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العنوان
The Effect of Using Professional Learning Community (PLC) to Enhance the Faculty of Education English Department Student- Teachers’ Oral Performance /
المؤلف
Alafify, Alaa Ousama Aboulhadeed.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / آلاء اسامه ابوالحديد
مشرف / اسماء غانم غيث
مشرف / أورلا ماك كورماك
تاريخ النشر
2021.
عدد الصفحات
211 p. :
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
ماجستير
التخصص
المناهج وطرق تدريس اللغة الإنجليزية
تاريخ الإجازة
1/1/2021
مكان الإجازة
جامعة عين شمس - كلية التربية - المناهج و طرق التدريس
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

English language is a fundamental requirement for global communication. The English language teaching and learning has gained special focus in recent years. English language teaching approaches have changed through the years. Starting from the grammar translation method in the 17th century and reaching to the communicative approach to language teaching, educational systems started to deal with the English language as a means of communication rather than as a set of grammatical rules.
Teachers of English language should be able to communicate meaning with their students by using the target language in different meaningful contexts. Moreover, Hammond (2006) clarified some roles that English language teachers should know and be able to perform in their classrooms. They are also supposed to acquire various language components, especially oral performance.
Oral performance is very crucial to all English teachers who teach a global language of almost all the world’s countries. The English language teachers who are skillful at oral performance create an interactive and a communicative learning environment. In addition, oral performance is important for a teacher in delivery of education to students (McCarthy and Carter, 2015). A teacher with good oral performance always makes teaching and learning easier and understandable. Good communication abilities of teachers are the essential requirements of academic success of students, and professional success in general.
Teachers communicate more instructions orally in classroom to students. Teachers with poor communication abilities may cause failure of students to learn and develop their academics. Students need to understand that what is right, and what is wrong while it is totally depended upon the communication skills of teachers which s/he adopts in classroom (Sherwyn ,Morreale, Michael ,Osborn and Pearson, 2014). Good communications decrease the idea of unkind feeling during the process of teaching. learners should be attentive and focused on their teacher during the lecture. Loss (2016) recommended that teachers have to communicate and interact in obvious and understandable way.
Communication is a dynamic and interactive process. Good oral performance is considered an effective tool in the teaching profession. Besides, Performance of teachers in classroom totally depends upon the oral performance. Maes, Weldy and Icenogle (2008) stated that if the teacher has good oral performance abilities, then s/he can easily convey massages or deliver the lecture in an understandable manner.
Danielson (2007) asserted that some approaches and programs concerned with enhancing the oral performance of English teachers as well as improving their academic preparation. As long as the academic preparation occupies an important place in the teacher education programs in Egypt, some projects which focused on teachers’ professional development are theoretical and cannot be applied practically, and their impact is limited.
English language teacher preparation and professional development are important issues. Good preparation is reflected on EFL students in different stages. Thus, preparation and professional development should adopt current trends. Professional Learning Community (PLC) is one of the most successful trends. As a result, this study was based on using the Professional Learning Community (PLC) which has real positive effect on performances. It is also an ongoing approach, and it would help the student-teachers enhance their oral performance. It depends on exchanging and sharing experience and discussion. All these processes would enhance their oral performance in meaningful and authentic contexts.
PLC is a panel of practitioners working together using an organized process of inquiry to focus on a specific area of their teaching to improve learning outcomes and so increase school standards. Besides, the study illustrated the importance of interdependent learning and collaboration as the cornerstone of school development and effective professional improvement. PLC depends on teachers who work collectively to investigate methods of coping with barriers to their students’ learning. Working in this way, as PLC, can bring many benefits but most importantly, if done well, PLC can result in improved learner outcomes (Verscio et al, 2008; Saunders et al, 2009). In addition, PLC enables the groups to widen their experiences and to share their most effective practices.
Lewis and Andrews, (2004) declared that teachers who are part of the PLC tend to be more effective in the classroom and achieve better student outcomes. Jones and Harris (2014) pointed out that PLC can also improve teachers’ professional learning and secure improved school performance, irrespective of the school context and its socio-economic profile. Moreover, Dufour (2009) illustrated that PLC engages teachers in collaborative enquiry about a specific issue or a problem, with the prime purpose of changing professional practice so that improved teaching and learning follow. Harris and Jones (2010) stated that the purpose of PLC can be summed up in three words which are ”improved learner outcomes ”.
