Category Archives: OBSERVATIONS

Welcome to the Observations page. Here you will find both individual and collaborative posts, co-authored by two or three participants who have observed or participated in the same lesson. Each post describes the important and relevant events in a lesson (narrative) and what may be learned from contemplating these events, in terms of either practice or principles or both (implications for learning and teaching).

Sansone & Yang- UC Davis & Curriculum Design

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Kathy: It is a pity that Andrew and I missed the last session of Curriculum Design class, which was also the most exciting Trade Fair occasion – but you can’t eat your cake and have it at the same time, that’s life. ☹ I have all my faith in my colleagues in doing excellent jobs presenting their projects, since everyone has put so much passion and efforts in designing their creative curricula. Another round of applause for my peers!

While at the same time, Andrew and I had a great time in UC Davis presenting an assessment-related project that we have been working on for most of the semester. Based on a previous test review project on TOEFL-iBT that Andrew and I did for Jean, we took an audacious move to apply for the third Language Symposium held on UC Davis and made our first appearance on a professional language teaching stage successfully. Although we were the last session on that day, we were still lucky enough to a decent number of audiences to share our findings. I’m so glad and excited that it turned very well! All the sweat and tears finally paid off on the last day of school in an insanely intense semester!

Andrew: I agree, Kathy! It was great getting to have the audience check out our hard work.  So cool!

Kathy: I can definitely view the transferable knowledge and skills of design thinking that I gained through the curriculum design process have worked in our research project. The research question of our project is whether the ETS stated constructed validity correlates with the applications of TOEFL-iBT in the higher institute through the perspectives of LPAs, teachers and students. We experienced real struggles when designing the survey because we had no clue about who would be the potential survey takers. Although we received some leads of TESOL graduates from Jean and Kathi, it was still hard to do the audience design. So instead of sticking to the original one-for-all survey, we created three versions of the survey to accommodate different groups, which varied in range and types of questions. Even though collecting as much as data by reaching out to as many people as we could was so time-consuming and energy-draining, the experience of doing research with a large and entirely unfamiliar audience was priceless for us.

Andrew: Our project was quite interesting, and both Kathy and myself really enjoyed getting to work on the UC Davis project.  We learned quite a bit, and it was great getting to see the other presentation in action.  Although our project was more focused  on the TOEFL iBT and critically analyzing its validity and testing constructs through our research, there were several elements of our experiences at UC Davis that could be extended to curriculum design.

For instance, I think that some of the presentations- which focused on student agency and how particular registers are socially constructed and signal meaning in society at large- would be valuable for any curriculum designer.  Anyway, it was great experience for both of us!

Roy Lyster’s Talk

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On Friday, I attended Roy Lyster’s talk on Proactive and reactive approaches to integrated language & content. 

I was really impressed by his clarity in presenting ideas, the extent of his experience and research, as well as the wealth of information he’s gathered from his work. I particularly enjoyed his explanation of the proactive model to curriculum design. Here is what I took away from this discussion:

Immersion does not harm L1, it can actually enhance it. However, immersion students still had trouble with grammatical accuracy, lexical language, & sociolinguistic appropriateness.

These difficulties arose for immersion students’ because their input, from teachers, was limited in tense, aspect and other elements of language that native speakers are exposed to.

Roy’s research, and others’, shows that language can be learned by bypassing grammar and focusing on communicative competence (which is what happens in CBI courses and immersion programs sometimes). However, a direct and contextualized focus on grammar can help solve the non-native issues may immersion and language learners face.

CBI contextualizes language in content and builds pathways to language that are strongly associated with topics. To do this teachers should design their course (or cross disciplinary courses) so that the focus on content bookends the focus on language and grammar learning.

Roy’s proactive approach sequence:

noticing (language during content)

awareness (metalinguistic reflection,  noticing patterns)

guided practice (Ss use new grammar/lexical/language in meaningful content driven tasks)

Autonomous practice (a return to content information where Ss are expected to use the newly learned language skills as well)

 

I think this system is very useful for designing a curriculum because it can be used at the syllabus stage, the unit stage, the lesson plan stage, or even at the individual task stage. I think this approach would be very useful to use in the language classroom that has a focus on other areas of the culture (environmentalism, holidays etc.)

Reflections on Roy Lyster’s talk: Proactive and reactive approaches to integrating language and content

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By Josiah Nilsen

Roy Lyster’s presentation really helped me to understand the difference between Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and Content Based Instruction (CBI). CBI is a good way to teach content, but the students’ language acquisition can suffer as attention is directed solely towards content. CLIL, on the other hand, balances out this deficiency by turning some of the attention back onto language. Thus, the language is used to teach content, but at the same time, content is specifically used to focus on language.

