Upper-Intermediate Speaking Class
As for my first reflection, I would like to focus on the beginning portion of the lesson. The lesson as a whole and the different parts of the lesson conveys different purposes for the students. As I recently learned from TESL 3010, the introduction/warm-up phase of a lesson has a significant impact on the start of class. It sets the tone of the classroom and gets students thinking and focusing on English. Even before the class had started, the instructor took 10 minutes to shortly interact with all students. Although it was difficult to have long conversations due to the number of students in the classroom, I was able to see that checking in on the students to see how they were doing with the excuse of checking attendance had a significant effect on the students. I believe that this allowed the students to feel that they are welcomed and recognized when present in class.
When the time 8:30 AM alerted the students that class had started, the instructor began with greetings and allowed me to introduce myself. This also showed respect to the students by letting them know that there is someone new joining the class to observe. The instructor then continued to the objectives of that day’s lesson with slides to provide visual aids while listening. She also reviewed the course syllabus as she felt the need to go over some information that not all students were fully aware of. The instructor never missed the opportunity to ask for questions after giving any sort of instruction which showed her emphasis on repeating to check students’ understanding. With the limitation to confirm the understanding of all students due to the large number, the fast responses in the public chat of Big Blue Button gave her an idea of their response.
Before going into the main activity, the instructor presented a question related to the video that she was planning to show. Students again answered in the public chat to brainstorm some ideas before going into the main material. This part of the lesson seemed to be the pre-assessment phase of BOPPPS(Bridge, Objectives, Pre-Assessment, Participatory Learning, Post-Assessment, and Summary). Students were well led into the main activity through a smooth transition of thinking about the topic.
After watching the video of a TED Talk (Patricia Ryan: Don’t insist on English), students were put into breakout rooms to discuss the main objectives. As I got the chance to join audio in all the rooms, I was able to identify that some rooms were silent for a long time and some rooms were very interactive in sharing their thoughts. Something that came to mind is that, if the instructor was able to assign random students to facilitate each group discussion, could the silence in the breakout rooms decrease? It may be a challenge for introverted students at first, but I think it would grow leadership and also enhance the quality of the group discussions. Through my learning experiences in an online classroom, I found it quite difficult to lead a discussion because we are unable to see whether someone else is going to jump in or not.
Another moment of realization came when I saw that the instructor stayed busy even after the students have gone to their breakout rooms. The instructor made sure she didn’t miss anyone and tried to help students that were having technical difficulties. I was able to learn about the important duties of the instructor when they are not teaching nor giving instructions.
Conversation Club
While observing the conversation club, I felt happy for the students that this sort of community exists for them. I remember when I first started learning English, there wasn’t anything like this when I desperately wanted to speak more. The club was run with simple activities to reduce the stress of the students. This was great because speaking becomes much more comfortable when it’s not in a formal environment. They didn’t have to be constantly thinking about grammar which allows them to explore a broader range of their vocabularies and take a step further in expressing their thoughts and opinions. However, I do think that this could be stressed even more because there were a few students who continued to say “sorry” after they made a mistake during an activity. My hope for the students is that they would understand how important errors are when learning and that they should never be sorry for making mistakes.
Again, another challenge of the classroom came from the virtual environment. The instructor was attempting to run a free conversation at the beginning of class, and I observed several technical difficulties. Students’ audios were overlapping which made it hard to hear both what the teacher and students were saying. I think the biggest conflict here is that conversations are supposed to flow through eye contact but, there is not much that can be done with regards to this limitation. Additionally, when they were going through a worksheet, it was visible that some students were disengaged when it was not their turn. Apart from these technical issues, it was great to observe the structure of a conversation club. It portrayed a good example of the community language learning approach which also resonates with my pedagogical beliefs for developing speaking skills. It focused on improving students’ communicative competencies while providing learners with authentic input. If I were to teach a speaking class, this is the type of approach I would use.
Intermediate Grammar Class
Grammar can be very boring and tiresome to many L2 learners. When we say we are learning a new language, the main goal is to be able to speak it fluently for many people. We want to be able to speak it, not become grammar masters of that language. While observing, my thoughts were heavily focused on how I would be able to make it more enjoyable. Nonetheless, sitting at my desk right now and reflecting on this observation, I realized that there are more important reasons to consider as to why grammar needs to be taught even though it can be very dry as most lectures are content-focused and why I shouldn’t be too concerned with making the lesson entertaining.
