seem to capture the essence of each writing task well.

There are a few exceptions; they are some people who came directly to this advanced group from the placement exam, and as time goes on I see more and more that they are definitely not anywhere near an advanced level; they are struggling to write anything that resembles English and not simply direct translations of Spanish. It is difficult and slow for me to grade them as they use a lot of false cognates, have problems with word order, create new English words etc. I spoke to one of these students on Tuesday and she is feeling quite discouraged because, even though she has received fairly good grades (based on the criteria for each task) up till the essay, she knows (and I know) that she doesn't have the bases to write well in English yet, at the standard appropriate for advanced English. She may even drop out of the course. There is at least one other student who is in a similar position. I think the students' feedback for me will be very helpful to see if I'm on the right track with what I tell them or not.

We've also done a lot more work on transfer-type errors, common spelling mistakes, false cognates etc. I've also tried to be a lot more systematic in teaching of word order in sentences: the subject - verb - object order, subordinate clauses, etc. My intention is to continue raising consciousness about grammar, spelling and vocabulary, perhaps more aggressively than in past classes, because I want to see if by the end of the semester this consciousness-raising and direct feedback of "I understand, but I don't like it", so long as it is in the context of giving constructive criticism and affirmation of what they did well, can actually make a difference to the students' writing.

I've given the same set of spelling words three times during these weeks; and still only less than half (about a third) of the students get them all correct. Some of them are the same words each time; others are simple slips, it would seem. I'd like to see a whole lot more get them all right soon! I also did another inductive spelling rules activity with them last Tuesday; and after finishing "understanding" all the rules, I tested them on a selection of words that they had just finished seeing. Not one person got all the words correct. Granted, one of the words was "consciousness", and their problem was more with "conscious" than with the "ness". Still, two students misspelled "mindless".

I should add that I am really enjoying this semester. This group is extremely responsive; quick to work; friendly and open and fun. I like that they ALL stated that they value peer feedback. This type of class motivates me to help them more and more!

Using the feedback form

So I've almost finished marking the Writing students' first task of a C.V. and this time I'm using M's feedback form. I made some adjustments to it - made it half a page instead of a full page and took out the lines so I can write according to my own style. I think it's a good form to use - it stops me writing too much, but makes me write some general comments, something good about the work, and things they can keep working on. In this section I'm focussing mainly on spelling and language transfer errors. The idea is that the students keep and check each feedback before the next writing task so that they are more aware of their mistakes, particularly the ones that come over from Spanish, and attempt not to make them next time.

I feel it's taking me a long time to write the feedback, but then I always take a long time to write feedback; and actually it keeps me more focussed, which is probably a good thing in the long run.

Starting again ... New Year ... no OPP

OK, so writing after each class definitely doesn't work. But here goes a fairly comprehensive overview of last year's OPP and writing class, mostly (second semester), mostly in order to keep things in order in my mind and to remind me of things that worked, didn't work, could work in the future, and things definitely to keep working on.

Beginning semester 2 of Formación, I had five trainees: M, C, E, V and now A, who had come from the "split up" of a previous OPP group. I wasn't too concerned as, although he was a little "problematic", his personality was more dynamic and I thought it would make a good mix for the rest of the group, which was, in general, pretty sort of quiet and laidback. As far as this goes, I think it worked to have someone with totally new ideas and methods for the class. However, C dropped out of Formación after just the first week or so, and E was dropped from the course due to attendance and punctuality problems. This left just three trainees: 2 from last semester, and the "new guy". Having chosen and agreed to give an advanced Writing course with my trainees because I was sure they would be up to it, suddenly having this unbalanced smaller group changed things considerably. Still, for the most part, they were able to give the writing classes necessary and actually do it well ... I say for the most part and am sticking to it, without going into more details. At the end of the course I decided to give them all a 10 for OPP. This seems a bit strange, seeing how I was so strict on my former trainees of 2008 (one 10, four 9s and a 7); but every time I think of it, I remember how much of a struggle it was for all three in this course. One had a full-time job and still had to cancel a private class in order to attend; another had a full-time job as well as a new baby who was having health issues; and one had bitten off more than he could chew with his classes at FFyL, the CELE and his work. The classes went from 5-9pm, which wasn't easy for anybody; yet their attendance and participation was adequate throughout. Not all the classes were the best, but they were good enough to keep the students happy, and a number made positive comments at the end of the course, particularly about M and A. And it was Advanced Writing, which was a big enough challenge in itself, let alone having all the other pressures on top of that. For these reasons I think the three did an admirable job and deserved a good grade.

I think I learned three important things this semester from my trainees.

1. How to give feedback. I always try to give both positive and (if necessary) negative feedback, after first hearing what the trainee observed, felt and thought about the class he gave, and when possible getting other feedback from the other trainees as well before launching into my own. Still, it seemed to A that the feedback I gave in his initial classes was overly unbalanced towards the negative side. In fact he considered I hadn't given any positive feedback at all, which wasn't true, as I can vouch for in my notes. But to him it seemed that way. Was he just a particularly sensitive soul? Or did he only hear selectively (which did happen on other occasions)? Either way, it helped me realize that I need to be more careful in the way I give my feedback. In this I learned something from M, who on the Google Group page we'd opened was able to give feedback which, while being inherently negative, sounded positive just from the way he wrote it.