In Content Based Instruction there is a risk that students will fail to be achieve grammatical accuracy, lexical variety, and sociolinguistic appropriateness, despite learning the content well and despite achieving native-like comprehension and high communicative ability. It is possible for students to understand and follow discourse without actually understanding the forms being used. Although such a situation is better than the reverse, where someone knows the forms but cannot communicate or understand, it is still not the ideal situation. As language teachers we should strive to enable our students not only to communicate and understand but also to properly use the right grammatical forms in a sociolinguistically correct way.

Dr. Lyster proposed four practical steps for integrating language and content in a proactive way. In his proposal, a teacher should include a noticing activity, an awareness activity, guided practice, and autonomous practice. It was really cool to see his concrete examples of what these activities could look like in the classroom. I look forward to being able to implement this approach in my teaching.

Part of his talk that also really stood out to me was when he talked about a reactive approach to integrating language and content. He did a great job of highlighting the different kinds of feedback and their relative effectiveness. It’s interesting that although recasts are used as much as all other kinds of feedback combined, they are less effective for most age groups and ability groups. This will be very useful for me as a teacher, and will be one of the things that I will take away from this presentation and remember well.

Another thing he mentioned was to show students the underlying patterns that govern language, and not scare them up front with the exceptions. Arabic has a lot of underlying patterns, which can grow huge families of related words out of a single root. Helping students to understand these patterns is really important, especially in Arabic.

It was very interesting to hear Dr. Lyster’s take on whether foreign language texts should be altered for learner use. Dr. Lyster took the position that altering authentic texts is not only permissible, but often desirable or necessary. In my classes here at MIIS, I have often heard “Change the task, not the text.” This has been so ingrained in me that I have begun to take it for granted. That’s why I didn’t expect to hear a prominent voice in the field take a diametrically opposed view. This is a helpful reminder to me that not all the experts agree, and that the conversation on these issues is ongoing. This is a issue which I need to look into more in order to determine my own position.

Jerry – Reflection on Dr. Roy Lyster’s Talk

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First of all, I like how Dr. Lyster begins his presentation with cognitive advantages of bilingualism and selective attention. He makes an interesting point that having to manage two languages and switch between them allows learners to hone cognitive skills, but this “two for one” ability does not come to learners for free. According to Dr. Lyster, attention of learners must be drawn to their L2 that is well manipulated and enhanced through content-based instruction. So, based on this idea of attention, I think that language teachers must consider psychological aspects of learning and then come up with effective ways for their students to fully concentrate on language learning before choosing appropriate contents.

The second interesting point Dr. Lyster makes is that L2 learners in French immersion curriculum demonstrate high communicative abilities and confidence as well as native-like comprehension skills but low production skills in grammatical accuracy, lexical variety, and sociolinguistic appropriateness. In other words, separation of language and content allow students to bypass grammar and lexicon. Just as Dr. Lyster proposes systematic integration of language and content over decontextualized language teaching, I believe it is imperative that teachers think about flaws of traditional language teaching such as subject-matter instruction and transfer-appropriate processing.

Third, Dr. Lyster introduces integration of language and content through what is called counterbalance. The crux of this concept is that there must be a proportionate influence of content and language in ways that reinforce connections in memory as well as increase depth of processing. I think it makes sense if teachers look at it from a psychological perspective because something can be remembered for a longer period of time if learners take more time to focus on it and then mentally process it. This idea of counterbalance seems to be the basis for Dr. Lyster’s proactive and reactive approaches to content and language integration.

Fourth and the most interesting point of all is Dr. Lyster’s instructional sequence for integrating language and content. To explain the noticing and awareness steps of his instructional sequence, he shows the video of a moon-walking bear that walks through two teams passing balls among the same team members. The first time I encountered a video of awareness test was in the cognitive psychology class back in my undergraduate, and I learned from the course that most of the viewers would not notice another object or person changing or moving if they did not know about selective attention in advance. Thus, it is interesting to see Dr. Lyster labeling certain grammar points like conjugation and gender as moon-walking bears, which can be learned more attentively to learners through guided and autonomous practices.

My last comment is on the notion of corrective feedback (CF). Dr. Lyster makes a rather surprising remark that teachers are reluctant to provide CF assuming that students prefer not to be corrected. Honestly, I feel uncomfortable to know that there are teachers who hesitate to correct their students. If CF is verified to be effective by four recent meta-analyses and even most effective during interaction among students, then I would strongly argue that after receiving proper training and information of CF types, all language teachers should at least consider trying to give CF to their students and then observe for its effectiveness. Personally, I would like to learn more about scaffolding functions behind recasts as well as output hypothesis and skill acquisition theory behind prompts.

