33
issn-i 2631-2840 | issn-e 2631-2859
una estrategia metodológica en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras
a través de creaciones artísticas con semillas
Language teaching strategies in the English language classroom as a foreign
language have changed signicantly in the last few decades. New approaches
and dierent materials have risen in the learning process. is action research
focused on the use of seeds as didactic material and idea generator in the
development of the writing process with university students from Técnica
del Norte University —Ibarra and Central University— Quito. e data were
obtained through the application of a survey and observation. A description of
what was observed was recorded in each stage of the process while using seeds
as a methodological strategy. Results showed that when designing and seeing
gures, a ‘rock-slide’ of thoughts emerged from students for writing. Students
simply expanded their horizons with their creativity because this new strategy
gave them liberty to express themselves openly. ey were more than able to
rearm their intellectual capacities when learning the foreign language.
Las estrategias de enseñanza de lenguaje en el aula de inglés como lengua extran-
jera han cambiado signicativamente en las últimas décadas. Nuevas técnicas y
diferentes materiales han surgido en el proceso de enseñanza. Esta investigación
acción está enfocada en el uso de semillas como material didáctico y generador
de ideas en el desarrollo del proceso de escritura con estudiantes universitarios
de la Universidad Técnica del Norte-Ibarra y de la Universidad Central del
Ecuador-Quito. Los datos fueron obtenidos a través de la aplicación de una
encuesta y la observación. Una descripción de lo que fue observado se registró
en cada etapa del proceso al utilizar semillas como estrategia metodológica. Los
resultados mostraron que cuando se diseña y se observa imágenes, una lluvia de
ideas emerge en los estudiantes para la escritura. Los estudiantes simplemente
expandieron sus horizontes con su creatividad porque esta nueva estrategia les
dio libertad para expresarse ampliamente. Ellos pudieron rearmar sus capaci-
dades intelectuales al aprender el lenguaje extranjero.
: 10.29166/kronos.v2i1.1698
Methodological strat-
egy, seeds, images, rods, writing
skill.
Estrategia
metodológica, semillas, imágenes,
paletas, habilidad de escritura.
Eugenia Proaño
Universidad Técnica del Norte
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5510-5139
Ernesto Muñoz
Universidad Técnica del Norte
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9502-5889
María Rosa Ferigra
Universidad Central del Ecuador
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7334-2947
| - | vol. | n.°
Recibido: 13 de mayo 2019
Aprobado: 30 de abril 2021
34
Language teaching strategies in the English language
classroom as a foreign language have changed signi-
cantly in the last few decades. New approaches and
dierent materials have risen in the learning process.
e use of seeds can be an alternative material to be
used in the classroom. Seeds are not only inventive but
provide a tactile resource usually wasted and thrown
away; equally, it is cheap and easy material to obtain.
With this strategy, students are provided the opportu
-
nity to be creative, express their opinions, and develop
critical thinking. Although everyone has something
to say, not everyone is given the opportunity to do so.
Working with seeds contributes to this purpose in a
relaxing environment, in which students are reassured
and can set free their imagination (Robinson, 2009).
Finding motivation to achieve a task can become
a nuisance for students, as some of them come from
dierent backgrounds where learning a new language
had no importance. Brown (2000) mentions on his book
Learning by principles that when given the opportunity
to do language for their personal interests; students
succeed at becoming independent and motivated.
rough working with new materials and resources,
students have a chance to create pieces of art drawing
inspiration from their own creative minds, becoming
little by little aware of their own abilities and getting
motivated for a better learning.
Shiing the focus of the classroom has become
inevitable in the language classroom. e role of the
student must be an active one as they are the ones
learning the subject. e use of seeds to create mosa-
ics gives them a chance to be themselves, act on their
imagination, and become independent in their own
learning. Linse & Nunan (2005, p.7) mentions in his
work that the eects of traditional methods have been
greatly unsatisfactory. A change in methodology can
always open doors to improving the teaching and
learning of a foreign language.
