S. Baratova. Teaching Culture through Authentic Materials: Evaluating the Efficiency

S. Baratova. Teaching Culture through Authentic Materials: Evaluating the Efficiency

Teaching Culture through Authentic Materials: Evaluating the Efficiency

Svetlana Baratova

Gulistan State University

 Research Question

The primary question of the research was “Whether authentic materials prove to be more efficient while used within project works in teaching culture?”

In Introduction to Project Work (1992) by Tom Hutchinson, specifics of project working are described. A project is a result of hard work, because the authors have to find information for their project, get pictures or draw some, make a draft containing their ideas, then put everything together and complete the text, the result of which is a presentation.

“A project is an extended piece of work on a particular topic where the content and the presentation are determined principally by the learners.”[1]

The teacher can provide the topic, but the authors decide themselves what exactly are they going to write and how will they present it.

Because a project is a creative task, it is also personal.

The reason for doing project work are based on the fact that there is a strong communicative aspect, which enables the students to use the language in something real, not in an artificial exercise. Principal elements of communicative approach are a concern for motivation, a concern for relevance and a concern for educational values. Motivation is a crucial key for successful learning. Project work is especially useful for developing positive motivation.

As mentioned above, projects are personal. The students write about their lives, their families, their cities or their researches into topics that interest them. Because of such personal approach, both sense of the project and its presentation are important for students. Projects are not simulations. They are real.

Projects are also very operative. It is actually a play. The learners have to collect information, draw pictures, maps or charts, cut out pictures, carry out interviews and surveys and make recordings.

Diane Phillips, Sarah Burwood and Helen Dunfold say in their publication Projects with Young Learners (2003) that projects develop children’s whole personality:

• intellectual skills (describing, drawing, imagination, reading, planning)
• physical / motor skills (colouring, painting, folding, cutting etc.)
• social skills (sharing, cooperation, making decisions, appreciating individual contributions)
• learner independence (making responsible choices, getting information, evaluating results)

According to Hutchinson, project work enables all students to produce a worthwhile product. Therefore it is highly suitable for mixed ability classes and for students with special educational needs. The brighter students can work faster while at the same time, the slower students can work in their own pace and produce something they can be proud of. They can use more visual aid to compensate their language imperfection.

The advantages of projects according to Phillips, Burwood and Dunfold are:

• The project focus is on all aspects of children’s life, not only on their linguistic competences. Therefore they can easily relate what they know from their lives to concrete problems.
• Projects encourage students to be responsible for their work and their learning.
• Projects allow students with different competences cooperate when working out the project. It is a kind of solution for mixed – ability classes.
• Personal involvement is high, which support students’ motivation for further learning.

Hutchinson says that projects are good for integration of foreign languages into learner’s communicative competence. “It encourages the use of a wide range of communicative skills, enables learners to exploit other spheres of knowledge, and provides opportunities for them to write about things that are important in their own lives.”[2] The language used in projects is more relevant to students´ needs. They can rehearse use of language, which would be the most useful for them in real life.

There is a big culture part in project work. The learner can not only mention their own culture, but also explore into foreign cultures and compare them with each other.

Project work supports independent work, cooperation, imagination and self-discipline. These are some of the basic aims in the most curricula. Recently, the requirement of cross-curricular learning has been raised and anchored in Uzbekistan. Project work obviously encourages using knowledge gained in other subjects such as Geography, History, civics etc.

There are also some disadvantages in project working.

Firstly, there may be more noise in the classroom when the students are working out their projects. However, Hutchinson claims that there is not really a problem of noise, but a problem of control. The teacher has to be able to manage the class during such an alternative way of work as well as during common teaching. There will always be some noise, because the students need to discuss some thing with their classmates and need to borrow some tools or books. But it is a natural noise, which is comparable with noise made during common teaching: teacher’s strong voice or whole class repeating after the teacher can be even noisier.

Secondly, time management is definitely a thing to consider. If a project is a group work, most of it must be done at school. But students can work outside the class, too. They can have some partial or individual tasks to work out.

