Thesis on English Education in 2000.

1 Purpose
　It is said that we live in the international world. And the communicative ability of English is so important for us. So to improve students' communicative ability, especially speaking and listening, is our main purpose in our English classes at school.

　Students also want to learn speaking and listening. (Figure 1) I asked my students, "What do you want to improve in English abilities?" Each student chose one out of four; speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Nearly half of the students make speaking the most important, then listening. So what students want to study in English classes is speaking.

Figure 1

What students want to improve? 　　　　speaking ... 45% 　　　　listening ... 27% 　　　　reading, writing ... 14%

　Then I planed to teach studnts to imporve their spaking ability. I gave students two opportunities to have conversations with native speaker of English, and tried to see their improvements between these two conversations. I want to analize students' converasation scripts to see if they improve their speaking abilities or not.

2 Research Hypotheses
　To learn English with a lot of input and output activities improve students' communicative ability. The number of the senteces students use increases after the classes with input and output activities.

3 Reserch Design
　The experimental sequence of the study took 10 hours spread over 1 month. (Figure 2) The treatment consisted of two phases; conversations with native speaker of English, ALT or Assitant Language Teacher, and input output activities. Each student has one minutes for the convesation with ALT and students listen to the conversation, which are recorded in cassette tapes, and write down the script after the conversation. 2nd and 9th classes are the conversations with ALT. I want to compare these two conversations using the transcripts.

Figure 2 Communication Unit
	Communication Unit 1 Introduction of the unit 2 1st conversation with ALT 3 input and output 1 4 input and output 2 5 evaluation 1 6 input and output 3 7 input and output 4 8 preparation 9 2nd conversation with ALT 10 evaluation 2

4 Participants
　The participants in the study are the 7th graders of a junior high school. I chose three studetns as representatives of each group. (Table 1)

5 Treatment
a. Introduction of the communication unit
　Let the students know what they are goig to do in coming 10 hours of study. I gave them portfolios (See the picture.) They are used when students have conversation with ALT. Students can see the materials inside the files.



b. First conversation with ALT
　A class was devided into 9 groups. Each group has about 4 students. Each group come to the "conversation corner" at the corner of the classroom and talked with an ALT, one minutes for each student. (See the picture.)


c Input of present progressive
　Showing the video which I took, I introduced the new expression, present progressive, like "He is eating lunch. He is walking. He is listening."

　After the repeating practice using picture cards, students tried the output activity. They played a Bingo game using the expression, "What are you doing? I'm playing tennis." When a student had a picture which the partner mentioned, he crossed out the grid.

d Show and tell
　I explained how to use the portfolio showing the demonstration. I talked about my theatrical history showing my old pictures. It is a show and tell presentation.
　As an output activity, I asked students to bring their pictures and made them write down the sentences which discribe the picture, such as "I am eating takoyaki." Then students enjoyed the Bingo game using the expression, "Are you eating takoyaki? Yes, I am."

e. Portfolio evaluation 1
　I gave students an assignment to write down the script of their own conversation listening to the tape which was recorded at the conversation.
　Then students think of the good points and bad points of their conversations and shared them with other students. It is a "portfolio evaluation."


f Input of auxiliary, can
　I showed a lot of picture cards and introduced another new expression, auxiliary can, saying "My sister can play the piano." I used the interaction when I introduced the expression as follows.

At first I just let them listen and respond with motion, and then required short answer, like "Yes," and "No." Gradually students started to use the expression, can.
　Output activity was followed. Students enjoyed the Bingo game, using the expression, "Can you play the piano? Yes, I can."

g Output activity
　Another output activity was followed. At first I asked students, "Can you ski? Can you play the piano?" and let them write down their answers. Then I asked them to share the information with partners, asking, "Can you play the piano? Yes, I can." Then students wote down the information using the 3rd person singular subject, like "He can ski. She can play the piano." Students enjoyed the information gap game "Who is the criminal?" The information students can decide to find the criminal is sentences like"He can ski. He can swim very well." I planed this game as a jigsaw activity. Each group had four students. Each student went and got the information and then told it to other members. Each students played an inportant role in this activity.

h Preparation for the conversation
　As a preparation for the next "conversation with ALT" activity. Students made an "I can card." They pasted the pictures they brought from home and wrote sentences, telling what they can do.
　After they prepared "I can card," output activity was followed. One student said to the partner, "Look at this picture. I can ski" showing the picture of skiing. Then the partner said, "Oh, you can ski." and wrote the signiture on the sheet.

i Second conversation with ALT
　Second conversaton with ALT was done just like the first one.


j Portfolio evaluation 2
　Students wrote down the script of the conversation like the first one.
　Then students wrote down what they improved comparing two conversation transcripts and shared the comments with partners.