Generally, the English as a foreign language ()
classroom material refers to the course books widely
oered by editorials. However, this paper is based on
the use of seeds as didactic material. Seeds are princi-
pally used in sowing, but appropriately dried, they can
serve as a tactile resource to be easily manipulated in
the classroom. ey can be used as Harmer suggests
as any other «object for involving students in activities
of all kinds» (2007, p. 177), whether to learn Math or
to create art; their use will awaken students’ senses
meaningfully.
Language teachers provide students a wide range
of materials which help to augment the acquisition of
the English language. e didactic material employed
spans the more traditional approach to the not-so-tra-
ditional methods-of knowledge-acquisition. Simple
paper is used, posters, balls, varieties of plastic objects
to take advantage of, toys, and clothes to mention
some. e vision spreads out very far and beyond the
aforementioned examples provided that seeds are a
precious natural resource.
e question arises here. How are seeds used in a
language class? Are they just seeds? What is there to
talk about seeds? ey can be reused as the raw material
needed to create artistic picture designs. From these
images, learners organically generate ideas necessary
in the composition of English. Similarly, as stated by
Janovsky (2015), when students have the opportunity
to use a graphic organizer, they can create their own
illustrations and this can be a great way to incorporate
active learning experiences in the classroom. Starting
there, the demonstration of the student’s consummate
creativity was astounding. Students’ designs and com-
positions were totally original. Everything was spawned
from their minds and hearts.
Literature review
is article reports on an action research and inno-
vation project focused on the use of seeds as didactic
material in the writing skill. is research was inspired
on the work of other teachers as for example, Mary
Scholl, Costa Rica, (2016) who uses rods, colored
stones, cards, dice, even real food to create stories
with them and promote the language learning. Also,
a teacher from Dirección de Educación (2001) who
mentioned that in the countryside teachers use seeds
as educational material due to its availability and a
teacher of natural sciences Colegio Bilingüe (2009)
who created with her students a seed bank to preserve
them. In other words, didactic material can be any
element that might contribute to the teaching-learning
process in the classroom in which learners become
active constructors of their own learning and teachers,
facilitators of it (Moreno, 2013).
Even though there is no research about the benets
of seeds as didactic material in the language class-
room, the present research aims at exploring how
seeds contribute to language learning. is project
takes as reference the studies carried out by Arnold,
Puchta & Rinvolucri (2007) about imagery in the
classroom. Harmer and Scrivener (2011) about the use
of Cuisenaire rods as tactile tools for learning.
Mental images
Arnold et al. (2007) present solid reasons for dealing
with imagery in language teaching. For them, imag-
ery work can contribute signicantly to our students’
language learning in direct or indirect work; among
others they can increase learners’ cognitive skills and
35
their creativity, provide things they want to say when
they write, enhance their motivation, and help to focus
their attention. ese mental images rst conceived
in students’ minds are then represented in a picture
design worked with seeds which can be visualized by
everybody but mainly by the authors who will use it
as idea generator to write their compositions.
e neurologist Antonio Damasio explains that
images are what ‘mind’ is actually made of. He goes
on to state that an essential condition for mind is the
ability to display images in a process called thought,
Damasio (1994), (cited in Arnold et al., 2007, p. 89-90).
erefore, the mental images that little by little take
form on a canvas with the use of seeds also generate
ideas in a piece of writing because both the picture
design and the composition are closely related. Boosting
intrinsic motivation through tactile material (seeds) in
the language classroom will help students spark their
artistry that all have inside secretly hidden.
Dornyei in his discussion of motivation and self-mo-
tivation presents the concept of the ideal language self.
He explains that if in your ideal vision of yourself there
is a facet associated with knowing the L2; this can act
as a strong motivational force (cited in Arnold et al.,
2007). Teachers need to ensure their students that
knowing English can be attractive and possible for
them when they picture themselves as uent users of
the language either speaking or writing and the illus-
trations they create help them reach this goal because
these images can take them wherever they want to go.
