ruiz (2007) fl writing & multimedia use

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Universidad de Antioquia

School of Languages

Adolfo León Ruiz Hernández

FL Writing and Multimedia Use

Action Research Report

Advisor: Clara Inés Arias Toro

September, 2007




FOREIGN LANGUAGE WRITING AND MULTIMEDIA USE

This paper comprises a report of the project “Foreign Language Writing and

Multimedia Use”. This project arose from observations and teaching practices carried out

through the first semester of my teaching practicum. It is a requirement to receive my B. Ed.

degree in Foreign Languages (English, French).




Universidad de Antioquia

School of Languages

Adolfo León Ruiz Hernández


Action Research Report

Advisor: Clara Inés Arias Toro

September, 2007

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE 4

DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTEXT 5

THE PROBLEM 6

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 8

OBJECTIVES 12

MAIN OBJECTIVE 12

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE 12

PLANNING ACTION 12

DEVELOPMENT OF ACTIONS 14

DATA ANALYSIS 15

FINDING INTERPRETATION OF DATA 17

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 22

REFLECTION 23

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ABSTRACT

This action research project explored the impact of the use of multimedia to enhance

the writing skill of Grade 9 students in an English foreign language class, in a public girl-

school in Medellín, Colombia. This research study was carried out during my Practicum year

and the results show that implementing multimedia activities in the language classroom does

help students both, increase positive attitudes and behaviors towards language learning, and

improve students’ overall language skills, especially the writing skill. Nonetheless, the impact

of the project on the students’ language skills was lessened due to time constrains.

KEY WORDS FOR RETRIEVAL

Multimedia in the language classroom, foreign language writing, writing skill

enhancement, CALL, motivation and autonomy, modes and amount of input.

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Computer use is widely spread in today’s world. Computers and all the facilities that

they present, such as easy manipulation and sharing of information and information presented

in a multimedia way (images, sounds, videos, and texts), offer a broad range of new

possibilities in the teaching and learning processes carried out in educational contexts. This is

why it becomes crucial for educational systems to implement such useful tools. In the case of

language learning, computer interface is bringing into language classrooms new ways for

teachers to help their students improve their Foreign Language (FL) skills.

This Action Research Report (ARR) presents the results of a research project carried

out through my teaching practice in the Institución Educativa Santo Angel (IESA), in

Medellín, Antioquia. The main objective of this ARR is to find ways in which students can

enhance their writing skills using multimedia as part of the development of the language class.

I am a pre-service teacher-researcher in the teaching practicum of the B. Ed. in

Foreign Language Program of the School of Languages, at the Universidad de Antioquia,

coursing the tenth semester teaching practicum.

This study emphasizes my role as a facilitator of the learning process. It presents me as

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DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTEXT

The IESA is a girl-school located in El Rodeo Sur neighborhood. This institution is

located in the southwest of Medellín and is classified as socio economic strata 3 – 4 (middle

class). It considers life as the primary and most prevalent gift from God. Likewise, humankind

is conceived as unique, intelligent, thoughtful, and in a process of change. Its philosophy is

defined by the Gospel values: justice, truth, freedom and love. Its main concern is the

improvement of the life of all the members of the educational community.

Concerning English, its syllabus emphasizes the development of linguistic skills and

competences through content-based instruction. It also proposes the use of different sources,

means and procedures to gain access to information facilitating, thus, Language Learning

(LL). Textbooks are not followed. Activities are prepared by the teachers depending on the

topic to be taught. The institution provides them with a few grammar books, dictionaries,

reading books, cassettes and video tapes. There is also an English laboratory in which there

are 42 headphones, a sound system, a TV set, and a VCR.

My Cooperating Teacher (CT) is one of the two teachers in charge of guiding the FL

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THE PROBLEM

During the first semester of the practicum I devoted most of my time to observe and

record in my journal the school context, the English class development, students’ attitudes

towards LL, and the teacher’s performance. One of the things that surprised me the most was

that the IESA was well equipped in terms of multimedia (something not common in most

public institutions). I also saw that, in contrast with other public institutions where I had

taught, students were highly motivated towards FL learning. This significantly facilitated the

teaching and learning process since students were almost always engaged with the activities

performed. I also observed that, according to my previous experience observing and teaching

classes in other public institutions and based on talks I have had with partners and colleagues,

students’ language levels were above the average level in public institutions.

