Dynamic english immersion model to enhance primary school students' speaking performance

Abstract

The English language is important in the business world. In China, English is taught as a foreign language from primary three. However, most teachers are Chinese with speaking English ability lower than standard. In English class, teachers highlight memorization, not practice. This passive teaching leads to Chinese students’ difficulties in speaking English. To bring up primary school students’ speaking English performance to be standardized, the ‘Dynamic English immersion model’ is proposed as a solution model. Research objectives are i) to identify critical situations of BEST English Training School students; ii) to develop the dynamic English immersion model based on constructionism and customer knowledge management; iii) to compare students speaking English ability before and after implementation; iv) to measure customers' satisfaction based on the proposed model. Knowledge workers are 11 students in primary school studying in the BEST English Training school. The dynamic English immersion model covers two major areas, which are problem identification, and proposed solutions. In problem identification, CKM highlights ‘knowledge about and knowledge from customer’. Regarding this, SLA is applied to identify the critical area of the teaching and learning of English in China. The learning pyramid is used in observation guidelines to identify teachers’ passive teaching. Text mining is applied to extract the negative polar words from customer comments. The solution section aims at ‘CKM: Knowledge for customer’. To this, constructionism, second language acquisition, immersion teaching, and learning pyramid are integrated to propose the solution model. Constructionism is utilized to build up three components which are i) i+1 domain knowledge design; ii) generating play and learning activities based on immersion teaching; and iii) visual tools selection based on the learning pyramid. The whole research implementation lasts for 2 months. First, through the mode of practicing textbook knowledge, the students became familiar with the online class once a week for a total of one month. Second, speaking test 2 is used to determine the teaching content and design teaching plans. Then, a pre-test is introduced to all students in order to evaluate their speaking performance before implementation. Next, teaching is conducted online for 10 days. After finishing the class on day 10, students have to be evaluated their speaking performance through the 1st post-test immediately. Besides, observation is used to assess students’ behavior. Later, after 2 weeks of teaching, students are evaluated their retention rate via the 2nd post-test. Results after research implementation show that  All students’ speaking performance pass with a minimum score of 70.  Students’ retention rate after two weeks is 86.90%.  Three features (homework, textbooks, and teachers) of customer satisfaction range from dissatisfaction become positive reviews.  7 out of 11 students got an A. Those students never dare to speak English and become very confident. From the research result, the dynamic English immersion model proves that students are extremely active in the English classroom, are extremely confident in spoken English, and want to continue the course of study.