Cuisenaire rods
What are Cuisenaire rods? «Cuisenaire rods are small
colored blocks of wood or plastic that come in dierent
lengths. Originally used in primary Math teaching, they
have become a very useful language-teaching aid. ey
rst became widely known as a feature of Caleb Gat-
tegno’s Silent Way approach in the 1970s» (Scrivener,
2011, p. 300). Seeds are somehow similar to rods. Seeds
come in dierent colors, textures, shapes, volume and
sizes and originally they were used in Mathematics.
Seeds can be used as another visual and manipulative
aid, which is tangible, and the students can pick them
up, move them around, play and create a scene with
them in the way their images come to their minds.
According to Harmer (2007), rods help students to
focus in on meanings, ideas, stories, language items,
etc. In a similar way, seeds can provide language learn-
ers with an opportunity to develop imagination and
creativity in an experience that requires concentration
and a narrowing of attention. is was reected in
the testimony of a student who said «I, personally,
became so focused on what I was doing when working
with seeds that I sometimes dried out of thought. I
was totally immersed in the present. I seemed to be
driing out of time and space, where every moment
seemed to be as long as the life-age of Mother Earth».
«Creativity is also necessary for survival. e history
of our species can be mapped with reference to key
creative breakthroughs: agriculture, the wheel, writ-
ing systems, printing —a cumulative and constantly
proliferating series of discoveries and inventions»
(Peachey & Maley, 2015, p. 9).
Incorporating picture designs
Same as when using graphic organizers, the implemen-
tation of picture designs with seeds served as vocabu-
lary lists that students alone made. Some learners are
just more naturally visual. ey are inclined to learn
with their eyes. ey comprehend gures faster. From
seeing gures, a ‘rock-slide’ of thoughts emerged from
students when writing. Students simply expanded their
horizons with the designs of seeds. eir creativity
could grow spontaneously. Moreover, their tasks gave
them liberty to express themselves openly in a writ-
ten way. ey were more than able to rearm their
intellectual capacities. ey further developed their
abilities in using the English Language.
Writing in a foreign language
Writing is communicating thoughts and ideas through
the written word. Writing competence comes from
how you write and consummately grows depending on
what is written (Zemach & Staord, 2010). In order to
be able to excel at these tasks, as well as to accomplish
them, students need to have exercised certain abilities
previously related to the structure of how to compose
simple, compound and complex sentences to eventually
write a paragraph. Can they express an argumentative
idea? Is there cohesion in what is said? Does it make
sense or is the writing coherent? How is the grammar?
Is the lexical-resource employed able to articulate
proposed ideas? Is the punctuation correctly utilized?
As the aforementioned authors armed, writing
artistic entrepreneurships is a process. e writer nat-
urally passes through dierent stages until achieving
a nal product. Once students understand how the
writing process works in short compositions and es-
says, they will gain the necessary condence to dive
into the higher academic levels of communication.
Prior research has identied areas of diculty when
acquiring a second language regarding writing. is
occurs due to the rst language interference (Hinkel,
2015). e author has identied some elements of weak
writing as for example, the over-use of the verb ‘to
be’ as well as other verbs, starting a sentence without
a subject, using the noun before an adjective, drop-
ping s-es in the ‘third-person’ in simple present’, not
36
using the auxiliary to ask a question. Such examples
as these are enhanced with practice. ey are some
of the challenges and habits of rst (L1) and second
language writers.
ese common-errors are observed in class activ-
ities sent as homework as well as in written texts that
are produced by the students, in order to be evaluated
by tests. e tests prove the prociency and eciency
of the students. When being successful, students can
receive certication as a requirement before graduating
from university. e aforementioned common-errors
are on account of the mother-tongue; which is still quite
strong. is project aims at helping the acquisition
process of writing and joyfully removes lters that may
hinder the acquisition of stellar and communicative
English.
