Palavras-chave: revisão de pares;
diálogos; fluência; Falando; inglês como uma língua estrangeira; ensino
superior.
Introduction and Literature
Review
Participants of this study held an A1 level, according to a
proficiency test taken online (https://www.kaplaninternational.com/free-english-test-online). This
mock test was chosen to determine the proficiency of students. They were
students of the Communication Systems and Network school. Before they finish
the third level, they need certifications from technological areas like CNN1
Cisco and IBM. Most certifications require spoken communication in English
given the personalized teaching of electronic circuits that come from North
America. Therefore, reaching standard levels of oral fluency for communication
is essential for these language learners. In addition, Ecuadorian policies
require university students to meet a B1 level prior to their graduation
(Consejo de Educación Superior, 2013).
Roeders (1997) mentioned that to improve education, active
learning techniques should be applied. Active learning techniques encourage
creativity and participation of students. They are sometimes included in lesson
plans to make students autonomous and critical human beings. This study
proposes active learning through the use of dialogues created by EFL students.
The content was related to students’ computing class.
Studies report that students have many reasons for not developing
speaking skills (Al-Eiadeh et al., 2016; Derakhshan et al., 2016). Some of
those are: confusion, embarrassment, deficiencies of English learning in prior
educational levels, difficulties in pronunciation, limited vocabulary,
fossilization, lack of confidence, anxiety due to inaccurate utterances, and
misunderstanding questions, among others. These conditions worsen when teachers
want to develop speaking skills in a non-English speaking country because
students are not expose to the language or do not need to use it (Rashtchi
& Khoshnevisan, 2008).
In this regard, Derakhshan et al. (2016) pointed out the
usefulness of practice, structure, and planning to develop speaking skills.
Moreover, Harmer (2007) suggested combining language features in communication.
In this context, students need input to create their dialogues. Krashen (2009)
mentioned that input is the new information students incorporate to what they
already know. He sustained that the focus should be in the meaning. The Council
of Europe (2018) considered conversation as a macro-functional basis of the
Common European Framework of Reference. It is within the interaction component
that transactional language use is visible for information exchanges to obtain
goods and services. Therefore, oral practice is better in dialogues to promote
communication. If the practice is authentic or simulates real situations,
students become engaged. In learning a new language, Rashtchi and Khoshnevisan
(2008) added students should also understand how native speakers manage the
language in context.
The Ecuadorian Ministry of Education has set student standards
taken from the Common European Framework as reference (Ministerio de Educación,
2012). Thus, this study included the ones from the spoken production which
served two objectives: for students to start conversations, and for the pair to
understand an interlocutor. The standard describes that students in A1 “can
understand everyday expressions aimed at the satisfaction of simple needs”
(Council of Europe, 2018, p. 84).
This study was based on the principles of Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT). In a list of components of CLT, Jacobs and Farrell (2003)
proposed teachers to consider: (a) the role of the learner is a key component
in the process; (b) teaching is based on process rather than product; (c)
school context is connected to the world; (d) individual differences of
learners and the of social nature of learning is considered; and, (e) the
emphasis is on meaning.
Considering the previous components, pair work through real-life
and field-related dialogues matches well the CLT approach. In this research,
students were active at writing their dialogues, and then recording in pairs.
They applied content related to their field of studies to connect school
practices with the world. Then, students shared their recordings in a What’s
App group created for the purpose of this study. Alamer and Al Khateeb (2021)
reported the advantages and challenges of applying What’s App in learning. They
highlighted the increase in students’ motivation when their teachers use this
application. The design of their study was quasi-experimental and their
participants were enrolled in two Saudi major universities.
In addition, Oprandy (1999, cited in Jacobs & Farrel, 2003)
pointed out the critical role of teachers in the design of pair work
activities. When they plan pair work, they should include meaningful tasks.
Richards (2006) defined meaningful tasks as those that students will be stored
in students’ long-time memory. Moreover, teachers must tolerate messiness
because of the organization of the tasks while identifying students’ needs to
meet them accordingly.
In the same venue, Harris and Noyau (1990, cited in Jacobs &
Farrel, 2003) sustained that pair work enhances learner’s autonomy. They
explained that the collaboration among peers raises independence from the
teacher, as it happened in other approaches. They also highlight the role of
meaningful tasks to retain more information. In this regard, it is important to
consider student’s preferences of topics.
