Research Projects (5660) DipTEFL Autumn 2012

Assalam-o-Alaikum DipTEFL Colleagues Hope you all are fine. I am sending you few hints about the research format of your Projects. Please decide your Research Question and read about it in the book. You may send your choice through a text message. You need to finalize your choices on 17th March, 2013. This time around, I would like you to take up all the three questions set up in the Assignment No.2. We are 30 in number. No more than 10 students should opt for a single research topic. Those who go for Question No.2 will have to design a very nice Questionnaire. This questionnaire will have to be discussed quantitatively using statistics. I will give you hints about it later. Right now, please read instructions for Question No.1 and Question No.3 General Guidelines 1. Read each question closely and underline key words and topic words. Key words tell you what you are required to do. These are action words. Topic words are related to your topic.(Common Key Words Used in Essay Questions are: Compare Contrast Criticize Define Discuss Enumerate Evaluate Explain Illustrate Justify List Outline Prove Relate Review State Summarize Trace etc) 2. After doing this, go to your prescribed book (5660) and read the units related to the topic. Equip yourself wit the nitty gritty of the topic. You can also search google to know more about your topic. 3. First develop a hypothesis which can be tested through your research study. Select your population (students/teachers etc).Select the institution. Plan as to how to visit the school or college. Use your social links if you have any. Teachers are usually reluctant to allow anyone to sit on judgment in their classrooms. Schools head also do not want outsiders in their classrooms. So you have to be quite resourceful. The best option is to conduct the study in your own school with your own students keeping in view the demands of the question. 4. This stage is called data collection stage. But you need a lot of home work for data collection. You need to be very much clear about your research topic. Plan on paper thoroughly before going into the field. 5. After data collection, you need to tabulate the data and analyse it. Then, interpret the data and deduce results from it. In the light of the results of the data, you can say whether the hypothesis you established before going into the field proved true or vice versa. Give recommendations. Q.1 Descriptive Writing can be either subjective or objective. This means that description of anything could be based on your opinion and may reflect our attitude to the people, place/things we describe and may be based on objective facts. Select a group of students of secondary level or above. Give them a task based on descriptive writing and judge their writing skills. Now, design a lesson plan to teach this writing sub-skill. Your lesson may be based on any two different texts based on subjective and objective description that you will select for yourself. Now implement the lesson in the class. After teaching descriptive writing this way, give the students a task to describe a picture (you may display the picture in the class on a chart). Record any improvement that you observe in their writing skills and present your observation in from of a report. Also enclose the lesson plan with your written assignment. Now in Question No. 1 the key words are Select Give design implement record present enclose Select a group of students Give them a writing task Judge their writing skills Design a lesson plan Implement the lesson plan Teach descriptive writing skill
Facilitator: Rustam (03459603918, rustam_123@ymail.com) http://rustamdiptefl.blogspot.com/

Research Projects (5660) DipTEFL Autumn 2012

Describe a picture Enclose the lesson plan Topic words/Message carriers

Record any improvement

Present your observation

Students of secondary level/above (6th to 10th or above i.e. college level) Writing Task (such as describe a person, place and object etc) Descriptive writing Writing skills (both mechanics and rhetoric.. Mechanics means spelling, punctuation, word choice, capitalization, sentence structure, transitional devices, punctuation etc. Rhetoric means quality of ideas, organization of ideas, purpose, audience, style etc) Lesson Plan Two different texts Picture Improvement observation written Report

