서강대학교

초록/요약

The purpose of this research is to develop an intermediate level syllabus for Korean high school students to teach English punctuation marks focusing on comma, semicolon, and colon for Korean EFL high school students. The procedure of four steps in action research (plan, act, observe, and reflect) is utilized to explore and reflect some unpredicted problems and actions in class and upgrade the lesson plan and teaching performance considering the students’ idea. The study was conducted in two cycles, both of which involved a class of 8 students for 5 weeks. As a researcher and teacher, I used a test to estimate their prior knowledge about punctuation and reflect its analysis to devise the lesson plans. They consisted of lecturing and playing exercises in Cycle 1. Revision of the used lesson plans followed the reflection on Cycle 1 to examine and evaluate teaching materials, lesson plans, and teaching performance. It involved three additional activities to a new class of in Cycle 2. Data for this research were collected through learning logs including comments to each lesson, worksheets used in exercises and activities, single lesson time-line record sheets, reflective diaries, written interview sheets, and test results. I reflected on the last teaching performance through the data and modified the lesson plans to improve the class. The change from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2 involved lesson plans modified considering students’ opinions, leading to three additional activities: matching conjunctions, clauses, and sentences; editing concisely; making a comma rule table. Students showed their satisfaction and willingness to take those works actively as I played a role of facilitator. On the other hand, I made use of different teaching skills and strategies and revised several parts of lesson plans on mature reflection on actions to the last particular problematic situations. The three major improvements are as follows: explicitly explaining different usages of English punctuation compared to that of Korean to avoid the confusion; adding example sentences out of the textbook to understand the use of punctuation at the discourse level; presenting a specific guidance for editing and proofreading for students to do the job. In the end, the action research encouraged both the students and me to engage in learning and teaching punctuation with confidence and vitality.