COLT Case Study

In Canada in the 1980's, COLT has been developed in order to investigate the relationship between learning outcomes and the second language instruction. As described above COLT has become from Part A and Part B. In Part A, it can be determined by numerical communication orientation of the class through observing and analyzing the learning contents. In Part B, it is possible to analyze what kind of conversation or speech was done between the teacher and students or between students. One of the COLT developers Spada (1987) investigated whether the difference in the guidance in each class contributes to improvement of student achievement. Students who were target of this research were enrolled in the ESL program of one Canadian university. They
(2005) verified whether COLT Part A is effective for analysis of English program intended for communication. This research was carried out in one university through observing and analyzing how the English class which orients communication is operated and what extent the class could implement its goals by using COLT Part A. By analysis by COLT, this English program devoted a lot of time to whole class activities, listening and speaking activities and dealing with topics related to the students than the language format. Also it revealed the text is for native speakers and using teaching materials beyond the words and sentences. From this analysis, it is revealed that this class focused enough on the set of objectives. (ex. “To understand the topics in English without using the Japanese translation, and to discuss about their contents.”) Furthermore, from Global Score was calculated from the analysis using COLT, the difference in the style of lesson by instructor was appeared as a numeric data, and also any classes had enough communication orientation. From these results, COLT Part A is said useful as a method to check the teaching goal in the actual class in
Yasuno et al. (2004) verified whether it is possible to analyze lesson plans using Part A. They analyzed lesson plans published in "The practice guide for English activities in elementary school" (Kairyukan Publishing, 2001) and also, discussed about features of them. On the lesson plans which is specified the time designation, it calculated the proportion of each categories in the lesson plans through calculating the amount of time spent each activities and episodes as units of analysis. As a result, since there was a lower degree of coincidence between four analysts in the coding of use Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing skills of students, it pointed out that the information that should be described in the lesson plans is insufficient. Therefore, if it is clearly the contents of the activity and allocation time for lesson plans , analysis is to be possible using COLT Part A with respect to lesson plans , and evaluating the effectiveness of the