Methodology
e participants were university students belonging to
dierent faculties: Centro Académico de Idiomas (),
English Major and Graphic Design from Técnica del
Norte University-Ibarra and Carrera Plurilingüe from
Central University-Quito. e students were between
the ages of 19-25. ey were both male and female.
e study was carried out in two-hour sessions with
each group of students.
e store house of seeds available has been collected
by the teachers for more than three years. e material
comes from several types of fruit, like mamey, plums,
tamarind, guanabana, cherry, cherimoya, sapote, and
peach, shells of pistachio, walnut, and the seeds of other
plants, like huairuro, caimito, acacia, tortas, visola, and
san pedro. ey belong to the three dierent regions
of Ecuador, the Coast, Highlands and the Amazon
Region. Galápagos is excluded, because «Consejo de
Gobierno del Régimen Especial de Galápagos» has
a law that prohibits anybody from introducing or
removing anything that can damage the ecosystem
in this protected area, Control ambiental art. 82 al
85 (2015). So, there is nothing from the Galapagos
province. e fruit seeds have been obtained following
certain detailed steps.
e fruit is rst eaten. e seed is removed. It is then
rubbed with a sponge and washed with water. Next,
all the remaining parts of the fruit-pulp are diligently
removed with a tooth-pick until all is completely clean,
or picked-out. At long last, the seeds are exposed to
the sun to let them dry a bit. e drying process can
take several days. If a seed is not dried well enough, it
runs the risk of becoming spoiled. When ready, the best
seeds are lovingly selected. Despite being well cleaned,
it is interesting to note that the seeds maintain their
former characteristics of color, size and texture. Seeds
of dierent plants that are harvested directly from trees
are dried before being used. All seeds are stored in jars
with the caps seals shut to avoid a possible invasion of
hungry moths that would incessantly feast on these
precious little seeds.
e information was gathered through the application
of a survey to the students who participated in the
study. e survey was validated by well-experienced
teachers, working at and the English major at -
of , and a professor from Central University.
A description of what was observed was recorded in
each stage of the process while using seeds as a meth-
odological strategy.
e information was processed aer completing the
task of designing and writing. Signicant results were
identied from the students’ answers and teachers’ ob
-
servations which helped to draw the following ndings.
e materials, namely the seeds, were a medium
that most of the students hadn’t worked with since
they were in primary school. is fascinated them,
as was evident by their enthusiasm and engagement
with the activity. e dierent colors, forms, sizes and
textures gave them an outlet to express themselves
creatively, which provided them an opportunity to
use their language learning in a way that has not been
visited upon in a very long time. ey were also given
the opportunity to adjust their own presence in the
learning environment, like sitting or lying on the oor,
or in other ways that did not inhibit their creative
expression while doing their projects. By working in
pairs, they developed new experiences in teamwork,
communicating in the target language without the
inhibition usually associated with formal language
learning. is manifested in a mutual respect for one
another through the sharing of ideas and concepts, that
may not usually be achieved by traditional language
learning means.
is way of working facilitated creativity in the
creation of original work, giving the students a sense
of ownership over the projects they were developing.
ey felt free to express their own ideas while at the
same time they valued and respected their teammates
ideas and creations. is supported an environment
of tolerance for others, their culture and ethnicities as
Kaplan (2019) claims in her article 6 Essential Strategies
37
for Teaching English Language Learners that creating
a supportive environment is about cultivating an
appreciation of diversity. e use of materials that
might usually be overlooked fostered a new perspec-
tive in English as a subject especially when put into
the context of an original and untraditional learning
environment. ey created an art gallery with all of the
other teams, where the viewer could walk through and
appreciate what the students had made, giving them
a feeling of satisfaction that encouraged their abilities
and belief of success in the target language.
Overall, the evidence demonstrates that the eect
of using alternative materials, in this case seeds, serve
as a means to eciently facilitate conversation as idea
generators. It also supported the writing process, as
the students had to work together to describe their
nal projects through written word in a context that
represented their experiences, beliefs, culture, interests
and needs. It also developed social skills in the target
language through concepts including, cooperation,
sharing, community building, teamwork and creativity.