Overall, I truly enjoyed listening to Dr. Lyster’s presentation on proactive and reactive approaches to integrating language and content. I must say that this topic makes me realize how much I have missed studying psychology ever since I got my Bachelor of Science in psychology. In this sense, language acquisition intrigues me very much as it connects two fields of study that I love the most: language and psychology.

Collaborative Observation on the Activity “Workstation”

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Workstation

This activity is intended for students who are learning to be a language teacher.
Procedures:
1. The teacher prepares a number of activities printed on a specific theme/topic.
2. She then sticks them around the classroom to create a workstation.
3. Students form groups of 4-5.
4. Students are asked to go around the station and pick up some copies of the activities they think their group might be interested (they can pick up all if they have enough time to look at all the activities)
5. The groups look at and explore the activities together. They may illustrate or model them to see how it works in the class
6. Group reflection on what activities they are interested and would like to use in their future classes.
This activity is greatly enjoyable because it enables learner exposure to many different activities on the same theme at a time. They can try to make some basic illustration or workshop themselves to visualize the activities and share ideas with their team mates. The activity was organised for Punctuation use and meaning, but it can be employed for other themes like teaching speaking, listening, writing, vocabulary, applications for big class size, etc.

Minh, Kathy, Brienna, & Annabelle

Minh’s PEDAGOGICAL REPERTOIRE

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I. Integrated language skills

1. Mock auction
Language objectives: Persuasive skills through positive description
Level: Lower-intermediate upwards
Procedure:
1. Learners are told they are left with only one object/possession (they can choose what it is), and write its name on a slip of paper.
2. Jumble the slips and redistribute them.
3. Ask the learners to make a list of the qualities of their object – its desirability, usefulness and aesthetic value.
4. Ask students to make their own mock money (divide a clean sheet of paper into 10 rectangles and write the agreed value on each.
5. Each student then auctions their own object. They should try to get as high a price as possible. Teacher may need to model an auction. Learners should understand they need to use inflated comments on each sale, using the list made at step 3 as prompts. They will also need to urge buyers if bidding is slow or flagging.
Example: “Come on ladies and gentlemen… This bag is made of the best grade leather. You can see how soft it is and it really is chic! Do I hear $150?”
5. After the bidding has finished, find out:
• how many people bought more than one thing
• whether anyone bought nothing
• who spent the most
• who spent the least
6. Finally encourage learners to discuss why they decided to pay what they did for different things, or why they decided not to buy.
Follow-up writing (This activity can be assigned as homework and displayed in the next class session)
1. Students are told to choose an object that they own but rather dislike and write an advert emphasizing its positive qualities, suitable for placing in a local shop window (or facebook school marketplace page).
E.g., This is an advert for a chair posted on MIIS Marketplace “Available for drop off. Totally collapsible and very comfy chair. Washable covers. Pillows included.”
b. When everybody has finished, place the adverts around the room and give learners time to browse and to note down any articles they are particularly interested in/
3. Finally ask learners to form groups of 3-5 and to compare what they are interested in buying.
Note: This activity can be used for large-size classes. Students will sit in groups, choose an object they want to auction and make a list of exaggerating description. Each team will have one time auction to get their object sold.

2. Jigsaw reading
Language objectives: Critical reading skills and ability to orally summarize the ideas in the assigned readings to other students in group.
Level: Intermediate upwards
Note: This activity is often applied to a big number of required readings, either short or long in different types of text, and is assigned as home-work for the next classroom discussion session.
Procedure:
1. Ask students to form groups of 3-4. If there are fewer than 3-4 readings for the whole class session, let learners assign which reading among themselves, normally each in charge of one text. If there are more readings, e.g., 5-7, allow students to choose the text they like to read (there should be a maximum of registration for each text, or else, many may choose the same text), then number them from 1 to 7 and ask them to sit in group 1, group 2, …, group 7.
2. Each group member reads his/her own text at home. While they are reading, they need to address several questions as follows:
– The main ideas of the text
– Two points made in the text you find most useful or interesting (students can talk more than two if they want)
– One thing you don’t really like (students can talk more than two if they want)
3. Students sit in their group and summarize their answers for those questions. Other members can share opinions and discuss further questions to clarify information.