6 Result and Discussion
　I want to analyse the each students' two transcripts and discuss how they improved.

a A case of student A
　Student A's first conversation is shown in figure 3. And the second one is in figure 4. The number of the sentences and words do not change much. Then does student A improve her communicative ability? Let's have a close look at them.

　Student A showed a picture of the singer, Koichi Domoto. ALT, Trevy, responded saying, "She is pretty." He mistook the singer as a girl. So the first communication brakdown occured here. Student A tried to explain that the singer is a man. Student A led the conversation, continuing asking question, "What stars do you like?" Then ALT answered and asked her back saying, "Do you like Chara?" At the end of the conversation student A regreted not to be able to say, "Do you know him?" She wanted to return the topic of the conversation to her picture, but she could not because she could not find out the expression in English.
　In this conversation Student A gave the first topic showing a picture and gave another question. She seems not to prepare farther questions. She just wanted to show and tell who she likes and ask who ALT likes. So ALT took turns and ask her.

　Then let's look at the second conversation. Student A started talking on the swimming. However communication breakdown occured at the begining. ALT could not understand what student A said because her pronunciation is so Japanese and the verb she used was "play". ALT tried to look at student A's portfolio and finally found out what she meant. ALT then asked her back on the swimming topic. Then conversation ended.
　Student A gave the first topic and wantd to ask ALT about his favorite swimming style. She may want to tell what her favorite style after the qeustion. In this sence she didn't just say what she likes instead ask ALT first and tell about her later. She organized the conversation better than the first time.
　In both of the conversaton, there was communication breakdown and it is ALT who managed it to solve the problem. After the communication breakdown, ALT took the turn of the conversation and contiued asking and student A only answered. Then time was up.

b A case of student B
　 Figure 5 is student B's first conversation, and figure 6 is the second. The number of the sentences and words are same. Now let's look at them one by one.

　 Student B gave the topic at first and she added one more question, "What animal do you like?" Then ALT took the turn and kept asking questions. Student B had a communication breakdown at the middle of the conversation. ALT asked student B saying, "How many dogs do you have?(sentence A)" but student B answered, "I like husky.(sentence B)" Student B misunderstood the meaning of the sentence A. Student B did not notice this mistake until the end of the conversation becuase ALT did not mention that and continued the topic as student B changed.
　Student B wanted to talk about her favorite animal. She first asked ALT. However she could not tell what animal she likes from her. She just answered. ALT limited the area. So student B answerd that she liked husky. Then she only answered ALT's continueous questions.

　On the "I can card" in student B's portfolio, there was a picture of the horn. She prepared to talk about the horn. Studnt B succeeded in starting the topic and let ALT ask her back. So she could say, "I can play the horn." However she could not add one more sentence telling ALT more about the horn. So ALT took the turn and kept asking her. So the conversation style was similar to the first one. However this time she succeeded to tell what she likes to play. She may not have farther questions and topics so she let ALT kept asking.
　
c A case of student C
　 Figure 7 is the student C's first conversation and figure 8 is the second time. The number of the sentences and words did not increase. They decreased. Let's look at closely.

　Student C only asked once. After that ALT kept asking him. That is maybe because student C seemed not to speak English well. At the beginning of the conversation, student C told about himself and asked questions to ALT. He seemed not to prepare farther qustions and topics. So he allowed ALT to keep asking.

　Student C prepared the picture which he snowboarded. So student C looked happy because ALT was surprised at looking at the picture. Student C could say, "Thank you." when ALT praised him. The conversation went on well until the next question, "Do you snowboard many time?" because the words, "many times" was new to him. Then he lost his confidence. At the beginning of the conversation student C leaned forward, but from that time he sat back. However he succeeded in answering "Yes, I do." and "Yes, I can." according to the question.
　Just showing his favorite picture, he seemed to be satisfied. He may not be able to give farther comment on his picture. Then he allowed to give the turn to ALT.

7 Conclusion
　Comparing the conversation style of the six conversation examples, I can notice that the structure of the conversation is so similar. Students try to give the conversation topic, either telling themselves or asking questions. Then ALT answered and asked them back. Students answered with Yes or No. ALT kept asking yes/no questions until the end of the conversation.
　Students only prepared the first two sentences and wanted ALT asking qeustions. Students need to prepare more topics and comments on the same topic.
　Students does not know how to take turn after ALT started keep asking. So students only answered. They need to learn the expressions and techniques to take turns.
　In this classes, students and ALT had only one minutes for conversation. However it may be too short. They just started the conversation showing something in their portfolio and soon after that the time ended. If they have two or three minutes, they may think of the flow of the conversation and prepare.

8 Further Studies
　Students need to notice the flow of the conversation more. They need to learn the conversation strategies to take turn and keep it. I want to give them more time for the conversation and preparation time to think of the conversation structure. I want to contiue this communication unit next year and want to clarify how students improve their conversation with native speakers.