Background Information

Background Information 

Most students whine of boredom if they repetitively do the same thing right from the start of the class session to its end. The more they become disinterested in class, the more they cannot go far in learning a language. Unluckily, most of the instructors are not conscious whether or not the learners are fascinated and interested to adopt the class activities they design for them. It is significant to ascertain the means and ways in which students can be kept interested in learning (Vasiljevic, 2010). The use of warm-up activities is one way by which teachers can break boredom in a class session and to interest, the students, capture their attention, offer them with objective and inspiration (Vasiljevic, 2010).

Defining the Problem

Some instructors do not regard warm up as significant for learning neither do they give attention to it.  Most the teachers will adopt warm-ups at the beginning of each session of new courses in order to offer the opportunity for them to know each other. The other primary importance of warm-up activities in the classroom is overlooked. For instance, warm up activities can serve to motivate the learners to get involved in class events, trigger the background know-how of the student, assist the teachers when introducing a new topic in a captivating manner or help to arrest the concentration of the student. Alternatively, other methods that are usually used by teachers include questioning, evaluation of materials learned in the former class, casual chat with the learners by the use of jests, songs, comic videos, playoffs, stories and the use of images to create interest in the students towards the class session.

The objective of the researcher is to ascertain the impact of using warm-up activities in teaching English to students of 9th grade of Muscat International School.

Introduction 

The success of the class will have to involve the students and make them feel interested at the onset of the lesson. Thus, a teacher should initiate the session in a manner likely to engage the learners. Different types of warm-up activities such as deliberation questions, games among others can be used to focus the class. This section comprises the definition of warm up, principles of warm-up activities, their importance, and drawbacks.

Definition of Warm-up

According to (Rushidi, 2013) warm-up is a preparatory phase that creates a relaxation feeling among the learners in addition to creating a positive mood suitable for learning. A warm-up stage for learning a language is at the start of the lesson (Rushidi, 2013).

Defining the Problem

Principles of Warm-up Activity

Some of the principles of input in the class have been suggested by Burns (2009). The author argues that warm-up activities should be initiated at the start of the session, for it will aid the instructor in arresting the attention of the learner. Also, it ought to be exciting and short to inspire the class at the start. Burns also proposes that the input be relevant to the study topic to integrate the learners at different steps and in other activities for easy learning.

Significance of Warm-up

Create a rapport

The process of learning is expedited through the creation of a positive association with the learners. Richards & Bohlke (2011) opines that an exciting class primarily relies on the instructors because their disposition and method of teaching inspire the students to develop a positive attitude in learning. A rapport between teachers and students will allow the students to share their views with ease in the classroom (Richards & Bohlke, 2011). Warm-up activities assist in the creation of build a relaxed classroom setting and creates peer trust among the learners thus enabling them to interact easily (Burns, 2009).

Inspiration 

According to Wi?niewska (2013), students are motivated if warm-up activities occupy the initial minutes of the class session the inspiration to learn is subjective to the students’ interest in class activities. Interest develops the enthusiasm and exploration to study, establish solid knowledge and to acquire skills and expertise (Wi?niewska, 2012).

Attention 

The lack of concentration and noticing hinders the retention of unattended material making it stay in the memory for a short time. The initial class activity focuses the attention of the learners on the lesson and develops a positive learning attitude among the learners (Richards and Bohlke, 2011).

Disadvantages to Warm-up

Richards and Bohlke (2011) opine that the activity used for students has to adhere to the i+1 formula where i represents the current knowledge of the student and 1 is the next competence level of the student from the present one. Majority of the designed warm-up activities do not meet the needs of the students because of the mismatch between the organization of the language of warm-up activities of the teacher and that of the students’ mind, thus hampering the learning process (Gaspar et al., 2016).

Additionally, introvert learners can perceive warm-up activities as a threat. More so, in cases where such a student has to conduct activities individually in the presence of all his/her peers (Richards and Bohlke, 2011). If the activity negatively affects the student emotionally such as it creates fear, anxiety, stress, etc. then it will as well be an obstacle to the learners understanding.