I recently learned more about the Skills Acquisition Theory from TESL 3040(TESL techniques course). We discussed the different roles of declarative and procedural knowledge for language acquisition and learning. The point I want to bring in with regards to this concept is that declarative knowledge helps to engage in mental behaviors that allow the building of procedural knowledge. Thus, declarative knowledge is required to enhance procedural knowledge. I believe that grammar is the basics of declarative knowledge when learning a language. Grammar can be tough and may be one of the students’ least favourite part about learning English, but it is mandatory for them to achieve their goal of becoming an English speaker. I can see now why the instructor was more focused on delivering the content as to having the students engaged. I believe that grammar is something that students have to work on individually to practice and become familiar with, after the material has been introduced. Furthermore, I am now able to fully understand what my practicum advisor has told me about the grammar lab I am currently instructing. My concern was that I felt like I wasn’t teaching because my job was to review the content that the main instructor had already taught. I thought the games and activities I plan for that specific class lacked purpose and that it was different from teaching. My practicum advisor told me not to de-value what I was doing, and I completely understand now that I am in that position where I can give them support to become familiar with the content instead of having them do it on their own. I am thankful to have become aware of this vital role I have been given as it gave me an opportunity to make a promise to myself that I will do my very best for the students to support them in all ways I can.
Beginner Level Communication Class
From the series of short clips I watched, there were several teaching styles that I found to be very effective. The instructor started with a warm-up and went into the first part of the lesson in which her objective was to have the student feel more comfortable when they go shopping by learning vocabularies related to clothing and practicing relevant dialogues. I assume that she was using the audio-lingual method as she was using repetition to positively reinforce correct response, so they are able to use it automatically when they need to. Although too much repetition can get tiresome for the students, I was able to learn from her videos how to try to keep the students engaged. The instructor continuously added in other information about grammar such as using “-s” for plural items, giving corrective feedback on pronunciation, and helping them with the flow of speech through counting syllables to keep them actively listening.
What I found very valuable from this observation was that the instructor really focused on what type of dialogue would help them in real-life situations. By choosing this topic to teach them English, I believe that the students were much more motivated to learn because they aren’t learning vocabulary that has nothing to do with them, it all has to do with their daily lives. Coming from an immigrant family’s point of view, I know that my parents struggled at first going out to buy something. This may seem like nothing important for people who haven’t experienced living in a foreign country, but I know from watching my parents that being scared to proceed with your daily routines is what really makes them feel alienated. Not wanting to go into that store because the staff keeps coming to ask questions when you don’t understand what they’re saying. Feeling afraid to pay for items at the till because you had problems using the card machine last time. Not being able to buy a pair of pants because you don’t know how to ask if you can try it on. All these sorts of situations are what makes people homesick and feeling like they don’t belong.
I was astonished by how she made the class so enjoyable for all the students. When I was observing the students’ facial expressions, they all seemed like they were happy to be there. I believe this was a result of the instructor’s use of the interactionist approach. During the interaction, students were engaging in beneficial interaction moves such as input modification, corrective feedback, modified output, and self-initiated output (Long, 2015). This aligns with my pedagogical beliefs with regards to a speaking class because I strongly believe that speaking is most improved by getting enough practice with your peers or in real-life situations. The instructor had them practice over and over again so they can make use of that outside the classroom. This observation taught me a lot about how to effectively instruct a beginner level communication class.
EFL Class in Korea
An interesting element from this class was that there were two teachers leading the class with about 30 students. It was intriguing to observe the dual operation of provide instruction and leading activities. The one teacher was bilingual which made it possible to clarify instruction and comprehend the context of students’ ideas by using L1. The other teacher was a native speaker which allowed the students to listen to perfect pronunciation. I found that this cooperative instruction done by the teachers was very effective because they were filling each other’s inadequacy and satisfying various aspects of the student’s needs in a language learning environment. They also made the class entertaining for the young students by including songs and interactive games.