3. Role and language
Language objective: Casual conversation
Level: Lower-intermediate upwards
Procedure:
1. Writing on the board (giving or eliciting) a list of contrasting human conditions. E.g.:
Old person …….. Young person
Lazy person …….. energetic person
Thin person …….. fat person
Driver …….. Passengers
City person …….. Country person
2. Write a topic of casual conversation on the board, something like the weather, clothes price, food price, our schools, traffic problems in the city, etc.
3. Ask students to make pairs and choose roles for their pair.
4. Take two contrasting roles not being used by the learners and then model them.
5. Pairs hold a conversation on the agreed topic with each person in their role.
E.g. A conversation is an upper-intermediate group between an old and young person on traffic problems might run as follows:
Old: Look at all these cars!
Young: Most of them’ve only got one person in them!
Old: In my days, we used to cycle everywhere, or walk.
Young: I suppose people need to travel further these days. …

4. Information gaps
Objective: Contextualised communication; Making questions and answers
Procedure:
1. The teacher gives a handout to each student. These handouts have the same content, but some of them have different erased words or phrases.
2. The teacher gives instruction: students need to stand up, move around and ask other students if they know the erased words in their handout by asking the questions for the blanks like “Do you know the population of city (A)?”. If their friend knows the answers (i.e., the words are not erased in the partner’s handout), they will say it, or else, they say “I don’t know.” and move to the next friend.
3. The students carry out the activity, and the teacher monitors their interaction and make sure they are not using their L1 language.
In this activity, learners are given a context in which they need the answers for the words erased in their handout, so they need to interact with their friends who may have those words to identify which words were taken out.

5. Qualities for life: Deciding what qualities help you get the best out of life
Language focus: Words and phrases describing qualities that enhance enjoyment of life
Objective: Speaking; listening
Level: Intermediate upwards
Procedure:
1. Ask the class to think of things about themselves and others that enhance their enjoyment of life. They might be personality, abilities, or attributes.
2. After 5 minutes for brainstorming, write up as many as the class can think of on the board.
3. Ask learners to choose one quality that they think would enhance their own enjoyment of life. They should tell nobody at this stage.
4. The teacher chooses a quality and pretends to hold it in her hands. She chooses a learner and gives him/her the quality as a present, saying, e.g.
Teacher: I’d like to give you the ability to do break dancing if you don’t already have it.
Student: Thank you – and I’d like to give you the ability to calm down in difficult and scary moments.
The teacher thanks the learner, takes the new gift in his/her hands and then looks for someone else to pass the new gift on to, and continues the next exchange.
5. When learners understand the game rules, ask everybody to get to stand up ad walk around exchanging “gifts”. When everybody has spoken to most other people (in about 15 minutes), ask learners to return to their seats.
6. Optional (for follow-up activities)
Ask learners which of all the gifts they were given they would most like to keep and (1) volunteer to share orally with the whole class; and/or (2) write a positive brief note and stick it to a place in the classroom, referred as “Qualities for life”
Freer follow-up activity can involve contextualized prompts. Teacher can show the students a short story focusing a specific character’s life, then asks them to think of what qualities that character would find most useful in life and why.
Note: Doing this activity, adult learners may create valuable qualities and can use good vocabulary to talk about the desirable qualities. It is also very meaningful to involve children. Young learner may have simpler ideas, but it would be a very good opportunity to talk to them about good social and personal values. Learners can learn more deeply about one another when sharing these values together.

II. Vocabulary

6. Shiritori (from Dana and Andrew’s activity for PTF)
Objectives: warm-up, vocabulary
Procedure:
Students make pairs and listen to game rules: each player is given a random letter by their partner and must pick a word beginning with that letter (their “start” word can also be their first name or anything related to themselves, e.g., their favorite food, flower, drink, etc.). In one minute, the player keeps coming up with as many words starting with the last letter of the previous word as possible while the other keeps timing. After one minute, they switch roles. The one who has more words is the winner.
Words created must:
– be not proper nouns
– have at least 4 letters
– not be repeated
Note: In pair, students can take turn to come up with their own word starting with the last letter of the previous word written by their partner, and the game can occur in 1-2 minutes. The one who has more words is the winner. The game may also finish before the time limit if no players can come up with the next new word.

7. Letters to Words
Objectives: Warm-up, vocabulary
Procedure:
1. Students make pairs
2. Teacher gives the pairs a handout with a list of words of ten letters, asking students to break each word into two words of five letters each. The word can be a proper name and makes sense in current English vocabulary.
Note: The game can also have a completely different version. Students are given a list of abbreviations that they have learned or known and required to work out in pairs what the abbreviations stand for.

8. Definition Matching
Objective: review, warm-up, vocabulary, speaking, listening
Levels: All levels
Procedure:
The teacher gives each group of 4-5 students two envelopes; one contains the vocabulary (words), concepts or terminology, and the other contains the definitions, examples or descriptions to illustrate the vocabulary/concepts. Teacher can give just one envelope for both words and definitions but in two different colors. In their group, the students take turn to pick up a piece giving the description and the other students, if they can say the target word/concept, will get the pair of word-definitions. Who can get the most is the winner.
Note: This activity is normally used as a review of the vocabulary/concepts the students have learned so far. It can also be used as a warm-up activity to help review the knowledge but also to give students a break at the same time. Depending on the difficulty of the vocabulary and how much the teacher wish the students to review, the activity can be modified from easy to relatively difficult, accommodating all levels of learners.

