Año 22, N.º 45: enero - junio 2023
Applying the ESPIT Model to Foster Spoken Production of Participants
from the Academic Improvement Strategic Plan
Abstract
In a distance learning environment, English
teachers encounter the need to make substantial adaptations to their teaching
methodology, considering all the variables that can intervene in such context.
At Universidad Estatal a Distancia (Distance State University, UNED) in the
English Teaching Major for First and Second Cycles, students who require extra
practice and teaching guidance due to low linguistic performance can be part of
a successful project called Academic Improvement Strategic Plan (PEMA in its
Spanish acronym). In order to help PEMA participants enhance
their oral production, researchers designed a methodological model called
ESPIT. The article presents the theoretical framework that supports the design
of the ESPIT model; which acronym stands for Engaging myself, Shaping
my knowledge, Performing my skill, Intervening my production, Transforming
my linguistic profile, its main features and structure, the description of the
teaching experience, its results and finally the conclusions.
Key words: English teaching, feedback, linguistic improvement,
methodology, oral skill.
Margoth Arley-Fonseca
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0881-4714
Máster en
Administración Educativa, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), de Costa Rica.
Licenciada en Lengua Inglesa y Bachiller en la Enseñanza del Inglés, UCR.
Profesora y Encargada de la Cátedra de Lengua y Cultura Inglesa de la Escuela
de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (ECSH), de la Universidad Estatal a
Distancia (UNED), de Costa Rica. Correo: marley@uned.ac.cr
Tobías Brizuela-Gutiérrez
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7291-0634
Máster en Educación con
Énfasis en la Enseñanza del Inglés, Universidad Latina de Costa Rica.
Licenciado en Educación con Énfasis en Currículo y Evaluación, Universidad de
las Ciencias y el Arte, de Costa Rica. Bachiller en la Enseñanza del Inglés
para I y II ciclos, Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED). Encargado de la
Cátedra de Enseñanza del Inglés de la Escuela de Ciencias Sociales y
Humanidades (ECSH), de la UNED. Profesor titular del área de Enseñanza del
Inglés y docente de grado de asignaturas relacionadas con la carrera de
Enseñanza del Inglés para I y II ciclos, de la UNED. Correo: tbrizuela@uned.ac.cr
Marcela Castro-Barrantes
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0976-6611
Máster en Educación con Énfasis Administración Educativa,
Universidad Hispanoamericana, de Costa Rica. Licenciatura en Docencia con
Énfasis en Enseñanza del Inglés, Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED), de
Costa Rica. Bachiller en Enseñanza Media del Inglés, Universidad de Costa Rica,
de Costa Rica. Profesora del área de Lengua Inglesa de la UNED, de Costa Rica.
Correo: mcastrob@uned.ac.cr
Recibido: 14 de diciembre de 2021
Aceptado: 16 de marzo de 2022
Aplicando el modelo ESPIT para mejorar la producción oral
de participantes del plan estratégico de mejoramiento académico
Resumen
En un ambiente de educación a distancia, las personas
docentes de inglés enfrentan la necesidad de hacer cambios substanciales a su
metodología de aprendizaje considerando muchas variables que podrían intervenir
en tal contexto. En la Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED), en la carrera de
Enseñanza del Inglés para I y II ciclos, el estudiantado requiere práctica y
guía extra debido a su desempeño bajo lingüístico, pueden ser parte del
proyecto exitoso llamado Plan Estratégico de Mejoramiento Académico (PEMA). Con
el fin de ayudar a los participantes de PEMA a mejorar su producción oral, los
investigadores diseñaron un modelo metodológico llamado ESPIT (cuyas siglas representan
Engaging myself, Shaping my knowledge, Performing
my skill, Intervening my production, Transforming my linguistic
profile). El artículo presenta
el fundamento teórico que respalda el diseño del modelo, sus características
principales y estructura, la descripción de la experiencia de enseñanza, sus
resultados y, finalmente, las conclusiones.
Palabras clave: destreza oral, enseñanza del inglés,
mejoramiento lingüístico, metodología, realimentación.
Mise
en place du modèle ESPIT pour améliorer la production orale des participants du
plan stratégique d’amélioration académique
Résumé
Dans
le cadre de l’enseignement à distance, les enseignants d’anglais sont
confrontés au
besoin
de faire des changements notables aux méthodologies d’apprentissage en
prenant
compte plusieurs variables qui interviennent dans ce contexte. En ce qui
concerne,
l’Université de l’État à Distance (UNED), dans la filière de l’Enseignement de
l’Anglais pour les cycles I et II, les étudiants
qui requièrent pratiquer et un guide
supplémentaire dû â leur faible performance
linguistique, ils peuvent faire partie du
programme
réussi nommé Plan Stratégique d’Amélioration Académique (PEMA en
espagnol).