Literature Review

Introduction 

This chapter outlines in details the approach adopted by the researcher to gather data from Muscat International School and analyse it.

Research Design

This study used a cross-sectional survey to explore and describe the study topic. It assists the researcher to gain more knowledge concerning the views and attitudes of respondents. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data. Questionnaires are easy to interpret the outcomes, analyze and deliberate.

Instrumentation

The researcher designed the students’ questionnaires using simple language to encourage the participants to give their views with ease. The questionnaires comprised of the questions aimed at identifying the attitudes of the students towards warm-up activities and their impact on learning the English language.  The participant students were to rate their best answers by ticking against each item. A five-point Likert scale was used ranging from entirely disagree to agree with values of 1 to 5 respectively entirely. Then the opinions were changed to arithmetic figures.

Sampling Plan 

The target population was all 9th grade English class students at Muscat International School. The researcher used random sampling to select one class of 9th-grade students at Muscat International School as a sample for data collection. This prevents biasness on the side of the researcher and increases the reliability of the findings. The respondents comprised of 200 students.

Data Collection

Data was gathered from 9th grade English students of Muscat International School. The researcher sought permission in writing from the heads of the English department of Muscat International School and English teachers whose classes were under survey.

Data Analysis

The mean score obtained from the responses was used to analyze the data. This is the total sum of each score of all the items in a cluster divided by the number of items .The mean shows the overall response of each group as a whole. The formula is shown below:

X = ∑X/n where;

X = mean

∑X = total sum of all respondents

n = number of respondents

Introduction 

This section shows the implications of the findings from the survey

Findings and Discussions

This section discusses the findings in table 4.1.

The following explanation key is applied to the discussion if the outcomes

Bad attitude = 1.00 to 2.25

Not contented = 2.26 to 3.00

Contented = 3.01 to 3.75

Very contented = 3.76 to 5.00

Table 4.1 Findings of the questionnaire survey

No.	Items	Entirely Agree	Disagree	Not sure	Agree	Entirely agree	Mean Score
A.                   Principles of Warm up activities
1	It is  a short input and not the major section  of the lesson	3	9	7	26	5	50
		3	18	21	104	25	3.42
2	A warm up is linked to the study topic and class activities	2	5	8	25	10	50
		2	10	24	100	50	3.72
3	It initiates thinking in English, overview of former session, and creates interest	3	5	10	23	9	50
		3	10	30	92	45	3.6
B.                     Significance of Warm-up
i.                    Create a rapport
1	Warm-up activities establish a good learning atmosphere for the learners to easily contribute in class	2	3	4	28	13	50
		2	9	12	112	65	4
2	Warm-up activities create a connection and shared confidence between instructors and learners	1	5	6	25	13	50
		1	10	18	100	65	3.88
3	Warm-up activities assist to understand each other and develop trust amongest students	2	3	4	28	13	50
		2	9	12	112	65	4
ii.                    Inspiration
1	Warm-up activities foster inspiration in students	2	4	7	25	12	50
		2	8	21	100	60	3.82
2	Warm-up activities helps assists the learners to begin the session with interest	2	5	7	27	9	50
		2	10	21	108	45	3.72
3	Warm-up activities trigger the interest of the learners ready to learn	3	5	6	27	9	50
		3	10	18	108	45	3.68
iii                  Attention
1	Students’ concentration is needful from the start to the end for effective learning of English	3	4	6	27	10	50
		3	8	18	108	50	3.74
2	Warm-up activities improve learners’ concentration in class	2	5	7	26	10	50
		2	10	21	104	50	3.74
C.                    Disadvantages of Warm-up
1	Warm up activities discourage students if they are above their competence level	3	5	8	25	9	50
		3	10	24	100	45	3.64
2	Warm up activities can be a source of intimidation for introvert learners more so when they become afraid to do an acvitity in the presence of the entire class	2	6	7	27	8	50
		2	12	21	108	40	3.66
3	Instructor should give warm up activity i+1 level of the student (i stands for  the current knowledge of the student and 1 is a step higher than the learners’ present competence level)	2	6	8	24	10	50
		2	12	24	96	50	3.68

N/B The figures in at the top are the scores whereas those below are the converted arithmetic values. The means are derived from the derived figures at the bottom.

