The summary of the students’ course experiences with the teacher-researcher’s interpretations and comments
On a course like this where the participants’ language competence and proficiency differ, two main text materials at slightly different levels serve the course participants better than one single main material. The translation of the text into Finnish beside its English counterpart levels out differences in skills but also invites the students with a good level of competence to rely unnecessarily on the first language text. CD recordings of the text material are very useful for adults who may find listening comprehension worth specific attention. If the recording is paused, it gives the student time to repeat and does not
require the student to remain close by the CD player. The presentation of sensory channels, learning strategies and self-assessment through the CEF scales and grids demand proper preliminary tuition but all of them improve the students’ awareness of their own learning.
Tasks related to these activities bring variation to the course programme. In general, the course material was considered appropriate, useful and different from the usual. Opinions varied according to the participants’ English level and preferences.
Adults appreciate tasks that allow free expression, where one has to collect the ingredients and think. Even if some tasks types were repeated, learning was diverse and varied. If the language use is not closely bound to the book, it gives more. Conversely, assignments involving rote-learning do not serve adult students. Especially when the sessions are long or take place in the evening, varying tasks and participatory activities like changing groups are welcome. They help people to stay interested and active after their working day. Changing group sizes bring diverse experiences and introduce the course participants to everyone else. Whole group activities increase courage and give an opportunity to participate in general conversation. Medium-sized groups are convenient for the practice of spontaneous discussion and turn-taking especially if the order of the speakers is not predefined. Pair work is useful because it gives a secure environment for speaking but the gain depends much on the level of the pair. People on this kind of oral English course appreciate tasks that allow free expression, provide multifaceted learning and are not closely bound to the course book. The sessions ought to pass quickly on to active tasks and assignments. A suitably brisk tempo keeps the students involved. The challenges of pronunciations and circulating turns maintain interest. Speaking and communication ought to be ample, meaningful and empowering and aided by sufficiently easy vocabulary and material.
A plot spanning the whole course joins separate tasks and activities into a sequence and retains some familiarity across students’ possible absences from the course. A good plot creates liveliness and a positive atmosphere, includes the unexpected, gives freedom of expression and many possibilities for language use. Role-play attached to it can increase fluency, generate encouragement and individual freedom and, despite the roles, can concern real life. The roles provide a good start for speaking English. According to this research, the majority of students gain from the roles but there are people who find speaking as themselves and about their own lives more rewarding on the course and for the future. The plot and the roles involve narration but all people are not narrators, not equally creative and inventive as others, which diminishes equal participation. Also limited language resources for speaking can impede speaking when roles are used. In any case, the long-term roles should be carefully explained and later repeated to avoid uncertainty that disturbs learning.
According to these students, it is helpful to have more choice in the roles than is available here. The roles and authenticity are discussed in the context of autonomy in Part IIIA.
Music gives much, especially to the course climate. Listening to music facilitated concentration, had a calming influence and brought enriching images and this way supported language learning. However, music had the opposite influence on a person for
whom focussed concentration on one thing at a time was essential for learning. Background music prevents the work groups from disturbing and hearing the conversation in another group, even when they were not far away.
According to the inductively organised conversational data, the course stimulated speaking but was relaxing, too. It was a good course to resume English studies after a long break. The sessions moved on quickly to active tasks and assignments. The tempo kept the students involved all the time. The course was characterised by conversation, meaningful speaking and freedom in doing these.
Course participants’ suggestions and critical comments for the improvement of the course
Collecting words and expressions for a task in groups and writing those down by oneself would have given more than receiving them as handouts, which took place more often.
As a more participatory activity, collecting the words together would have been good and it would have created a calm moment in the middle of other activities demanding more energy. On the other hand, this practice offered less material for the task than a handout.
One valuable suggestion was that reading the text aloud in turns in the session should be delayed if people had worries about it. Even so, the reading should not be left out to help people overcome their fear or even trauma attached to it from school. It was important that it happened and mentioning it shows that they believed that the change could take place on this course. Less text reading and more conversation, the wish presented most often, could have increased the benefit. It would be worth trying provided the students study the text by themselves in advance. However, the change should not increase the amount of activities and tasks that demand a lot of action, especially in long sessions. On the other hand, some students could benefit from several readings of A Holiday in Cornwall texts.
Another suggestion was that one could get homework to make up for what one missed when unable to participate in every session but especially if there had been many such requests, it would have demanded more time than I could afford. Instead, the student in question got a compact presentation of the basic grammar that he also needed.
The course participants’ earlier studies and their English competence and proficiency varied, which is reflected in the suggestions. A short, compact grammar revision at the beginning was mentioned. It could have been quite useful for some of those at level A2. For some of them even the basic grammar had become vague. Many others had a sufficient, even very good command of grammar. We could not have begun with grammar on a relatively short oral English course especially when the preliminary information mentioned nothing about it. Some of those at B1 or perhaps above it suggested more demanding conversation beyond common situations, tasks involving listening to a text followed by the teacher’s questions on it, a prepared short talk and more demanding free conversation, tasks that
were too demanding for the rest of the group. For several of the people at this level, A Holiday in Cornwall could have been without translations. It was also presented as a wish that student negotiation on puzzling issues in the small groups would take place in English.
According to my experience, one of the two persons suggesting this would have coped easily with it. From the other person it would have demanded more effort, but this person had a strong motivation to learn and he was always looking for challenges to learn more. For him, non-speakers of Finnish would have been welcome on the course.
Students’ suggestions tell about the diversity of English levels among the course participants affecting their preferences and expectations. The English competence of many of them was at least B1, probably above it, even if their proficiency of speaking was not. A sufficiently low course level gives safety and it becomes even more important if the study context is new as it was for the majority of the students and if the previous studies are far in the past. The proficiency of those with a good general command of English advanced quickly as soon as they got used to speaking, started to recall what they had learned years ago and got over such impediments as scarce or practically lacking experience of speaking and fears of speaking. They noticed that they could cope with more demanding oral tasks. If so, they had reached their goal. The course was of suitable length. On a longer course, the differences in speaking English and in the course expectations among the students would have grown further.
PATHS AND SIGNPOSTS TO ADULTS’ IIIA ORAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION
Part IIIA continues answering the second research problem on the promotion of oral English communication and explores which ways course participation supported the students as users of English and promoted their oral English communication in the light of the inductive data analysis. The first section describes the key components of the course life which, according to the data analysis, were the course climate, the students as peers to each other, the teacher and participation as the prevalent form of work. The second section is conceptually organised and deals with the students’ cognitive, emotional and volitional resources and the changes in them during the research span. In this section, participation is viewed from the viewpoint of learning. The third section examines how the course influenced these people’s lives and identities as students and users of English, their achievements and plans whatever plans they may have for the future.
The data employed in Part IIIA came from the conversational interview data (for the categories, see Appendix 3) through inductive data analysis where the categories developed gradually and step by step. Because the data used here emerged from the fact that the students chose to mention them or alternatively, that the conversation somehow led them to these issues, the data discussion speaks of the diversity by dealing with all opinions but not everyone’s expressions. However, it is probable that for those who for example did not mention anything about a certain topic here, – climate and affective issues were prime examples of this – then, it had not been particularly important for the given student.
Although the two course groups differed from each other, the data from them are discussed together, with the exception of the last subsection in the first section, which only concerns the WE group. The membership of each student appears in Appendix 6. In addition to the conversational data, Part IIIA includes a small amount of teacher diary data.