Afin d’aider les participants au PEMA à améliorer la production orale, les
chercheurs ont conçu un modèle méthodologique
appelé ESPIT –en anglais Engaging
myself, Shaping my knowledge, Perfoming
my skill, Intervening my production,
Transforming my linguistic profile– (dont les sigles signifient:
Engagement avec moimême,
Façonner mes connaissances, Développer mes
compétences, Intervenir ma
production, Transformer mon profile
linguistique). En outre, cet article présente le
fondement théorique qui donne support au modèle
ESPIT, ses caractéristiques
principales,
sa structure, la description de l’expérience d’enseignement, les résultats et
finalement,
les conclusions.
Mots-clés:
compétence orale, enseignement de l’anglais, méthodologie, feedback.
Introduction
In a distance learning environment, English
teachers encounter the need to make substantial adaptations to their teaching
methodology, considering all the variables that can intervene in such context.
Undoubtedly, students are immersed in a learning and teaching reality that
requires deep analysis and constant observations. At Universidad Estatal a
Distancia (Distance State University, UNED), in the English Teaching Major for
First and Second Cycles, students who require extra practice and teaching guidance
due to low linguistic performance can be part of a successful project called
Academic Improvement Strategic Plan (PEMA in its Spanish acronym).
Since 2018, this project has helped from 30 to 35 students advance in
the courses and be more proficient in their language profile through individual
one-hour-per-week sessions with an English tutor from the major. As a secondary
objective of the project, when PEMA students finish their Major, they are eventually
more equipped to teach the language more effectively to children. Besides, as
part of the requirements to obtain the bachelor’s degree in this major and be
hired in public or private schools, students must obtain a B2 in the Test of
English for International Communication (TOEIC), including an oral examination
from certified testers.
As part of the continuous observations to PEMA
students when receiving individual sessions with tutor Marcela Castro Barrantes,
this group of researchers concluded that it was necessary to identify a teaching
methodology that could help students improve even more their speaking skill.
However, after examining various teaching methodologies, this group of
researchers discovered that it was necessary to establish a model that could
respond to the students’ personal and linguistic needs and could perfectly fit
in a personalized distance language learning context such as PEMA.
This article intends to present the experience and outcomes of applying an
original English teaching model named ESPIT (which acronym stands for Engaging
myself, Shaping my knowledge, Performing my skill, Intervening
my production, Transforming my linguistic profile) to five PEMA students
in the first two quarters of 2021. Firstly, the article presents the
theoretical framework that supports the design of the ESPIT model, its main
features and structure, the description of the teaching experience, and its
results. Lastly, the researchers provide key recommendations to apply the model
in personalized language learning contexts.
Humanistic Learning
From a humanistic perspective, before starting any language training
session, the instructor needs to acknowledge the learners’ emotional state.
Each individual has preconceived positive or negative feelings regarding
learning experiences and these feelings have a direct effect on the learner’s
performance. For this reason, it is necessary for an instructor to identify the
learners’ preoccupations, expectations, and goals. According to Delgado, «Mediating
between knowledge and learning is an art»[1]. By embarking in an
attentive and critical analysis, the instructor can identify the true
motivations for a learner to be part of a language lesson. Scholars have
classified learners’ motivations into two main categories: intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations. Chinambu & Jiménez explain that «Extrinsic
motivation involves making a specific action driven by external forces or in
order to receive an external reward»[2]. Learners may be learning
a language to satisfy their family’s desires, get a job promotion, and/or
upgrade their financial situation. On the other hand, «Intrinsic motivation
incites action for the pure enjoyment of it and produces pleasurable and
fulfilling sensations». Undoubtedly, the latter type of motivation deals with
accomplishing personal learning goals without the need of receiving any sort of
external compensation and the instructor does not have to cope with negative
preconceived feelings. To ensure a humanistic learning environment, instructors
must promote opportunities for interacting with the learners and identifying
their motivations and true reasons for learning a language.
Learners’ Autonomy
In an enriching and meaningful learning experience, the instructor has
to encourage the learners to examine particular feature(s) of spoken language
that go(es) a little beyond their current linguistic level. To enhance the
learners’ autonomy during the execution of tasks that enable them to shape their
linguistic performance, Arnold & Brown, (cited in Chinambu & Jiménez[3]), suggest applying various
learning strategies, inviting learners to visualize the rewards of completing a
task, emphasizing on cooperative learning and learners’ desires, organizing
content-based activities focused on their interests, and expressing observations
for them to keep improving their performance, avoiding the exclusive use of
numerical evaluations.