III. Grammar

9. Bad English (Our activity for Pedagogical Trade Fair)
Objective: Learner ability to spot and correct grammatical and vocabulary errors; Build up learner confidence
Level: Intermediate upwards
Procedure:
1. Teacher collects some signs in real-life use from the surrounding environment or from the Internet. The signs should not be ambiguous (i.e., having enough context as a clue for students to be able to identify the error), and they should also show the language errors from native speakers, not only from international use.
2. Teacher asks students: -what is the problem with the sign?; – how do you think it should be corrected; – explain your reasons. Teacher can model one example with the whole class, and have the students work in groups on the signs (if there are quite many signs, divide 2-3 signs to each group for all the work to be done)
3. Teacher then shows some examples of student work/assignments but leave it anonymous. The students need to spot the errors and suggests ways to correct them. In this way, students have an opportunity to look at their erroneous use of language, listen to others’ feedback but do not lose confidence when their work is shown.
Note: Doing this activity, students can see they may make mistakes, but they are also capable of spotting and correcting errors including ones made by native speakers of the target language.

10. Self-correct grammar homework (From my Language Analysis class)
Objective: – Students gain deeper understanding of the knowledge acquire through seeing why their answers might be not appropriate and being exposed to other ways examining the same problems; – Raise more linguistic awareness; – Build up confidence and motivation
Level: Lower-intermediate upwards
Procedure:
This activity should be used for Grammar course and linguistic courses which often included a lot of grammar exercises. Before giving any textbook exercises to students, teacher gives them the exercises Key (which is often not included in student textbook). The students are asked to first do the exercises themselves (based on what they understand from reading the textbook, lectures and class materials), then compare their answers to the sample answers given in the Key and correct them. By the deadline, the students are supposed to give the corrected version of their homework to the teacher. The teacher will mark and give feedback on student work of correction and comparison. There are some questions may suggest a varied answer and the students should also give those exercises a tick to show they have read the ideas suggested in the Key. I found it really useful and enjoyable when doing this type of activity myself in the Language Analysis class. Therefore, I would love to use it in my Basic or Advanced grammar (involved with Morphology and Syntax) classes, or even Phonetics or Phonology classes. Doing this activity, students will not follow the conventional way of doing grammar drill practice, find it more challenging and more motivated to engage in grammar classes.

IV. Information review (adaptable for Vocabulary learning)

11. Jeopardy

Objectives: Review, have fun
Teaching aids: Paper pieces with information categories on them, paper pieces of score numbers (100, 200, 300, 400, and 500, or any other scale the teacher likes)
Procedure:
1. Teacher stick the categories on the board/wall, and the scores underneath (each categories include the five score bands)
2. Teacher has students form groups of 3-5 depending on class size. Each group nominates a leader who is in charge of saying the category and the score level the group agree on.
3. Teacher randomly picks up the group taking the first turn to play the game. Each group takes turn to choose their own category and score level. Teacher will read the question (e.g., definitions, illustrative examples, problems/situations…) that level, and the group has 30 seconds to discuss the answer. If they cannot give the answer within the time limit or fail to give the right answer, the next group on their left will get the chance to answer the question until the right one is given.
4. The class plays the game until all questions are solved. The group with the highest score is the winner.
Note: This activity can be used to review information/knowledge (e.g., theories, concepts, definitions, …), vocabulary, or grammar (e.g., names, use, exceptions of grammatical points). As a review activity, it can be played at the end of units, chapters, sections, and when the course finishes. The game rule can also vary. For every turn, a student in the class is randomly selected to choose the category and score level. All the teams have 30 seconds to think of the answer and write it on their team boards, and then hold them up to the teacher when time runs up. Every team with the correct answer gets the score, and loses the same amount of points with an incorrect answer. For this Jeopardy version, the teacher can make fewer questions, but the former version is more appropriate with teacher’s goal of reviewing a large amount of information. Playing this game enables students to memorize the main points (essential information) they need to review.

12. Warm-up with Socrative short questions and answers (from my MALL course)

Objective: Warm-up and activate students’ knowledge of previous lesson; Individual contribution
Level: All
Procedure:
The teacher uses the app/software Socrative, which is free and simple to use without much of the teacher’ preparation, to form some short questions that help review the content taught in the previous lesson. The teacher first creates the accounts for all students in his/her class, they then have a username and password to log in the site. When they log in their account in class from the Socrative app on their mobile phone, they will see the questions in sequence and they have limited time (decided by the teacher) to answer each question. They are only advanced to the next question if they finish the current one. After an appropriate time allotted for the questions, the teacher can show to the whole class (using the projector connected with his/her mobile phone/laptop/iPad) the answers submitted for each questions. They can collectively look at the answers and share their opinions.
Note: This activity allows the teacher design quick questions for warm up and lesson review in an efficient way. Socrative is also used during the lesson if some quick questions are necessary to collect students’ opinions about a class topic. Also, as the answers are presented when the teacher chooses to display them and quick, short answers are required for the next question to appear, all students have to make their contribution (although not to all the questions). Besides, every question will be answered from at least several learners.