Something about this class that concerned me was the pace. I felt that everything was too quick and sometimes even rushed. The class had a large number of students and they were very efficient in trying to give students a chance to speak up. However, I thought that if I was the student in that class, there would be very little I could remember and be taking out of the class since everything went by so fast. Through observation, I was able to understand the importance of speed in facilitating a class. If I were to lead this specific lesson, I would consider slowing it down to allow students to process the input, so they have more time to comprehend the meaning. Additionally, students who need more time to process than others would not be able to follow along. I wasn’t able to spot a specific student who visibly showed that they couldn’t catch up with the speed, however, if such student was present, the teacher wouldn’t have had enough time to even notice that there are students who aren’t able to participate.
Grammar Video Resources from TESL CANADA
Through watching all the grammar videos posted under the TESL Canada link, I was introduced to several different methods of teaching grammar. The teachers used various activities such as dictogloss, tic-tac-toe, tag questions game, board games, and races. Connecting to previous reflections, I was able to retouch on the importance of review and practice for learning grammar. There were specific parts of the interview with the teachers that stood out to me throughout this observation. A teacher from an EFL upper intermediate class used dictogloss to have students practice using grammar without thinking about it. He first read out a short story and asked them to simply listen the first time and take notes the second round. The students were then asked to reconstruct the sentences in groups from the notes they took. After all groups shared their work, the teacher broke the sentences apart and showed how it can be reconstructed using grammar. This was a great activity for the students, yet the interesting part that stood out to me was when he said he likes to not give away the content they will be learning for the day. The teacher explained that he gets his students to focus on the activity itself to allow them to recognize the purpose on their own.
A similar idea was presented by another teacher from a different class. He also stated that he tries to teach from context to grammar, not grammar to context. Instead of teaching how to talk about events in the past through grammar structure, he first explained events from his past and had his students talking about their past events in pairs through an activity. I used to think that the objective of the lesson should first be introduced before going into anything. I learned through the perspectives of these two teachers that not giving them the exact outline of what they will be learning can also help students focus on context and then have grammar practice follow along. This is something I will try in my future lessons as I believe this can bring many benefits to the class without the students being aware of it.
TESL Training Videos (Listening)
Since I have never taught a class focused on listening yet, I found these videos very intriguing as it showed several different skills and methods as to how it could be done. The first idea that grabbed my focus what that it is important to have them practice listening in a comfortable environment. It is not only the speaking part about English that gets many students anxious, listening can also become very stressful because when you don’t understand something you hear then it is difficult to even attempt to speak up. Thus, it is crucial that teachers try to create a learning environment where they can relax and practice listening without getting anxious about comprehending it inaccurately.
There was a teacher in one of the videos who used a song to develop students’ listening skills. She first had the students warm up by talking about singers that they enjoy listening to and why. After that, she introduced a song to the students and asked them how it made them feel. The instructor swayed the focus away from fully understanding the lyrics to speaking about the mood of the song and what emotions evolved while listening to it. I believe that this short step before getting into the main activity played a vital role in pulling out the stress factors of listening to the foreign language. One of the students even stated that he didn’t understand the meaning of the words, but he felt relaxed and happy listening to it. I thought that this was a great start to improving their listening skills because comprehending the message is important but understanding the tone of the language is also very important. They were then asked to listen to the song again and fill in the blanks on the lyric sheet in pairs. The last part of the activity was to have the students write their own lyrics in teams. Students were well able to create their own message and also practice listening to English with the additional model of rhythm and stress.
Another important skill I learned is to point out the strong syllables when learning new words. Understanding the flow and stress put on each syllable truly helps students when listening to that word being used in a full sentence. There were numerous methods used throughout the videos, but what I took out from this observation is that to improve listening skills, the process of continuous practice and becoming more comfortable with hearing is key.