Research Methodology

Of all the items under ‘principles of warm-up,’ the attitudes of the learners is ‘contented’ for the first (mean score 3.42), the second item (mean score 3.49) and for the third item (mean score 3.60). When asked of the significance of warm up in a classroom, they were ‘very contented’ that it creates a rapport under items 1, 2, and 3, with means scores of 4.00, 3.88 and 4.00 respectively.

Similarly, the findings show that the students are ‘very contented’ with the fact that warm-up activities act as an inspiration under item 1, and ‘contented’ under items 2, and 3 with mean scores of 3.82, 3.72, and 3.68 respectively.

The students also had a ‘contented’ attitude on the idea that warm-up activities increase the students’ attention in the classroom.  Both items 1 and 2 had a mean score of 3.74.

Students were ‘contented’ of the disadvantages of warm-up activities under items 1, 2, and 3 with mean responses of 3.64, 3.66, and 3.68 respectively.

From the findings, it can be seen that the principles of warm-up activities are averagely appreciated and will have a positive impact on the learning of English language at Muscat International School. These findings are in agreement with those of Burns (2009).The warm-up activities create a good relationship with the students and amongst themselves thus promoting a productive learning environment through participation and involvement. Additionally, warm-up activities motivate the students hence encouraging their participation in the classroom. They also make the class interesting thus sparking interest in the students towards lesson, therefore, improving effecting learning of English language.  Through the use of warm-up activities, the instructors can arrest the attention of the learners and direct their focus to the lesson objectives. These findings are in agreement with those of (Wi?niewska, 2013). However, the results also show that warm-up activities can also be disastrous when they are not used efficiently, primarily, when they create fear for introverts and when they do not tally with the learners’ competence level.

Conclusion 

The study has demonstrated that warm-up activities can be used for many reasons in teaching an English language class. For instance, they can be used to establish good rapport between instructors and learners, to create an effective learning environment, for inspiration, and focus students’ attention on the class. However, this study found out that different students have different perceptions on the use of warm-up activities. Some acknowledged that warm-up activities make them concentrate, some perceived it to be a means of creating relationships and as a source of motivation.

References

Burns, A. (2009) Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for practitioners. Routledge.

Gaspar, Y.B., León, J.D.H., Barrios, J.A.G., Inglesa, L.E.L. And Pereira, C. (2016) The Effects of Warming Up Activities in a Primary State Students’ Listening Comprehension Classroom Project (Doctoral dissertation, Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira. Facultad de Bellas Artes y Humanidades. Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa).

Harper, C.A. and de Jong, E.J. (2009) English language teacher expertise: The elephant in the room. Language and Education, 23(2), pp.137-151.

Lam, R. (2010) A peer review training workshop: Coaching students to give and evaluate peer feedback. TESL Canada Journal, 27(2), p.114.

Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M. (2015) Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

McNiff, J. (2013) Action research: Principles and practice. Routledge.

Richards, J.C. and Bohlke, D. (2011) Creating effective language lessons. Cambridge University Press.

Rushidi, J. (2013) The Benefits and Downsides of Creative Methods of Teaching in an EFL Classroom: A Case Study Conducted at South East European University, Tetovo-Macedonia. Benefits, 4(20).

Vasiljevic, Z. (2010) Dictogloss as an interactive method of teaching listening comprehension to L2 learners. English language teaching, 3(1), p.41.

Wi?niewska, D. (2013) Interest and interest-enhancing strategies of adolescent EFL learners. ELT journal, 67(2), pp.210-219.