Now you are supposed to do the following A Pretest Treatment Post Test 1. Select the class and give them a descriptive writing task (Read thoroughly about descriptive writing). This task maybe: describe a picture.describe a place or describe an object 2. Collect the answer sheets and grade (mark) them. You should have marking criteria with you. We call it a Grading Rubric. I discussed it in the class with you. Judge both mechanics and rhetoric but extra weitage should be given to rhetoric. (You need to attach your Grading Rubric with the written report) 3. Students score will give you an idea about their weaknesses and strengths. It is a sort of needs Analysis. You can also call a Pretest. In the light of the pretest you are going to design a lesson plan. 4. A Lesson Plan has a set format/template. I have already uploaded a template on my blog: http://www.rustamdiptefl.blogspot.com . A lesson plan should have a Warm-up activity, Presentation stage, Practice Stage and Production Stage and some follow-up. 5. Select two different texts: one for teaching subjective description and the other to teach objective description. Please educate yourself on subjective and objective description first). For objective description you can select a place. and for subjective you can select a personality. It is entirely up to you. 6. Design a lesson plan around these two texts (tasks) and go to the classroom and teach it. This cannot be done in one session. You can split the lesson plan in 4 to 5 classroom periods of 40 minutes each. It can be done in one session of one hour if you are a skilled teacher. It depends on your teaching skills. 7. Now at the end of the lesson, give a picture to students (Ideally it should be the same picture which you may have given them in the pretest). Ask them to describe it both subjectively and objectively. 8. Take students description home and mark the answer-sheets using the same Grading Rubric you used in your pretest. 9. Find the difference in the scores of pretest and the post test. See if there is any improvement as a result of your teaching. At diploma stage you can analyse the data using simple percentage analysis. Normally researchers use SPSS which even I am not good at yet. 10. Let me give you an example Maximum Marks 20 Pretest score Obtained Post Test Obtained marks marks Ali 10 Ali 14 Ayesha 12 Ayesha 9 Nimra 8 Nimra 12 Batool 7 Batool 15 Arshad 13 Arshad 15 Total 50 Total 65 Average: 50/5= 10 Average 65/5= 13 Result: There is improvement in students learning Discussion: However Ayesha did not show any improvement.(Discuss reasons as to why was it so. Usually after the treatment there should be an improvement. If it is not it means either your lesson plan was not good or you could not execute it well in the class, or there may have
Facilitator: Rustam (03459603918, rustam_123@ymail.com) http://rustamdiptefl.blogspot.com/

Research Projects (5660) DipTEFL Autumn 2012

been be something wrong with teaching environment(noise) or students may have had some problem.(extraneous variables)

Wish you good luck Keep visiting my blog and your email Inbox Keep in touch with me through text messaging service. I wish we could spare some time for socializingPeople even do not bother to acknowledge a simple SMS. They think messaging services is free. Mine is paid, mind please.
THE world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers (Wordsworth)

Attach with your report 1. Pretest items ii. Lesson Plan with all the activities test iv. If possible, opinion of an ELT expert

iii. Post

Facilitator: Rustam (03459603918, rustam_123@ymail.com) http://rustamdiptefl.blogspot.com/

Research Projects (5660) DipTEFL Autumn 2012

Best Regards Rustam 15 March, 2013 Q.3 Prepare a lesson plan based on the discussion/recommendations) given in Unit 6 of your book. Implement the lesson in your classroom. After teaching the lesson, get students feedback with the help of a questionnaire. Whereas you will get the questionnaire filled by the class that you have taught, also get feedback of any two of English teachers from your/nearby school in form of an interview, regarding the teaching techniques that you used in your classroom. Analyse the feedback received both from the students and the teachers and submit it as your second assignment. Enclose the questionnaire filled by the students.

