Cathy Vila

Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

WMAIE Conference 2015: Action into Spring- Teacher Action Research

Worksheet
1. Whats in your mind that you want to figure out regarding your teaching?
How do we (Teacher and assistant) motivate kindergarteners in their first year of
Spanish Immersion to speak only in Spanish? If we use an incentive, a reward system,
will we motivate our young learners to speak only in Spanish?
2. Develop above description into a research question (Remember: my, researchable,
manageable, without spending extra time or efforts)
If we use an incentive, a reward system with a clear common goal for the class, will
we motivate our young learners to speak only in Spanish?
3. In which way, are you going to figure out the answer to your questions? (Step by step)
a. Examining current classroom strategies based on the question
Strategies- Currently individual incentives exist for increasing the amount of
Spanish spoken in the classroom. Tickets are awarded for the use of Spanish
throughout the day. Green Paws, a school-wide system to recognize good behavior
and in our class are also given for increasing use of Spanish are also awarded.
Students use both the green paw and the ticket for opportunities to win prizes
through a raffle. We currently do not have in place a classroom strategy for 100%
use of Spanish at a specific time of day, nor for the class as a whole.
b. Literature Review- read about what people say about your question.
1. Show Me the Spanish! Increasing Student Motivation to Speak Spanish in an
Elementary Dual Immersion Classroom, Horowitz, E., 2005 M.A., School of
Education, UCDavis
This study examined a second grade Spanish Dual Immersion classroom during two
phases of an intervention with the goal to increase student motivation to speak
Spanish.
Phase I: Extrinsic motivation involved handing out Magnfico raffle tickets for
speaking Spanish during Spanish Language Arts Center time and the Spanish
Certificate, which was presented to a daily winner for speaking in Spanish.
Phase II: Intrinsic motivation gave the five Spanish speakers in the classroom
Enhanced Status and the opportunity to teach their English speaking peers a
Peanut Butter Playdough lesson in Spanish with the goal to teach ten vocabulary

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Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

words. To measure the success of the intervention, identical Pre and Post
Language Attitude Surveys,
Observation Tally Data and Achievement Vocabulary Assessments were given.
Results showed significant evidence of success. These results indicate that the
Magnfico raffle ticket system, the Spanish Certificate, and the Peanut Butter
Playdough activity taught by the Spanish speakers increased the amount of
Spanish spoken in the classroom.
2. Help! Theyre Using Too Much English! The Problem of L1 vs. L2 in the Immersion
Classroom by Cindy LaVan, Fourth Grade Teacher, Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion
School, Robbinsdale, Minnesota February 2001 ACIE Newsletter The Bridge.
Teachers need to establish rules of conduct for the classroom, and make clear to
students that they are expected to use the L2 as much as possible. In addition to
clearly established rules and expectations, teachers also need to create a nurturing
environment, which encourages the use of the L2 and provides ample
opportunities for its use. Rewards have been proven to be ineffective in the long
term.

3. What Motivates Students to Study Foreign Languages?

March 9, 2011, Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS)
http://casls.uoregon.edu 5290 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 541-3465699 Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS), University of Oregon
When students are able to communicate successfully in the new language, they
can experience a sense of accomplishment that motivates them to continue
studying and improve their skills even more.
c. Design a Plan:
What are you going to change?
We will establish a common class goal with a daily reward for the entire class to
use as an extrinsic motivator for all the students in the class to speak Spanish
during the approximately 40 minutes of language center time. Before the
language centers begin each day the teacher will write on the board: Hablamos
espaol, (We speak Spanish). For every utterance in English with the exception of a
request for a word in Spanish as in a direct question of Cmo se dice word in
English? , we will erase one letter of the 15 letters in Hablamos espaol. Codeswitching will be counted as an utterance in English. If at least one letter remains
after the language center time is up, students will receive a class-wide reward, an
Rui Niu-Cooper, Ph.D / Page 2 of 8

Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

extra five minutes of recess time, candy or a video. We rehearsed the plan with
the class for two days, April 23 and 24 during language center time. We will begin
to collect data on Monday, April 27, 2015.

What are you going to collect as data? The number of times in language centers
that students use English using an individual tally and a whole class tally. The
number of days out of five that the class is successful in uttering in English less
than 15 times. The reactions of the students after the ten days.
How are you going to collect the data? Teachers observe the students during
language centers, a period of approximately 40 minutes. With two teachers
each teacher will be responsible for observing approximately 14 students and
tallying the number of times that English is spoken, and then erasing a letter
from the board for each time. We have two rooms in which the centers take
place, with a door accessing one room to the other. Each teacher will watch
either two or three centers at a time. The centers are arranged in close
proximity, with only a few feet in between. Students are expected during these
times to work together and use their Spanish in talking with each other or
addressing the teachers. Teachers will monitor the stations up close to assess
the number of times the students speak in English. The teachers are not at this
time involved in directed group teaching, and as such can much more
efficiently formatively monitor the students.

