Rebekka's Blog: Action Research

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TEFL With Coursebooks

How are coursebooks used in the teaching of EFL in Finland? And how do they ingage in the versitile development of pupils’ communicative competences?

By: Rebekka Jensen, Blaagaard/KDAS, UCC

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How are coursebooks used in TEFL in Finland and how do they incourage the development of different skills? What can we learn from the Finnish approach to TEFL?

The above was my preliminary plan to investigate through action research during my stay in Finland.

Along the way I discovered the difficulties of action research in praxis, the time consuming work and effort and misleading results, and controverses in observations, questionnairs and coursebooks. But before going in to that I will take a detour to my intentions and the first plan I sought out to perform – which eventually turned out to be a greater success than I expected half-way through the project.

Why Finland?

As a joint in my teacher education at the international line at Blaagaard/KDAS, UCC, I spent a termester abroad, getting a global perspective on teaching English as a foreign language, receiving international contacts and broadening my horizon on TEFL.

But why Finland? Finland has been amongst the top scorers in PISA for the past few years. I wanted to move to Finland to see if some of their success in science and maths teaching were implimented in EFL teaching as well. And so my research began.

Content

The questions from the header for the article will be answered by examining the Finnish national curriculum for TEFL, analysing a few of their coursebooks and practical observation of English lessons at Finnish schools. In addition to this, a questionnaire about the curriculum, coursebooks, skills, and personal attitudes towards TEFL, has been answered by EFL teachers in Finland.

Where in Finland?

The research has been performed in Joensuu, a city in the Southern part of Finland, located less than 300 km from the Russian border.

(Google pictures: Joensuu is seen on the right)

Joensuu has a very young population and the main reason is the university, The University of Eastern Finland, which two years ago became the joint university for the Finnish eastern cities: Joensuu, Kuopio, and Savonlinna – with the biggest university facility being in Joensuu, holding around 20,000 students – out of an overall population of 70,000.

Background for my research

There are many schools in the area of Joensuu and during my stay I have had the pleasure of visiting a few of them, but the observation work that lies behind this exact research is made at the Univeristy’s practice schools, Länsikadun koulu (Primary school) and Tulliportiin koulu (Secondary school), where I have observed around 40 lessons these last two months. I decided to start off by observing different subjects, different age groups of pupils – and moreover, different teachers at different times of the day and week to try to get an overall idea of the school culture at these two teaching facilities (although, mainly at the primary school where I have done most of my observastion). My research is mainly based on what I have seen and heard in EFL classes and the answerw I got from a questionnaire I sent to some teachers and teacher students I met at the university’s teaching facility. The results from my questionnaire will be taken in to account in my analysis of the teaching observations and the work in this article. In addition to this I read the Finnish national currriculum for English and borrowed the most common EFL coursebooks used at the university’s training schools where I did the observation.

Working process

My TEFL research in Finland started out by choosing courses about education at the University of Eastern Finland and using whatever relevant information I got from those courses and lesson observed at the placement schools. This lead me towards doing some research about the use of coursebooks. As you might be familiar with in before hand, coursebooks are very commonly used in Finnish schools – and at the two schools I base my research on aswell.

I observed as many lessons as possible, borrowed some of the coursebooks to get an overview of the teaching material used for TEFL at the practice placement schools. I sent a questionnaire to some of the respected teachers of English at the placement schools, asking about the curriculum, coursebooks and EFL teaching. The questionnaire was a combination of a quilitative and quantitative investigation, as the teachers used their own words and explanaitions but in a structured manner which made it possible for me to organise their questions. Some questions were organised as a quantiative study only.

Finally, after carefully planning, analysing and assessing my material, I started writing this article – which became increasingly more difficult after I analysed my material and discovered many mis congruences in the material which had an effect on my results and therefore the writing process of this article became far more complicated than originally expected.

Curriculum

The Finnish national curriculum for English is found under the section “Foreign languages” where English is the “A-Lanugage” (the first foreign language).

English is one out of a minimum of 3 foreign languages pupils study at the University’s placement school. At other school, the minimum requirement is 2 foreign languages, Swedish and English.

English starting in grade 1 and Swedish in grade 7.

English – as the A-language – is in the curriculum’s preliminary outlines to be seen as a cultural skill and an academic skill that must give the pupils capabilities for functioning in foreign language communication situations. Because English is (in most cases) the first foreign language pupils get accuanted with it shall create a basis for subsequent language teaching, one of the core elements of EFL is to adapt good foreign language study habits. The objectives are mainly divided in these overall categories: language proficiency,

cultural skills,

and learning strategies.

The curriculum does not imply any specific teaching methods, although, it is mentioned that grammar should be taught from the standpoint of communication.

