This action research project was applied in a public university in Colombia.

I took into
account four important phases along its implementation. Those phases are the action
research ones proposed by Hockly and Madrid (n.d.p. 51). However, there was a fifth
stage I considered which is the one suggested by Cohen and Manion (1985) about the
interpretation of the data. In the following section, they are going to be described briefly.

According to the authors, the first phase is to develop a plan of action. In this stage, I
focused my attention on getting familiar with the previous knowledge and experiences
students had towards writing. Thus, I designed a survey with multiple choice questions in
order to gather information. Then, based on the results obtained, I interviewed six
students considering a semi-structured interview format. The reason for this was because
I had already identified some areas I would like to deepen (See Chapter 2); hence, I
designed some questions considering them. However, I also contemplated the fact of
asking follow up questions depending on pupils’ responses and items which were worthy
to expand during the interview. Afterwards, I reviewed research literature and comparable
studies in order for me to start formulating a hypothesis. To finish phase one, I planned
the methods, material and procedure so as to test my preliminary assumptions.

In the second phase, I implemented activities based on my previous analysis and praxis
process taking into account the diagnosis results obtained in stage one. During the
implementation, observation, or phase three, took place. Here I used field notes as the
data collection tool; my purpose was to note the effects the plan had towards the problem
of writing. In order to identify them, I divided my attention in four items each one in
accordance with the specific objectives this research had. Thus, I took notes regarding
the steps students used when they were asked to write their opinion in some classes;
then, I took notes about the learning strategies students were using before, while and
after writing their reviews. Here I scaffolded students by proposing the activity of writing
a sentence synthetizing all the information being discussed in the class. Thus, students
were writing a “topic sentence” per class. My purpose was to have some training in
regards to writing this type of sentences. Afterwards, I asked students to provide
arguments to those sentences for them to be aware of the second type of sentences
(supporting sentences developing ideas by considering prompters such as for instance,
for example, etc.)

However, it is important to mention the fact that some students did not know or were not
conscious about what learning strategies were and their usage. Accordingly, data
obtained in stage three suggested the idea of implementing a learning strategies
workshop (strategy training) along the contents the subject has. This workshop was
actually the researcher implementing them along each class; they were used in order to
brainstorm ideas, collect information about students’ interpretations, key concepts to
study along the semester, and so forth (See annex 1)

Finally, phase four was characterized by the reflection process I carried after observing
and taking notes regarding the impact my plan had in my class. Thus, this phase was
core since I designed a new plan based on the results I obtained. As a matter of fact, new
phases two, three and four came as a result of my praxis. Regarding learning strategies,
I planned classes using them as a resource for students to gather and organize
information, considering the categories given by Oxford (1990) and Varcárcel et al.
(1996).

Lastly, the fifth phase dealt with the interpretation of the data collected. Based on this
analysis, I draw the inferences which helped me write down the conclusions this research
project suggests. Also, this final phase dealt with the project evaluation itself (Hockly and
Madrid, n.d. p. 51) taking into consideration the impacts and further research the analysis
and conclusions advised.