Moreover, DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many (2006, p. 217) defined PLC as a group of educators who work collaboratively in ongoing and sustainable processes of action research to accomplish better results for the students Besides, Hord (2009) suggested that PLC implements open inquiry, and establish improvement communities where students or members can form the questions, identify what their required needs, collect and analyze the data, suggest findings, share the results, and assess the research. It also encourages teachers to develop trust, relationships, and collaboration in order to have the expertise of all members of the PLC. According to Joyce and Showers (2002) teachers in learning communities are researchers.
PLC supports the collaborative learning approach. Johnson (2014) clarified that the process of learning in a collaborative situation makes students have higher knowledge acquisition, and greater problem-solving skills than students working individually. There are several reasons for these positive differences. Students’ interaction and discussion with others give the group a chance to construct new knowledge and use their prior knowledge, conceptualize it in an authentic framework of existing knowledge. Then, they can refine and evaluate what they know and do not know. This group dialogue helps them identify what they are learning and what they still need to learn (Ambrose et al. 2010; Eberlein et al. 2008). In addition, Kuh (2007) declared that groups can tackle more complex problems than individuals can and thus have the potential to gain more expertise and become more engaged in a discipline. Working in group provides more chances for critical thinking and supports student learning and achievement.
Generally, PLC is mainly based on reflection and collaboration to have an outstanding performance and effective outcomes. Thus, student-teachers or school members of PLC can reflect on others’ different kinds of performances. Hence, they can work in groups to suggest new methods and find out many solutions which would participate in improving their teaching and learning process and oral performance abilities.
Oral performance is one of the most important concerns of PLC. The relationship between PLC and oral performance is concerned with how to present, perform, share, produce, construct, and speak in the atmosphere of professional learning community. PLC is supposed to play a vital role in enhancing student- teachers’ oral performance through sharing and critically exchanging their practices in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented and growth- promoting way. As a result, PLC would give the student-teachers opportunities of speaking practices that may positively affect their future students’ oral performance.
According to Fink (2015) PLC members meet regularly and work collaboratively to develop their teaching techniques and performance. For instance, they may agree to identify and monitor student learning interests in their classes, conduct observations of their colleagues while teaching and give them constructive oral feedback, and improve the appropriate strategies that help students. Further, PLC encourages oral communication, discussions, exchanging experience and reflection to achieve several language objectives. It may also participate in improving the English language oral performance components, such as fluency, accuracy and pronunciation in the light of integration with the PLC’ s features such as, shared vision, reflection and inquiry. Thus, if the English department student-teachers make use of PLC’s principles, their English oral performance may be enhanced effectively.
1.2 Context of the problem
The initial purpose of learning a foreign language is to use it orally or in writing (Pisarenko, 2017). However, Hadijah (2014:1) found that the students’ problems of speaking in English were not only having limited knowledge of the components of speaking including pronunciation, grammar vocabulary, fluency and comprehension but they also had other problems, such as being shy to perform orally, in addition to lack of speaking practice, time management, speaking material, and exposure problems.
El-Fiki, (2012) stated that the emphasis is not on teaching English components as a whole in Egypt, but the focus is on writing and reading at the expense of speaking and listening. English learning is limited to memorizing vocabulary and grammatical rules.
Most of students in Egypt study English in a traditional way that is based on memorization of vocabulary and structure for twelve years. The students who are admitted to the English Department at the Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University is based on their grades in the achievement written test they passed in high school regardless of their level of oral performance. Rababah (2002) pointed out that this problem is common in most Arab countries:
”The English language sections accept high school graduates without taking into consideration their communicative level.”
