Evaluating the low communicative competence among learners in the context of Communication Language Teaching Approach in Senegal

• In Event: Voice, Agency and Education

Proposal

Problem statement
Senegal is a former French colony, and like many other countries has adopted French, the language of the former colonizer as the official language. Therefore, it is chosen as the medium of instruction from kindergarten to university. English is taught as a compulsory subject from middle school through high school. Authorities have been taking various decisions aiming at offering a program with the intention of training students with an appropriate communicative competence at the end of high school corresponding to 7 years of study from grade 1 (6e) to grade 7 (Upper 6th). Yet, it is noted that at the end of the transitional stages i.e., grade 7 (Upper 6th) students fail to communicate appropriately in English.

Purpose statement
The purpose of this qualitative case study is to investigate the main factors that contribute to the lack of communicative competence among Senegalese students after a long of English language learning. Communicative competence refers to a speaker's internalized knowledge of a language's grammatical rules and of the rules for appropriate use in social contexts. For this action research, I intend to select high schools from both the urban and the rural areas from which we will be interested in both teachers’ performances and learners’ productions. Participants in this research will be selected from the current teachers of English in Senegal using a purposive sampling approach to ensure transferability of the findings. This qualitative case study is aimed at answering the following research questions:
Central Question:
What factors contribute to the low communicative competence among Senegalese students?
Sub questions:
(1) How do other students’ languages influence their English production?
(2) What are teachers’ perceptions towards the Communicative Language Teaching Approach?
(3) What are the main written and oral challenges of the Senegalese students?
(4) What techniques do teachers use to mediate students’ English communication challenges?
Methods
My overall data will be composed of students’ oral and written productions, students' artifacts and teachers’ interviews, textbook, and lesson plans. The participants will be students and teachers in the Senegalese public high schools.
For this research, I intend to select high schools from both the urban and the rural areas from which we will be interested in both teachers’ performances and learners’ productions. Participants in this research will be selected from the current teachers of English and learners in Senegal using a purposive sampling approach to ensure transferability of the findings.
For this study, purposive sampling (years of teaching experience, knowledge, and application of CLT, public/private, teacher with students in the seventh grade) will be used to select both students and teachers who fit my research population. Maximum variation sampling will also be used to obtain a heterogenous and representative sample from the students and teachers.
This research aims at creating change, leading to action in the domain of English Language Teaching in Senegal. In other words, this research is indicative of a transformative worldview. Therefore, an in-depth data collection involving multiple data sources is needed to grasp the relevant types of information related to the education system and its main stakeholders. A qualitative case study fits this type of research if maximum variation is ensured in the sample of participants given the large population of teachers and students for a national education system.
Sample Selection
For this study, purposive sampling will be used to select both students and teachers who fit my research population. Maximum variation sampling will also be used to obtain a heterogeneous and representative sample from the students and teachers. I will adopt some inclusion/exclusion criteria to identify cases that meet my criteria (years of teaching experience, knowledge, and application of CLT, teachers in public and private institutions, teacher with students in the seventh grade-upper sixth). My intention is to target information rich cases to gather reliable data to inform the pedagogical implications I want to provide by the end of the study. Therefore, to recruit teacher participants I will use a surveil as a recruitment protocol with questions related to the criteria. From the responses I will be able to identify the relevant participants for this research.
Since, my objective is to help students whose level is extremely low, I will target those who have low scores in English. Such information can be collected from students’ artifacts or by requesting the help of teachers to identify students who struggle with communicative competence.
Data Collection
In this research, I will collect data through teachers’ interviews, students’ focus groups, and classroom observations. I will also analyze textbooks, teachers' materials (lesson plans), and students’ final essays to collect the primary data.
But in the context of this pilot project, I will be interviewing 3 teachers among those whom I consider information-rich cases. The interviews will be conducted in English as participants are teachers of English.
Interviews will be conducted via zoom and recorded for late exploration. They will be transcribed verbatim by myself. For the master project, any user-friendly computer program will be used given the large amount of data I am expecting to collect from both interviews and focus groups. Each teacher participant is interviewed for about 30 minutes. Apart from the students’ test papers, and the teaching materials (lesson plans and textbook) I will organize 5 observation sessions with 1hr/per session with an observation protocol to record: teacher-students and students-students' interactions, types of activities, teachers' roles, classroom talk, students' roles
Data Analysis
Data from interviews, observations and focus groups will be presented in narrative forms and will be analyzed through the lenses of sub questions correlating with my central question. To facilitate the analysis the narrative texts are processed by open coding, then axial coding to draw the most salient themes. As such I proceeded with a thematic analysis by looking at patterns of meaning in the datasets (teachers’ interviews) to identify participants’ opinions, and views.

Author

• Ndrao FAYE, University of Nebraska Lincoln TLTE