According to Benson (cited in Nunan[4]), autonomy deals with «The
capacity to control one’s own learning». That is to say, the learner
establishes the route for meaningful learning to take place. To do this, Nunan[5] suggests instructors to
apply the following principles to foster autonomy in the classroom: be actively
involved in the students’ learning, provide a range of learning options and
resources, offer choices and decision-making opportunities, support the
learners, and encourage reflection. In an autonomous context, learners have the
possibility to express where they want to go in the learning process and
provide essential information for the instructor to plan the upcoming lessons
based on their decisions. Autonomous learners are guided to analyze knowledge. This
ability can be encouraged in autonomous learners through critical and
analytical observations on language features that need to be reinforced.
Distance Learning Contexts
When planning EFL classes, instructors must
consider the pedagogical model established in the institution where they work;
that is to say, the series of elements that intervene in the educational
context and clearly define how learning has to take place. In face-to-face
educational contexts, learners have the possibility to have regular
interactions with the instructor, participating in a variety of in-class
activities that promote the application of new learned language features. In
these face-to-face educational contexts, learners have to complete out-of-class
short assignments or projects to complement in-class formal preparation. In
such context, learners rely on the instructor’s decisions and the learning
process is based on previously defined educational programs or course outlines.
On the other hand, in distance education, learners only have occasional
meetings with the instructor. Learners are asked to work on assignments or
projects that demand more preparation time and planning, and in many cases, the
face-to-face meetings are mainly used for clarifying doubts and formulating
questions. Singularly, in a distance learning context, learners experience more
independence to define their learning style and can apply individualized
strategies that can help them obtain their learning goals. Faibisoff &
Willis argue that «By definition, distance education relies on students to
accept responsibilities for the success of their program and not to depend on
the presence of an authoritarian professional educator»[6]. Learners are expected to
be responsible individuals that make wise decisions when organizing their time
based on the demands of the educational program and self-evaluate their
performance.
Specifically, when defining the pedagogical model of UNED[7], the University Advisor
Committee explains that the methodological conception has to offer learners the
tools to construct their own teaching-learning process, offering the scenario
for learners to become protagonists of their learning experience (UNED, 2005).
Contrary to traditional face-to-face educational contexts where the tutor would
be the main actor, determining what needs to be learned, in a distance-learning
educational context, learners are the core of the learning experience.
According to the epistemological principles at UNED, learners are active
individuals who construct continuous representations and internal processes as
a result of their relationship with physical and social backgrounds. Besides,
learners self-regulate their learning process, making decisions to accomplish
the established learning goals (UNED[8]).
Linguistic Performance
Linguistic competence
and linguistic performance are two terms that tend to relate to one another, yet
they look for a different purpose. When assimilating a foreign language, a
learner might display certain language performance that does not necessarily
imply showing linguistic competence. In short, performance deals with the «doing»
with the language while competence involves «knowing» about the language.
Chomsky's competence/performance distinction has
been traditionally understood as a distinction between our knowledge of
language and how we put that knowledge to use[9].
Productive Skills
When it comes to
language learning, there are two types of skills: receptive and productive
skills. Receptive skills are mostly related to developing abilities of reading
and listening comprehension. Productive skills, on the other hand, aim at
developing speaking and writing abilities. In language teaching, the four
skills are described in terms of their direction. Language generated by the
learner (in speech or writing) is referred to as productive. Language directed
at the learner (in reading or listening) is called receptive[10]. The most obvious
approach to analyzing interlanguage is to study the speech and writing of
learners, or what is also called «learner language». Production (speaking and
writing) data is empirically observable and is hypothesized to be reflective of
a learner’s underlying production competence, revealing developmental changes
of linguistic forms over time[11].
Speaking
Speaking is the
productive aural/oral skill. It consists of producing systematic verbal
utterances to convey meaning. This particular skill comprises aspects like
correct pronunciation of phonemes, accuracy, fluency, stress, intonation
patterns among others.
Harmer points out two
interesting scenarios when dealing with students and speaking[12].
Getting students to speak in class can sometimes be
extremely easy. In a good class atmosphere, students who get on with each
other, and whose English is at an appropriate level, will often participate
freely and enthusiastically if we give them a suitable topic and task. However, at other
times it is not so easy to get students going. Maybe the class mix is not quite
right or perhaps we have not chosen the right kind of topic.
Teachers need to provide
students with plenty of opportunities where they can expose themselves to
different speaking events, learning activities, conversational strategies that
will successfully provide them with meaningful interaction.
Feedback
When learning a foreign language, mistakes necessarily occur. As Brown
states, «L2 learning
is a process that is just like first language learning in its trial-and-error
nature»[13]. Therefore, feedback
provided by teachers or tutors is relevant in the learning process because,
with the instructor’s help, the student will become aware of his/her areas to
improve. This awareness will help the student make his/her own decisions
regarding mistakes and improvement.
As Hallie Edgerly, Jesse Wilcox and Jaclyn
Easter explain,
«it isn’t the giving of feedback that causes learning gains, it is the acting
on feedback that determines how much a student learns»[14]. Giving students an
opportunity to show evidence of their learning, providing effective feedback,
and giving students an opportunity to continue learning are essential parts of
the feedback loop.
