The area of personality and second language learning is a very complex one as can be seen from the variable results obtained by past studies. Our research grew out of the feeling that we might be disadvantaging our quieter students in some way by the teaching methods we used. We chose vocabulary learning as an easily quantifiable means of exploring this.
What did we learn from our results?
We learned some very useful things in the course of the study:
- Our ESOL team already has many strategies in place for encouraging and including quieter students. It was very helpful to share these together.
- Pairwork is one of the mainstays of our class activities and so it was good to see that this was effective for all personality types.
- Introverts were the only group to score above 50% in all the post- and end of term tests so they are clearly managing to learn effectively whichever teaching method is used.
- Working alone was effective for both introverts and extraverts (in terms of the post-test results). It would be good to use this more often.
- Most of the students were very positive about the helpfulness of the lessons. The image below gives an idea of the sorts of words students used when filling in the questionnaires.
There were also some aspects of the project that were a surprise or left us with further questions:
- Extraverts performed least well overall. Is our teaching therefore actually disadvantaging them and not the introverts? Alternatively, could it be that the test-teach-test formula used gave the introverts an advantage?
- Retention of the lexis was generally poor. The coursebook does recycle language, but more effort is needed to ensure that words are retained beyond the end of the lesson.
Finally, there were some things we wished we had done differently:
- We had some technology problems which meant that some of the individual interviews with the second class were not recorded. It would have been good to have had a backup device available.
- Another time I [Rachel] would interview the students in pairs rather than in large groups and alter the questions, homing in on "What have you learnt about yourself?" which I feel would give more useful feedback.
- It was unfortunate that the weather words handout had an error on it which wasn't discovered until the first lesson, leading us to repeat the pairwork exercise. However, encouragingly, students were still all positive about the lesson overall and found it helpful.
Actions taken as a result of the project
From the comments made by both students and teachers we were able to produce a student
advice sheet with suggestions for learning vocabulary and also for language
learning in general if students are more introverted.
This has yet to be piloted with our learners but we believe it will provide a useful tool to encourage them to explore different ways of learning vocabulary.
Final reflections on the project
Kate talks about what she has learned:
1. It's always so helpful to learn from other teachers. For me, one of the most useful parts of the project was learning how the other members of our team work with quieter students. It was also really helpful to have time to discuss different aspects of the project with Rachel and to gain the benefit of her experience
2. I am a strong introvert and can sometimes overcompensate in my teaching by trying to make everything lively and fast paced (to me!). Working alone was shown to have value and is worth repeating in class.
2. I am a strong introvert and can sometimes overcompensate in my teaching by trying to make everything lively and fast paced (to me!). Working alone was shown to have value and is worth repeating in class.
3. I need to aim
for a balance of activities - I do this anyway but it's worth thinking
about this from a personality point of view as well as in terms of of learning outcomes.
- Quieter individual activities give some "recovery time" to me and the more introverted students.
- Extraverts actually performed quite well when working on their own - it is worth encouraging students to work for at least some of the time in their non-preferred ways as they may be more effective than expected.
- For the purposes of the research, we kept the different types of activity very separate. In reality in the classroom, we often use a mix of approaches for one activity eg "do it on your own and then pair check". This provides reassurance for less confident students
4.
The value of student feedback - this has provided a lot of very helpful insights. It would be good to remember to ask for feedback on activities on a more regular basis, especially when trying something new.
5. As a relatively new ESOL teacher it can be tempting to "catastrophise" when I perceive that a lesson has gone badly. In reality, as with the weather words lesson which had an error on the first handout, students often learn and retain more than I think they do!
Rachel reflects on the project below (click on the image to view the video):
Rachel adds:
I was reminded of the value of involving learners in research, so that they learn more about themselves. It requires buy in from the beginning, and ongoing co-operation during the course of the project. I was really impressed at the end when they reported back on what they had discovered and there was real enthusiasm to discuss this together. Also, they seemed to appreciate having an opportunity to reflect both on their own and in small groups about how they learn best.
It was good to work on the project with a colleague so that we were able to share the joys and frustrations together. Kate had had previous experience with quantitative research while Rachel had done more qualitative research and so we were able to complement each other.
It would be good to leave the final word to one of our students:
