Running head: A WORD-SENTENCE WALL

A Word-Sentence Wall and Its Effects on Students Sentence Expression

Sinan Wang Michigan State University

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL Abstract

This article explored the importance of a word sentence wall and its effects on students sentence expression. The main question is To what degree will a word-sentence wall improve third grade students' ability to express themselves with Chinese sentences? My action research will be conducted in my Chinese classroom during daily thirty-minute Chinese lessons. Two third-grade classes, including more than 50 students, will be my participants. Qualitative unstructured and semistructured observations will be conducted to address my research question. Also, inductive analysis will be applied to analyze the data I collect. After teaching of three weeks with the word-sentence wall, students are in high and medium level improved in sentence making. They also try to apply Chinese sentences actively in their expression. However, the students who have not solid Chinese language background get limit improvement. The conclusion is that for the students who accumulate enough words and vocabulary, the concept of setting words into different categories and put them in sentence order is helpful in students ability of sentence expression. The visual wall works well in the classroom. However, the differentiation cannot be ignored. It is necessary to search the functions of the word- sentence wall to facilitate both high and medium level students and slow students. Key words: sentence structure, word- sentence wall, constructivism

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL A Word-Sentence Wall and Its Effects on Students Sentence Expression Introduction of the Problem

This year I am teaching third grade students who have had daily Chinese classes for three years. These students have learned a variety of words through studies of different topics. However, I have noticed that they include single words in English sentences. For example, a third grade girl told me, I will have dinner with my grandma with the words dinner and grandma in Chinese. Language may be separated into different levels, including word acquisition, vocabulary expansion, sentence construction and paragraph formation. For these young students, who are not in an immersion environment, word acquisition and vocabulary expansion are easier for them to develop during the early stages of language learning. However, if students continue to use English sentence structure with inserted Chinese words, it will be difficult for the students to progress to the next level. Research question My research question is, To what degree will a word-sentence wall improve third grade students' ability to express themselves with Chinese sentences? I began with the topic of making a word-sentence wall to improve students ability to form sentences. Then I applied the four w and one h question: Who: my third grade students who have been learning Chinese for three years. What: improve their ability to construct sentences in target language. Where: the wall will be displayed on the front wall of my classroom. When: students share their thinking with classmates during Chinese class time.

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL How: use a word-sentence wall separated into four categories: subjects, verbs, adverbs, and nouns. Students may select the words from specified categories to make a sentence. Oral assessment will be given every other week. Theoretical Framework Constructivism was developed by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. It is a learning theory

that suggests that learners construct their current and post knowledge to solve real problems. For my word-sentence wall, students will not receive the knowledge of how to use the words and how to put them into sentences from me. When they need to express themselves, they will search for the words they need on the wall and put the words into a sentence. Students motivation of learning will be also increased as they are learning trust-worthy knowledge to solve their problems. I plan to generally introduce a sentence structure to students with the main topic we are learning. Then break up the sentence into words which may be put to different category in the word- sentence wall. When students express a sentence which may apply to this sentence pattern, they will be guided to turn to the wall and take advantage of the wall. As the most of the words have been learned, students need to reorganize the words and set them in the right order. Literature Review For my action research project, the main topic is about word-sentence wall. Students prefer to apply single Chinese words to English sentence patterns, even though the Chinese sentence pattern they need has been taught. In this situation, their language output is limited in words, which will be a problem for their future learning. When I notice the importance of connecting words into sentences, I want to use a word-sentence wall to improve my students