Besides, through the researcher’s experience as a demonstrator at Faculty of Education, Ain shams University, it is noticed that students enrolled in the English department, and they study literature, linguistics, and educational psychology in theory. They also pass from a year to another according to their assessment in the written achievement tests in the above-mentioned subjects. Accordingly, students do not practice the oral performance in English effectively, because it is not required in their final exams. Besides, most of them listen to the lectures without active interaction and they are passive receivers. That also appears in the micro teaching sections where they are supposed to give a whole presentation or teach lessons by using English only without using their mother tongue. As a result, students face many problems when trying to use language to communicate in real situations. El-Matarawy (1998: 3) noticed some of these problems, such as ”the inability of the oral verbal aspect of the language to make the speakers feel insecure during communication, leading to hesitation, stammering, the production of grammatical errors and the use of literal translation”.
Accordingly, the researcher’s observations clarified that the students of the English Department do not have the opportunity to practice English orally, because there are no training programs that would enhance their English oral performance. Consequently, students will not have the capacity of enhancing the English language abilities of their future students.
The Pilot Study
The researcher conducted some face-to-face interviews with a group of thirty- second year ”basic- English ” students to assess their oral performance abilities. She measured their fluency in expressing different thoughts and feelings, their accuracy in building well- structured sentences, and their pronunciation of several words and sentences. They were asked to introduce themselves. Then, they were asked various questions, such as:
• What do you do in your free time?
• Who was your favorite professor at college? why?
• Can you describe an important event in your life?
• What are your favorite hobbies?
• what are your ambitions for the future?
• What do you do when you face a problem?
• What motivates you to achieve your goal?
• Do you like group work? why?
The student-teachers’ responses to such questions demonstrated their major weaknesses of different features of oral performance, such as hesitation, grammar errors, lack of self-confidence, usage of incorrect structures, non -use of appropriate body language and facial expressions, or intonation in their oral performance.
The results also showed the general lack of the student-teachers’ oral performance as follows:
• 92% of the student-teachers could not speak fluently. They had difficulty expressing their views smoothly. They kept hesitating, pausing, and repeating unnecessary words.
• 94% of the student-teachers made grammatical mistakes some of which hindered the listeners’ ability to understand the conveyed messages.
• 96% of the student-teachers made pronunciation mistakes. They could not pronounce some sounds such as: /p/, /θ/, /ð/, /v/, and /dʒ/. They also had problems with intonation. They tended to speak using a monotonic voice.
Participants of the study
The participants of the current study (n=60) were randomly chosen from second -year students in the department of English, Faculty of Education, Ain shams University.
5.2.3. Aim of the study
• Enhancing the English department student-teachers’ oral performance through PLC.
• Determining the effect of using PLC in enhancing English department student-teachers’ oral performance.
5.2.4. Significance of the study
It is expected that the study would be of benefit to:
• EFL majors and student-teachers: they could gain a clearer understanding of PLC and its effect on improving oral performance, and hence will be able to enhance these skills for their 1future students
• EFL researchers: this study would present a theoretical background that could be utilized by EFL researchers in future studies.
• Curriculum developers and designers: who would be provided with some PLC activities which could be included in future curricula.
5.3. Pedagogical Implications
• The use of PLC specially reflection and collaboration, helped to make student-teachers self-confident, which in fact contributed to increase student-teachers’ motivation toward learning and willingness to speak freely and fluently.
• PLC made a difference in their presentations, and discussions where they could express, reflect, and speak accurately and fluently. That difference was obvious in the pre\posttest results.
• The use of PLC helped student -teachers get together to share resources, solve problems, enhance their teaching and learning language strategies, and improve their oral performance ability.
• The use of PLC developed the pedagogical skills such as, giving oral feedback/ reflection, improving language learning outcomes, changing learners’ mentalities, and creating authentic learning experience.
• Working in a fun, non- judgmental and safe learning environment supported the student-teachers to participate, interact and express their views freely and confidently without afraid of being criticized or making mistakes.
• The researcher made sure to make the objectives of each session obvious. That helped the student-teachers work collaboratively and actively to accomplish the predetermined aims. It also aided them to have a clear vision and purpose of their own learning.
• The researcher provided her student-teachers with formative and summative assessment, and ongoing reflection that made them aware of their weakness and strengths. They did their best to enhance themselves and their oral performance based on the given feedback.
