This thesis presents a comparative case study on the effects of an All English teaching programme on the oral English proficiency of 12-13-year-old Norwegian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). By ‘All English’, it is here meant that the teacher spoke the target language (TL) exclusively in all English lessons. The study is based on the experience gained from two 7th grade classes of Norwegian pupils in the county of Rogaland, where one class of 21 pupils was used as an experimental group and another class of equal size was used as a control group.
Both the experimental group and the control group used the textbook called Stairs 7 (Thorsen & Unnerud 2008) and its complementary Stairs 7 Workbook (Thorsen & Unnerud 2008). This textbook provides a model called ‘steps’, where each class is divided into three groups based on their proficiency level in the TL. The pupils with the lowest TL proficiency are placed in step 1, those with middle proficiency in step 2, and those with the highest
proficiency in step 3. These divisions were used to find out if any of the groups of pupils were more influenced by the All English programme than the others.
The following research questions were devised for this study:
1. How does it affect the oral English proficiency of 12-13-year-old Norwegian EFL learners if the teacher speaks exclusively the TL in all English lessons?
a. To what extent does it affect the length of the answers the pupils make in response to open questions?
b. Does it affect their oral proficiency in terms of number of different verbs and auxiliaries they use?
c. Does it affect how often the pupils jump to their first language (L1) when they encounter difficulties in the TL?
2. How does the All English programme affect the pupils’ attitudes towards:
a. Speaking English?
b. The usefulness of the English lessons?
3. Based on the results from questions 1 and 2, does the All English programme affect the pupils differently based on how proficient their English was at the start of the programme?
In order to answer these questions, two different methods of data collection have been employed. Firstly, structured interviews were used to analyze oral proficiency. Secondly, a questionnaire was used to analyze the pupils’ attitudes towards speaking English aloud and attitudes towards the usefulness of the English lessons. Interviews and questionnaire sessions were carried out at the start of term in the 7th grade and repeated after a six-month period.
The interviews were transcribed and analyzed, and data for four different variables were collected. Firstly, the amount of words the pupils answered on these questions were analyzed before and after, to see if the length of the answers decreased, increased or stayed approximately the same. The purpose of this was to find out if the experiment lead to a higher, lower or equal willingness to speak English. Secondly, the number of L1 words used in the pupil’s foreign language (FL) speech was counted to see if the pupils changed their use of L1 during the six-month period. The third variable relates to how many different verbs the pupil used during the interviews, since this may reflect changes in the pupil’s vocabulary. The final variable concerns how many auxiliaries the pupils used. This variable was chosen as a way to detect changes in the complexity of the pupils’ answers, since sentences that contain one or more auxiliaries often can be more complex than sentences without auxiliaries.
Several studies that involve All English teaching programmes have been carried out in recent years; however, these studies mainly focused on experiences from other countries than Norway, and did not specifically target the effects such a teaching method might have on oral English proficiency amongst Norwegian pupils. Two main views are presented amongst scholars. On the one hand, Cook (2001), Van Lier (1995), Rolin-Ianziti and Brownlie (2002) and several others argue that the L1 should be used in L2 and FL teaching. On the other hand, Krashen (1982), MacDonald (1993), Turnbull (2001), Levine (2003), the Welsh Department of Education (DES 1990) and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL 2010) are amongst those that think the L1 should be left out of, or at least minimized in the FL classroom. The literature referred to throughout this thesis reflects these two views.
Chapter 2 presents the theoretical foundation of this thesis, where the different views on whether or not L1 should be used as a part of the FL teaching, are described in more detail.
Chapter 3 provides a detailed description of the methods used in this case study; structured interviews and the use of a questionnaire. Further it describes what action research is, and why this present study is regarded as action research (p. 21). Chapter 4 contains the case study, presenting the results from the structured interviews and the questionnaire. In Chapter 5, the results are discussed in light of the theory presented in Chapter 2 and related to the
research questions, examining potential reasons for the presented outcomes. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the main findings of the study and provides a conclusion, as well as remarks on the possible implications of the present study for the field of FL didactics.