Given these factors, I started to have high expectations about the results concerning the

students’ proficiency levels. In contrast, I started to realize that the aforementioned aspects did

not result in much progress in terms of language skills. I saw a big gap between the

institution’s language teaching ideals (stated in the syllabus) and reality. The class, even

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In cooperation with the teacher, I started to implement activities aimed at promoting

new ways to approach the contents to be taught. Some of these activities included authentic

material, such as crosswords, matching, hangman, bingo, reading and writing exercises,

different pronunciation modeling sources (i.e. audio tapes and CD-audios), whole class

interaction, and vocabulary in context. From talks with my CT and the students, I learned

they liked the activities because they provided an amusing way to learn. With these activities

students began to produce a little more during the class. For instance, during the whole class

interaction activities, students wanted to talk to their classmates and use the vocabulary they

had learned. Given these facts, I started to build up a hypothesis: the more input and

opportunity for FL interaction, the more probable for production to occur.

From a survey I conducted in order to know the students’ backgrounds, needs, and

interests, I learned that students preferred activities in which language is present in a more

authentic way (i.e. songs, role plays, games, and readings). I contrasted this information with

some observations I kept in my journal about the non-existent input from resources available

in the institution.

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

As the world of technology takes a core role in everyday life, a great challenge for

education and educators emerges: to take to the classroom all the benefits of technologies so

that the learning process can be enriched.

This, of course, also applies to language learning. In this field, efforts to develop

computer programs to be implemented in language classes started to show results in the

1960’s (Ahmad et. Al, 1985 cited in Lee, 2001) when the University of Illinois presented the

Program Logic for Automated Teaching Operations (PLATO) project. This software was

mainly composed by a range of activities aimed at grammar and vocabulary drills, and

translations. With time, this kind of software was developed into more efficient and effective

computer programs that allowed teachers to present their students new possibilities for

language learning. As this new language learning feature started to expand it adopted the label

“Computer Assisted Language Learning,” better recognized with the abbreviation CALL.

Those who are more aware of the necessity of taking the benefits of CALL into the

classroom are making big efforts to promote, on the part of educational systems, the use of the

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easily manipulated by students according to their needs, this gives them autonomy in their

learning process, allowing students to make decisions about what steps to take in order to

respond to their own needs. Besides, as it is interactive and integrated, it fosters motivation.

Kataoka (2000) gives an account of the advantages of using computers for language

learning. He presents three standpoints: the first one is related to the great number of

possibilities for real communication and use of authentic material (given that the internet

provides the students with lots of information in different types of formats, as well as with

chat and mail services) through the use of computer interfaces. Students can have more access

to authentic material in the target language used in real communication, which gives them

more possibilities to work on their own fields of interest. Besides, students feel more engaged

with tasks in which real communication and meaning negotiation are present. The second

standpoint, which is in agreement with the asseveration of Paige (in Hall & Austin, 2004) that

this kind of technology-supported learning processes help students to meet their learning

needs, is related to the opportunities students have for individual manipulation of equipment

This gives them the possibility to decide the pace for their own learning process and reduce

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conferencing systems, games, etc.) just for fun, keeps students highly motivated and engaged

with their LL process (Andrews, 1997)

In addition to the aforementioned advantages, another important aspect of using

multimedia in the language classroom is the possibility to foster specific skills, in this

particular case, writing skills. Using computers interfaces for writing purposes provides the

students with lots of possibilities related to what to write for, who to write to, and how to

write. Students and teachers who use computer software (word, word pad, etc.) experience an

easier writing and revising task than those who use pen and paper (Pennington, 1993; 1996a,

cited in Kataoka, 2000). Besides, interfaces such as chat rooms and e-mailing foster students

motivation towards writing given that these kinds of interaction occur in a real communication

context. That is, students do not write only to accomplish a writing task to be revised only by

the teacher, but to express their ideas to someone else who will respond accordingly. Finally,

to use a computer also means to be able to use software designed for language learning

purposes.

On the Internet there are web sites that offer teachers free-to-use software addressed to

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registers the results of the activities in a database, which allows the teacher to keep a record of

the students’ performance and progress.

Concerning writing skills, I took into account only the grammar aspects of the

language for assessment, namely, morphology, syntax, semantics, spelling and punctuation,

cohesion, and coherence, given that this aspects are more measurable with numbers.

Morphology is understood as the branch of linguistics that studies the structure and

form of words. This aspect was taken into account under three categories: word form, verb

tense, and article use. The first one refers to a mistake produce by a slip or confusion in the

form of a word (i.e. Travel agent vs. travel agency). The second one refers to a mistake in the

form of a verb in a tense that is not the appropriate for the correct meaning of a sentence. (i.e.