TESL Videos for Teaching Pronunciation and Vocabulary
From watching the TESL videos on pronunciation, I was able to notice that many teachers used their warm-up to bridge into the main activity. None of the teachers went straight into the main lesson. For example, a teacher for a speaking and pronunciation class started off by asking students to name some adjectives for explaining today’s weather. Using that as a start, he created mini dialogues for students to practice while working on their pronunciation. I believe that this bridging portion of the lesson is crucial for students to actively engage themselves before going into the main content. This specific instructor provided a dialogue frame with familiar language for instructional scaffolding to take place, then had the students move on to use their own choice of vocabulary. While they were doing this, the instructor also emphasized the use of stress, rise, and fall when speaking. He gave me insight by describing stress as the material to give life to the language when spoken. Additionally, the instructor explained that when he is trying to help students improve their pronunciation, he has them go through the recognition phase; getting the general feel for the pitch direction, then into production. It was interesting to learn that it is not only important to have students practice their speech for enhanced production, but also to give enough opportunity and time to recognize the sound.
In one of the vocabulary teaching videos I watched, the instructor used the total physical response to teach new vocabulary. When I first learned about this method, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to use this approach as I was mainly focused on grammar, speaking, and reading, and writing. This video showed me how effective TPR can be in learning new vocabulary. The use of this method allowed students to become very engaged and gave them the opportunity to listen, speak, watch, and touch all at the same time.
Intermediate/Advanced Reading Class
I was introduced to some very interesting lesson plans from the teachers in the reading classes. The main focus was on developing reading skills, but it brought the students much further than that to work on speaking, critical thinking, and listening skills. One of the instructors chose the topic of birth order to create a pre-reading activity to explore students’ personal experience with the topic, make predictions about the reading, and fill gaps from the reading while interacting with other classmates. Another instructor led the class in a similar structure but with the topic of love and relationship. It was great to observe and realize the importance of choosing the right topic to engage students through its relevance and interest. However, the instructor mentioned during the interview that it is vital to know your students before using such topics because it can be sensitive or inappropriate to some cultures.
The instructors used a variety of diagrams to support students in organizing the information through visual aids. I learned that reading classes can be heavily improvised and elaborated through one specific text. Reading the text provides room for development in the practice itself but, having discussions and sharing ideas with others provides a great opportunity for enhancing speaking skills. Even throughout the role-play, students were encouraged to use words they don’t normally use in their everyday lives as they take on the role of someone else. They may feel less inhibited and less self-conscious about what they are about to say. There were some great techniques used in these videos that I would love to try out in my classes one day. Not only the ones specific for a reading class, but many techniques that can be used to improve all skills of language use. I observed that with relevant topics and engaging activities, students naturally become more active learners and most importantly, enjoy the learning process.
Video on Assessment, Promoting Critical Thinking Skills and Teaching Performance
There were four main points introduced in the video to create effective assessments. First, to connect with instructional objectives and outcomes by clearly explaining the expected outcomes. Second, using multiple, varied strategies and tasks; examples are direct, indirect, task-based, and gaming forms of assessment. They all go for the same purpose in checking students’ level of understanding but in very different ways. The third trait for an effective assessment was to have it going throughout the lesson and lastly, to provide feedback on progress to inform instruction. One thing I realized was that assessment for adult ESL classes should be slightly different than for younger ESL classes. In a similar sense, the teacher should be aware of their audience and adjust the form of assessment as to whether it should avoid high-stakes testing and focus more on what gaps should be filled and be re-iterated to improve their understanding.
In the video that explained strategies for promoting critical thinking skills, it showed several techniques and the reasons for teaching these skills. Teachers implemented activities to have students compare and contrast, identify assumptions, interpret, analyze/evaluate, and summarize/synthesize. Additionally, learnings skills such as categorizing, making predictions, listening/reading selectively, and practicing note-taking were also promoted as these skills take a long time to develop and will be helpful for the students’ future workplace, community, and further education.
The teaching performance video gave me an opportunity to observe the three common mistakes teachers make and evaluate whether I make the same mistakes or not. From the three, I realized that I need to work on my “echoing” mistake. I tend to always respond back to every answer a student gives because I want them to feel that I am listening carefully and that I appreciate their attempt, however, I learned that it usually accomplished much more than needed and it only increases teacher speaking time. Instead, it would be more helpful to give a positive response when needed and reinforce corrections myself or ask other students to help their classmates. For further improvement, I will try to record my teaching and identify the mistakes I’m making to create positive changes.