As a matter of fact, the instructor
may recur to a variety of feedback techniques when providing feedback,
depending on the moment and aim of the lesson. Some of these strategies are
explicit correction, recast, clarification, metalinguistic feedback,
elicitation, and repetition. In fact, the combination of such ways of providing
feedback enriches the language learning process. As Espinoza claims, «It is
imperative to analyze the context in which mistakes are made, the student’s
level and the corrective feedback technique implemented in order to provide
students with the best corrective feedback practices, and thus to internalize
the correct utterance»[15].
Consolidation of Skills
Learning a foreign language takes time, effort, discipline, willingness
to relearn, endless chances to practice and desire to keep improving. According
to the Common European Framework of References, a learner needs a great range
of hours to consolidate the different proficiency levels.
Cambridge English Language
Assessment estimates that learners typically take the guided learning hours,
shown below, to progress between levels. «Guided learning hours» means time in
lessons as well as tasks you set them to do. You will notice that it takes
longer to progress a level as learners move up the scale. Of course, learners
will vary in how long they take depending on many factors. This means that many
learners will follow more than one course to progress from one level to the
next[16].
C1 Approximately 700-800
B2 Approximately 500-600
B1 Approximately 350-400
A2 Approximately 180-200
A1 Approximately 90-100
As it is shown in the previous
information, learning a foreign language is definitely a great deal of
investment. Students who take the challenge to become proficient in English
must never forget that in order to transform their initial proficiency level, they
must never stop learning, reinforcing, reviewing and exposing themselves to new
opportunities where they can use their learned vocabulary, pronunciation,
grammar structures and linguistic features.
After having chances to interact
with their facilitators or instructors, being guided and corrected by them and
encouraged to improve their performance by means of extra practices and
reinforcement exercises, students must self-reflect about their specific areas
of improvement and self-regulate themselves by committing to a plan of becoming
better speakers.
Development
The ESPIT Model
The investigators designed an original English Teaching Model called ESPIT
which explores five specific stages to ensure meaningful and enriching learning
to students whose context is a distance learning modality. In every stage, the
learner is encouraged to self-reflect and analyze his/her learning experience
by developing a variety of purposeful activities.
The letters of its name stand for the following stages:
·
Engaging myself
·
Shaping my knowledge
·
Performing my skill
·
Intervening my production
·
Transforming my linguistic profile
Stage 1: Engaging myself
The learner needs to set up his/her emotional state. Before embarking in
a learning experience, it is essential to identify the preconceived feelings,
goals, expectations, and desires that the learner manifests. To do this, the
instructor can stimulate the learner to express his/her thoughts through an
open and honest conversation.
In this stage, the instructor can ask the learner questions regarding
some aspects concerning humanistic learning and learning motivations such as
personal goals, expectations, motivation, challenges, and others.
If the instructor identifies negative feelings towards the learning
experience that is about to start, he/she needs to be prepared to explain the
importance of addressing the topic for meaningful learning purposes, the
instructor needs to naturally link and transfer the learning experience to
real-life communicative contexts. Undoubtedly, the instructor has to
acknowledge the learner’s feelings and identify the possible causes of these
emotions that are taking place. Subsequently, the instructor can channel the
conversation to explore the impact of affective commitment to attain the
authentic goals of the learning experience.
The learner intends to scaffold in his/her speaking skill. After
engaging himself/herself in an open conversation in the previous stage, the
learner is taken to examine particular feature(s) of spoken language that
go(es) a little beyond his/her current level. Likewise, based on previous
personalized evaluations and self-assessment techniques, the instructor can
address specific language feature(s) that the learner needs to reinforce
through deeper analysis and further learning activities that respond to the
learner’s personal interests.
The instructor can develop a variety of tasks that invite the learner to
apply intrinsic motivation strategies and activities that fit in a distance
learning environment.
When planning these tasks, the instructor needs to ensure that the
learner can apply various learning strategies. More specifically, the activities
respond to previously identified meaningful goals and the learner’s interests.
The learner participates in independent and individualized exercises that
require him/her to go beyond his/her linguistic level. These activities encourage
the learner to work in collaboration with the instructor.
Stage 3: Performing my Skill
The learner needs to show his/her oral skills through performing
different didactic activities based on real-life situations. To accomplish
meaningful learning, he/she needs to complement his/her formal education and
apply new learning in a variety of simulated contexts. After receiving instruction on new language
features (grammar structures, vocabulary, phonics, etc.), analyzing samples,
and working on controlled exercises, the learner can perform orally using the
new input in scenarios that resemble real English-speaking contexts.
The instructor can identify situations that suit the target language and
design activities or tasks that are accurate representations of these
situations. During the «performing my skill» stage, the learner is invited to
perform in these concrete real-world speaking activities and, with guidance,
improve the necessary language skills to efficiently participate in these oral
contexts.
