Brief introduction to the mini project

Based on the requirements of the mini project and the rate of progress of my classes in high
school, I decided to implement the mini project in my Chinese 1B class to promote the students'
oral communicative competence in Chinese. My Chinese 1B class consists of 22 students at
novice low level of Chinese language. As the beginners of the Chinese learning and the freshmen
of the high school, they are always quite excited and enthusiastic to anticipate in their Chinese
class activities, as they participate in their school lives. Their willings of expressing themselves
to be heard by others are stronger than any other my Chinese class of mine. I expect my Chinese
1B students to prepare themselves, as beginners, for bigger tasks ahead by establishing a solid
foundation for their Chinese learning, especially for their Chinese speaking competence.
Task Conceptualization and Design
I decided to implement the mini project into the unit 3 of the Chinese 1B class. The Chinese 1B
was required to follow the IB curriculum by using the Easy Steps to Chinese 1 in simplified
characters version in this semester. Each unit consists of 3 lessons, and each lesson consists of 2
texts with exercises, quizzes, and tests. The topic of the unit 3 focuses on the introduction to
oneself, which includes family member (lesson 7), self-introduction (lesson 8), and
occupation (lesson 9). The class in which the mini project would be implemented was the
lesson 9, the last lesson of unit 3, on the topic of occupation. The exercises and practices on the
textbook focus more on the students' listening, reading, and writing competences, and it is hard
to find any authentic task-based performance for the students to practice their Chinese speaking
competence. Thus I designed the last lesson of the unit 3 into an authentic student-centered
performance task, so that the students would be able to reinforce their previously acquired
language knowledge of the unit 3, to apply their language knowledge to the authentic and
communicative use, and to achieve an integrated language use accomplishment at the end of the
unit 3 to fulfill their learning, and my teaching, objectives by the task-based performance
practice.
Since the students have already finished the learning of family members, self-introduction,
and occupation with sufficient practices and targeting assessments to reinforce their language
knowledge of the basic vocabulary and phrases, the useful sentence structures and expressions,
and the critical grammar points, what the students was still greatly lack of focused on how
should they apply their acquired language knowledge to an authentic use to improve their
integrated and communicative speaking language competence. The task I designed for the
students in this lesson was a job interview. The students were required to accomplish a job
interview with their partners to apply the language knowledge they previously acquired on
family members, self-introduction, and occupation to an authentic and integrated use. In
each pair, one student would role-play the interviewer while the other one would role-play the
interviewee. The interviewer and the interviewee were required to complete a job interview by
using communicative Chinese they previously acquired. Explicit and instructional interview

guidance with detailed questions and answers were prepared before the task for the interviewers
and the interviewees for reference. Detailed and scaffolding activities would be proceeded
orderly before the job interview task to prepare the interviewers and the interviewees to
accomplish this task successfully step by step.
Task Implementation
As an integrated task-based performance, the job interview requires the students to apply their
previously-acquired language knowledge to the authentic use. Instructionally detailed and
orderly scaffolding pre-tasks are essential to the success of the task. I would prepare the students
starting with the non-task preparation activities, and then I would guide the students to perform
some similar tasks, and provide the model of the task with task-based and student-centered
teaching strategies, so that the students would be able to successfully perform the task by
individually with achieving the teacher's expectation.
Pre-task phrase
The pre-task phrase was divided into 3 steps as the non-task preparation activities, the similar
tasks with the main task, and the demonstration of the model of the main task.
1. Non-task preparation activities (20 minutes with 2 tasks)
I would start to prepare the students with reviewing the previously-acquired language
knowledge to reinforce the use of the words, expressions, sentences, and grammars by the nontask preparation activities. Shortly after the routine greetings, I would start one quick round of
the stand and deliver. The students are required to stand up while answering the teacher's
questions on the words and expressions of the previously-acquired language knowledge. The
teacher will speak the English meaning of a word or a phrase, and the students are required to
translate the word or the phrase into Chinese. All the words and phrases in this activity are from
the important expressions required in the curriculum that would contribute to the main task. I
would help with and/or correct the students pronunciations during this activity, reflect the weak
words and expressions that the students have not been familiar with by then, and slightly revise
the plan by reinforcing or reteaching the key words and expressions to prepare the students for
the main task. The stand and deliver was planned approximately 10 minutes.
After the word and phrase practice, the second activity in the non-task preparation activities
was a writing practice to reinforce the students' language use in sentence structures and grammar
points in the upcoming main task. I would distribute a piece of paper with 10 questions on it to
each student. The students were required to fill in the blanks on the paper with the words given in
the box. The students were required to read their sentences with answers in the chain practice as
the first person would read what he/she wrote, and the next person would translate the Chinese
sentence into English to strengthen their understanding towards the meaning of the sentences.
The sentence structures and grammar practice was planned approximately 10 minutes.