5.4. Limitations of the Study
● At the beginning of the program, the student-teachers were somewhat hesitant and shy to talk in English. They did not have enough self-confidence and courage to speak in front of others. The researcher tried to break the ice, between herself and them and between the learners themselves, from the beginning of the program. She succeeded in creating a safe, relaxing, and delightful learning atmosphere in which the learners felt free to express their views openly.
● Some student-teachers tended to talk in Arabic as they were used to it. The researcher set a rule, from the very beginning, to speak in English all the time. Whenever they saw the researcher or anyone of their colleagues, they started to talk in English.
● Some student-teachers did not attend the first session (introductory session). The researcher started the second session with a quick revision to outline the main objectives of the program and what they would be doing.
• Some student-teachers had bad internet connection which made them unable to attend all online meetings. Thus, the researcher uploaded the recorded online sessions on Edmodo application to make them cover the main points of every session which they missed.
5.5. Results of the study
1. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the study participants on the pre and post oral performance test in terms of the enhancement of their oral performance as a whole in favor of the posttest scores.
2. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the study participants on the pre and post oral performance test in terms of the enhancement of ”fluency” in favor of the posttest scores.
3. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the study participants on the pre and post oral performance test in terms of the enhancement of ”accuracy” in favor of the posttest scores.
4. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the study participants on the pre and post oral performance test in terms of the enhancement of ”pronunciation” in favor of the posttest scores.
5.6. Findings of the research
The findings of study could be summed up in the following points:
• The use of PLC, which appeared in group working and presenting topics also in-group reflection makes student-teachers realize that collaborative learning is greater and more effective than individual one. They asked for more group reflections to share their stories, experiences, and reviews.
• The use of activities based on PLC increased leadership skills.
• PLC provided collaborative work opportunities such as, sharing, engaging, reflecting, and dealing with problems.
• PLC is a social process which supported friendship, cooperation, scaffolding and exchanging experience.
• PLC made its members active leaners through sharing views, creating innovative ideas, having permanent practice, and having time management skills.
• The use of PLC features reflected in activities that were based on collaboration, reflections, shared values were significant aspects to enhance English department student-teachers’ oral performance components i.e., fluency, accuracy, pronunciation and non-verbal components.
5.7. Conclusions
Based on the findings of the present study, the following conclusions could be stated:
• Using PLC was remarkably effective in enhancing student-teachers ’oral performance. This was obvious after conducting the post oral performance test. It was also clear through the student-teachers’ gradual development throughout the experimentation.
• Considering the learners’ needs and interests enhanced the learning process. It also confirmed that all learners were engaged in PLC which contained active learning, constructivism, and inquiry -based learning, as they felt that their learning is authentic, effective, and practical.
• The use of various and interesting activities to be done and topics to be discussed with the learners are also effective. It was more engaging and less boring for the learners to get involved in different activities of their interest and feel themselves responsible for their learning.
• Using new strategies in teaching motivated learners and increased their willingness to participate in the learning process. They were exposed to something new which encouraged them to take part in it to see how it goes.
• Prior knowledge, inquiry and reflection were basic factors of PLC program.
5.8. Recommendations
Based on the reached results and conclusions, the study recommends the following:
• More opportunities to practice oral performance should be provided to the student-teachers in the Faculty of Education.
• The present study may be replicated on a larger sample that belongs to different faculties and universities.
• Teachers\ instructors should pay much attention to develop oral performance through PLC as an integral language component that learners themselves seek to enhance.
• English department students at the Faculty of Education should be trained to use English orally in different contexts from day one.
• Programs that are based on PLC should be designed for in-service English teachers for development of teaching practices.
5.9. Suggestions for Further Research
Researchers may consider the following suggestions to investigate the adequacy of utilizing PLC for further research:
• Using PLC to enhance oral performance for secondary school students.
• Investigating the effect of a program based on PLC on enhancing students’ listening, writing, and reading and their teaching skills as well.
• Using PLC for the development of self -reflection for in-service English teachers.
• Supporting collaborative work in terms of PLC to promote the learning and teaching.