Team and individual work :a research on the contribution of these two techniques in reading comprehension activities performend in two schools in Santiago

Abstract

We think that Chile has been widely recognized by its diversified growth. This developing process has had a significant impact on the educational field and its policy objectives, especially when it comes to the teaching of the language of international communication, that is to say, English. In 2011, the outcome of the national assessment, Simce Inglés 2010, showed that 82% out of 186.000 students who took the test in their third year of High School Education, could neither understand nor read any English. As a response, the Education Minister stressed the importance of increasing the number of teaching hours of English Language hours in Primary Education (Lavín, J., 2011). From that moment onwards, it was made mandatory for elementary level students to have three hours of English lessons every week. Enhancing the English language proficiency is considered a key developmental aim of the educational system, and in order to be achieved, it is fundamental that the English teachers become agents of change, whose work is of good quality and ensures effective learning. Since our country is still quite far from addressing a bilingual education, English teachers have the challenge of immersing their students in a context that does not really exist. It has become essential to create proper and accurate opportunities to make students interact with the foreign language as much as possible. Through our personal experiences, we have been exposed to several teaching techniques, approaches, and strategies. Nevertheless, the one which drew our attention was team work. As George Brown and Madeleine Atkins claim: “Team Work has been promoted as the best technique to be performed in the educational field, especially in English as a Foreign Language lessons”. George Brown and Madeleine Atkins, 1991 – Effective teaching in higher Education As trainee teachers we have acknowledged that teachers must assume the important role of connecting students with the rest of the world. Moreover, we believe that in our case, since English has become the most important means of communication around the globe, English teachers should create a wide bridge to connect our language “Spanish” with the one we think is the most important, that is to say, “English”. Out of our experience as future teachers, we think we should not only focus on teaching the language, but also on the methodology and techniques we use. According to a study published in EF EPI “Education First- English Proficiency Index”, Chile can be found in 44th place in a ranking of the use of English. This places Chileans in the section in which their level of English only allows the delivery of basic information regarding themselves and to describe, in the most basic terms, simple concepts in the foreign language. March 2011, www.ef.co.uk/epi/ This does not come as a surprise, if we consider that according to the curriculum written by the Ministry of Education, state schools in Chile should provide only 3 compulsory hours of English classes every week for students in 5th grade and above. Furthermore, the teaching of the language to those students from pre-kinder to 4th grade is merely optional, despite the knowledge that it is during this period that foreign language comes most naturally and is most efficient. Some of the many difficulties that are present in the teaching of foreign languages in our country are the geographical isolation of Chile in regards to English speaking countries, the scarce opportunities in which we can practice and the inevitable embarrassment that we feel during the rare few occasions that we are able to do it. The result of the above is a very low level of English, and a necessity to invest both time and money in order to make an improvement. Consequently, we as teachers have the obligation of teaching the maximum knowledge to our students in this very little time per week. However, this alone is not enough, as we also need to identify how students learn better and how we could make them feel more comfortable while learning a foreign language, with special attention to the feeling of “embarrassment” in front of the class or being bullied by their classmates. In this way, we are recognizing the importance of classroom techniques in order to maximize the success and efficiency of our teaching. Hence, the objective of this research is to investigate two types of techniques, teamwork and individual work, which according to our experience, are not being used to their highest potential. As a consequence, we will define team and individual work. Our study is based on two different Schools. One of them “Liceo Salesiano Camilo Ortúzar Montt” and the other “El Patrocinio de San José” both Schools from Santiago. We started our research the second week of October, first in the School “Liceo Salesiano Camilo Ortúzar Montt” and then in “El Patrocinio de San José” The main objective of this research is to recognize the differences between individual and team work and how they both can contribute into a better methodology and technique while TEFL.