Minh.

Minh’s Two Informal Observation Reports

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The Two Informal Observation Reports

I missed the opportunities to make two informal observations in person, so I went the course Moodle site to look for some videos that may provide somewhat informal observations. I found professor’s short videos of his classroom activities including Fluency practice and Working with authentic materials. As they were the clearest videos with sounds and images, I chose to observe them for my information reports. The videos are short (they were actually shortened and modified from the original full-length recordings) since they had recorded one activity each. Therefore, I reviewed the longer recording for my first informal observation report and the two shorter videos are included in the second report.

I. First informal observation report: Fluency Practice
From a brief introduction given by the teacher, the class being recorded is an ESL class where possibly most of the students are Japanese. As the course emphasis is on spoken English (presentation skills), the students were required to self-assess their speaking ability in different categories (fluency, pronunciation, use of vocabulary, gesture and eye contact) at the beginning of the course. The recording was taking place around half way through the course and the students were expecting to re-evaluate their self-assessment to see how much they had improved and what they would need to work on.
The activity procedures are quite simple. Students were asked to sit in two lines, each facing another from the opposite. The teacher then gave instructions: – each speaker has 1 minute to speak (the topic wasn’t mentioned in the video but sounds to be “daily routine” for me) and their partner (the listener) had to give a summary in 20 seconds with main points only (no detail); – then, they switched roles and the partner became the speaker with the same limit time; -after the pairs finished a turn, one line of students (the first speaker) needed to move one seat to their left to form a new pair with the person sitting opposite; – the line on the teacher’s right-hand side started first. Whenever the students were about to start a new step in the procedure, the teacher confirmed if they had understood what they were going to do next in the new step.
While the students were doing the activity, most of the speakers read from a paper they had prepared before. I don’t know if they couldn’t remember the information or they were just shy, which I couldn’t clarify with the teacher as I was just watching the video. Although I neither see the listeners taking notes while they were listening, they still summarized the others’ ideas reading a hand-out they were holding. I guess they might not have listened carefully to get the information from the speakers. I thought the topic might have been well-prepared by the students in advance and the listeners might even have been given a handout of the other’s story. Besides, most of the listeners made a summary by listing the main points, using the repeated structure “and…and…and…” After the pairs finished the first turn, they moved to the left and repeat the activity again. Afterwards, the teacher said he would want the students to talk about a new topic, i.e., improvement on one category of presentation skills, starting with the sentence structure like “This week, I’m going to improve…” for eye contact, frequency, and so on. This is how they were asked to re-evaluate their initial self-assessment. He also required the students to specify what level they would like to target compared to the initial level (e.g. “I’m 4. This week I want to be 3”). The students then continued their one-minute fluency practice after they had decided what and how much they wanted to improve in this week. After the activity finished, the teachers asked one student to write all the answers on a poster on the board. Other students gradually talked about what they would like to enhance.
The activity is aimed at improving learner fluency without much focus on their grammar and language form. Honestly, at that point of the course, the learners didn’t actually make the most use of the activity. Reading the topic and summarizing possibly without listening to the interlocutor do not really boost speaking fluency. However, if the teacher had allowed the students to prepare hand-outs like that, he might have also expected the activity would happen that way. This limited practice could be acceptable and understandable as the students were still on their way to improve their speaking skills and still far from what was considered “fluency”. I also think the teacher didn’t try to remind the students not to read possibly because he wanted them, when re-evaluating their achievements, to think of and compare how they had just performed the activity to their initial ability from the start of the course.
I do learn something about how to conduct this activity in the class and again, about the benefits it will bring for the students’ growth. Firstly, instructions should be delivered after pairs/group shaped to avoid confusion because the students have the context to better understand what they need to do. Specifically, the teacher pointed to his right-side line and said “one minute speaking” and to his left side saying “20 seconds to summarize”, and the students still understood, which helped save much of the teacher’s time and energy to give efficient instructions. I like the way the teacher integrated learner re-evaluation into a classroom task. This way makes more sense for the re-evaluation process (as the students could think of how they had just performed in terms of each category), and also makes it more enjoyable to work on. Also, having all the students’ resolutions written on the poster might have a stronger impact on their determination and feeling of self-accomplishment. If I were one of the students, I would feel more determined seeing goal stated in public, kind of “Yeah, I’m gonna do it!”

