We started this research based on some teachers’ difficulty have in recognizing students’ silence in class—not only in BASIC 3 but also in all the other levels. However, we have specifically selected BASIC 3 for being one of the most challenging modules in the whole course due to the quantity of information we have to teach. Therefore, we have created some questions that could be answered during the classes the teachers were going to watch. Then we selected four of these questions:
1. What strategies does the teacher use in order to convince a shy student to participate in a chat?
2. How does the teacher determine if the students are shy, in doubt or just thinking?
3. What strategies does the teacher use when the group is too immature for the topic being presented or the subject is not of great interest to the group?
4. How does the teacher offer feedback and orientation to the students who need to overcome silence and speak more?
Based on these four questions we have got the following results.
Question 1
Negative aspects:
· We observed that whenever a teacher addresses the whole group to ask something, only the students who are not shy or the ones who don’t mind being corrected answer those questions.
· If a teacher doesn’t include chats in his class preparation or if he doesn’t perform chats throughout his class, he will fail to perceive students’ limitations regarding their lack of production in class.
Positive aspects:
· When the teacher promotes a fun atmosphere, it makes students feel more relaxed, comfortable and motivated to participate.
· Eliciting is also a very important and stimulating tool to help these students.
· Addressing specific questions to specific students also help teachers detect which pupils need extra attention.
· Some teachers try to get a little friendlier with the students, asking them to justify their answers and showing real interest in their opinion.
· The teachers also help students create a mental picture so they feel sure about what they are saying.
Question 2
Negative aspects:
· Sometimes a teacher doesn’t pay much attention to his more quiet students, not on purpose, of course, but perhaps because he gets too absorbed in the topic being discussed or engaged in some sort of debate with the group.
· Controlling the use of Portuguese by the students may be a challenge too sometimes. In a way it shows a teacher’s lack of skills to handle such situations, but the most experienced ones tend to take control of the situation in an easier way.
· The time spent waiting for a reply from some quiet students is also a challenge in terms of time management.
· Teachers’ moods or emotional baggage during class is also an issue to be taken into account, for, if an instructor is not feeling well, is too tired for some reason or upset due to some external situation, it may also affect his perception.
Positive aspects:
· The teacher tries to elicit from the quiet students and, in the process, depending on the time it takes for the student to answer it, he will opt for group support.
· Guiding these quiet pupils through the activities helps too.
· Getting close to them and moving around the classroom is also very important because shy students tend to take a chance when the teacher is nearby.
· If the teacher is raising an issue for discussion, a good strategy may be to offer the students your own opinion first—that was one of the solutions that one of our teachers came up with while facing some problems with some quiet students.
· Of course, a teacher’s perception is something very personal. Experience helps.
Question 3
Negative aspects:
· One of the challenges here is when the teacher himself is also immature—not unusual, since many Wise Up teachers are very young, too.
Positive aspects:
· Sometimes a student tends to reject certain subjects, as observed in one of the classes in our branch. The teacher raised a topic about “being romantic” and one of the students said she was not a romantic and hated it (she was a teenager, as the teacher noted), but the teacher involved the girl in the topic, saying that she herself was not a romantic either and told her the things she did to be more of a romantic and its importance in a relationship. The teacher who observed the class said that she doesn’t know if her colleague could persuade the student about the relevance of being a romantic, but the girl certainly thought about it and also participated in the activity. Therefore, there are moments when a teacher needs to teach other values to the students than simply English.
· Widening a subject is an alternative to get students to think in a broader manner regarding certain topics. In the class that was observed there was a text about an article related to the Iraqi war. The teacher noticed that the students didn’t feel very interested in that topic so she decided to ask them about common subjects they usually read in the newspapers and they mentioned tragedies and wars, among other issues, and that was when she got them interested in the activity.
· Adapting the activity to the students’ reality is another good strategy. An example was when the teacher was going to run an exercise about the differences between different countries and decided to ask them about the differences between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo instead.
Question 4
Negative aspects:
· Not offering feedback or ignoring the students who are facing difficulties is a major problem, and that’s what I always reinforce to the teachers at our branch. We need to focus on the goals of the class and the goals of the module continuously.
· Lack of motivation may also affect the teacher’s interest in helping some students. The point is that a teacher may not exactly be willing to quit his job, but may be going through personal problems which will affect their performance as a whole and naturally affect the quality of their feedback.
Positive aspects:
· When the student does his unit preparation and homework, he feels more confident to take risks in class, so the teachers usually reinforce its importance.
· Teachers also tend to explain the importance of taking chances so students have an opportunity to identify their difficulties and be corrected.
· Some students feel very uncomfortable speaking English, especially beginners, so they end up speaking Portuguese, which is why a teacher must always emphasize the importance of using English in class.
· One of the teachers also emphasized the importance of being in contact with the target language through the use of the Internet, films, and music.
Conclusion
If one could think about some possible solutions to the problem raised in this Action Research, I could say that a teacher needs to go beyond good class preparation. A teacher needs to get close to his students, look them in the eye, and make them see that he, the teacher, really cares about them, the students.
The preparation of a class gives the teacher the necessary mindset and awareness about what a student is supposed to accomplish in that class. Along with that, the other elements of a class such as appropriate correction techniques, output awareness, the settings (when done correctly), and the chats will certainly make students achieve their goals more easily. Nonetheless, there is one thing that is more challenging for some teachers, which is sensibility, for it’s difficult to transmit it to them. I have already seen several teachers perform their classes and not always be able to perceive students’ needs. Due to a number of possibilities, such as the teacher’s motivation, stress or health problems, and also a badly prepared class, the teachers feel like focusing more on their teacher’s guide than on the class itself. Another issue is the fact that those instructors who have been working for a long time tend to take for granted that they have already prepared a certain class so many times that they believe they just need to take a quick look at it and that’s it. Therefore, overlooking or neglecting certain important elements of a class may jeopardize students’ participation, production and, naturally, their learning.