This research proposes pair work to improve speaking through the
creation of dialogues shared in an application. Some considerations about
speaking are that it does not only aim at understanding the linguistic
features, but it also involves interpreting and knowing the meaning of the
message. To this end, important components are vocabulary and grammar
(Derakhshan et al., 2015). Lucas (2001) listed other decisions that appear
during this process like: being knowledgeable of the topic, organizing thoughts
into spoken ideas, structuring the message, and responding to the listeners’
feedback. For Backlund (1990 as cited in Al-Eiadeh et al., 2016), the same
issues are classified into social, self, and content knowledge. The author
added that communication may be impaired if students show deficiencies in one
of them.
Speaking involves fluency and accuracy. The first refers to the
ability to speak spontaneously and without many pauses. The latter to construct
grammatically correct ideas, phrases, or chunks (Derakhshan et al., 2015). For
other authors like Bygate, speaking also involves interaction and production.
Bygate (1997) defined production as the ability to speak without time
limitations; and interaction is produced when pairs negotiate the conversation.
Burns and Joyce (1997 as cited in Al-Eiadeh et al, 2016) shared similar points
of view. They considered speaking involves interaction to construct meaning.
This interaction means not only receiving and processing information but also
producing it.
Hence, students require extended, authentic, and meaningful
practice (Celce-Murcia, 2001; Jacobs & Farrel, 2003). Celce-Murcia (2001)
added that speaking tasks need structure and planning. This author suggested
using short dialogues, and a structure of question-answers to start with. Due
to students’ proficiency level, they required that the structure and planning
phases were preceded by vocabulary introduction.
Participants in this study belonged to the school of Network and
Telecommunications. Thus, technical vocabulary from their field of study were
introduced in readings. According to Mahraj (2018) and Wanpen et al. (2013),
learning technical vocabulary is an important factor to students of technical
areas of study. Students like to be familiar with the type of English used in
their career (Mahraj, 2018). They also need to communicate effectively and
convey meaning of that communication in their fields (Wanpen et al., 2013).
Mahraj (2018) classified vocabulary into two main categories. The first one
refers to the ones found in academic texts. The second one refers to the
lexicon that is associated with specific areas of study. To the previous
classification, Wanpen et al. (2013) added that sometimes the meaning of words varies,
or they can be unique if they are used in specific areas. For Mahraj (2018),
vocabulary enhances students’ performance in the four skills of the language.
The study of this author promoted grammar rules to raise students’ knowledge of
technical vocabulary.
To improve speaking, there are many research studies in the
context of EFL that have investigated teacher’s and students’ perspectives of
role plays (Krebt, 2017; Tran, 2016); the use of improvisation techniques for
transactional and interpersonal conversation (Hadeli, 2017); self-recording
videos (Rojas & Arteaga, 2019); and audiotaped dialogue journal (Rashtchi
& Khoshnevisan, 2008). In the last study, students interacted with the
teacher talking about a variety of topics. The purpose of the teacher, as in a
regular dialogue, was to be an active interlocutor who responded to students’
written work. Ho (2003 as cited in Rashtchi & Khoshnevisan, 2008) reported
that dialogue journals are excellent resource of input to ease appropriate
output. Recent studies report the use of revoicing or dubbing to improve
production skills (Ávila-Cabrera, 2022; Bolaños & Navarrete, 2022; Talaván,
2021).
This study proposed that students work in pairs to create a
dialogue after topics that were introduced. Pairs could rehearse before
recording and uploading the audio file to the What’s App group. When recording
the dialogues, students may demonstrate difficulties like one of the pair
trying to dominate the conversation, speaking very low and not clearly,
ignoring the pair, or making constant interruptions (Backlund, 1990 as cited in
Al-Eiadeh et al., 2016).
Methodology
Design
To determine improvement, a mixed design was implemented. It
included qualitative and quantitative instruments. The design applied was a
mixed methods design. Following Laverty’s process (2018), this study includes
quantitative instruments at the beginning, a qualitative intervention, and
quantitative instruments at the end. It finishes with the interpretation of the
results. In this study, the quantitative instruments were surveys at the
beginning and at the end as well as pre and posttests. The qualitative intervention
was action research. This design was adopted to answer the following research
questions:
1.
To what extent does pair work through dialogues improve spoken
fluency?
2.
To what extent will dialogues improve technical vocabulary?
3.
What are students’ perspectives towards this intervention?