I had a great weekend and learn a lot about my grandmother. vs. I had a great weekend and

learned a lot about my grandmother). And the third refers to a mistaken use of an article form

(e.g. a vs. an) or the use of the indefinite article instead of the definite one. It also refers to the

lack of the article when it is needed or the presence of it when is not necessary. (i.e. There is

store vs. There is a store. In front of the my house vs. In front of my house).

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Semantics is defined as the branch of linguistics that studies the aspects of meaning

expressed in a language. Under this aspect there are the following categories: word choice,

which refers to an error in meaning or grammar produced by the use of a word where another

one should be used. (i.e. We looked for in the house vs. we searched in the house. In the left

vs. to the left), word order, and incomplete (explained above).

OBJECTIVES

In order to carry out this project, I established the following main objective:

To foster students’ FL written output by using a computer

interface (Clic 3.0) to increase the amount and mode of language input.

In the same way I established the following specific objectives to facilitate the

accomplishment of my main objective:

To design lessons related to the English syllabus to be

implemented with Clic 3.0

To design writing tasks to measure the students’ development.

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return after passing by observation. This is the spirit of Action Research, a cycle of planning,

acting, observing, and reflecting in order to develop new plans of action. (Selener, 1997)

As the number of students in the educational context in which I developed this ARP

project was high, I decided to ask three students to allow me to use their writing outcomes as

data for the project. I thought that in order to get different results for this research, I should

take into account what Mayer and Moreno (1999) term individual differences, which in this

case I will apply to refer to language proficiency levels. I decided to ask my students as I think

that they reflected, somehow, different levels of language proficiency found in the class.

Thus, Student 1 evidenced a high level in contrast with the average level of the class. Student

2 evidenced an average level. And Student 3 evidenced a level under the class’ average

proficiency level. These students’ performance in the class was the same as the rest of their

classmates’. The three received the same instructions that the rest of the class for the tasks

used for data, the same amount of time to do the tasks, and the same type of help as the rest, so

that the data collected was as similar as possible as the outcome of the rest of the class.

I decided to gather three different types of data. The first type of data reflected the

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reports included the number of session each student took, the number of activities completed

from those proposed, the number of activities resolved correctly, the time spent in each of the

activities, the time spent in the session, and a percentage intended to measure the overall

performance in each session. And for the third type of data I kept a journal in which I

recorded different aspects of the educational context such as students’ behavior, class

development, and students’ overall output (focused on written output). These notes let me

keep trace of my perceptions, thoughts and reflections through the whole process. As

explained above, all of the students took part in the same kind of activities and my

observations and reflections were centered in the overall performance of the class. For the

data analysis, I used Burns’ (1999) five stages for data analysis: assembling, coding, and

comparing the data, building interpretations, and reporting the outcomes.

DEVELOPMENT OF ACTIONS

At the beginning of the second semester of my teaching practice I started to teach all

the classes in the group, 3 hours a week. According to the Practicum Work Plan, during the

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This writing task was aimed at evidencing what they had learned from the previous

class sessions and at having a starting point to establish later comparisons and contrasts.

Students were given 30 minutes to write at least one page about their dream neighborhood.

While students were doing the given task, I took notes about what I observed concerning

students’ behavior and general class development. In the same way, after the class was over I

completed my notes based on my impressions.

The multimedia implementation from which I got the reports, took place on October 18

and 25 in the Computer Room of the institution. However, students had had a previous

introduction to the program during a class session carried out on September 29. This first

contact with the program did not have the expected results given that all of the students did not

have the opportunity to operate it because of the number of computers. Due to difficulties

arising from extracurricular activities done during class time, students were asked to do the

first set of activities at home in order to have the opportunity to become familiar with the

interface and with the way to operate the program, and at the same time not to be affected by

the reduced time class allocated to my activities. Nonetheless, on October 18 the data from

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research study. First, the way in which the project had to be developed. Due to events at the

university, the two semesters of my practicum year had to be planned in a way that would

allow us to complete it without delays. To accomplish this, it was necessary to make some

adjustments with which I agreed when they were proposed to me. Those adjustments included

the completion of the first part of the process in half a semester (from April to June) so that we

could start the implementation of the project proposal in the second semester of the year.

Nonetheless, due to school extracurricular activities, the implementation as such was only

possible during the last month of the school year. This significantly reduced the possible

impact of the project in the students’ LL process.

Second, most of the difficulties I had during the final part of the project (the one

concerning the data analysis and the report of the findings and interpretations, as well as the

reflections that emerged from the research process) were due to personal matters which

prevented me from devoting the necessary time to carry the project out within the established

time (up to February 2007). These difficulties forced me to take one semester more to present

the missing part. This fact, of course, affected the reliability of the results as this process was

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interpretations were not a result of intuitions or anticipated outcomes, but of the analysis of the

overall research process itself.