4. Implementation of your plan: (how about tomorrow, start to try)

Enact your plan and make sense of your data:
Collecting data: Tally chart of the number of students utterances in English for
each student, and the class as a whole during the 40 minute center time for a
period of two weeks.
Analyzing data: Did the learners speak less English? Did certain students
perform better or worse with the extrinsic motivation of a class reward? Did
the class as a whole decrease the utterances of English as the study progressed,
or did the motivation become less meaningful? The idea of our research was
to see if a class-wide extrinsic motivator with a reward for the entire class
would encourage the children to speak in all Spanish. The results were mixed.
Half the class was able to remain in all Spanish for the entire week, and this
was very encouraging. There were 13 students of the 28 in the class however,
who did have utterances in English. After analyzing the data, it is evident that
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Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

of the 13 students who spoke in English, six students had 4 or more utterances
over the week, and the other seven students had less than 4 utterances over
the entire week. These particular 13 students are at the threshold of being able
to speak in Spanish all the time. We knew this after almost a year of working
with them and we believe that if not for one particular student (QU) we would
have succeeded every day with the rewards. We did not notice a pattern from
day to day, other than the fact that this one student consistently spoke every
day in English, with 17 out of the total of 56 utterances attributable to him
alone. The remaining fifteen students, the rest of the class, were very
consistent in only speaking in Spanish. The class has a whole earned the reward
every day except for Wednesday, 4/29/15. We have concluded that we would
like to do further research on the six students who spoke more English, and
especially on the one student (QU) who overwhelmingly spoke English
compared to the others, to determine if there is something in particular we can
do to motivate them, or if there is an external factor such as issues at home or
emotional issues that are affecting their school performance. For the most part,
we are pleased with the results, with only having one day of failure towards
the goal out of five.

Rui Niu-Cooper, Ph.D / Page 4 of 8

Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

Action Research Collected Data and Analysis:

This first chart details the number of English Utterances by each student in one
total amount for the week. More than half of the students had not one English
utterance. Student no. 4 (QU) had a majority of the utterances. His situation will
be addressed in further research.

Number of English Utterances

Weekly Total per student
18
16

14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
1

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Number of English Utterances Weekly Total per student

The second chart details the number of English utterances of the entire class
from day 1 to day 5.

Daily Totals of English

Utterances For Entire Class
15
5
-5

Daily Totals of English Utterances

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Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

The third chart totals the number of utterances by the individual students who
made them versus the daily rewards to see if the type of reward affected the
utterance. Our conclusion was that it did not. No discernable pattern was found.

Daily Rewards vs. Amounts of Utterances

5/1/2015 Video
4/30/2015 Video
4/29/2015 Video Failed
4/28/2015 Extra Recess
4/27/2015 Candy

Student AR
Student GA
0

4/27/2015
Candy

4/28/2015
Extra Recess

4/29/2015
Video Failed

5
4/30/2015
Video

Student AR
Student GA

5/1/2015
Video
2

Student KA

Student LU

Student HA

Student EL

Student CL

Student PA

Student QU

Student AS

Student ZA

Student JA

Student KA
Student LU
Student HA

Student ZE

Student ZE

Student EL
2

Student CL
Student PA
Student QU
Student AS

Student ZA
5
2

1
1

We will share the data with each student as well as with the class to assess their
opinion of the project. We will ask each student these questions: Did you speak
more Spanish because of the daily reward? Did you like the project? Why or why
not? The class loved the idea of a reward. They all expressed their joy when
the class obtained the reward, and there were many instances of the children
encouraging each other or asking for help if they did not know a word in
Spanish. The children also expressed that they did try harder because of the
reward. I do think there is merit in this type of procedure to encourage the
children to speak Spanish, however, as I stated earlier, certain students were
repeatedly speaking in English and we need to address their needs specifically.

Rui Niu-Cooper, Ph.D / Page 6 of 8

Student JA

Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

4. Comparing with research. Of the articles I researched, only one has a direct
comparison to this study. The others were mainly to see what types of studies had
been done on motivation and Second Language Learners. Help! Theyre Using Too
Much English! The Problem of L1 vs. L2 in the Immersion Classroom by Cindy
LaVan, which states that teachers need to establish rules of conduct for the
classroom, and make clear to students that they are expected to use the L2 as
much as possible. In addition to clearly established rules and expectations,
teachers also need to create a nurturing environment, which encourages the use
of the L2 and provides ample opportunities for its use. Rewards have been proven
to be ineffective in the long term. This research agrees with what we did, and
specifically because it was short term. We would not use this type of motivation all
year long. We determined that the class was ready, and that we should and could
push them with a short term reward. We believe that we were successful as we
had four out of five days in which we were able to reward the children.

Talking with colleagues

Most Immersion educators are looking for ways to encourage children to use
more of the L 2 in the classroom. It seems to be our biggest challenge! I believe
that we must work together and share our findings so that we can help each
other in this endeavor. My own teacher is continuing the tallying and also has
implemented a different type of reward now that is geared towards an
individual learner every day to see if this will encourage the 13 students who
were not able to remain in Spanish to do so.
5. Reflection:
Formulate solution/asking further questions/ starting the cycle again. There is no easy
solution to the issue of encouraging students to remain in the L2. We would like to
hear from other teachers about what they do, what strategies have worked for them,
and how they deal with a child who may have external factors weighing on them that
are affecting their school performance. It is obvious to us that the students who come
in the immersion program with higher levels of skill in their L1 are the ones who have
an easier time learning in the L2. How can we ensure that students are really ready for
immersion? Currently the screening process is the same for immersion as for regular
kindergarten. Perhaps this is an area that could be researched and addressed. We will
continue, however, to create a warm and nurturing environment that encourages the
use of L2, and we will give the students ample opportunities to do so.

Rui Niu-Cooper, Ph.D / Page 7 of 8

Cathy Vila
Action Research
EN 459
May 1, 2015

6. Report at next WMAIE Conference

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