Participants
Forty students from two different groups participated in this
study. They were Engineering and Networks majors. Their English proficiency was
A1, according to a test taken online
(https://www.kaplaninternational.com/free-english-test-online). Their ages ranged
from 18 - 40 years (M = 20.12, SD = 3.78). They were in the third semester of
the school of Mathematics and Physics at a public university in Guayaquil. Some
of the participants came from nearby cities. These two groups were assigned to
the teacher-researcher. They had similar limitations in speaking, that was the
reason to implement the study in both classes. When there were speaking
activities, the researcher observed that students did not actively participate.
Their responses were single word or phrases. They completed all activities in
this research. There were not students excluded.
Instruments,
pre and posttest
A pre and post-test provided statistical information to know if
the application of dialogues improved students’ speaking. They answered
research questions one (To what extent does pair work through dialogues improve
spoken fluency?), and two (To what extent will dialogues improve technical
vocabulary). The pretest was the first recording students did in pairs.
Students had to create a dialogue in pairs, record, and share it with the
teacher in the What’s App group. The same procedure was observed for the posttest.
The intervention lasted six weeks. In-between the pre and posttest, there were
five practices with different topics related to students’ area of study.
Recordings were graded using a rubric that included components:
fluency (speaking spontaneously and without many pauses), and vocabulary
(technical vocabulary). The highest grade for each component was 5 and the
lowest 1. The maximum grade students could get was 15. It was expected that
students start with an average of the lowest band and move to the second band.
To avoid bias in the results, the posttests were graded by a colleague.
Survey
Participants completed two surveys. The pre-survey was developed
to get demographic information to describe the participants. This survey was
made up of four questions. They were multiple choice items. In some cases, it
asked students to provide reasons for their responses.
This survey also included items with a Likert scale that goes from
Totally Disagree (5) to Totally Agree (1). The items were taken from the
literature review regarding speaking difficulties. There was also a section
about classroom activities in general, in speaking specifically, and pair work
to know background information of students about their previous learning
experiences.
The post survey included a Likert scale. The items related to
students’ feelings when speaking, speaking activities they practiced,
dialogues, and pair work. Similar items were compared to determine if students
changed their perspectives as a result of the innovation.
Both surveys were built in groups of ideas according to each main
variable, following Christensen and Knezek (2017) procedure. The section of the
Likert scale provided data to answer research question number three about
students’ perspectives towards the technical dialogues to improve their spoken
fluency. The surveys were piloted with a different group to improve the
instrument. It underwent a process of validation by three experts in the field
of English as a Foreign Language. Their comments were considered to improve the
consistency of the survey. Conbrach alpha was .76 in the pre-survey and .82 in
the post-survey which is interpret as a good internal reliability (Oviedo &
Campo-Arias, 2005).
Data
Analysis
This study includes a mixed-design. Once the normality of the data
was found, parametric tests were used. Quantitative data from the pre and
post-test was entered in a spreadsheet. Then, the data was exported to the
SPSS. Descriptive statistics were run like minimum, maximum, mean, and standard
deviation. The means were compared and contrasted to know if there was an
improvement through a pair t-test. The mean and the standard deviation were
entered in an online calculator to get the effect size and determine if the use
of dialogues had an impact in students’ speaking fluency and use of technical
vocabulary.
Survey responses were coded and registered in a spreadsheet.
Later, it was reported in a table with the means and standard deviation to
analyze if the perspectives of students prior and after the innovation changed.
To test the reliability of the surveys, the Conbrach alpha’s coefficient is
included.
Action
Research
Once the teacher identified the problem of students in speaking, a
lesson plan was developed to introduce the practice of dialogues. The
implementation lasted six weeks. Classes were held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Friday for two hours each day. The content was taken from the regular
coursebook and from adapted material related to Net and Telecommunication which
is students’ field of study. As suggested by Celce-Murcia (2001), students
planned and structured their dialogues before practicing them. The planning was
in pairs. They had to write and read a dialogue that reflected their
understanding of the passages. This practice was done after introducing the
topics and completing the activities of the book.
To raise students’ confidence and lower their anxiety levels, they
practiced their lines before they recorded their conversations. The teacher
monitored the process and provided feedback if needed. Students could use
other aids like pronunciation applications from google to help them improve
their utterances. Those aids were provided by the teacher or students could
search the ones of their preferences. Students typed in the search engine
(google) the sentence, question, phrase, or word and listened to them as many
times as they felt necessary.
