HOW TO MAKE STUDENTS INTERACT IN ENGLISH

LANGUAGE IN CLASSROOM WITHOUT HESITATION

“Sometimes what looks like an obstacle in your path is actually a gift meant to move you in a
different direction”

Introduction

As English has international prominence, every student is interested to speak in English. But,
it is not an easy task to the non-native speakers of the language. It is always a challenging task
to make the rural students to speak the language keeping aside all their fears. Unlike the other
3 language skills, speaking plays a significant role as it involves communicating orally. It is
the main problem to the non-native speakers of the language. Because, students from the rural
background are very poor in communication when compared to a town or city cultured learner.
Hence, I took up this Exploratory Action Research to change my classroom scenario. As a part
of research, I introduced them such activities which engaged them effectively and
meaningfully.
I introduced them many activities/tasks like pronunciation of words, describing themselves,
describing their villages, their school, their most liked festivals, conversations, interviews,
speeches, Story Telling etc. I got an amazing response from some of my students. During the
research period, I faced many challenges in teaching the diversified group of students. But, this
research lent me a chance to identify and analyze the problem area keenly and introducing them
various strategies to improve their speaking skill.
Background problem
I’m a teacher of English rendering services in Telangana state Model school. Though it is an
English medium school, the students lag behind in speaking the language. Lack of practice and
exposure to the language, they are unable to communicate in English. When I ask a question
in English, they respond in their mother tongue (Telugu). when I asked them the reason, the
students said some reasons such as, fear of language, lack of vocabulary, timidness, confidence,
fear of making errors etc., for their inability to speak the language.
Due to the outbreak of covid-19, the schools were closed till August 30th 2021. On September
1st, the schools are reopened. Teachers were Shocked and surprised to see the changes in the
behaviors of the students. They became just passive listeners, not showing any interest in any
kind of books, material etc. At the initial stage no one came forward to participate in any
activity. After giving proper guidance and motivation, only girls came forward to participate
to improve their speaking skill. Gradually, all the students participated in all the activities. This
was the major challenge.
Most of the parents of students are illiterates and they completely depend on agriculture. They
work in their own farms and go to other farms as agricultural labour. Cultivation is the main
occupation of the students’ parents. Therefore, one cannot expect a supportive and co-
operative environment at home. The parents don’t even attend the parent teacher meeting
 when we call them to know their sons/daughters progress. I don’t like this irresponsible nature
of the parents. Students will be very serious at their studies when teacher and parents focus on
them. It’s not only the responsibility of teacher but parents’ also. This is also one of the major
drawbacks of the poor language skills among the students. Mother tongue plays a major role
in everyone’s life. When it comes to a modern language, mother tongue becomes an obstacle
to learn a new language. But it is not at all impossible. Lot of exposure & practicegives us
fruitful response from the students. Lot of patience is needed from the teacher’s part. Many
researches have proved that language is acquired not learnt as it is absolutely true with our
mother tongue. But if it is English, unknowingly students get frightened and step back, not
realizing that is a matter of practice. Students generally translate a sentence from their mother
tongue to modern language. That is the main problem as the sentence structure changes from
SVO to SOV.
Absenteeism of students was another major challenge. Various reasons were there for their
irregularity like health issues, no transportation facility, going to their grandparent’s homes etc.
For me it was a big issue to motivate them to participate in this improvement research. They
didn’t respond to anything and stayed back as passive listeners. Hesitation and fear of making
errors in front of their classmates are the major drawbacks for their latency.

