A Role for Action Research in the Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

A novice TA walks into my office and asks for advice. He's having a difficult time getting his second-semester Beginning German class to interact with him (or each other, for that matter) in any sort of engaging way. His students take part in the various communicative tasks that he gives them, but often grudgingly, orso it appears to him; and when he moves from communicative tasks to teacherfronted instruction on forms, most of them seem to lose interest altogether. The prevailing atmosphere is dull and unmotivated, a far cry from the action-packed, fun-filled atmosphere he was hoping for. He thinks the problem might lie with his transitions, the explanations and commentary joining task to task, or perhaps with the temperament of the class itself, or a combination of both. What can he do to engage his students? How can he sustain their attention more consistently during his grammar explanations? Another TA, also teaching Beginning German for the first time, comes to me with a different sort of question. His students are for the most part affable and actively participating, but he is troubled by his own uncertainty regarding how he should correct their spoken errors. On the one hand, he feels compelled to address every mistake that occurs (and there are many), for fear that uncorrected errors will hinder his students' progress. If the errors go unchecked, he reasons, they may lead to bad habits that will be increasingly difficult to break. He also might be sending confusing signals to observant students who notice others' errors and are expecting him to step in with a correction. But on the other hand, he senses that to point out every error would undermine the communicative nature of the class, and violate the atmosphere of camaraderie and friendship that he has been working hard to develop. Correcting his students over and over again could only breed self-consciousness and anxiety. What should he do? Will non-correction lead to fossilization? Or will negative affect outweigh the advantages of correctness? To what degree is the classroom atmosphere, with its potential for positive or negative motivation, a factor in the on-going process of second language acquisition (SLA)? My first reaction to such questions, of course, is to suggest something--anything-that will fix the problem, mostly in the sense of assuaging the anxieties of worried TAs. But I need to be careful: How I deal with their concerns sends a message not only about the issue at hand, but about learning how to teach in general. If my mentoring style is aligned with what Michael Wallace (Training) calls the craft model, then I will have a TA watch me (or another teacher) conduct a class and learn inductively how an experienced teacher deals with such issues. Like an apprentice learning from a master artisan, the TA in this scenario will observe carefully, ask questions, and then model his performance after the mentor's style. If my teaching