The instructor can guide the learner by setting up and/or eliciting
different methodological and didactic activities that will be content-based and
totally related to their interests where they can evidence their oral
productive skills. To do this, the instructor can have previously applied
questionnaires to identify the learner’s interests and learning goals and with
this input, design concrete and meaningful activities.
In these questionnaires, the instructor can invite the learner to answer
questions regarding favorite things, experiences, preferences, expectations,
and others. With this information, the instructor has the possibility to get to
know the learner better and establish engaging and meaningful contexts that can
be used to develop activities to attain specific language goals.
Some examples of these oral activities are: interviews or conversations,
impromptu/ argumentative/ persuasive speeches, discussions, and case studies.
Stage 4: Intervening my Skill
The learner is guided by the instructor based on the evidence of
learning. During and after the «Performing my skill» stage, the learner
receives effective feedback since it is proven that it can be a very powerful
tool for enhancing student learning. Treating errors is a complex practice that
requires analytical observation from the instructor, and he/she has to make
decisions in regards to the most effective method or technique to use at a
specific moment during the session.
Depending on the identified error, the instructor can use cueing,
discrimination exercises, questioning, among others. Choosing a feedback method
depends on the stage of the session, the type of activity, the type of error,
and the learner’s personality.
Besides, the instructor has to keep in mind that providing feedback
cannot overlap the learner’s performance or affect the learner’s motivation.
The instructor must avoid interrupting the flow of the learner’s performance
with observations on every single error.
On the contrary, providing feedback is a technique used by the
instructor to help the learner improve his/her skills and acquire all the
necessary tools to efficiently communicate in real-life scenarios, avoiding
misunderstanding and confusions. In order to provide specific observations on
language performance, the instructor will review the recorded evidence and take
notes on the learner’s errors. The instructor will hand in a written report
that contains these observations. With this report, the learner will have the
chance of self-correcting in the last stage of the ESPIT cycle.
The following is a complete list of various effective methods or
techniques to provide feedback:
·
Not immediate feedback: the
instructor ignores the mistake and makes a written summary of the
errors to share at the end of the learner’s participation.
·
Formative feedback: the
instructor uses compliments while providing sincere feedback to encourage
the learner to keep on doing his/her best.
·
Praise indicated: the instructor writes or
tells the learner how well he/she is doing.
·
Recast: the instructor repeats the
phrase/sentence with a question intonation to
create doubt, so the learner has the chance to improve
him/herself by rephrasing the idea correctly.
·
Elicitation: the instructor elicits
the correct answer from the learner by the completion of
an utterance or ask questions to elicit correct answers.
·
Error type indicated: the
instructor tells the learner what type of error he/she has
made, whether it is a spelling, subject-verb agreement,
tense, etc. without fixing the mistake for him/her.
·
Location indicated: the instructor tells
the learner to look for the error on a particular part of his/her job.
Stage 5: Transforming my Linguistic Profile
The learner needs to advance on his/her language areas. To achieve this,
he/she will have a second chance to self-evaluate, self-correct and
self-improve his/her oral skills. In
this stage, the instructor provides remedial and complementary practice for the
learner to work on during the session. The learner is given a second
opportunity to use the same language features that he/she had to improve in the
previous stage to demonstrate that he/she has advanced linguistically. To
finish the ESPIT cycle, as shown in Figure 1, the learner is invited to
self-reflect upon his/her learning experience by answering a set of questions
included in a Google Form related to motivation, development of learning activities,
ways to improve language skills, and favored feedback techniques.
Figure 1. The five stages of the ESPIT model
Source: Arley, Brizuela and Castro, 2022.
Methodology
Qualitative Research and
the Case Study Approach
Qualitative researchers
focus on natural settings; therefore, qualitative research is sometimes called
‘naturalistic inquiry’; nothing is predefined or taken for granted. Shimahara,
representing the general view, claims that ethnography; for example, is the
study of events as they ‘evolve in natural settings’ or ‘contexts in process’.
Another way to make the point is that qualitative researchers want those who
are studied to speak for themselves. Qualitative research, then, has the aim of
understanding experience as nearly as possible as its participants feel it or
live it.
There are different
methods or approaches that are part of the qualitative design; the most common
are Grounded Theory, Ethnography, Narrative Research,
Phenomenological-Historical method, and the specific Case study research, which
is the one selected for the purpose of this article.
The Case Study method
has evolved over the past few years and developed into a valuable research
method. As the name suggests, it is used for explaining an organization or an
entity. This type of research method is used within several areas like
education, social sciences and similar data. The case studied can be simple or
complex, a child, a classroom, or a group of professionals, among others.