Lastly, the teacher has to decide whether he prefers the students to speak only English all the time or whether they can use their mother tongue, too. Hutchinson says that is does not matter when they use mother tongue. We should rather consider its merits than to see it as a problem. The product will be English anyway, so we can allow the learners to use their mother tongue during working it out.

        For teachers, project work has a wide use. It is a flexible methodology, which can be applied on every level except of complete beginners. It is suitable for all ages.

The teacher should choose the topic according to the age of his students, their interests, level of English, available sources and the amount of time which can be devoted to the project.

The question of the research was to find out whether the project works that involved enormous use of authentic materials facilitated the learning of the given material and analyze the efficiency of these project works using authentic materials from the point of view of students who took part in the project works.

Methodology

Respondents and the Procedure of Investigation

Students of the second year of the English language and literature department of Gulistan State University were taken as respondents of the research. The students consisted of 3 groups: group 1-13, group 2-13 and the group 3-13 who were taking the Country Study course in the academic year 2015-2016 fall semester and spring semester.

There were 75 students who took part in the research. The level of the English language of the respondents was of different levels ranging from B1 to B2+ level.

The classes of Country Study course was conducted by the senior teacher of the department Kulidi Olga Valentinovna.

The research was mainly interested in the efficiency of integrating authentic materials into project works that’s why there had been chosen 2 project work lessons conducted in the fall semester and spring semester.

The first lesson was conducted on theme “The most famous historical events in the history of Great Britain” from January 12 to January 16.

The second row of lessons was conducted on topic “Peculiarities of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland” from 9 March to 24 March in all three groups of the second year students.

The sequence and choice of the lessons were relevant because all of the groups experienced the same material and the same topic.

During the investigation one questionnaire comprising 12 questions were prepared in order to find out the efficiency of authentic materials given within project works (see Appendix 1).

The first part of the questionnaire concerns the personal information of the students e.g. their age, gender and self-assessed level of English.

The second part of the questionnaire is mostly about the project works and authentic materials. The questionnaire was designed in order to learn about the students’ experience of project works, their experience of using authentic materials, and their attitude towards the use of authentic materials.

Discussion of Findings

 

The first question was whether the students knew what project work was. And according to results of the questionnaire almost all of the students knew what a project work was. In group 1-13 89% of respondents answered “Yes” and only 11% answered “No” to the question. In group 2-13 85% of the students had knowledge of project works and only 15% did not know what a project work was. In group 3-13 90% of students was aware of the notion of project works while 10% could not imagine what the project work was.

The numbers in group 1-13 and 3-13 can be explained by the wide range of project works they had taken part prior the questionnaire and as we can see from the graph 1 the group that showed the least results was 2-13, which can be explained with the lack of involvement of students in different types of projects during their studies.

The second question on the questionnaire aimed at identifying the number of students involved in the project works during attending the course of Country Study, to which all of the students answered positively. Every student in the project had his or her own allocated role and every student had taken part in the works enthusiastically.

The third item of the questionnaire aimed at identifying the feelings of students when taking part in the project works e.g. role-plays and other activities in the form of project and role-play.

As it can be seen on the graph 2 most of the students enjoyed the project work while learning the country study course.

In group 1-13 most of the students (25%) enjoyed the project work, 12% of the students were afraid of the project work, it can be explained by the fear of the weak students of failing the project work and not meeting the standards set by the course teacher.

27% students felt motivated during the work, 13% were worried, as it appeared from the questionnaire results the students who had higher level of proficiency in the English language felt worried.

In the group 2-13 only 3% of students felt motivated as compared to the group 1-13 and 3-13 this group showed the lowest results in terms of being motivated by project works. However, 28% of students enjoyed learning doing project works. Number of students feeling worried and excited were almost the same (22%) and the number of students being afraid of doing project work was also highest in this group compared to groups 1-13 and 3-13.

The group 3-13 showed the highest results in terms of all feelings. 30% of students in this group were highly motivated, 28% of students enjoyed the project work, only 10 percent of students were afraid of failing the work and 12% students felt worried. And again the students with highest marks and language proficiency level felt worried during project work. As it appears students that are used to earn highest grades and used to show high quality tasks are always worried of failing and being disqualified when doing a task (Graph 2).

