Action Research

Thoughts

            Action Research is a very straightforward concept. Because of the simplicity, it allows you, as a teacher, to get right to the business of solving problems. As a teacher who deals with a wide variety of educational and language needs, I feel fairly confident in my ability to solve educational problems. However, Action Research has allowed me to fine tune these abilities by zeroing in on the heart of the issue. This allows me to look for changes and solutions I can use that will not only solve problems for one student, but possibly prevent problems for the entire group in the future.

Ideas

            The biggest and most important idea I have had as a result of my Action Research is the idea of front loading students with simple English vocabulary. When I was using pictures to represent words with a target sound, I was encountering major problems with students not recognizing the words in English, but in their native language. Often, the words did not have the target sound in them. By taking the time to teach the words we would be using, I removed a lot of roadblocks before we encountered them. This eased the remainder of the lesson as we moved from oral to written language. Sometimes, changing the order of instruction can alleviate many issues instead of encountering them when sticking to a previously set order of instruction.

Suggestions

            The most important thing I can think of to suggest to other ESL professionals is to keep in mind that oftentimes, the words we would normally use to help teach sounds to our students are not the same in their language. We can not count on our students to have the same familiarity as native speakers of English. If you teach with this in mind and address the problems early, you will greatly improve your students’ chances for successful language acquisition while saving yourself a lot of headache in the process.