The proficiency level of the pupils is measured by The Common European Framework of References and is as follows:

After grade 6 (primary school) the level of the pupils’ productive skills (speaking and writing) should match A2.1 while they receptive skills (reading and listening) should be at A1.3. In grade 9 (lower secondary school) the pupils’ productive skills should be at A2.2 and their receptive skills, a little higher, at B1.1

It is worth mentioning that there are no national tests in Finland, not for English or for any other subject. Some coursebooks have testing systems incorporated in the material while in other cases the teachers measure the pupils’ level with their own material.

In addition to the overall, national curriculum for English, every municipality – and sometimes even single schools, have their own local curriculums based on the national curriculum. In most cases, the local curriculums are more detailed than the 5 page national curriculum for English and are written by teachers only.

Coursebooks

The coursebooks are printed by commercial publishers who have headhunted particular teachers, who often are known in publishing in before hand, to create these coursebooks. Before the coursebooks are published its contents are checked by a group set by the ministry of education who’s task is to insure the quality of teaching material and how it fits the national curricular guidelines for EFL. At the

(Key English 9, Workbook p. 190)

practice placement school where I visited they buy new coursebooks every 4-5 years and the subject teacher solely decide which books to buy.

Amongst the coursebooks I analysed was the series for the primary school level called, WOW!, and Key English for the secondary level.

All the books included grammar sections, summaries, tables and mind maps with grammar rules, vocabulary and so on, incouraging different learning strategies and different teaching methods for the vast amount of activitied provided – especially for the lower secondary level where ICT becomes increasingly more stressed.

The picture is from an activity from one of the couresebooks for lower secondary school, an activity that is very common for the book series of Key English. It shows the impact the curriculum’s focus on learning strategies has on the content and structure of the exercises in the coursebooks as well as the variety of exercises.

Observation

The observation I did in Finland is my main practical relevance and is summed up in a generalised overview of headlines below.

I noticed similarities and differences in TEFL in primary and lower secondary school (I did not observe lessons in upper secondary school). I noticed a change in the use of ICT in the classroom. In primary school the teachers used ICT close to every lesson while the pupils did not manage the ICT themselves. In lower secondary school there seemed to be a change towards increasingly more ICT being served by the pupils and less by the teacher.

Sum-up of points about the use of coursebooks in the classroom and in the lessons in general:

Classroom language

Lessons were taught in English and Finnish in primary and lower secondary school. Finnish was used for grammar rules and as the most used communication strategy for both teachers and pupils.

The roles of pupils and teachers

Teachers were the center of knowledge. The physical position of teachers and pupils, where pupils faced the teacher in most lessons, the teacher and coursebooks provided material for the lessons. All teachers used a combination of the audiolingual method and the grammar-lingual method of teaching English as a foreign language where the pupils learnt by “listen and repeat” exercises, translating and correcting from the teacher’s answers provided by the coursebooks.

The use of coursebooks

Coursebooks covered all educational material used in the lessons – ranging from textbooks, exercise books, Audio CDs and computer based teaching material – everything in a package from the coursebooks.

Skills practiced

All skills were practiced in every lesson and the stress on different skills was as follows when looking at time spent on each skill in the lessons:

Listening, reading, writing and speaking.

When the teachers used dialogs and other interactive activities in the lessons, the pupils were scaffolded by the coursebooks to such an extent that the authenticity in the assignments was close to non-excisting (from my Danish perspective, at least).

In some lessons I counted connection between TTT (Teacher Talking Time) and PTT (Pupil Talking Time) and it showed that the teachers (or CDs) would give the pupils an opportunity to speak for less than 10% of the time.

General comments

In general the four teachers and two practice placement teachers I observed taught very similiarily, starting the lessons by checking the pupils’ homework, using the textbook and listening to the CD and making some exercise. In genereal, the written assignments at primary level were done at home and corrected at school where writing took an increasingly more amount of time in lower secondary. During the 40 lessons I observed I did not experience discussions in the classroom and on rare occasions a few pupils produced a few sentences in English by themselves. The teachers produced most of the language in all grades.

The teachers did not differ very much in teaching methods, but they did differ in personality. The teachers in lower secondary school seemed to have a closer relationship to the pupils with more meaningful foreign language interaction than at primary level. If the resons was an encreased time spent with the pupils, the pupils’ English communicative competences or simply the difference in personalities, I do not know.

Me outside Lansikadun Koulu, February 2011

Questionnaires

The answers from the questionnaires were sent the respected teachers and teacher trainees. This is neither a praising nor a discard of the teachers I have observed, and therefore will their names stay anonymous. The role of this article and my research is simply an enquiry in to the nature of using coursebooks in TEFL and how it can benefit the versitile development of the pupils’ communicative competences.

The questionnaire was sent to all teachers I had observed (four subject teachers and two subject teacher trainees) and I recived three replies, from one primary school teacher and from two

teachers who teach at the secondary level (I observed their lessons at lower secondary level).