2. The similar task (15 minute with 1 task)

After the review and reinforcement of the previously-acquired language knowledge of the
words, expressions, sentences structures, and grammars, the students were ready to move on to
apply the language knowledge to asking and answering the questions the interview would use in
the main task. The students' speaking competence, which would be assessed in the main task,
could be analogously practiced via similar tasks to prepare the students for the main task with the
most effectiveness.
The guidance paper will be distribute to the students with 13 important questions on it. All the
13 questions were intensively required by the curriculum of the unit 3. The questions would
improve the students' Chinese speaking competence in the main task of the job interview in a
proper sequence. The questions started with the basic question, such as ? (What
is your name?). The difficulty and the integration of the questions went deeper with the
numbers of the questions. At the end of the question list, the students would be able to practice
all the required questions in the main task from asking and answering the names, ages, birthdays,
nationalities, today's date, family members, grades, parental occupation, home address, and
phone numbers. The students have 5 minutes to practice reading the questions and answering the
questions in Chinese with complete sentences individually by themselves. The students then
were required to pick any one question out of the 13 questions to read in Chinese after the
practice one by one, and the next person would answer the question the previous students asked
in Chinese with complete sentences. The chain practice was expected to be accomplished by the
students within 10 minutes in Chinese only, while the teacher might provide necessary
professional linguistic support in English to the students only to help them with a better learning
and understanding during the practice, especially to the students with special needs, such as the
students with ADHD, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, and hearing impaired. By the
similar task that I lead the class step-by-step to the expected outcome, the main task was
broken down into smaller steps, so that I could help the students with their encountered
difficulty and could offer them one or more parallels to a step in the reasoning process to
ensure that mixed ability learners could understand what was required. After this practice, the
students were expected to be ready for the main task based on the linguistic demands, thus the
last but not the least pre-task activity, the demonstration of the model of the main task would
focus on preparing the students ready for the cognitive demands.
3. Demonstration of the model of the main task (10 minute with 1 task)
To prepare the students for the main task in the cognitive domain, I would prepare the students
with a detailed and instructional speaking practice in Chinese by combining the previous
separate pre-tasks with the practice of the words and expressions, and sentence structures with
grammars into a coherent paragraph in an integrated language use and a clear logic to introduce
themselves in the main task of the job interview.

The students were divided into pairs in this task. Each pair of the students were required to
imitate a job interview scene in this task. One student would role-play the interviewer while the
other one would role-play the interviewee. The students were required to ask and answer the
guided questions only during the model task. The students were encouraged to practice all the 13
guided questions in Chinese only by asking and answering the guided questions with complete
Chinese sentences. The interviewer and the interviewee should switch their roles for the second
time of the practice in the task to guarantee that all the students were able to practice both asking
and answering competence in the speaking practice. The students would be required to pick 10
questions out of 13 questions in the upcoming main task to accomplish a job interview with their
partners. Each pair was required to present a job interview speaking task in front of the whole
class for only one time. (More rounds might be proceeded if time was allowed.) The students
were allowed to choose who would be the interviewer and who could be the interviewee in the
main task, however, they were required to practice their speaking competence for both roles in
the model task. The main task that the students prepared would be graded by me based on the
criteria and the rubric of the IB curriculum for Language B-the world language-Chinese 1B. This
last pre-task would take approximately 10 minutes.
During-task phrase
After about 45-minute-preparation for the main task, the students' linguistic and cognitive
knowledge to the main task was ready to be applied to the authentic job interview. The students
were divided into 10 pairs with 2 students in each pair. The students were required to practice the
main task on their own before the presentation, and they were encouraged to practice both roles
to strengthen their speaking competence of both asking and answering the questions designed in
the main task. The practice was planned approximately 5 minutes.
During the task, I walked around the class to supervise the students' practice by keeping the
students on task, correcting the students' pronunciations if necessary, scaffolding the task into
more specific steps for the students with special needs, demonstrating and modeling the task with
more detailed instructions, encourage the students to switch roles after the first practice to get
more reinforcement on the speaking competence required in the task, providing the students with
professional linguistic and communicative supports and suggestions, and managing the
classroom with rules and procedures to accomplish the task with achieving the academic
expectation.
Here are some examples on how did I support my students to complete the task.
When I walked to Issac and Brandon, my easily absent-minded and off-task students, I noticed
that Issac and Brandon were sitting on their seats quietly without practicing speaking and
preparing for the job interview. I asked, interviewer? interviewee? Issac turned back
to Brandon immediately after my question, and they decided that Issac would be the interviewer

