Procedures for reflective cycle three.

This reflective cycle was carried out at my new university (HUE) from April to July 2013, the following year from reflective cycle two. This period represents one university semester, and it was the students’ first semester at university. The intervention was presented to the students as part of their normal course work. The participants for this reflective cycle, the HUE 1 group, are described in section 4.5.3. In total, 43 students chose to partake in this reflective cycle; however, only 21 students completed the final questionnaire. In previous reflective cycles, I was able to remind the students a second time to complete the online questionnaire. However, at my new university I did not have the opportunity to see the students after I first instructed them to complete the questionnaire. This lack of a reminder likely contributed to the small number of students who completed this questionnaire.

During the second class, the students completed an initial spoken assessment task. The procedure used to administer this spoken assessment task was the same procedure used in reflective cycle two (described in section 5.3.2). After the audio-recordings were completed, I explained the term ‘collocation’ in a similar manner as in reflective cycle two. I also gave the students the web address where I posted the weekly collocations and

homework assignments.

For the weekly homework exercises, the students were given a set of 12 collocations and instructed to use the collocation dictionary to search for the meanings. The second part of the exercise was a cloze task using the targeted collocations. This exercise is identical to the exercise used with group B in reflective cycle two and can be seen in Appendix 11.

In the final 10 to 15 minutes of the following class, I used these targeted collocations in productively challenging tasks. Several researchers have stated the benefits of using productive tasks for vocabulary instruction (Lewis, 2008; Nation, 2001; Nation, 2008; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992). Brown (2003) encourages the use of productive tasks which give students more control and allow for uninterrupted communication, so fluency can progress. Griffin and Harley (1996) conducted a study with students in their first year of French study that showed productive tasks to be superior for improving productive abilities. They state “For production, learning in the direction of English-French is the more effective, since the forward association of English-French will be used at recall” (p. 453). However, the

productive tasks for the Griffin and Harley study were translation tasks which did not have the spoken requirement as the tasks used in this reflective cycle. In this reflective cycle, the productively challenging tasks required the students to attend to the form, meaning and use of the targeted collocations during a spoken exercise.

The productive tasks for reflective cycle three once more exposed the students to the targeted collocations adding further repetition to the overall procedure which Nation (2001; 2008) believes aids in vocabulary acquisition. For the purposes of this thesis, henceforth I will refer to these classroom exercises as productive+ tasks. The productive+ tasks were designed to be more productively challenging than cloze tasks. By more productively challenging, I required that the tasks had the students say the targeted collocation out loud as part of a larger discourse while also including the productive challenges associated with cloze exercises. In total I used five different productive+ tasks:

1. Translate and make a sentence – I (the teacher) placed 12 cards around the classroom. Each card had one of the English collocations from the previous week’s homework assignment written on the back and the Japanese translation on the top. The students worked with a partner, and each pair of students started at one of the cards. The first student in each pair read the Japanese translation and said the corresponding English collocation. The second student in the pair then used the English

collocation in a sentence. If both students agreed that the sentence was suitable, they moved to another card. If they were unsure, they raised their hands and I provided help. The students could also check the English translation on the back of the card.

2. Half a crossword – I created two crossword grids. On grid ‘A’, I wrote half of the previous week’s collocations as the across answers. On grid ‘B’, I wrote the other half of the previous week’s collocations as the down

answers. There were no clues provided on either crossword. The students worked in pairs: one student had crossword grid ‘A’ and the other student had ‘B’. One student asked for a hint from their partner by saying ‘what is number 2?’ Their partner had to provide a ‘hint(s)’. A hint could be a Japanese translation, a cloze sentence, or a description of the targeted collocation. The students continued asking for and giving hints until both crossword grids were complete.

3. Create a conversation – Each student worked with a partner. I gave each pair of students one of the previous week’s collocations. The students worked together and wrote a short two person four-line conversation which included the targeted collocation. As the students were working, I walked around the class and corrected their English. The most common problem was the students’ creation of an unnatural use for the targeted collocation. After most of the pairs of students had finished, they posted their completed short conversations on the wall. The students then walked around the class with their partner reading out loud each other’s conversations. 4. Conversation cloze – This activity was similar to ‘create a conversation’;

however, in this activity I wrote all of the short two person four-line conversations myself. The conversation was a cloze activity with the targeted collocation removed and written on the back of the card, so the students could check their answers. One student was ‘A’ and read the first line of the conversation. The other student was ‘B’ and read the second line. This continued until the conversation was completed. When one of the students encountered the blank space, they had to fill it in with the correct collocation in the correct verb tense for the given situation. All of the collocations were from the previous week’s list. The students continued around the classroom until all 12 conversations had been completed. 5. Partner quiz – Each student worked with a partner. On the projector, I

showed the 12 English collocations from the previous week’s homework. The students would alternate quizzing each other. The students could ask for a Japanese translation, for an English translation, or for a sentence using one of the collocations. If the students were unsure about a sentence, they raised their hands and I offered assistance.

Each week, I prepared one of the activities for the class. All five of these activities could be done within 15 minutes of class time if the students had completed the homework. These productive+ tasks will be critiqued in the discussion section on this reflective cycle (section 6.2.7).

In the eighth class, the students completed a test covering the first five sets of collocations. A test covering collocation sets six through ten was administered in the

fourteenth class. Each of these tests constituted 15% of the students’ final grade. The tests were the same ones as used for reflective cycle two. An example can be seen in Appendix

12. Since the focus of this study was spoken fluency, the test results were not used as evidence of the students’ increased ability to use the collocations productively.

In the last class, the students used the voice recorders for the post-intervention spoken assessment. The assessment was administered in exactly the same way as it was done in the second class and as it was done in reflective cycle two. The two audio-

recordings did not influence the students’ final grade. The students were encouraged to do their best. In addition, I instructed the students to complete the post-intervention

questionnaire which was posted on the same website as the homework assignments. A summary of the procedures used in reflective cycle three can be seen in Table 6.1. Table 6.1 Summary of procedure for reflective cycle three

Week In class collocation work Class time required in minutes

Homework 1 There were no collocation exercises done during the first class.

2 Pre-intervention voice recordings. Explain the term ‘collocation’. Explained homework exercises.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 1. 3 Productive+ task for collocation set

1.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 2. 4 Productive+ task for collocation set

2.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 3. 5 Productive+ task for collocation set

3.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 4. 6 Productive+ task for collocation set

4.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 5. 7 Productive+ task for collocation set

5.

15 Study for the test. 8 Collocation test for set one, two,

three, four and five.

30 Complete the collocation exercises for set 6. 9 Productive+ task for collocation set

6.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 7. 10 Productive+ task for collocation set

7.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 8. 11 Productive+ task for collocation set

8.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 9. 12 Productive+ task for collocation set

9.

15 Complete the collocation exercises for set 10. 13 Productive+ task for collocation set

10.

15 Study for the test. 14 Collocation test for set six, seven,

eight, nine and ten.

30 15 Post-intervention voice recordings.

Post-intervention questionnaire (completed outside of class).

12