Action Research On Short-term Adult Chinese Classroom Participation

Classroom participation has been the commonplace of all kinds of language classrooms. Emerging teaching methods emphasizes on the importance of classroom participation by focusing on the central role of students in classrooms. There are many factors concerning the issue, namely teachers, students, textbooks, teaching environment and teaching facilities. In order to substantially improve students’classroom participation, a comprehensive analysis of different factors is greatly needed. The present research is to improve the classroom participation of students in the National Defense University, where the present author was interned. The Action Research Method is applied to the present research.The present research consists of two phases. The first phase starts from May to July2014. At the beginning of the first phase, the present author noticed from class observation the following classroom problems:about a fourth of the total students were absent each class; students did not have stapled textbooks; the teacher’s attention was mostly on the students in the first3rows, others neglected and motivation deprived; an atmosphere of boredom covered the class; students were rarely asked to express themselves. Based on my observation, hypotheses are made as follows:the single form of classroom interaction is the cause of participation problems; a lack of practice opportunities has resulted in the loss of interest and confidence. To improve students’class participation, the author carried out the First-Phase Action Research and collected data throughout the process. After two months, the students’interest in the Chinese lessons has improved noticeably, so has their participation in classroom activities.After the first phase of action research, the department leader made some improvements to the program such as dividing the students into smaller classes, sending out stapled textbooks and changing into regular classrooms. These changes undoubtedly improved the teaching conditions of the program. However, there still remained problems such as memory problems, textbook being unrelated to real life and so on. To further solve the problems, the author carried the Second Phase Action Research which focuses on the integrating of study resources, revising the textbook and constant reviewing to reduce forgetting. To conclude, the two phases of Action Research has served their original purposes and overall satisfying.