2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Efficacy of a flipped-learning CLIL course in content teaching and promoting the target language skills
| Project/Area Number |
20K00783
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| Research Institution | Tokai University |
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Principal Investigator |
田中エリス 伸枝 東海大学, 語学教育センター, 准教授 (70593698)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
関口 幸代 明治学院大学, 文学部, 教授 (20524466)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Flipped Learning / CLIL / teacher trainees / oral output / learning environment |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This year, we attempted to identify what skills and knowledge were needed to be taught as English teacher-trainees. From the previous year's video data and feedback, the instructor felt that the syllabi were too theoretically-oriented. As the pandemic changed how foreign languages are taught, students wanted to learn more about hands-on skills rather than a strong focus on theories.
We, therefore, needed to change the focus of the study slightly by looking at student perceptions of online language learning from a student point of view and a trainee-teacher point of view, rather than solely focus on their oral performance in English in the research proposal. As educators and researcher, however, we felt that teacher-trainees need to have some understanding of different theories to design their syllabi and curricula, as they provide the rationale for choosing certain activities and selecting the right technology to enhance the activities. Therefore, a CLIL approach was used to overcome this issue. While students learned hands-on skills for learning and using technology, they also learned theoretical aspects of the activities with technology through the target language and actually using and evaluating some available educational apps and learning and teaching systems.
This lead to the conference presentation at INTED 2022. We presented on how an experienced educational technologist struggled in dealing with combining emergency remote teaching and face-to-face in two semesters and the students' perception about the course and experience in learning as teacher-trainers.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Although the learning environment was not stable, going in and out of online live classes and face-to-face modes, data collection has been progressing smoothly. For the online mode, the instructor (the research collaborator) collected data through Zoom, which was not difficult. When the university decided to go face-to-face, the instructor set up her video cameras at the front and the back of the classroom and collected data. Some reservations for data collection were; 1) zoom does not allow to record breakout rooms, and 2) the video cameras cannot capture the entire classroom because the students needed to keep social distance, so some areas were not recorded and was also difficult to pick up audio.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Compared to the previous year, we had more students this year (only one student last year). While the numbers of students who registered for the courses were not large (about 10+ students for each course), the students were keen to learn. We intend to continue recruiting good, enthusiastic students for the following year.
We are going to revise the syllabi again to adjust the content to the unpredictable learning environment. We are also going to learn more about their future workplace, e.g., high school English and infrastructure, to incorporate what technology can be introduced even in the classroom where the minimal amount of technology is accessible.
This year, we would like to see some changes in their language use in their oral and written outputs (student talk vs. teacher talk).
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| Causes of Carryover |
Due to the COVID-19 situation, we are not able to travel or the conferences we were planning to send abstracts were cancelled.
Also, due to the pandemic, we were not able to collect data as we initially planned. There was only one student enrolled into the classes we intended to collect data from. The same reason is applied to hiring research assistant as we were required to keep social distance, we were not able to employ any students for data analysis or data collection as social distancing was encouraged and classes were conducted predominantly online.
This year, we are hoping to present at conferences online or in-person.
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Research Products
(1 results)