After each practice, students used a rubric (Appendix 1) to
self-assess their work. This was introduced by the teacher. It was used with an
example of a recording. Students assessed their work to improve it in the next
delivery. This process was repeated five times. By the end of the
implementation, the first and last recordings were considered as pre and
posttest.
Results
Results of a preliminary survey, related to students’ background,
indicated that students practiced English outside classes for about two hours.
Twenty-two students said they spoke English to relatives or friends. The ones
that did not practice mentioned as the main reason the lack of money to do so.
Sixteen students reported to use technology to learn English.
Interestingly, students that did not use technology explained that
it was dangerous (13), they also said they lack resources (10), and there was
one student that indicated he did not have the necessity to practice English
outside classes. Most students (30) agreed that teachers should use technology
in the classroom. They considered technology makes learning interesting and
entertaining.
To use parametric or non-parametric measures, Kolmogorov-Smirnov
normality test indicated that the data was not normally distributed (p >
.001). Thus, parametric tests were applied. The first research question
addressed to what extent dialogues improved fluency. Table 1 shows that there
was an improvement in this component of the rubric. It means students spoke
spontaneously and without many pauses their dialogues. After rehearsing, they
did not use their lines to read as they did at the beginning. The result of p
< .001 indicates that the findings are statistically significant. According
to the scale provided by Plonsky and Oswald (2014), a result of Cohen’s d =
3.13 is interpreted as having a large magnitude of impact.
Table
1
Results
of the pre and posttest for fluency
|
|
Min
|
Max
|
Mean
|
SD
|
p
value
|
Cohen’s
d
|
|
Pre
|
1
|
3
|
1.75
|
.716
|
.000
|
3.13
|
|
Post
|
3
|
5
|
3.95
|
.686
|
Note:
Viteri Guevara, X. O. (2019) for Master’s thesis, Universidad Casa Grande.
Departamento de Posgrado.
The second research question referred to the incidence of
dialogues in terms of technical vocabulary. Table 2 evidence an improvement as
result of the innovation, p < .001 indicates that the results were
statistically significant. There is a large impact for learning, too (Cohen’s d
= 3.17).
Table
2
Results
of the pre and posttest for technical vocabulary
|
|
Min
|
Max
|
Mean
|
SD
|
p
value
|
Cohen’s
d
|
|
Pre
|
1
|
3
|
2.15
|
.671
|
.000
|
3.17
|
|
Post
|
3
|
5
|
4.10
|
.553
|
Note:
Viteri Guevara, X. O. (2019) for Master’s thesis, Universidad Casa Grande.
Departamento de Posgrado.
These
results indicate that there was improvement in all components of the rubric to
a large extent. They are all statistically significant. From all components
that the rubric evaluated for speaking, the one that improved the most was
vocabulary.
For the last question, students provided their perspectives
towards the components of this intervention. The following table summarizes the
most relevant perspectives from pre and post results of the survey for the
variables of this study.
There was a change in students’ perspectives from their feelings
when they speak which were negative (totally agree=5) at the beginning to
positive at the end (totally disagree=1). On the other hand, there was a low
mean for the items that involved the aspects of planning and recording the
dialogue in the pre-test. That result improved in the post-survey which
indicates that students structured what they were going to record.
Table
3
Results
of the pre and post survey.
|
When
you speak in English, you …
|
Pre
M(SD)
|
Post
M(SD)
|
|
Feel
confused for not knowing what to say.
|
3.15(.98)
|
1.87(.64)
|
|
Feel
afraid of making mistakes pronunciation, grammar.
|
3.61(.96)
|
1.75(.59)
|
|
Translate
everything you want to say.
|
3.46(.69)
|
1.77(.77)
|
|
Can’t
continue the conversation because of lack of vocabulary.
|
3.29(1.02)
|
1.75(.77)
|
|
Speak
with not many pauses.
|
3.54(.96)
|
1.8(.85)
|
|
Planning
and Recording the Dialogue
|
Pre
|
Post
|
|
Created
dialogues to practice with peers.
|
2.49(.54)
|
3.48(.64)
|
|
Write
a dialogue from ideas from the book.
|
2.49(.51)
|
3.9(.84)
|
|
Write
a dialogue about a conversation related to your field.
|
2.44(.52)
|
3.9(.78)
|
|
Practice
a dialogue about general ideas.
|
2.78(.63)
|
4(.93)
|
|
Practice
a dialogue related to Net and Telecommunication.
|
2.73(.71)
|
3.78(.77)
|
Note:
Viteri Guevara, X. O. (2019) for Master’s thesis, Universidad Casa Grande.
