Practical Project Design > Appendix


Two Samples of Students' Practical Projects
 
Note to the Appendix

For both students and tutors, two samples of students' practical projects are included. In order to give you an authetic picture of what real-life students' projects look like, no editing has been made on the original texts, although the original formats and layouts have been slightly altered in order to cut the length of the appendix to its tolerable size.

Note that the samples should not be treated as the models for students to follow blindly.

The authors of the present book would like to take this opportunity to thank the two students who are kind enough to allow their projects to be included in the appendix.


 
 

5.Data Analysis

After four weeks' action research, I designed Questionnaire Two(See Appendix E). The second questionnaire was partly based on Questionnaire One in the preliminary research so that comparisons could be made to see the improvement. In designing this new questionnaire, I also used feedback information from my solutions to the problems discussed so that their effectiveness could be reflected by the results. Compared with the first questionnaire, the second one had its own features, for by now I was more conscious of the usefulness of the oral practice management I suggested. I especially hoped to know what my students had gained and which methods they preferred.

The results are listed as follows:

5.1 Students' general impression of the project
The project here consists of three aspects: degree of interest, practicality and satisfaction. After comparing the results of the two questionnaires, I found out that generally speaking, there has been significant improvement after the implementation. The results of the two questionnaires are presented in Graph 1 and Table 1.


Graph 1: Comparison of degree of interest

Interest:

Graph 1 shows that there is a drastic improvement in this regard. Most of the subjects who rank themselves in scale "Like" and "Like very much" amount to 72.1%, while the percentage was only 48.5% before the implementation. The graph also shows no one dislikes oral practice after the implementation. As the objective of our research is to enhance my students' interest and effect in doing oral practice after class, such a result is very encouraging. It proves that our implementation of the solutions is fruitful and effective. Yet I should not be too optimistic, since there are still 37.8 % of the students choosing 3. Though the number is much smaller than that in Questionnaire One. This implies that I should find out some other reasons to account for this fact, and try to solve the problem more thoroughly, as can be seen from the following analysis.

Practicality:

Comparison between the results of the two questionnaires shows that 100% of the students think the oral tasks I asked them to do after class now are more practical than before. And through practising the oral tasks, they have much improvement in the following aspects.

Firstly, 83.3% of them said they had learned some methods of retelling texts.

Secondly, 86.1% of them said they could easily learn the new patterns and main ideas of the texts by heart.

Thirdly, 88.9% of them said they could express the main idea of the texts or retell the texts in oral English.

Fourthly, 50% of them said they could communicate something about the topic "Seeing the doctor" with their classmates.

Satisfaction:

Our data also show that 100% of the students are more satisfied with the oral tasks I asked them to do after class now than they were before. I asked them which methods of the following they were more satisfied with.

Table 1: Students' preference to methods dealing with the oral practice

Methods No. of Ss Percentage
Working in groups 21 58.3
Acting in class 20 55.6
Reciting the shorter passages 21 58.3

Giving necessary help and directions

24 66.7
Supplying more topics, models and materials 22 61.1
Checking every time 24 66.7

Table 1 shows over half of the students approved the methods very much. This indicates the effectiveness of the methods

5.2 Students' voluntariness of doing oral tasks after class

Graph 2: Comparison of whether the students do oral tasks or not

Graph 2 shows that there is the greatest improvement in this respect. After I implemented the project, 58.3% of the students could finish every oral practice I asked them to do after class. If we add the percentage of the students choosing 5 and 4 together in Questionnaire Two, we may conclude that 75% of the students can do oral tasks on their own initiative and enthusiasm. But I also learn that about 25% of them sometimes did not do their oral homework. This may be caused by both students and me. Some of them did not study hard, some are very weak in English, while others might dislike my oral tasks. So I should try my best to do my work better.

I think the improvement is mainly due to these four factors: Firstly, providing very effective help. Secondly, improving the recited homework. Thirdly, practising oral tasks with peers Fourthly, checking their oral tasks every time.
 
 
 

 
 

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