observation

Class observation

Experience

   The class that I chose for my observation is a class in guidance school in my own town. It is a class of 21 pupils. As the class starts, the teacher says hello and good morning to the students. She says that there is going to be some questions from the previous lesson. She talks very simply and tries to talk in English. She says some incomplete questions and the students complete them with pronouns. She also asks some questions in which there are adverbs of frequency (Do you often go to school?). The teacher wants the students to complete such a kind of sentences in chorus or individually. "Mina wants a cup. Give ------ a cup. He needs a pen. Give ------ a pen." Then she calls the students to order and says that she wants to start the new lesson. She then wants the students to open their books and says some sentences with there are…. After that she changes the sentences into questions using how many and how much and the students raise their hands in order to answer the questions but the teacher continues to make questions and the students get that they are not going to answer these questions. She points to some objects in the class, the desks, the bags, the windows and so on. She also uses the things that she has already prepared like a glass of water and a glass of tea which are on the table and some money which she has put in her pocket as well. Then she says that this lesson is about how much and how many. She again asks two questions and then in Persian wants the students to make question like the ones that she made. One of the students in Farsi asks whether to make a question or an affirmative sentence. Then the teacher calls the students' names who are volunteer. The Ss make their questions and the teacher repeats each of the students' sentences once more time and if the students say something wrong, she corrects them immediately. The student says "how many book…" the teacher stops her "books" she says. After that the teacher says that she is going to teach dialogue and wants the Ss to open their books. She reads the dialogue in the book and the Ss listen. Then she wants the Ss to repeat after her and after that she wants the students to practice the dialogue two by two and while they are practicing, she walks in the class and answers the Ss' questions. After that, the teacher chooses two of the students by name and they read the dialogue. After some of the students read the dialogue, some of them raise their hands and say that they can do the dialogue by memory. Then the teacher says "patterns, just listen" and students look at their books and listen. As she reads the patterns, if there are some new words, she repeats them two or three times and don't give the meaning of the words. She then reads the patterns one more time and wants the students to repeat after her. Then she says in Persian "now practice this part by yourselves". She again walks in the class and responds to the students' problems. Then she selects some of the students in order to read aloud the patterns. Those who are chosen are volunteers. After most of the students read aloud, the teacher repeats the sentences which she had said at the beginning of the class and again wants the students make questions with how many and how much. At the end of the class, she assigns some homework for the Ss and wants them to practice the dialogue and pattern and understanding their meanings at home.

Comments

    Although the pronunciation and accent of the teacher is not that satisfied but there is accuracy in her speech and structure and the students understand what she says. The voice is loud enough in order to be heard easily but when she wants to introduce something new or change the part, she does not attract the students' attention and they look as if they are not interested in the lesson. And they are not activated that much in the class. Although most of them participate in the class but no interaction from the side of the students is made. The students just do what the teacher wants them to do. Therefore, the interaction is completely teacher→student and the class is teacher-fronted.

    When the teacher wants to teach the dialogue, she does not talk about the situation in which the conversation happens, even the characters are not introduced. If the Ss knew something about those things, they would get more interested in the dialogue. This is repeated in case of patterns as well. She could do this with preparing some useful pictures and asking them to make sentences about the pictures. Since I believe pictures work a lot and I have experienced this in my own classes. When I don't want to use my students' native tongue in the class, pictures help me in a great extent. Another point which is evident in this observation is the teacher's exclamations. Positive reinforcement is very rare and most of the time the students are not reinforced by useful exclamations such as "very good" when they respond correctly. Moreover, some of the students at the back are not listening or they are making sentences while the other Ss speak or read aloud. Since the Ss can learn from each other many things, the teacher should want the Ss to listen to their friends and keep silent when their friends are saying something. Sometimes the teacher cannot manage the noise in the class. Error correction is done immediately and without letting them think in their errors and correct it themselves. I believe if the teachers let their students self-correct their errors, the error would be unlikely to happen again compared with the time that the teacher herself corrects the error. Furthermore, the teacher can want the Ss to listen to their friends carefully and help their friends to correct the errors. This can force all the Ss to keep quiet and pay attention to how their friends say or read something. Some of the students are completely quiet and only those who are volunteer are selected to do something in the class. This frees those students and they don't worry that the teacher may call them. The teacher does not pay attention to those inactive students.

   The point, here, I dare to mention is that what I observed in this class and the way the teacher taught the lesson can be seen in most of the schools in Iran. But this is not most probably the case in the institutes. I wonder what the reason is for this big difference; the teacher, the interest of the learners, the syllabus, the time, the facilities, the policies and regulations, the focus of the curriculum. Yet, I tend to strongly believe that this is the teacher who should use the best potential of the classroom despite all the constraints. How dramatic difference I see between what I observed in this class and what I am learning in my MA teaching classes…