Objectives
• To understand their difficulty – means why, when and where they feel struggling.
• To enable the students to speak the language fluently in the classroom transaction.
• To provide them suitable strategies or techniques/methods to improve their speaking
skill.
Exploratory questions: Once I identified the problem area I posed some exploratory
questions to myself as given below: As it is a part of research, I posed some questions to
myself to analyze the problem very carefully& systematically. I planned to make a good
start/move questioning myself.
1. How to improve speaking skill in English language among my students?
2. Does peer interaction help in speaking activities?
3. What strategies should I adopt to overcome this problem?
4. What obstructs the learners speak in English?
5. Does Mother Tongue influence stop the learners while speaking English?
Selected tools to collect data
1. Questionnaire for teachers and students: I prepared a google form to my colleagues
as well as teacher researchers to gather their opinions. The students have written their
responses in their note books.
2. Informal interviews with students: Informal talks with the students helped a lot as
they openly explained their feelings/opinions why they struggle to speak the language.
3. Audio and video recordings of students: I have taken students’ audio responses
before starting the research. I have taken many videos of their performances week by
week as it is very important to know how they are improving their skill gradually.
 4. Inviting a critical friend to my classroom: I invited one of colleagues to my classroom
before starting the research and after completion of the research to know the difference
before and after.
5. Reflections from children: After the completion of the research I asked my students
whether they are satisfied with their improvement (improved or not).
6. WhatsApp for daily follow up: I couldn’t cope with the academic works along with
the research work. So, I created a WhatsApp group to clear their doubts and all. It
needed some more extra time.
7. Zoom meetings: I conducted zoom meetings as they need clarifications about the
activities like how to do an interview, how to pose questions, etc. If it is a conversation,
how to begin, if it is story-telling, what stories they have to select etc.
8. Padlet to upload student’s performances: As it is not possible to store all the videos
and audios all the time and faced the problem storage space I posted all the activities,
paper scripts on Padlet. It is a wonderful tool as we can upload En number of
documents, videos or audios. Most important thing is we can see lots of things on only
one platform.
Questions for Teachers: Actually, I have prepare a google form for my colleagues and other
teacher researchers (both) a questionnaire. Both my colleagues and teacher researchers
suggested me some techniques/methods/activities. I adopted some of the activities which were
suggested by teacher researchers’ fraternity. The opinions of teachers helped me to select
suitable activities for the student community. Here are the questions:
1. Do your students enjoy speaking in English?
2. Did you observe any difficulty while they speak?
3. Which language they use when they answer to your question?
4. Does peer interaction help in speaking activities?
5. Does mother tongue influence stop them to speak the language?
6. How do you motivate/encourage students to speak English?
7. What do think is important- Accuracy or Fluency?
8. How do you engage and what strategies would you adopt to make the students to speak
English?
Action Phase: Before going to start the action phase, I conducted a pre-test (oral
&written) to know their level and after completion of 2 months I conducted a posttest
also, where we can see the improvement of the students’ speaking skill.
After identifying the problem/ root cause, I started introducing them many more activities
which were suggested by my colleagues and other teacher researchers from different districts.
I collected data through questionnaires both for teachers as well as students. The answer scripts
which are collected from the students were posted on the Padlet. I prepared a google form for
teachers and shared it in WhatsApp Teacher Researcher’s group and got enough suggestions
and methods they follow in their classroom transaction. Some of the responses are here:

For the question, do your students enjoy speaking in English? All the teachers responded as “Yes”. And
for the question, did you observe any difficulty while they speak? Some subject teachers agreed that they
found difficulty while the students try to speak. I received different responses for the question, how do
you engage the students to improve their speaking in English? Some opined that reciting poems, role
play, Self-Introduction, Interview etc. are helpful. Whereas some teachers suggested that
language games are very much helpful. A few teachers said to order everything in English and some said
that to motivate them towards the language.
What strategies would you adopt to make the students to speak in English? This question has
got responses like follow communicative method, bilingual method, all possible strategies etc.
The question, Does peer interaction help in speaking activities? has got the response “yes” from
all the teachers.
What do you think is important-accuracy or fluency? is the question and the teachers opined
that fluency is much more important than accuracy.
Action plan
Week 1&2: Self Introduction (Hobbies, tastes, ambitions etc...) and describing their
school &village
As teacher should act as a facilitator, I sent my Self introduction and described my native place through
WhatsApp and also explained in the classroom. Their videos and written scripts are the evidences which
were posted on the Padlet. The main learning outcome of this activity is that they should beable to
introduce themselves and also their villages & their school. Many more errors were there and ittook
much time to make them clear and edit. Their write ups and my corrections. It was an unending process.
It was not as easy as we talk where it needed much time to correct their scripts and needed much
patience.