Therefore, this research
considers the Case study approach because it aims at gathering data from a
group of five university students from the English Teaching Major for I and II
Cycles at UNED and who are part of an educational initiative to help them
improve their academic performance. By implementing the methodological ESPIT
model, a five-stage- and very structured model, the researchers intend to gain
understanding on how the model enhances the development of the oral production
of the selected five participants.
PEMA stands for UNED’s «Plan
Estratégico de Mejoramiento Académico» and its participants are chosen students,
who are already in the Major and had not displayed the expected academic oral
performance in the different courses of the study plan. The selected students
committed to the plan by signing a document called «Compromiso» to actively
participate in all PEMA sessions and complete all the required assignments. Tutor
Marcela Castro met with these students in one-hour synchronous sessions once a
week to monitor, practice, encourage and propose activities that would help
them to improve the language contents that needed improvement in their English
oral performance.
The selected students received a
code nickname for confidentiality purposes to identify them in this article. Table
1 provides a detailed description of the participants, their topics of interest
as well as their main focus on language content. All this information was obtained
from previously applied digital questionnaires and was considered when planning
and designing their individualized sessions; in other words, the activities for
each class were theme-based on the identifiable topics of interest.
Table 1. Information about participants
|
Student |
Gender |
Age |
UC |
Topic of interest |
Language content |
|
ESPIT - 01 |
M |
33 |
San José |
Science fiction, video games,
anime |
Final consonant sounds, TH
sounds
|
|
ESPIT - 02 |
M |
30 |
Limón |
Sports, Beach, Marvel superheroes |
Final consonant sounds |
|
ESPIT - 03 |
F |
48 |
Palmares |
Harry Potter, old English rock
music, The Cupcake War |
Word forms, past modals for
speculation, possibility, etc. |
|
ESPIT - 04 |
F |
38 |
Cartago |
Make-up, Instagram |
Preposition collocations |
|
ESPIT - 05 |
F |
26 |
Cañas |
The Crown, The Big Bang Theory,
Yoga |
Pronunciation of plurals,
possessive and third person singular form of verbs |
Source: Arley,
Brizuela and Castro, 2022.
The ESPIT Model was first applied
during week five of the second term 2021, specifically the week from July 5th
to 8th, 2021 and the second time during week eight July 26th
to 30th. Before classes started, each student was asked about
her/his likes and preferences through a questionnaire in Google Forms in order
to contextualize the sessions and the activities.
Motivation, the skills and/or
language content that each student needed to work on were taken into account to
plan each session. To obtain this information, researchers considered feedback,
observations, and evaluations of students’ performance during previous PEMA
sessions, following Edgerly & Easter’s[17] recommendation: «Throughout
the learning process, the teacher makes decisions about where to go in
instruction based on the evidence of learning provided by the student».
During ESPIT session one, each student was asked the same two questions
in the «Engaging myself» stage regarding their personal goal to be part of the session and their level of
motivation to learn the topic. All students expressed that they were
considerably motivated at the beginning of the class.
In the second ESPIT session, the questions used
in the first stage were related with the language aspects that required
improvement. For the second stage, «Shaping my knowledge», the content was
introduced by having the students start talking about the topic that had been
chosen from those related to their likes, including the skills and contents for
improvement. For example, Student ESPIT-03’s lesson plan combined «Harry Potter»
and word forms. Therefore, the student was able to practice word forms while
talking about her favorite movie. One interesting downside encountered was with
Student ESPIT - 04, who answered that her favorite TV series was «The Crown»;
however, after all activities were planned in relation to it, the student
mentioned not having the time to watch it. On the contrary, this same student displayed
a more positive attitude and even a better performance when the second session
was based on the series «The Big Bang Theory». Based on this case, investigators
concluded that it was absolutely relevant to obtain true answers about
students’ likes and preferences.
Likewise,
information from previous sessions were also included. For instance, Student
ESPIT - 03 shared the desire of visiting London someday, so even though this
piece of information was not part of her answers in the questionnaire of likes,
aspects related to London were included in the plans, as well as features about
yoga were part of sessions for Student ESPIT- 05. Moreover, during this stage,
the tutor offered some language explanations to set up the content of the class
and reinforcement practices like an activity in which ESPIT Student - 04 used a
big chart with collocations with prepositions to practice. Then, these same
phrases were included in the context of wearing makeup, so the student could
use the prepositions studied before in the context of interest. Another example is an activity assigned to
ESPIT Student 05 in which after reviewing the pronunciation of the final
consonant -s in the third person singular verb forms, the student had to
describe characters from the TV series The Big Bang Theory. These
exercises helped all students to shape their knowledge, connect to their prior
one, review key language aspects, as well as essential vocabulary.
