Summary of our research project

What is the bilingual project? The bilingual project in Madrid is called AICOLE and began in 2004 The project began with just 26 schools in the whole of the community of Madrid and is now running in 276 schools Each school has from 2 to 6 language assistants and a minimum of 30% of classes are taught in English (excluding Spanish language and Maths)

So… What exactly does a language assistant do?

Reinforce and improve students oral fluency Help teachers by preparing didactical materials Have direct responsibility in supervising students Give students and teachers an insight into their culture Bring coffee to all the teachers in the morning Help improve students grammar and phonetics Complete a report detailing activities carried out during the year They can be left alone in the classroom with students whenever considered necessary They give members of staff English lessons They have to speak Spanish at all times in the classroom

Following our research and personal experience working with and as language assistants we have come up with the following hypothesis: “Which are the areas a language assistant should be covering? Which are being covered? And why?”

CEIP Iplacea in Alcalá de Henares The school has been part of the bilingual project since 2005 There are approximately 350 students Our investigation was centered around 6 th form students who are more capable of analysing the role of language assistants Where our investigation took place…

There are two 6 th form groups in the school. We will be working with 6A, which is made up of 9 girls and 10 boys. They have been part of the bilingual project from its beginnings.

There are 4 language assistants in the school ALL 4 of them rotate between classes on a daily basis. Here is the timetable for 6A… MONDAYTUESDAYWEDNESDAYTHURSDAYFRIDAY MaríaLauraLindsayLaura Stewart Lindsay MaríaLindsay BREAK LauraLindsayLaura MaríaStewart

Our research is naturalistic Data collected is both quantitative and qualitative Therefore comes from a statistic, interpretative and deductive research It has been conducted using students as our primary tool of measurement. To complete and justify conclusions we have also carried out a second questionnaire with most of the bilingual teachers from the school. Our research tool…

Our questionnaire is made up of: Closed questions: Yes/No/Excellent/Good/etc. Open questions Mixed options

The procedure we followed…

We began our background research on the role of language assistants with the help of various articles and the BOCM (9th July 2009 Orden 2670/2009) To reinforce/improve oral fluency To improve grammar and phonetics To Provide help to teachers by preparing didactical material To give students and teachers an insight into English/American culture through games and current issues Any other activity related to English decided by the Ministry of Education NO responsibility whatsoever for supervising students Language assistants should NEVER be left alone with students in the classroom (outside?) On finishing the school year Language assistants have to complete a report detailing the activities they have carried out in the classroom. Language assistants have 16 teaching hours per week however two of these hours can be used for teaching English to members of staff

We then decided our objectives based on the BOCM Here are some examples of the conclusions we hope to reach: 0. To know whether students have a good relationship with the language assistant 0. To discover if they consider the language assistant as another teacher and respect them as such 0. To find out if they think that the language assistant motivates them in English classes. i.e. are classes more fun? 0. To see if the students think that there is a good relation between teacher and language assistant 1. To know whether any Spanish is spoken in the class by the language assistant therefore implying that students will make far less effort to speak in English to them

We then elaborated our questionnaire taking into account the objectives we had established

The final questionnaire was established with the help of our classmates We gave the pilot questionnaire to our children We discovered and consequently changed two or three difficult questions

The final results!!

The student’s questionnaire… We grouped questions 1,2 and 3 together to establish whether student/language assistant relationship can be considered positive.

Questions 9 and 10 establish if language assistant corrects oral and written English

Questions 12, 14 and 15 gave us an insight into whether the language assistant transmits their culture to the students

And finally we combined questions 6 and 7 to establish whether speaking/listening skills were reinforced with the language assistant

The teacher’s questionnaire… With question1we wanted to find out if teachers’ were completely aware of language assistants role according to the BOCM

Question 2 gave us an insight into whether teachers received sufficient training related to working with language assistants in the classroom

By combining questions 3 and 4 we discover if language assistants are aware of the syllabus and daily lesson plans

Finally question 12 told us if teachers’ considered language assistants necessary

According to the results we have obtained from the student’s questionnaires: Results concerning reinforcement of speaking/listening were quite positive but lower than expected 74% considered their relationship with the language assistant as extremely positive Virtually all students realised that the language assistant corrected their oral and written English An extremely high percentage were able to give examples of “cultural” activities carried out by the language assistant

According to the results we have obtained from the teacher’s questionnaires: All 6 teachers interviewed believed that language assistants were a necessary resource in the bilingual project Two of the bilingual teachers were completely unaware of the language assistants role according to BOCM!! These same two teachers answered that they had received no training whatsoever related to working with language assistants Virtually all teachers thought that language assistants were aware of the syllabus and lesson plans in advance!!

Taking all of these facts and figures into consideration, here are some of our conclusions…

Results were extremely positive in most questions Teachers consider language assistants an important element in learning a language Although most students rated their relationship with the language assistant as “good” rather than “excellent” we consider that on the whole they are very much appreciated by students and teachers alike Language assistants are not just speakers of a foreign language. They transmit their culture to the students and create a genuine interest in learning a foreign language

Difficulties and anecdotes encountered during the process… The day after our research one of the assistants left without warning! Some students don’t understand the meaning of anonymous and insisted on writing their names on the questionnaires! Other students thought it was a kind of test and copied classmates answers! Due to the fact that they have four language assistants (we were unaware of this beforehand) consecutively it was difficult for them to judge and reply to some of the questions. We discovered that Thanksgiving has been renamed “turkey celebration”!

Thank you very much for your attention!