Besides, Caicedo (2016) manifests that cooperation
can be conceived as more than just sharing with oth
-
ers, but also implies having in mind a particular goal
and working with enough spirit and responsibility
to achieve this goal. Indeed, the students found the
project fun and engaging, which greatly supported
the learning experience.
e seeds worked well as an economic medium which
were found to be a convenient yet inspirational tool
in the classroom. ough there is no research
specically applied to seeds, the use of everyday items
has been documented to demonstrate benet in the
classroom. Such items help to initiate thought, allowing
the students to access their imagination which facili-
tates conversation and descriptive writing. Developing
artwork greatly contributes to this creative process,
which work hand in hand to generate an overall fully
engaging learning environment.
e use of seeds mimics the use of tactile material
applied in almost all other content areas. Examples
of this include colored rods in Mathematics, models
in Science, or creating posters in History. e seeds
gave the students a solid, non-abstract item that helped
them to focus their creative energy and move into the
target content without many of the inhibitions that
may be associated with traditional learning strategies.
e students would become lost in thought by creating
something new and innovative.
The methodology described in this activity rep-
resents a holistic learning strategy that appeals not
only to visual learners, but all of the different types
of learners because it lends itself to such multifaceted
strategies. Working as teams also helped students,
who normally might be reserved in expressing them-
selves verbally or through writing in English, find
confidence and support which supported them
working outside of their normal comfort zones.
The idea behind this strategy, as is shown evident
through the final products created by the students,
was not to accomplish the forms of communication
flawlessly but to get to the essence of communication
and language by getting across ideas and thoughts
without the inhibitions of formal, traditional means.
This methodological strategy in the foreign language
teaching has turned out to be a positive alternative to
avoid students’ frustration, demotivation and drop
out when facing writing challenges as it is mentioned
in the studies carried out by (Lou & Noels, 2017)
cited in (Douglas, 2019).
An example of a written text produced by Jorge
Morales and Erick Taimal ( English major students,
rst semester, 2017).
e Andean condor
e condor freely soars about the Andes Mountains
in splendor beneath the shining sun!
e Andean Condor gazes down, from on high, and
sees that there are waterfalls cascading downwards.
It inhales the pure Andean air before descending to
join its mate on the edge of a special crag.
A condor’s plumage is black. It is a very large bird.
It has feathers lining the edge of its great wings as
well as its bare neck.
Yes. at is correct. You read correctly. e Andean
Condor has no feathers around its neck.
Moreover, their head is red and can alter its hue
depending on the emotional state of the bird, so
don’t get them upset!
Condors want to gaze down and see people culti-
vating ‘Little Seeds’.
A condor is also a symbol of spirituality and purity
for many conscious people in Ecuador. ey are
spiritual beings and simply adore the condor, simply
for being.
Using seeds as a methodological strategy in foreign
language classroom allowed the students to engage
their intellect with positive and enthusiastic emotion.
eir joyful collaboration gave them ways and avenues
to give voice to their thoughts and ideas and make
them visible in a written way. eir imagination was
their only limitation. e students created art that
contextualized personal experience and perception.
38
ey expressed real-life situations that everybody
encounters at some point in life.
e use of seeds in the classroom was a fountain
of inspiration. Creativity could only bloom. ere
was great motivation to create a piece of art with their
own hands and then build meaning through a rst
dra of a piece of writing. e students used seeds to
communicate not only in the target language, but to
reacquaint the youth with art and seeds.
e students and teachers had the opportunity to
break the mold that must have been originally set in
a traditional writing lesson. Having the freedom and
exibility of choice, students could participate with
one another in a holistic, motivating and inspirational
environment, guided by the teacher who created a
serene space where all could become constructors of
knowledge.
e three groups of students involved in this par-
ticular project, not only improved at demonstrating
personal background-knowledge and learning, but
they also made use of ‘so-skills’; such as interacting
with the public and working with the community.
is innovative tactile strategy/approach is not for
every English writing lesson. However, it gives lan-
guage-teachers a new dimension to be explored when
teaching writing in their own classrooms.
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