During the
third stage of the ESPIT Model, called «Performing my skill», students had the
chance to produce oral content with no interference correction or help from the
professor. Having enough practice, they were supposed to be able to produce and
perform an activity related to the previous exercises. For instance, they answered
some personal questions using the target contents. As an example, Student ESPIT - 05’s performing
task consisted of a set of phrases that required to be completed extensively.
These phrases had the intention to make the student speak, but at the same time
use prepositions, as this was the target content practiced through the session.
Some of these phrases were: «In the past I was accustomed...» and «I admit I am
fed up...». Consequently, the learner included the corresponding preposition
while developing answers freely and spontaneously. In this way, the language production was not
completely controlled, but at the same time, the student was expected to use
prepositions in the answers.
After the
first set of sessions, it was concluded that it was necessary to make some
changes regarding timing because during the first sessions, there was not
enough time for the «Intervening my skill» stage. Therefore, the structure of
the ESPIT Model was split up into two sessions, considering the first session
for the stage of «Engaging myself», «Shaping my knowledge», and «Performing my skill».
Whereas in the second set of sessions, the agenda focused on a short warm-up
and then developed the «Intervening my skill» stage, which began with the
analysis of the production displayed during the «Performing my Skill» stage
from the previous class. In this sense, the tutor played specific minutes of
the recording so that the student could identify by himself/herself the
mistakes that the instructor had already found. Besides playing the recording
specifically in the minute where the mistake occurred, the instructor
encouraged the student to identify his/her mistake and correct it. By doing so, students were encouraged
to develop their self-awareness and metacognition that would help them shape
their learning. As part of this stage, the instructor also provided students
with repairing strategies to have them reinforce the weak language aspects that
will eventually help them transform their production.
In table 2, some consistent sample language
mistakes (in bold) from students 01,03 and 05 are displayed.
These mistakes were made by
students during their performance stage and based on this information, the
tutor had to select a teaching strategy that would require the student to use
the language content in further exercises.
Table 2. Language Mistakes from Students
|
Student |
Mistake |
Strategy |
|
ESPIT Student - 01 |
-if you want to feel that excited
feeling -When everybody star dying… -.. yeah I enjoy it ---
(past) -… movies you have enjoy …
the most -A movie that I haven't enjoy… |
There is a
constant mistake in pronouncing the -ed ending in past forms that was
addressed by reviewing the three main pronunciation rules of pasts, providing
a controlled reading activity and then responding to a short video. |
|
ESPIT Student - 03 |
-it must have been love -I shouldn’t have put attention -tell me what could it have happened |
In order to
improve the use of past modals, the student looked at some pictures and
provided answers to the question: What should he have done? |
|
ESPIT Student - 05 |
-regarding the four skill -she doesn´t like to
cook she prefer… -he doesn´t have social intelligent /because he try to speak with -in some episode / in
some season -the person talk like
that -the guy give him – and she´s give the rabbit… -in some occasion… -if a person are going |
After
explaining and reviewing the third person singular ending, the tutor shows a
chart with the pronunciation rules. As practice, the student read sentences
with blanks to add the -s ending and made emphasis on the pronunciation. To
conclude, the student described her two sons individually, so she practiced
the target structure in a less controlled activity. |
Source: Arley, Brizuela and Castro, 2022.
Once each
student was exposed to the pieces of the recording and was able to identify and
correct mistakes, some of the mistakes that were considered necessary to
address were chosen for the practice activities in the last stage called «transforming
my linguistic profile». A concrete example is when Student ESPIT - 04 was
trying to avoid double negatives in sentences, and when she was fixing some
negative quotes during the performing section, she made other types of
mistakes. Therefore, during the «intervening my skill» stage, though she was
able to hear herself doing a great job regarding double negatives, she was also
making subject-verb agreement mistakes when omitting the correct verb form with
‘s’. So, the new consistent mistake was considered when planning the «transforming
my linguistic profile» stage. Finally, during this stage, the students
participated in activities that helped them improve their weak points shown
through the session.
Before each
class was over, students were provided with a list of extra activities and
links that they could work on their own to reinforce the topics studied during
the ESPIT model class. Hopefully, by providing these extra activities, students
would keep on working on their particular linguistic needs and continue
searching for other ways of better improving their performance.
As
part of the «transforming my linguistic profile» stage, a self-assessment
instrument was applied to the students. In this instrument, they were asked to
share their insights in regards to the learning experience that was planned by
the investigators to help them improve their linguistic skills through the
application of the original model ESPIT. Specifically, after applying the second
session, they were asked to fill in a Google Form that contained questions
regarding motivation, selection of learning activities, challenges for
improvement, feedback techniques, learning goals, personal interests, and
controlled activities.