Comparing all the trends in the graph 2 we can see that the most result was shown in terms of enjoying the project works (81%), on the second place it comes for being motivated, almost 61%, being excited 63% and being afraid and worried gained the same results (43%) for both of the feelings (Graph 3).

The next item in the questionnaire was “If you felt motivated in during the project works, what do you think motivated you the most?”. We designed the following question in order to identify the crucial points of the project work that motivates them most while preparing for project works and doing the work.

“Motivation is one of the most important factors influencing learner achievement.” To be more precise, according to Harmer it “determines how much a person will learn and when he will learn it”. It might differ from person to person, as it depends on numerous factors which influence individuals, such as their needs, interests, personal goals or even their background.

These results are interesting in the light of students´ responses to the previous questions, as one could hypothesize that if students considered AM to be undemanding, enjoyable and useful they might also find them motivating.

Although undoubtedly, the percentage of those who agree that AM are useful in the process of language acquisition is higher than of those who do not. Therefore, we might consider it to be a success if more than half of the students in a group get more motivated to learn English due to using AM in the lesson.

As the questionnaire results revealed the most prevailing motivator in all the groups was assessment and scores that students will get for accomplishing the project work (Graph 4). The next motivating factor was authentic materials used in the works (16 students out of 75 students), next is group work, as the projects involve mostly the use of group work as a preparation stage for the task to present (13 students out of 75), then comes teacher’s instructions (12 students out of 75).

         These statistics show a sort of contradiction in respondents´ opinion, as one might suppose that if students consider something to be undemanding, funny and useful, they also find it motivating. However, according to the results it does not have to correspond exactly with each other.  It seems to me that it would advisable to investigate the components of students´ motivation or their perception of the word “motivating”. However, it would require another research primarily focused on motivation, which was not the purpose of the present study.

        As it appears teachers instructions, his or her explanation of the material and pre-task preparation stage play a key role in motivating students attitude toward learning the subject and compiling the project work (Graph 5).     

     We can draw a conclusion that assessment factor of any task is a prevailing factor in motivating students to participate in the projects and show their best qualities in order to obtain highest marks.

        Overall we can conclude that authentic materials also play an important role in raising students’ motivation and concentrating their efforts on learning the subject and accomplishing the task.

        The next question was “What did you find most interesting in the project works?” and the aim of the question was identify the factors that lead to the successful reception of the projects and things that involved learners most of all.

        Most of the respondents, approximately 75% of the students admitted that the interaction among students was the most enjoying factor that led to successful accomplishment of the project works.

        Moreover, the materials that they had prepared, the articles about UK and interesting facts about the life of English speaking people also was interesting for them (about 43%).

        The next question on the questionnaire was “What authentic materials were used in the project you and your groupmates had prepared?”

        Before presenting the questionnaire the students were given clear definition of authentic materials in order not to mislead students perception of authentic materials and acquire clear data for the research analysis.

        As it can be seen on the graph above the widely used authentic materials included Articles on the historical facts about Great Britain and their peculiarities. The next place was pictures of Great Britain and items of clothes of British origin.

        Most of the used materials were student generated materials, nevertheless they can be admitted as authentic as most of the materials, e.g. articles and pictures are regarded to be authentic and designed not for educational purposes.

        Among the most important questions of the questionnaire was “Did the authentic materials help you to learn the topic better?” as the purpose of the question was to learn about the benefits of the authentic materials during the educational process.

            As the graph above illustrates 20 students in the group 1-13 admitted the usefulness of authentic materials, 21 students in group 2-13, and 15 students out of 18 in group 3-13 agreed that the authentic materials served for the better understanding of the materials given in during the project works.

        Overall 56 students out of 75 (75%) admitted the usefulness of authentic materials, 8 students out of 75 (11%) claimed that they don’t know the usefulness or not usefulness of authentic materials and 11 students out of 75 (15%) admitted that the authentic materials were not so useful and they were difficult to understand.

        The next item on the questionnaire contained the following question and the aim of the question was to let students reflect on their English lessons experiences and compare the lessons they attended given by other teachers during their studies “Comparing the lessons conducted without authentic materials evaluate the efficiency of lessons conducted using authentic materials using scores from 1 to 5 (1 being not efficient at all, 2- not so efficient, 3-less efficient, 4-efficient, and 5 being most efficient)”.