Departamento de Posgrado.
In the next table, the items on the left were included in the
pre-survey and the ones on the right were added in the post-survey. Students
checked the answers of neutral and disagree (3-2) at the beginning, and the
tendency moved to agree and totally agree at the end.
Table
4
Results
of the pre and post survey about pair work.
|
Pair
work
|
|
|
|
Pair
work is useful to practice speaking.
|
2.68
(.55)
|
We
worked equally.
|
3.97
(.53)
|
|
Pair
work for speaking is difficult because the student who knows more dominates
the conversation.
|
3.02
(.85)
|
We
agreed in the flow of the conversation.
|
3.75
(.78)
|
|
It
is not advisable because some pairs speak slowly.
|
2.73
(.68)
|
It
was easy to work in pairs to give more ideas.
|
3.92
(.86)
|
|
It
is not advisable because some pairs do not pronounce correctly.
|
2.80
(.73)
|
There
was interaction when planning the dialogue.
|
3.88
(.82)
|
|
The
pair makes constant interruptions.
|
2.90
(.86)
|
There
was interaction when practicing.
|
4.55
(.64)
|
|
|
|
There
was interaction during the recording.
|
4.22
(.58)
|
Note:
Viteri Guevara, X. O. (2019) for Master’s thesis, Universidad Casa Grande.
Departamento de Posgrado.
The following results reflect students’ perspectives towards the
implementation of dialogues to improve their fluency. These items were included
in the post-survey. The mean of each item refers to neutral (3), agree (4), and
totally agree (5).
Table
5
Results
of the pre and post survey
|
Writing
the dialogue helped me recall vocabulary.
|
3.72(.85)
|
|
When
we recorded the dialogues, we did not have many pauses.
|
4.30(.57)
|
|
Dialogues
are useful to practice speaking.
|
4.12(.69)
|
|
Dialogues
are difficult because the student who knows more dominates the conversation.
|
3.80(.82)
|
Note:
Viteri Guevara, X. O. (2019) for Master’s thesis, Universidad Casa Grande. Departamento
de Posgrado.
The positive results evidence the impact of recording dialogues to
improve speaking in general, and specifically in fluency. This practice also
contributed to expand students’ knowledge of technical vocabulary. Their points
of view demonstrated that they agreed with this implementation.
Discussion
In regards to speaking, some authors consider linguistic features
like vocabulary and grammar (Derakhshan et al., 2015), others mention decisions
about topic, organization or ideas, structure of the message, and responding to
the listeners’ feedback (Lucas, 2001). For Backlund (1990 as cited in Al-Eiadeh
et al., 2016), the same topics are classified into social, personal and content
knowledge. In the first recording, deficiencies were detected in the creation
of dialogues. Students were very slow and unclear. At the end, they managed to
create more spontaneous dialogues, they were more confident when speaking and
had a fluid expression when working in pairs. This may be the effect of
including the social (pair work), personal (students’ individual contributions
to the task), and content knowledge (technical vocabulary) as stated by
Blacklund (1990 cited in Al-Eiadeh et al., 2016).
Lucas (2001) contributed with some decisions that students make
when they speak; for example: being knowledgeable of the topic, organizing
thoughts into spoken ideas, structuring the message, and responding to the
listeners’ feedback. In this study, students did not respond to feedback; but,
they were knowledgeable of the topic, they organized their thoughts in writing,
and practiced several times to record the voice message that was uploaded to
the What’s App group.
Passages chosen were related to their field of study, Backlund
(1990 as cited in Al-Eiadeh et al., 2016) referred to this as content
knowledge. Thus, this component may have motivated students to participate in
the activity and learn technical vocabulary that they have not seen in previous
English classes. Teaching technical vocabulary not only aims to understand
linguistic characteristics, but also implies interpreting and knowing the
meaning of the message (Derakhshan et al., 2015). In the first recording, the
vocabulary was very limited, there was no way to build relevant dialogues that
were understood by the couple. In the analysis of post-recordings, it was
determined that students produced coherent sentences and phrases connected with
the words and topics that were introduced.