Journal entries: At the beginning of the implementation of actions, it was planned to

take into account most, if not all, of the journal entries from class observations and reflections.

However, after the analysis of several entries, I did not find much data to make interpretations

concerning the implementation of actions and the impact of the use of the computer interface

in the students’ writing performance. I decided, then, to use only observations and reflections

registered in my journal in the sessions in which actions and multimedia were implemented.

After reading and analyzing the journal entries I recorded from the sessions explained above, I

saw that many of my comments were addressed mainly to three categories that I call:

motivation, autonomy and input (meaning modes and amount of input).

Pretest and Posttest: First, I analyzed each of the students’ written samples. I identified

their mistakes and classified them into categories. I counted the number of mistakes under

each category and ranked the categories according to the number of occurrence. I also

counted the number of simple and complex sentences. Then, I briefly explained the mistakes

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implementation of my teaching practice. In this part, I will report three crucial factors for

writing skill enhancement. I will refer, first, to motivation, promoted by the use of multimedia

in the language classroom; second, to autonomous work, facilitated by the corrections the

software provided and the easy manipulation of the program; and third, to modes and amount

of input, an appealing and essential feature of the CLIC program.

Multimedia as promoter of motivation in the writing skills enhancement process

Even though at the beginning of the project I saw that motivation was not a problem in

this context, I recognized that the reflections I wrote based on the lessons I implemented, were

focused on how the activities kept students motivated.

For instance, in the session in which I presented the CLIC 3.0 program to the students

for the very first time, I prepared a set of activities such as filling in the gaps, listening and

completing, matching, verb conjugation, etc. That day I wrote in my journal: “Even though the

class could not be developed as expected, due to the number of computers and the poor

familiarization (sic) of the students with this kind of technology, students showed very high

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(2000) remarks, the fact that students had the possibility of manipulating the software at their

own pace and that the program gave them scores during each activity, helped them to reduce

levels of anxiety as they were more focused on competing against their classmates than on

being worried about making mistakes.

Multimedia as promoter of autonomous work

Regarding autonomy, I found that students liked so much the activities presented in

this multimedia way that they wanted to take the software with them so they could practice the

activities at home. Taking this into account, I talked to my CT and asked her about the

possibility of asking the students to bring CDs to burn the software and the activities so they

could install them in their computers at home. This way they could be more familiar with the

software and take more advantage of the classes with multimedia exercises. She told me it was

the students’ decision. Before asking the students, I also talked to my Advisor and explained

to her that this could help me to overcome time constraints. She agreed but asked me to be

sure that all the students could do it, not just some of them, because this could create

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showed the most motivation, were more familiar with the vocabulary used to explain how an

activity should be completed. These facts evidence that students are using CLIC at their home

as a way to foster their language skills”. (Journal, Reflections # 14, October 18). In order to

support this last statement I have to say that students evidenced general language learning

improvement. After working at their homes, students were more capable of using the target

grammar structures. They also demonstrated to be more fluent in their written answers when

completing texts. Besides, students showed more understanding of pieces of audio used for

transcription purposes.

Multimedia as a crucial tool to address students’ different learning preferences and

to increase opportunities to receive input: Modes and amount of input

During the first part of the project implementation I noticed that: “Even though

students are normally motivated in the classes, their involvement increases when the activities

proposed present different ways to do a task or different ways in which the information to be

learned is presented (a piece of audio, a reading, a game, a drill practice, etc.)” For example,

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with a type of activity (Andrews, 1997). The second was that since students could manipulate

the software according to their own speed of learning and processing of information, they

could set their own pace (Kataoka, 2000). This made them more comfortable and more

capable to solve the activities than if they had to solve them at their classmates’ pace.

In terms of language skills enhancement, particularly writing skills, in the analysis of

the pretest and the posttest I found that when students were more exposed to writing tasks and

in such different ways (amount and modes of input: Willets, 1992), as they were through the

CLIC program, they handled the syntax rules of the language more easily since repetition

made them more aware of sentence structure. In one of the student’s posttest the influence of

the activities developed in class, and especially those developed through the software

implementation, was very evident. This is the case of the syntax improvement in the written

samples. The student clearly followed the structures fostered in the CLIC activities. Equally,

I discovered that when students felt more comfortable with correctly using sentence structure,

they felt more confident to write, regardless of a correct expression of meaning.