The title of your Unit 6 is Integrated and Communicative Skills TEFL is a practical programme. It is a pure applied linguistics field. The ultimate end of a language teaching programme is that learners should be using the language as a means of communication. They should be able to understand the language in spoken and written form and also they can produce it both in writing and speech. Learners should have mastery over structures and meaning in the target language. Both form and meaning need to be taught. Social approroriacy (pragmatics) is also a major area in foreign language teaching. Language skills work in integration. We listen and speak. We read and then write a response. Sometimes, we listen to a conversation, we answer it orally and then we may have to write an answer to it. So we need to integrate skills in our lessons. It is killing two birds with one stone. Ask students to read a passage and then write a response. Once they have done it, ask them to discuss it in a group. They will now be speaking and listening on the same topic. This is called integration of skills. Please read Unit 6 and then read Question 3 closely. You are required to develop a lesson plan on teaching integrated Skills. The aim is to teach communication. Communicative competence means linguistic and social competence. Both use and usage are required to be mastered. Use means rules of speaking (pragmatics, social context etc) and usage means language forms, grammar and structures etc. Fluency and accuracy need to be focused in communicative competence. Behaviorists focus more on accuracy while mentalists give precedence to fluency. It is a debatable issue. Anyhow, our learners should be using language accurately and appropriately. This is called communicative competence. You can integrate two, three or four skills in one lesson plan. Normally reading and writing are taught in unison and listening and speaking go hand to hand together. Reading and then speaking can be taught together as well. For your question 3 you can select a picture with captions and ask your students to first read it individually and then discuss in groups. At the end you can ask them to write a response to it. All the four skills will be integrated in one lesson 1. First go to a class (your class).Give them a reading passage.a picture an object ask them to read it individually..discuss it in groups. listen to them when they talk.. note down few observations.regarding accuracy of language..sentence structure.word choice.Fluency...connected speech norms.pronunciation. ..intonation..Then ask them to write few sentences describing the picture subjectively..The lesson should be integrated lesson. This is your pretest. Record your general observation in a diary such as i. Students are weak in producing language structures both in speech and writing ii. Their pronunciation is not goodthey are deficient in fluency.. This is your pretest. This will give you an idea regarding the weaknesses or strengths (if any) of your students. In the light of this.. 2. Now design a lesson plan based on your observation. You may use any activities/techniques in that lesson plan to develop students fluency/accuracy (to the extent possible). You may stretch your lesson plan on any number of days. This is called
Facilitator: Rustam (03459603918, rustam_123@ymail.com) http://rustamdiptefl.blogspot.com/

Research Projects (5660) DipTEFL Autumn 2012

treatment phase. You are treating your learners. You are trying to cure them of their ailments in writing, speaking and reading etc.. So you can give this treatment unless you are satisfied. 3. Ask two English teachers to sit in your class to observe your teaching and the progress of the learners. If teachers do not agree to sit on judgment in your class, then, show them your complete lesson plan and ask them to read it. Once they have read it or seen you in action in the class, then, interview them regarding your lesson plan. They will give you feedback on the teaching techniques you used in the class. They may come and visit your class and see you in action or they may be shown the lesson plan with all the techniques you plan to use in the class. Their feedback is a must. This feedback should be in the form of an . Read extensively as to how an interview is recorded. Your interview may be structured, semis structured or open one. Do record it and show it in your presentation Now after teaching the lesson, you do not need a post test. You are now to record the feed back of your students. You are to ask them about your lesson plan. Its utilityits efficacy.its execution.the benefits they have derived from it. Has this lesson plan improved their skills (reading.. writingspeaking..Listeningetc). Are they now fluent users of the languageAsk them if they are taught this way, do they think, there will be improvement in their language skills.etc. Design a Questionnaire for your students feedback. Include both open-ended and close ended questions. There should be at least 15 to 20 items (questions) in your questionnaire. Majority of the questions should be close-ended so that students may select the approripriate choice. One or two open-ended questions may be added. Filled-in Questionnaires of your class and the recorded interview of two teachers are your raw data. You have to analyse it qualitatively or quantitatively. Better discuss it qualitatively. It means general observations such asmajority of the students say that teaching techniques were effectiveone student said that.. Another student said Bothe the teachers said One of the teachers was of the view that..This sort of narrative will be your qualitative analysis. After analyzing the data, you may give few suggestions/recommendations regarding integrated skills teaching. The focus of the lesson plan should be on communicative proficiency..so listening..Speakingreading..Or writing should be integrated in one lesson plan.

interview

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Summary 1. You have to teach integrated skills to a class 2. The focus of the lesson should be communication. It means that learners should be equipped so that they can use language to realize many functions. 3. Design a lesson Plan on integrated skills. 4. Execute it in the class 5. Prepare a questionnaire for the class to have their feedback on techniques/strategies you used in the class 6. Ask two English teachers to observe you in the class OR 7. Give them your detailed Lesson Plan for perusal and then go and interview them 8. Record the interview in a mobile device(You can transcribe the interview to be attached with your report) 9. Analyse the Questionnaire and the Interview qualitatively 10. Attach with your report a. Lesson Plan b. Originally filled-in students questionnaires c. A Transcript of the Interview (in written Form).Also bring the video of the interview in which you are talking to the teachers.

Wish you good luck Best Regards Rustam

Facilitator: Rustam (03459603918, rustam_123@ymail.com) http://rustamdiptefl.blogspot.com/