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ability of making sentences in target language. The words will be separated into a few categories and put in sentence order, which construct the word-sentence wall. However, some detail questions come to me when I tried to make the word-sentence wall into practice. I am confused with the purpose of the word sentence wall in Chinese learning and what kind of activities I may take to involve students learning with this wall. Also, how may I know that the possible improvement from students is caused by the word-sentence wall? There are two effective ways for me to answer these questions: communicate with American experienced teachers who have use word wall for a period of time and turn to literatures. For reviewing literature to help me better my word-sentence wall, I searched for some materials in three main themes the importance of word- sentence wall in Chinese classroom, the implement word- sentence wall, and assessment of students sentence making. For the first theme, Karen D. Woods Promoting Vocabulary Learning with the Interactive Word Wall and a book about the particularity of Chinese words order is very meaningful for me. The Word Wall: Teaching Vocabulary through Immersion by Joseph Green is a wonderful book with many questions of word wall, such as how to build students concept of vocabulary or sentence, especially useful for language teachers. I get some great ideas of carrying out the word- sentence wall by reading it and some other articles about word wall. Whats more, Assessing the Language of Young Learners by Angela Hesslgreen and some articles about assessment with elementary students helped me with the assessment problems, for example, how to assess students with different age group and with multiple types. Why the word- sentence wall in Chinese classroom is important?

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL For elementary students without a language immersion environment, they usually start

learning with single words. Take fruit unit as an example, students may learn a lot of names of different fruits with only one sentence pattern I like So when they need to make real communication, it is the word which comes to them first. However, language is used to communicate. If words are exposed to students as frame works, they are meaningless. Only when words are put in order as a sentence, they will make sense. As Karen D. Wood mentioned that one particular artifact associated with literacy environment is the word wallI may supplement it as a word- sentence wall. Students are required to think about and use words in meaningful contexts to produce a deeper level of understanding (Beck, McClaslin, &McKeown, 1980). Additionally, the particularity of Chinese words order makes a word- sentence wall more useful for second language learners. As Charles N. Li (1981) introduced in his book Mandarin Chinese, Chinese words order in sentences can be very different from English. Even in Chinese itself, different words order may make totally different meaning. For example, xihuan bu means do you like it? While, bu xihuan means I do not like it. Also, there is no tense of words like write-wrote-written in Chinese. The order of words may clarify the time of this sentence. Thats why help students clear the words order in sentence is significant. How to carry out the word- sentence wall? The first question for me to implement the word-sentence wall is that what the wall looks like? Teaching Vocabulary through Immersion by Joseph Green is a book about making a word wall in English teaching. I borrowed ideas of it that separate the word- sentence wall into different colors. For example, red is for nouns and yellow is for verbs. When students need

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL certain word, they may turn to one color. Also, the colors will be arranged according to words order. So it is visual for students to organize words into sentences. Secondly, how to make daily activities according to the word- sentence wall?

Callella2001in book Making Your Word Wall More Interactive introduced plenty of activities which include whole class, small group and independent activities. Most of these activities are very practical in classrooms. Although these activities are focus on words instead of sentences, they inspired me very much. For example, for the activity all mixed up, the original game is messing up words with different initial letter. In my class, I may put words in wrong order and ask students to correct me. Whats more, the words on this wall should be flexible to update. I will update the word-sentence wall every time when we meet new sentences patterns. However, it is very sorry that I did not find a particular article addressing the problem of carrying out a Chinese word-sentence wall. What I am going to do is borrow the great ideas of interactive walls to my word- sentence Chinese wall. Last but not least, how to keep students interest in making sentences with the wall? Understand what students need is important (Spence, Jim, &Shari, 1999). The words and sentences should be selected based on what students want to express, which will increase students motivation of using the wall. Also, encourage students to review the word wall as more than just classroom decoration (Julie, 2004). Lead students to take advantage of the wall and make them get used to turn to the wall when they need help with sentences in daily learning. Whats more, the word- sentence wall engages students in multiple, varied, and meaningful experiences with words (Janis M, Karen D &Kendall, 2009). Topics, which are connected to students real life, will be more attractive for them.