About technical vocabulary, Mahraj (2018) and Wanpen et al. (2013)
agreed that it is an important factor in the career of students. Students find
it useful to be familiar with technical words, since they could relate this
content with their classes in Spanish. It was noticed that students did not
translate the passages but they structured the dialogues according to the main
ideas of the content. Wanpen et al. (2013) sustained that the meaning of the
words can be unique is they are used in specific areas. The technical words for
students of engineering and networks are similar in English and Spanish.
Therefore, that connection may have contributed to the improvement in speaking
of this study and the reduction or not use of translation.
As suggested by Celce-Murcia (2001) as well as Jacobs and Farrel
(2003), students had several extended and meaningful practice. Celce-Murcia
(2001) recommended structuring and planning the speaking activities. This
structure and planning was done by students. They created the lines that were
recorded in pairs. The teacher monitored their work. It was noticed that all
students participated. They were engaged and involved until they finished the
activity. However, they needed time to plan, rehearse, and record their
dialogues.
Students’ perspectives towards speaking report they had problems
when they spoke (confusion, afraid of making mistakes, long pauses, lack of
vocabulary). After the study, those opinions were reduced. Students’ responses
to the survey indicated that they had not been exposed to the process of
writing dialogues and recording them. They did not believe in pair work. They
considered it useless, and difficult due to circumstances like: pairs speaking
slowly, mispronunciation, and interruptions. That perspective also changed to
positive reactions towards pair work. In terms of the innovation, students gave
the highest scores to recording dialogues and to improve fluency.
These positive perspectives towards the variable of the innovation
may have been due to the principles of CLT applied: focusing on the role of
learner, teaching the process, emphasizing on meaning, and connecting school to
the real world. With pair work, these students relied less on the teacher. This
means they were becoming autonomous learners (Jacobs & Farrell, 2003).
Conclusions
Once a limitation in speaking was observed in English classes,
pair work and recording of dialogues were implemented to overcome that
situation. Another component was that technical English related to students’
field of study was included in the lessons. Students had to plan and organize
their thoughts in writing before they recorded the dialogues.
The first recordings were short, they were simple, and they had
communication errors. Sharing passages that connected content of students’
interest to create dialogues had a great impact on speaking skills and its
components: fluency, accuracy, vocabulary, and interaction. All students had
the opportunity to participate, it was a student-centered activity.
At the end of the intervention, it was observed that students did
not need the teacher to structure their conversations. Thus, this
student-centered activity raised their autonomy and self-confidence in their
speaking production. Another finding was that students did not only listen to
their recordings but those of others. They could have been comparing and
contrasting their work.
To conclude, the implementation of this innovation not only
upgraded students’ speaking but it also changed their perspectives towards pair
work and speaking itself. They considered the components of this innovation
helped them improve in accuracy, pronunciation, and fluency. This research
extended the positive quantitative results to a kind of autonomy, confidence,
and extended listening. However, the findings should be interpreted with
caution due to the number of students (40).
Limitations
and Recommendations
In the research process, one of the main limitations was to
analyze and select the materials to prepare the lesson plan. There is a lack of
resources in the educational institution. However, it was possible to adapt activities,
so they do not require the use of other technology like: projectors, computers,
or the internet. It is suggested to determine the level of the students to
select the material according to their proficiency. A proficiency or placement
test is thus required.
There was not a control group. The teacher-researcher implemented
the innovation in the two groups that he was assigned because they both had
speaking difficulties. For future research, a control group can be considered
to raise validity in the research.
In order to better explain or support quantitative results,
interviews should be carried out. This will lead to richer conclusions. Parts
of the survey can be turned into questions to get information that reinforces
the quantitative data.
There were some organization limitations like crowded classes, and
poor attendance of students. They usually arrived late because they travel to
the university from their hometowns which are located nearby. Sometimes they
reported to have economic problems to pay the transportation.
Lastly, students were expected to use the computers in the
laboratory to record their dialogues and to search for information to improve
the draft they had made in classes. However, there was a protocol to ask for
the room because it was available for all faculty. Besides, the time allowed
for each group was limited amount.
Instead and to continue with the intervention, students used their
mobile phones to record the dialogues. It was specially challenging to monitor
and practice speaking in the computer lab in the institution where this action
research took place for different reasons, namely: Not everyone could upload
their work to the platforms because the microphones did not work appropriately,
limited connectivity, the time was not enough, and there were not computers for
each student.
References
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