Finally,
on September 30th, students were gathered in a Focus Group to
collect their perceptions about key aspects of the sessions. The Focus Group
dealt with topics regarding complications and benefits of learning English
in a distance context, level of engagement to participate in the sessions, the
selection of meaningful contexts, the selection of target contents,
methodologies applied to provide feedback from the tutor, and the impact of
receiving feedback to improve oral skills. To develop this Focus Group,
investigators Brizuela and Arley took turns, one asking questions, while the
other was taking notes. To avoid the collection of biased information,
investigator Barrantes was not present in the session since she had been the instructor
developing the ESPIT sessions.
Conclusions
From the
students’ answers obtained from the self-assessment instrument, investigators concluded
that all students were motivated to continue with their learning process, felt
satisfied with the selection and development of the learning activities, felt
challenged to continue improving their language skills, and considered the
feedback techniques applied by the instructor to be very effective. When they
were asked to express how motivated they were to start the lesson, students
expressed they felt very well because their interests were considered. Students
confirmed that establishing the learning goal was important because they focused
on the tasks and knew in advance what they were going to attain. Moreover,
students claimed that planning the lessons based on their interests was a
marvelous idea because they felt highly motivated to practice. Besides, all
students agreed that all the controlled activities were very effective for the production
task and receiving feedback was extremely useful. When they were asked about
which feedback techniques they preferred the most, they selected when the
teacher asked students to identify their mistakes, repetition, and taking
notes. Finally, when they were asked if the activities helped them to transform
their linguistic performance after receiving feedback from their instructor,
they claimed they felt more confident to keep interacting in English and felt
challenged to continue seeking for more opportunities to practice.
Finally, in
the Focus Group, students identified as benefits of learning English in
a distance learning environment, saving money and time, avoidance of weather or
traffic complications, time management, and interaction to practice their
skills. However, some complications students mentioned in regards to learning
English in a distance education were the lack of feedback, connectivity
problems, minimum contact with the tutor and peers, and learning difficulties.
In contrast,
concerning students’ perception about PEMA sessions, they expressed they felt
more engaged and motivated to participate than in their regular classes since
their interests, preferences, and needs were considered. A very interesting
point that all students agreed on was their emotional state when participating
in the «performing my skill» stage. All students claimed that having the
possibility to express their ideas freely on particular topics of interest
without being interrupted made them gain more confidence and fluency. Moreover,
students expressed that the instructor provided very effective and specific
feedback, without making them feel uncomfortable and this helped them remark
their linguistic weaknesses and encourage them to pay closer attention to these
linguistic features in the future.
From the
findings obtained from the teaching experience when applying the ESPIT model
and the students’ insights from the Google Form and the Focus Group,
the investigators can conclude that from a
humanistic learning approach, English teachers have to encourage learners to
express their motivations and true reasons for learning a language, plus acknowledge
their personal interests and hobbies. The information that can be collected
from open conversations or other instruments to collect data is extremely
valuable and necessary to customize personalized sessions with learners who
evidence difficulties to perform in English in regular classes. Following Nunan’s
recommendations to promote autonomy, the English teacher has to be actively
involved in the students’ learning process, apply a great variety of learning
options and resources, invite learners to make choices and decisions to keep
improving their linguistic abilities, provide emotional support to learners,
and devote time to encourage reflection.
Undoubtedly, English teachers who work in distance learning education
have to remind learners that they have to be responsible individuals who make
wise decisions when organizing their time, considering their personal
obligations and they need to be constantly self-evaluating their performance. Moreover,
regarding the focus on English teaching, it is necessary to place more emphasis
on the application of activities that promote linguistic performance and
productive skills, especially considering that real-life communication lies on
human interaction contexts and learners need to have more opportunities to use
the target language in similar contexts than memorizing factual information. To
promote learners’ active participation in such activities, the English teacher
should plan activities in which learners are invited to speak freely and
enthusiastically based on topics of interest. When learners participate in oral
activities that demand the use of knowledge that is beyond their current
English level, mistakes and errors eventually appear. In such contexts, the
English teacher should apply feedback strategies that accord with the learning
objective. In this sense, at different moments, the English teacher has to
apply feedback strategies that can help learners acknowledge their weaknesses
but encourage them to keep improving. Finally,
after receiving effective feedback, students should be given the opportunity to
transform their initial proficiency level; that is to say, to ensure meaningful
learning, the English teacher should not finish a class cycle without providing
a chance for students to keep reinforcing and reviewing the learnt language
features.
Formato de citación según
APA
Arley-Fonseca M., Brizuela-Gutiérrez
T., Castro-Barrantes M. (2023). Applying the ESPIT Model to Foster Spoken Production
of Participants from the Academic Improvement Strategic Plan. Revista Espiga, 22(45).
Formato de citación según
Chicago-Deusto
Arley-Fonseca, Margoth, Tobías Brizuela-Gutiérrez
& Marcela Castro-Barrantes. «Applying the ESPIT Model to Foster Spoken
Production of Participants from the Academic Improvement Strategic Plan». Revista Espiga
22, n.º 45 (enero-junio, 2023).
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