As it can be seen from the graph above and below 45% of students claim that lessons given by using authentic materials are much more efficient than the lessons conducted without using them.  36% of students found the lessons that use authentic materials most effective among other lessons conducted using other materials. Only 12% of students find it less efficient, and 7% as compared to 45% of students find the lessons that involve the use of authentic materials not so efficient.

To sum up we can clearly see that the majority of students are for the use of authentic materials during the lessons as they motivate them, involve them and facilitate their language learning by enriching it with new content.

Below are the results for the next question on the questionnaire that asked to reflect on the working process on authentic materials and evaluate the degree of difficulty of working with authentic materials. So the question was “Was it easy or difficult to work with authentic materials (such as videos, texts, recordings, pictures and so on)”

        Most of the students admitted that the process of working with authentic materials was not so difficult while it only involved watching the video and pictures and read short articles about Great Britain.

        However there were students who admitted the negative sides of authentic materials being it not targeted at their level and that most of the articles from the internet was above their language level.

As the graph shows the majority of students found pictures easy to use and understand (48 students), and 35 students found articles as difficult to understand and use as compared to pictures and videos. 22 students out of 75 found videos easy, 18 students found articles to be easy and 26 students found recordings to be easy to use while doing the project work.

Overall in 114 cases authentic materials was found easy to use, in 86 cases it was found as not so easy to use and in 100 cases it was found difficult to use.

The difficulty of using authentic materials during the lessons can be explained with the fact that the students of the second year at the department not always encounter authentic materials during the lessons.

Reasons why some students have a stronger willingness to learn a foreign language can be different. Some people simply love the language itself. Other may have practical intentions (Harmer, 1998), such as to get a job abroad or to apply to a university in a foreign country and therefore they prefer to learn from materials which might be useful for their future.

“What aspects of language have you mastered or developed while using authentic materials during the project work? (e.g. new vocabulary, listening, reading, speaking, facts about the UK culture)” was the next question on the questionnaire which aimed at identifying the usefulness of authentic materials in terms of mastering or developing language skills and systems.

The graph illustrates the distribution of responds concerning the language skills and systems and facts about the UK culture and history learned during the project works in groups 1-13, 2-13 and 3-13.

The biggest number of students (36 out of 75) stated that they had learned a lot of interesting things about the culture of Great Britain while using authentic materials during project works.

In terms of grammar and lexis only 12 students out of 75 asserted that they had learned the systems of language while doing project works.

And as compared to productive and receptive skills they both gained almost the same results 12 to 15 students out of 75.

One can assume that the use of authentic materials led to deeper and thorough reception of knowledge given during the project works.

The slight difference in their opinions of 10 % might indicate that students have probably recognized the importance of using AM in the process of developing language skills to a level which corresponds with the requirements of English language studies. However, according to this high rate of agreement we might assume that students not only find AM useful, but they even require the enrichment of traditional teaching materials with them.

The last question on the questionnaire was whether students recommend using authentic materials to other teachers or not in order to make their lessons more entertaining and involving.

As it appears majority of students have a clear idea of quality of lessons and expect teachers to use authentic materials during their classes. However, not all the teachers can meet their expectation and provide wider use of authentic materials.

According to the questionnaire about 92% of all students highly recommend teachers to use authentic materials during their classes as only 5% of respondents do not recommend to use materials as compared to 92% who recommend and 3% that do not know about it.

We can clearly see and draw conclusions from the poll that was conducted among the second year students that at present students are fully aware of their needs and aims in terms of learning a language and clearly identify usefulness of authentic materials for the linguistic development. We may conclude that teachers should meet the requirements of students and find all possible ways and means to make their lessons interesting and beneficial for students. In this case the use of authentic materials can serve as another factor that lead to high quality lessons and meet the expectation of language learners.

 REFERENCES

[1] Hutchinson, Tom. Introduction to Project Work. Oxford University Press, 1992. p. 10

[2] Hutchinson, Tom. Introduction to Project Work. Oxford University Press, 1992. p. 12