II. The use of authentic materials
The video was carried out with same class of the Japanese students. The recording started when the students had already received a magazine, which was authentic materials, in groups. They had some minutes to explore the magazine fill in a handout named “Comparing popular magazines” while the teacher was going around the class to provide help for students with questions. After that, the teacher drew the students’ attention to a new activity based the materials, giving the instruction: he would tell the whole class about a person, their age and interest, and they had to suggest a magazine that might be appropriate with that person. The first situation, he talked about a young woman (using the first person singular pronoun “I”), around 23 years old, interested in clothes, music and lives of celebrities, and asked which magazine the students would recommend to her. The students actually gave several different answers, i.e., the magazines they were assigned. The teacher then gave feedback on each group’s answer. E.g., He asked a group to tell him some celebrities they could learn about in their magazine. He then talked about himself as a person who was more than 30, interested in international affair and politics, left-wing. However, it seems for this case, no group had the appropriate answer as their magazines didn’t suit the person’s interest. The right magazine actually wasn’t assigned to any groups yet, so the teacher introduced it to the whole class. He explained which public figures on the magazine cover, and opened to the page where the information was located. After that, he explained why it might look like the appropriate option, through which he told the difference between two types of magazines, i.e., news vs. entertainment. “News” type is different from those read by the students because it has a lot of words and the pictures are often in black and white, not fancy at all.
I like the activity the teacher used to exploit the real-life materials. Because the students were given the reading source (context) so they could give advice on what magazines might suit specific types of readers and justify their answers. It would be hard if we ask them to give advice without giving them some input on the topic. They might know those magazines, but didn’t think of them as potential answers. Normally, the textbook content just has enough space to describe a few types of magazines and cannot offer learners enough understanding of how such magazines may look like. When using authentic materials, the teacher would also have opportunities to integrate some cultural elements into their teaching content, and students can know more about the culture of the target language. E.g., after this class session, they better know how to distinguish news and entertainment magazines, or at least, they can expect they would not find political information in the magazines intended for entertainment purpose.

Minh,

Informal Observation: CALL class

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 https://youtu.be/bEBL4yuq4b0

I watched an online class carried out through the use of Google Hangouts focused on a grammar lesson. The lesson is about the present continuous as presented by one teacher to about eight students. Because of the online class format, students sign-in and leave the hangout during the class, accounting for the approximate student count. The class lasts about fifty-eight minutes and mostly follows a formulaic initiation, response, and evaluation (IRE) pattern. The teacher asks a student, by name, to provide an example demonstrating their understanding of the sentence pattern, the student will answer, and the teacher will provide some sort of evaluation about their response and then ask another student to provide an example. The teacher is in control for most of the lesson, determining who will speak and about what. Towards the end of the lesson, I think once the students have developed more of a relationship with one another and the teacher, the students take a more active role in answering each others’ questions and clarifying things when the teacher can’t hear due to microphone issues with one of the students.

The teacher’s evaluation always comes in some combination of saying “good”, “very good”, or “perfect”. Towards the end of the lesson at minute 49:12, a student provides an answer to a question and before the teacher can respond, another student, Danny, says “perfect, perfect”, mimicking the teacher. Because rapport among the students and teacher has already been established, the teacher and the other students laugh at this exchange. Danny continues to enact the role of teacher by correcting other students’ mistakes and using the same lexical items the teacher used throughout the lesson. Danny rises in the hierarchy of powerful contributors to this discourse and often provides opportunities for the other students to use English outside of the IRE formula. This process of students taking more control of the class allowed them to have more natural interactions instead of sticking to the teacher directed IRE formula.

Danny also takes on the identity of “teacher” when he initiates and repairs other students’ mistakes. At minute 52, Orlando starts to give an example sentence but pauses. Danny offers words of encouragement and coaches Orlando by suggesting one word at a time to help him complete his sentence. After Orlando completes his turn, Danny says, “That’s good” and Orlando responds to him saying, “Thank you, thank you, Danny”. Danny laughs and responds by saying “You’re welcome”.

I have become increasingly interested in CMC and CALL classes. I’m taking Netta’s CALL workshop next semester and wanted to have a better understanding of what online classes look like. That is what motivated me to watch this lesson. I think it is important for a teacher to have a clear understanding of what role he or she wants to play in a classroom discourse whether it is face-to-face or online. It is not always necessary for a teacher to be in control of the power and to determine which student should participate or that their responses need to match a specific sentence structure. The first half of the lesson, when the teacher was at the center of the discourse, was repetitive and dull. The students provided variations of the same answer but were not using the target structure in context. The students even looked bored. When the students took more control and directed the conversations towards the end, the students were participating more and producing more varied sentences. From this, I have learned that, while repeated linguistic markers allow students to know what will come next in the conversation, it becomes static and deters the students from participating communicatively. I think the teacher created a space where the students felt comfortable and that is why they started to speak more which is another important take-away from this lesson. I also became more aware of the many technical issues a teacher must account for in an online class. It limits the type of interactions students and teachers have but can still be a successful medium to use allowing geographically diverse students to interact with one another.