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL The last main question is how to assess students sentence making? There are a few points in Hassselgreens article Assessing the Language of Young Learners are very helpful with me. Age appropriated: as my students are in third grade, most of the assessment will be with speaking and reading ability more than writing. Games, in class activities and worksheets with free choices will be the main way to assess them. Multiple types: students have different learning styles, which decide the ways to assess them. Also, individual

assessment, group assessment and self-assessment will all be used. Good learning activities. The methods to assess students are familiar with students as they are also good learning activities in their daily learning. Besides, they can also learn from the assessment. To sum up, the three themes the review confirmed me with my research topic about word- sentence wall. The articles explained the importance of taking advantage of Chinese wordsentence wall to improve students from a word level to a sentence level. Great ideas of how to make and manage the wall keep coming to me during the reading journal, especially the ideas of interactive activities with the word- sentence wall. The articles also help me with how to keep students interest in learning and using this wall. Whats more, articles about assessment provide me detailed strategies to assess students effectively in my limited time with students. However, the literature review did not address directly to a Chinese word- sentence wall. Some details problems still exists in making such a wall. For example, as Charles N. Li (1981) mentioned in his book, different words orders may have very different meanings. But how can I add the explanation to such situation in the word wall, which wont confuse students if certain word appears in various spots. Another thing bothers me a lot is that how can I measure students improvement which only caused by the word- sentence wall? But I believe that I will figure out a answer during the practice of my action research.

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL Method My research project utilizes a Chinese word-sentence wall. My action research will be

conducted in my Chinese classroom during daily thirty-minute Chinese lessons. Two third-grade classes, including more than 50 students, will be my participants. Most of them have been learning Chinese for three years, since kindergarten. There are about 5 students who came to my school more recently, and have had less Chinese experience than the majority of my students. To protect the identities of my students, I will refer to them as Student A, Student B, etc., rather than by their real names. Also, I will refer to the two classes as Class One and Class Two. I will conduct qualitative unstructured and semistructured observations to address my research question. My goals, as a teacher, are facilitation of smooth classes and support of student achievement. The flexibility inherent in such observation will support me in meeting those goals. Field notes and videotape will be the main methods of data capture. My research topic is about students ability to construct sentences with the assistance of a word- sentence wall. The sentences they form will be open-ended answers, as they want to express different thoughts. I take notes and videotape their sentences to reflect students ability. I will check the notes and videos to see how many patterns they use in their sentences, whether they are applying complex sentence patterns, and the kinds of sentence patterns should add to the wall to facilitate flowing sentences. To ensure the trustworthiness of my data, I will consider three points: Firstly, apply multiple data resources and collection-- I have mentioned that I will apply this research to different classes. Not only observation, but also interview and questionnaire responses will be used to collect data. Secondly, member checking-- I will share my notes and data with both

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL students and other teachers. Adding comments to my own notes will support data analysis. Thirdly, persistent observation-- my observation will not be finished in one or two days; it will be a continuous process of observation. It goes through daily teaching and activities.

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After data collection, I will apply inductive analysis to analyze the data I collect. My field notes and videotapes will be watched to group data, like what kind of sentences they are using now with a word-sentence wall there. Second, I will categorize these sentence patterns. For example, what are they familiar with? What are they using more frequently now? What are they trying to use, but need to refer to the wall frequently when they are trying? Finally, I interpret what has been simplified and organized, and try to figure out whether the students have improved through the process of learning with a word-sentence wall. However, there are also some limitations of my study. The lack of sustained time is one of the limitations. As I have mentioned, I have only thirty minutes in each day with each class. In addition to sentence patterns, the students also need to learn words and expand their vocabularies. I cannot spend thirty the entire minutes of class time practicing sentence formation. Also, if there are other researchers working with other groups of students, the results will be more reliable. I will incorporate the sentence patterns on the wall during each activity, such as reading and games. So my results will not be exclusively attributable to the word wall. To make sure the whole procedure will go smooth, a time line will set up for this action research. Three weeks will be scheduled for data collection. As I will continue to add new patterns to the wall, it will be hard to set a time limit. I will conduct research for three weeks, as we are going to learn three new sentence patterns and I will add one such pattern to the wall on the first

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day of teaching new sentence patterns?. Students will be able to flexibly choose their sentences from new and old patterns. Then five weeks will be spend on data Analysis. The 5 is from 3+2. I believe the analysis may start with the data collection. Findings There was a pretest which focused on words order in sentences. For example, for the multiple choices part of this test, three choices with different orders of words are provided to students: ( ) Which sentence is the right one? A. My Mom dog likes. B. My Mom likes dog. C. Dog my likes Mom. I generally separate students into four levels according to the result of this test. Here is the pie chart of the result:

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The 24% students, who got more than 90 grades, are in high level. While 28% present students are in medium level, 32% students are in low level and 16% are in extremely low level. The students who are new to this school and had no Chinese experience before are included in the low and extremely low level. With the data from this pretest, I have a better view of students during my observation. During three weeks accentuation training of sentence making with the word-sentence wall, students who are in high and medium level are more interested in the word-sentence wall. The high and medium level students are obviously applying more sentence patterns for me. A good example in my video tape is that one student expressed a sentence that My Mom and Dad both give me presents for my birthday. In this sentence, she used only the word presents in English. However, the students in low level did not show much passion in this sentence structure. At the beginning of the fourth week, students had a final test with old and new sentence patterns. The question types are the same with pretest. And here is the result

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From the two pie charts, you may notice the great improvement for high and medium level students. Not only the number of students who got more than 70 points has been increased, but also the average score. However, it is still the same group of students who get low grades. Some of these students are new to Chinese class, and some of them have been kept slower than others in the past three years. Discussion The observation with field notes and videos showed that students who are in high or medium level of Chinese learning have much more passion of making sentences. The tests also showed the evidence that this group of students are benefit most from the word-sentence wall. They are engaged in the process of learning sentence structures and supported very much by the word-sentence wall. However, the students without a solid background of Chinese learning do not achieve much through the few weeks research project. Their improvement of knowledge about sentence structures is very limited.

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL My action research is based on the theory of Constructivism which suggests learners construct their current and post knowledge to solve real problems. The students who are in low and extremely low level do not accumulate enough post knowledge to help them build the sentence structure. While the students who get much improvement have a good language foundation to support them solve the sentence problems. The difference of their language background leads to such a different result.

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This result confirmed me again of the importance of students differentiation. The wordsentence wall works well to the students who have built a solid background of words and vocabulary learning. However, for the slow students, how to get them involved and improved with this wall is a topic which I would like to search in my future practice. Conclusion To apply a word-sentence wall to support students who have learned Chinese for three years is a great way to improve their ability of sentence making. Students supposed to be mastered of basic words and vocabularies. Through the learning with such wall, students can build the feeling of a sentence structure, and reorganized their current knowledge. Then they achieve the improvement of the ability to express themselves in Chinese sentences. However, the students language level in one real classroom is very different. Students without solid Chinese background have difficulty to meet the goal of improvement. Differentiation in activity design and assessment of the word-sentence wall should be paid attention to. How to help students in different level in using this word-sentence wall is a topic which worth to work on. It is necessary to search the functions of the word- sentence wall to facilitate both high and medium level students and slow students.

A WORD-SENTENCE WALL References: Li, C. N., &Thompson, S. A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Los Angeles, CA: The Regents of the University of California. Callella, T. (2001). Making your world wall more interactive. Los Angeles, CA: Creative Teaching Press. Wagstaff, J.M. (1999). Word wall that works. Instructor, 110 (5), 32-33

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Beck, I. L., McClaslin, E. S., &McKeown, M. G. (1980). The rational and design of a program to teach vocabulary to fourth-grade students. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, Learning Research and Development Center. Jongsma, K. (2000). Teaching reading and writing with word walls. The Reading Teacher, 54 (1), 80. Harmon, J. M., Wood, K. D., &Kiser, K. (2009). Promoting Vocabulary Learning with the Interactive word wall. Middle School Journal, 40 (3), 58-63. Hollenberg, J. (2004). See the big picture: Create a word wall. Teaching Music, 12 (1), 50-53. Hasselgreen, A. (2005). Assessing the language of young learners. Language Testing, 22 (3), 6078. Rea-Dickins, P. (2000). Assessment in early year language learning contexts. Language Testing, 17 (1), 15-22. Green, J. (2003). Teaching vocabulary through immersion. Toronto: Pippin Publishing Corporation.