2. When in situations of receiving lesson plans for reviewing (particularly for final observation, but not exclusively for this) I need to be more organized in order to spend time, when necessary, on weekends. Cos Monday night is too late to give feedback for a Tuesday class. And it wasn't the trainee's fault - he'd sent it on Saturday morning. This happened on more than one occasion. Don't assume the lesson plan will all be OK. Organization is a bigger key to helping trainees than what perhaps I might think.

3. M's work on helping students work on language transfer errors is something I definitely want to work on more this semester with my "new" writing class. I'm interested in the variation on Vigil and Oller's model that M made, whereby we give positive cognitive feedback ("I understand") and negative affective feedback ("but I don't like it") - not because I don't like you, but because what you said was not said correctly. At the level of the so-called Advanced students, who continue to manifest simple errors in their written work such as "He say" and "Is very difficult", it may well make a difference to the students to receive some more pointed comments to help break them out of this, without going too far and causing them to cease trying; on the contrary, the objective is to help them continue trying, and improve in accuracy, while giving them opportunity to provide feedback themselves on what I'm doing. We'll see. After helping M give a presentation on his Action-Research project on fossilization and syntactic language transfer errors, I'd like to make a conscious effort from the beginning of term to work with my students on this and see if there might be a difference at the end of term. I'll need to work on how to evaluate this at the end of term as well.

One last comment about the teacher trainees, I guess, is that I think I became too emotionally involved with the three: one (in the end) negatively, two positively. Perhaps it was also the fact that the advanced class was a greater challenge for them, I felt I needed to give them more help than I otherwise would have done with a lower-level class; but by the end of the year I was a helpless wreck of constantly flowing tears while writing their final evaluations and comments. I'm sure most teachers don't go through this to quite the same extent. I don't want to get that emotionally involved again. I think in the future when I teach OPP, apart from having a thicker skin, I will need to ask for a couple of things:

a. That I don't have my own class to teach during that time (if possible). It takes a lot of time away from teaching OPP and then gives the trainees less time to practice themselves. It also allows me not to have such an emotional attachment to the class they practice with, as it's not "my" class, which allows me to sit back a bit more and allow the trainees to learn from their own mistakes, rather than trying desperately to prevent accidents before they happen in the class.

b. That the practice classes always be lower-level classes.

And for myself I'm kinda happy I have become friends with two of the three remaining trainees, but I do need to be careful not to allow the prospect of future friendship to cloud any judgements on their performance. Not that I think it did this last year, but I want to make sure it doesn't in the future either, as I suspect it is something that may well lurk in the background of many teachers. For this I need God's help to keep me wise and discerning with regard to timing.

Thurs Mar 11

Once again, as two TTs had not turned up on time, my first activity planned for OPP (creating objectives in pairs) was necessarily done in one pair. I'm getting frustrated but I'm not sure what to do - one TT comes in rushing from his studies at another faculty; and the other comes from work; but both always come late. I also gave the trainees a different activity to prepare for microteaching for next week to just our small group. I hope this will make the trainees come more on time!

I asked the trainees to consider the objectives that I might have written for each activity as it unfolded in class today.

For the level 6 class, rather than starting with free writing, we finished watching the last part of the Louis Theroux video and answering questions in small groups. They enjoyed doing this; and to complete the activity they then did free writing on what their opinion on hypnosis was. Some of them shared and they had created thoughtful ideas.

We worked on modals from page 98; I had a number of ideas to write on the board about the expression of modals: Good idea; possible, probable, ability etc. It was difficult to do in an orderly fashion, but I think it came out okay because I practiced on the board before beginning class. The practice exercise in the book is not so easily understood and it would be good to find a different activity next time.

We also worked on the word "wrong", which was fun because we not only did that but went to the section called "real life" and worked on vocabulary from there as well. This allowed them to see the application of "wrong" in more authentic situations. To finish with, the sts role played certain situations I gave them on a piece of paper. One person was the complainer, and the other had to solve the problem. There was some confusion at first and I must be clearer on my explanations while giving instructions. But once they understood they used many of the phrases and it worked well.

After class I asked the TTs what the objectives were; once again, one TT (C) had written objectives that were either very general, or very grammar-focused. I want to encourage her to use the taxonomy handout as a guide for understanding and choosing more appropriate words and ideas to express the objective behind the procedure.

Wed 10 Mar - LAB

Today in the lab we went through common errors for level 6 and I explained the idea of fossilization. While it did take some time for them to locate the errors in the handout, many attempts were still wrong, even when doing it in pairs. So I hope that noticing and correcting was useful for them. There are still a number of spelling mistakes they continue to make, so we'll be working on that in a further class. I gave them time to identify which types of errors they may be in danger of fossilizing.

As this took a bit longer than planned (although I'd given it 35 minutes), I wasn't sure whether to do the bookwork as planned or not. In the end we did, but it also took more time and I sort of rushed it to finish it quickly in order to make time for the last activity. As it was, I didn't finish the final activity and in hindsight it would have been better to skip the bookwork and go straight to that final activity. I had to finish the video task the next day, but it should have been done all together.

We watched Louis Theroux's "The Hypnotists" video - three excerpts from it, and I'd prepared a handout with questions on each. Some questions were inferencing; some were listening for specific information; and some were questions asking their opinion. I think they worked well.