 

-Catherine

Informal Observation: German BUILD

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I observed Peter Seilheimer’s beginning German BUILD class on 11/6. The class is from 6-6:50 and there was only one student for this lesson. Peter briefly explained to me what he had planned for the class was to look at movement verbs and he had a powerpoint and some interactive activities planned, but he scrapped those because the student wanted to practice reading and pronunciation so she can read German children’s books to her child.

Peter chose one of his favorite children’s books and had the student read the title and try to guess what it meant because the words are similar to English. Peter began by reading a sentence and then having the student echo read so she could imitate his pronunciation. As they moved through the book, they switch to reading every other sentence (turn reading), which moved faster and allowed the student to practice pronunciation more. After reading each page, they would discuss what was happening based on word knowledge and using the pictures to help when needed. At certain points during the lesson, Peter would stop and do a mini pronunciation lesson or vocabulary lesson on the board based on words in the text or pronunciation the student struggled with. An example of a mini pronunciation lesson was when peter discussed different vowel sounds and words containing those vowels.

Wien    ie= “ee”                 Wein    ei = “eye”

They discussed other vowel sounds and spelling patterns and would revisit those sounds in the text on the following pages.

Peter also was able to pass along some cultural knowledge of colloquialisms found within the text: “Ich muss für Königstiger” and “Ich muss für kleine Mädels” – these are polite ways for children to say that they have to go to the bathroom. It is like saying, “I must”, and it is more polite than saying the whole phrase in certain regions of Germany.

After reading the book, the student chose certain pronunciation problems she had encountered to review. Peter made a list of diphthongs and example words on the board for the student to write down and take home.

Peter is a very animated teacher in his demonstrations of pronunciation and explaining vocabulary words. He used very little English, mostly just to explain grammar or higher level concepts, and used expressive body language and drawings on the board to make certain meanings clearer. I can tell he is passionate about teaching German and German culture and I found it refreshing to see him use a children’s book to teach a successful lesson to an adult. I think what I learned most from observing Peter is that enthusiasm and animation are very effective tools when communicating in another language.

 

-Catherine

Terrific Trade Fair

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Andrew Sansone & Danna Agha

What an experience!  The trade fair for our class was a blast to participate in, and really rewarding for all the participants.  It was great to check out everyone’s work and see the creativity expressed in all the activities.  It was so interesting to see how everyone came up with different classroom activities which could be easily applied to a language classroom environment.

We felt as though everyone did a really good job with their presentations.  Each one was really interesting, and everyone’s presentations showed off a particular element of their personality.  It was so cool to see the creative and engaging ideas that everyone worked so hard on developing come to life.  It was also very cool to learn that many kinds of symposiums and conferences include these sorts of activities.  We think that a focus on readily adaptable, dynamic, and practical lesson components is an important part of teacher development.  Getting new ideas that can be immediately applied in the classroom is such a critical part of the field- it’s nice to discover that many symposiums have a strong focus on this.

While we enjoyed our experience synthesizing our our own ideas for our project (Shiri Tori), a lot of the other lesson ideas were really impressive.  One of the lessons that was particularly engaging- Escape from the Chinese Room- was especially impressive.  It involved placing students in a scenario where they were trying to find a key hidden in the room based off of several clues provided by the teacher.  The activity incorporated realia- in the end, the key was actually hidden underneath a potted plant- but also encouraged students to think outside the box.  Students also were given clues in L2 being taught, which further acted as an excellent comprehension exercise.  This activity would also work great in an FL teaching environment in China.  Businesses called ‘secret rooms’ are increasingly common in many Chinese cities.  Usually themed after horror tropes or Sherlock Holmes, these places include puzzle and code solving elements in themed rooms.  For example, patrons would be asked to unlock a door using a code hidden inside a book.  Students who already enjoy the secret rooms experience would doubtlessly love Escape from the Chinese Room.

We certainly found that everyone’s efforts and hard work showed immensely through their posters. One that stood out in particular was Chandra’s Spanish book-making idea, which presented the idea of adding a noun phrase after a conjugated Spanish verb, creating a story. This would vary depending on the level of the students and their proficiency in the language. The reason I liked activity so much was because it could pan across any language and all proficiency levels (and it looked fun!).

The trade fair was truly a fun, interesting, and engaging experience and I can whole-heartedly say that I am so proud of everyone and their projects, progress over the semester, and their dedication to creative thinking in the TESOL/TFL program.

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