I have chosen to devide the questions and answers in to four categories which will be analysed in the next section of this article, putting them together wiith my observation and the national curriculum for EFL in Finland.

Curriculum

All teachers agree that the curriculum has a great impact on the content they teach and they all agree on the choise of teaching methods being essential to success in learning and teaching. When asked if the curriculum had an impact on the methods they used in TEFL there was some disagreement. The primary school teacher mentioned the opportunity teachers have to make alternations to the local curriculum and to choose their own coursebooks and the liberating effect this has on the individual choices of teaching methods. One of the lower-secondary school teachers said that the curriculum has an impact on the content taught, but not on the methods while the other lower- secondary school teacher said the curriculum has a big impact on both content and methods, because of the coursebooks that are based on the curriculum.

Teaching and Learning

The three teachers’ answers did not differ in this aspect, where all three of them described learning as a cognitive condition with the keywords being wonder, discover, understand whereas teaching was explained as organising the learning environment to facilitate learning, choosing the following keywords: coaching, guiding, and motivating.

Skills (listening, reading, writing and speaking)

At primary level, according to the teacher, the time spent on the four different skills in class and the proficiency level of the pupils was as follows:

Speaking (most/best)

Listening and reading

Writing (least/worst)

The teacher added a stress on practicing oral skills in class and leaving out too much focus on writing skills at the early age of primary school due to the curriculum and the timeconsuming nature of practicing writing.

At the lower-secondary level, the teachers said they spent an equal amount of time training the four different skills in class – with slightly less time spent on writing skills. The proficiency level of the pupils was, according to the teachers, as follows:

Listening (highest)

Reading

Speaking

Writing (lowest)

Activities

When asked about how they thought the coursebooks fascilitated the pupils’ versitile development of communicative competences with a special focus on the development of speaking skills (because speaking skills was what my preliminary plan was to investigate), all teachers agreed that the coursebooks they used were very extensive, offering a great variety of different exercises and task to accommodate all skills. The teachers mentioned how versitile the coursebooks were and how this made it easy for them to use efficient communicative teaching methods, that develop speaking skills in particular, in activities such as roleplays.

According to the teachers, the coursebooks’ biggest weaknesses when it comes to the practice of oral skills are as follows:

A lack of audiotive and visual reinforcement.
Too much scaffolding when practicing productive skills.
The lack of authentic – or meaningful - problems to solve.

Analysis

The national curriculum for English as a foreign language is described in this article in a very short summary stressing learning strategies and the teachers’ freedom in teaching methods with an incouragement to use the communicative approach to foreign language teaching when teaching grammar in particular. The curriculum has a focus on developing versitile communicative competences and progressing in intercultural competences. The teachers asked in the research all agreed with the importance of the curriculum and the inevitable effect it has on their choice of teaching material – but not neccesarily teaching methods.

My observation showed an inconcistency between what the national curriculum says, what the teachers say they do and what I claim to have experienced when observing English lessons. Wether or not I am right or wrong can not be argued fully in this article, but with only 40 lessons and a questionnaire that is obviously poorly constructed since it is impossible for me to make any final conclusions based on them, it seems obvious to me that this action research has its lacks og qualitites, but still can provide me and the reader with a general idea of what TEFL is like at The University of Eastern Finland’s practice placement schools is like.

Conclusion

How are coursebooks used in the teaching of EFL in Finland? And how do they ingage in the versitile development of pupils’ communicative competences?

The coursebooks seem to eaven-out the individual academic differences between teachers and give every teacher a variety of activities to choose from using different media – textbooks, writing exercises, and IT-based material. This and the fact that teachers ingage in the the production of teaching material and the local curriculum is clearly something the teachers feel pleased with and helps them keep-up the quality of their teaching.

Overall agreements in the teachers’ answers in the questionnairs could indicate that there is a concictency in either the Finnish teacher education or in the job-hireing procedures. This agreement might decrease communicational breakdowns between the staff, increase the satisfaction at work and therefore have a positive influence on TEFL.

The coursebooks concist of a variety of assignments and the teachers are overall satisfied with what the coursebooks have to offer and the possibilities to coursebooks provide for a versitile development of the pupils’ communicative competences. According to the teachers they preferred interactive, authentic, communicative activities when training speaking skills in class and did practice speech (at least at primary level) far more than the other three skills, but my observations showed quite the opposite.

This has made me wonder a reflect about TEFL and coursebooks in Finland.

Can it decrease the teachers’ motivation for teaching and judgement of their own teaching when coursebooks of high quality are easily accessable?

Can the focus and implementation of good, foreign language learning strategies ensure a constant development of the pupils’ communicative competences to reach far beyond the B1.2 level after comprehensive school?

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