Likewise, I saw that the CLIC activities helped student to improve semantics. Students

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regarding sentence division improvement were highly influenced by the type of exercises

developed with the CLIC program.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

The main conclusion of this action research project is that the use of multimedia in the

language classroom does help students to enhance overall language abilities, and results to be

a prominent tool to foster students’ writing skills. Likewise, this way to complement language

instruction also provides students and teachers with crucial factors such as the increase of

motivation and involvement in language activities as well as autonomy toward the completion

of language tasks on the part of the students. Finally, the broad range of possibilities, amount

and modes, to present information and activities to the students, makes of computer interfaces

a very valuable tool in the language learning and teaching processes. I believe that if teachers

take the risk of bringing to their language classrooms the benefits of multimedia, efforts will

result in their students’ language improvement.

Nonetheless, it is necessary to mention that due to the characteristics of most public

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REFLECTIONS

My life as an educational researcher can be reduced to the last three years of my

existence. This makes me very inexpert in the field. Nonetheless, I can say that my evolution

as a researcher has taken big steps. During this ARP, I saw the fruits of all the years I devoted

to studying in this program.

This action research process also helped me to be aware of the necessity to go beyond

in the language learning and teaching fields. It made me see the importance of being a

reflective teacher in order to strengthen, and to question in order to change, if necessary, the

principles and beliefs on which I founded my teaching action.

Concerning teaching, all I can say is that this experience made strengthen my

willingness to devote my life in favor of humankind’s education in order to make of this world

a better place to live.

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REFERENCES

Andrews, B. S. (1997). Multimedia in the foreign language classroom. Retrieved August 15,

2006, from the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) Web site:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/23

/43/9a.pdf

Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers. Cambridge,

England: Cambridge University Press.

Chun, D. M., & Plass, J. K. (1996). Effects of multimedia annotations on vocabulary

acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 183-198.

Fu, H. (1996). Multimedia teaching in Chinese courses: Practice and suggestions. Retrieved

August 15, 2006, from the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) Web site:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/25/

35/83.pdf

Hall, M. H. and Austin, T. Y. (2004). Integrating technology in an interactive, content-based

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Kataoka, K. (2000). Computer for English language learning in Japanese schools. Retrieved

August 15, 2006, from the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) Web site:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/10/

ca/2a.pdf

Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second language cquisition and second language learning. Retrieved

Abril 3, 2007, from Stephen D Krashen’s Web site: http://www.sdkrashen.com

Lee, K. C. (2001). Selecting and Integrating CALL software programs into the EFL

classroom. Retrieved July 15, 2006, from the ERIC Digest’s Web site:

www.eric.ed.gov

Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (1999). A cognitive theory of multimedia learning: Implications

for design principles. Retrieved July 12, 2006, from the University of New Mexico

Web site: http://www.unm.edu/~moreno/PDFS/chi.pdf.

Mustafa, Z. (2001). Non-courseware factors involved in using multimedia in foreign language

instruction. Retrieved August 15, 2006 from the Resource Center (ERIC) Web site:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/0d

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APPENDIX A: DATA COLLECTION CHART

RESEARCHER: ADOLFO LEÓN RUIZ HERNÁNDEZ DATE: Jan , 2007RESEARCH TOPIC: FOREIGN LANGUAGE WRITING AND MULTIMEDIA USE

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can I, as a practicum student, foster the FL written output of my ninth grade students by using multimedia?

PARTICIPANTS: Three Grade 9-2 students, Cooperating Teacher, Adolfo León Ruiz Hernández (researcher).Datasource

What the data is How to get thedata – techniques

Participants

Whogets tedata

Where + Whento get the data

How often

People:Grade 9-2students

Students’ performance inwriting

Pretest activity:written text (Classactivity)

Students Me In class, at theinstitution

Once, at the beginning of the implementationof the project.September 21


Students’ performance in acomputer interface

Softwareapplication.Program Clic 3.0

Students Me In class, at thecomputer room,in theinstitution.

Twice. The first one, on October 18, in classtime. The data collected corresponded to twosessions. The second time was on October 25,in class time. The data collected

corresponded to one session.


Student’s performance inwriting.

Posttest activity:written text (In-class activity)

Students Me In class, at theinstitution

Once, at the end of the implementation of the project. November 15

Me - My reflection onmy role as ateacher.- My role as ateacher itself.- Myinterpretations onstudents’

performances.

Journal Keeping(Teacher diary/journal – Burns, 1999).

Me Me After class, athome.

Three times a week.

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ruiz (2007) fl writing & multimedia use

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