Week 3&4: Describing pictures & describing their favorite festivals

I described my favorite festival to give an example and explained how to describe a picture. I
sent them many pictures through WhatsApp and provided some You Tube links for picture
description. Actually, I selected those students who have mobile phones as it was the pandemic
period (2021, July). The schools were started in the month of September. So, I started it online
and once the schools reopened then it became offline as we were going to school regularly.
Coming to the activity, the students came forward actively and described pictures and favorite
festivals. I showed them some pictures and asked them to identify the differences between the
pictures and they did it quite well.
Week 5&6 conversations and recapitulation of all the activities which were performed till
date
Students are very much interested in conversations as I have given them such topics like when
you go to shopping, what would be the possible conversation between you and the shop keeper.
I sent them some You Tube links to check various conversations and practice them.
Surprisingly, they came up with their own conversations which is appreciable. Taken videos
of the conversations uploaded on Padlet and You Tube. Lots of difference I saw in my students
during this period as they performed these activities in the classroom without any fear. Now,
they are able to communicate in English with their friends and with me. This week I invited
two of my colleagues named Ch. Naresh and Venu Gopal sir to observe my classroom. Students
were able to perform all the activities in front of my colleague teachers.
 Week 7&8: Story Telling and Speeches & Interviews
The students were suggested to take moral stories for storytelling. The scripts shown above are
moral stories written by the students. A few photographs are shown above and the rest are on
Padlet and You Tube. I provided them some moral story books and they also gathered stories
from 4th and 5th class text books. The students not only told the stories but also they have written
those stories with a neat hand writing along with pictures. The story scripts were very catchy
as well as attractive. The students were studying 8th standard then. Hence, they have taken
social issues and women empowerment as their topics which are a part of their syllabus. I
provided some famous and inspirable biographies to read and practice to explain. Very few
students did it very well. They have given speeches on the topics: child labor, old-age homes,
education of a girl child, teacher’s day etc. We successfully finished the research work in 8
weeks.

Observations: During the research period I came to know that the students lag behind
because of the following reasons:
1. Lack of exposure
2. Lack of vocabulary
3. Fear of making errors
4. Shyness
5. Illiterate surroundings
6. Mother tongue influence
Reflections of students
The students expressed that these activities are very much helpful to improve their speaking
skill when compared to the beginning. They realized their improvement.
Opinions expressed by colleagues/Teacher researchers

• The teacher researchers expressed that as teachers we have to understand their difficulty-
why, where and when they feel struggling.
• My colleagues also opined that this kind of initiation from my part is necessary at that
particular period.
• All my colleagues and teacher researchers appreciated me for my earnest efforts and
suggested me to continue this process.
• My principal sir was also very much delighted with the improvement of the students as
there was a remarkable change in their hand writing, speaking & pronunciation of words.
Result/final output
Lot of difference/improvement shown from pretest to post test
15 students are very much improved: These students were able to speak in the target
language spontaneously. They became good at language speaking.
 20 student’s improvement is average: These students were able to speak the languagewith some
errors. Appreciable thing is that they are trying to convey their feelings inEnglish though there
are errors.
15 students are still trying for betterment: The students in this category are still need much
more practice. They should work hard and it will take some more time to improve them.

Finally, the students were good at reading, writing and speaking the modern language.
Unknowingly/unconsciously the students were involved in all the language skills.
My experience as a Teacher Researcher/ Take aways from the project
• This research helped to my professional growth and changed myself from an ordinary
teacher to an exploring teacher.
• It gave me an opportunity to identify the problem areas of the students closely and
apply/introduce suitable strategies to the students.
• It has given me scope to find a better solution to the problem identified.
• This research helped me to introspect my teaching and enhanced my teaching skill.
Conclusion
• This research has given me scope to explore the classroom issue and how to overcome
that particular issue with suitable strategies.
• I enhanced and refined my own teaching skill.
• I would like to continue this research to explore some more classroom issues and make
my students flawless.

Links to check the students’ performances

https://padlet.com/gsv09061983/exploratory-action-research-yv494hemc4grnzy4

https://youtube.com/shorts/AxZLPxWbdGk?si=zafCNX_WE4Gy5axv

https://youtube.com/shorts/4NbRmEzufgA?si=3GPHKQ6oNjJMdHmQ

https://youtu.be/tR667sgsWSU?si=vAOL2yJd9Lf85UP2

https://youtu.be/EYRYX111NuM?si=fq23Ed_GlzfGlUct

https://youtu.be/NNBYFsdwLaM?si=rVYOl11liBN1fQc1

https://youtu.be/SOJL3-F4X_0?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/38S9Sm7BnyE?si=Id8CRyVebw5svvvt

https://youtube.com/shorts/tR667sgsWSU?si=emsEomxgNevtwWHH

https://youtu.be/DMljTTJDpco?si=68PRGr5AzsaDoHOd
References

1. “A course in English language Teaching” – Penny ur

2. Topics from TESOL Methodology.
3. Richard Smith and Paula Rebolledo - A Handbook for Exploratory Action
Research.
4. Action Research strategies for scaffolding struggling ESL Readers – Vinayadhar
Raju, SA English.
5. Developing 21st century skills through collaborative learning in the English
classroom – Mamatha Sadu, SA English.

Written by

SANGEETHA GORIKAPUDI TGT (ENGLISH)

TELANGANA STATE MODEL SCHOOL, NELLIKUDUR
MAHABUBABAD DISTRICT, PIN: 506101
TELANGANA STATE