in the 1st round of the practice. I stayed next to them and listened to their speaking practice for
about 1 minute to make sure they knew how to start their practice in complete Chinese sentences.
When I walked to Skylar and Dylan, my students who were hard-working but sometimes
struggling with the understanding of the language knowledge, they were practicing their
interviews, and Dylan was the interviewer while Skylar was the interviewee. Dylan asked Skylar,
? Skylar gave me a confused look, and she asked, Ms. Qi, what is this
talking about? I asked Skylar, ? By asking the question, I pointed the on
Skylar's paper when I asked the question. Skylar hesitated and answered, You have...? I
nodded, and kept going with my question, ? ? ?
? I pointed the words during my questions, and what I did recalled the Skylar's memory
towards these previously-acquired words she just reviewed really well. Skylar answered,
Siblings! means siblings! I confirmed her guess, and watch their practice for another
1 minute to make sure she understood the other questions before I moved on to the next pair.
When I walked to Isaiah and Iyana, my active students, they were in the middle of the practice.
I stopped them to ask them how did they start their job interview, and Isaiah started to read the
first question he got on the paper as ? I stopped him and asked, Isiah, as a
professional interviewer, do you have a better way to start your interview than directly starting
from asking Iyana's name? Isaiah smiled and replied, I do have a better way! He turned to
Iyana and changed his sentence into, Isaiah, ? I also suggested a
hand shake for them to start the job interview, and it was very obvious that they started to feel
this task more communicative and authentic. The other pairs saw this demonstration, and they
could not wait to start to copy what Isaiah and Iyana just did. More creative and authentic scenes
by using the previously-reviewed words and expressions were invented in a very short time by
the students, and their passion and enthusiasm towards this task got highly aroused.
After the practice, I asked 3 pairs of the students to pick 3 questions, instead of 10 questions due
to the time pressure, out of the 13 questions to demonstrate their task, and I guided, corrected,
and perfected their task by providing them with linguistic and cognitive support. The
demonstration lasted for approximately 5 minutes.
Post-task phrase
I asked the other pairs to demonstrate their task in the next class, and they would be able to
have more time to prepare for the main task. I corrected the mistakes in the demonstration of the
main task among the 3 pairs, I repeated the language points so that the students would be able to
relearn the words in the correct way if needed. The post-task lasted for approximately 5 minutes
although I originally expected this phrase much longer.
Reflection and Evaluation

Generally speaking, the main task worked quite effectively and productively due to the
sufficient pre-tasks and preparation. The students were able to be deeply aware of the linguistic
and cognitive knowledge of the main task, and they were also highly engaged in the pre-tasks
and the main task by using the language knowledge to fulfill this task-based performance in an
authentic and communicative environment to practice their oral communicative ability and to
improve their speaking competence .
The students' interests and engagement were well kept due to the variety of the activities from
the stand and deliver to the writing and speaking chain practice. The classroom management
was strictly controlled by the teacher to guarantee that all the students were on task to achieve
their best learning from the different phrases of the main task. I would evaluate this class
successful since most of the students had achieved the academic expectation and learning
objective set up by me at the beginning of the class. The students' oral and communicative
language competence was practiced, reinforced, and improved via the organized and scaffolded
integrated task-based performance in an authentic linguistic and cognitive environment.
The disadvantages of the class were also quite obvious. When I reflected my teaching based on
the experience and the video, I strongly felt the negative influence on the task due to the time
pressure. I should have planned more time for demonstration and modeling before the task, and
for the explanation on the common and typical language mistake corrections after the task.
Although I planned to write down all the mistakes the students made during their main tasks on
the whiteboard to reteach before the class ends, I still was not able to do as I planned due to the
time pressure. Actually I barely had enough time to listen to all the pairs' presentations with 10
questions as I planned. I only had enough time for 3 pairs to demonstrate 3 questions of out 13
questions before the class ended. I have already checked on all the other pairs' presentations with
10 questions out of 13 questions as I planned by now with completing explaining all the
necessary language points for some common and typical language mistakes the students made.
However, I wish I could have planned more time for the demonstration for the main task to make
the students understand the main task better, and for the post-task for correcting the students'
common and typical mistakes if I could in the first place, so that the students' learning efficiency
would be greatly improved.