June 16th, 2012
Information on the
observed class:
Course: Lectocomprensión - Psychology
Teacher: Natalia Cardini
Date: Tue 8 May. 10.30 to 12.30
Brief narrative of the class
The class started with
homework checking. The first assignment to be checked focused on technical
vocabulary: students had to translate different terms. The teacher called on
different students to read their translations aloud; when a student got stuck,
she tried to guide him/her and invited the others to help. The teacher placed a
lot of emphasis on suffixes, both in terms of the word category that they may
indicate and in relation to the meaning conveyed by them (e.g. "-ness" indica que la palabra es
un sustantivo y su significado es "condición de"; "-less"
significa "falta de"). The teacher devoted as much time as
necessary to difficult words such as "worthlessness" and
"hopelessness," to make sure that all students understood the
meanings conveyed by the suffixes. The teacher was also very attentive to words
such as "guilt," because she wanted students to be aware that its
meaning is different from the meaning of "blame," even though both
terms are translated into "culpa." The second activity focused on
translation of noun phrases. The teacher worked on transparent words and then,
in the same way she had paid heed to "guilt" and "blame" as
English words for "culpa", she now reminded students to be careful
when the reverse took place. For example, to translate "feeling" as
"sensación" and "sentimiento" context must be considered. After
homework checking, reading activities were carried out. First, students were
invited to consider paratextual features such as an image to predict the
possible meaning of the text; afterwards, the students read the text to get the
gist of it. Second, a reading task, in which students had to find specific
pieces of information was carried out. The focus was on the students being able
to find out the role that danger plays in anxiety disorders. In this type of
activity ("reading for specific purposes"), the learner practices and
develops the microskill "scanning", i.e., quickly finding a
particular piece of information in a text. Focus on noun phrases was present at
this stage, as well. After checking the activity, the teacher assigned homework
and insisted on the students' preparing good glossaries.
Reflection
To
begin with, I believe that there was in this class a strong emphasis on the understanding
of terminology and on knowledge of their equivalents in Spanish, and also a
focus on strategies. The teacher
seemed to be interested in guiding students towards the expected answers, but
at the same time in providing them with the strategies necessary for autonomous
comprehension in the future. Through scaffolding, the teacher aimed at developing
long-term autonomous learners and readers.
As
for my learning outcomes, it struck me this time how students themselves assume
the role of collaborators. It is them who bring knowledge of the specific
subject area into the classroom and therefore at times the traditional roles
"teacher" and "student" are somewhat irrelevant. The
distinction ceases to be functional, at times, as the class takes the shape of
a collaborative workshop in which everyone brings something to the table. It
was interesting to notice, too, that students love being the providers of
information and being in the role of a scholar or teacher.
At the same time, I
noticed how enriching the ESP class was for all. Because there were students
from both the fields of Psychology and Psychiatry, interesting mini-debates
arose in which different stances on concepts, terminologies, and theories were
set against one another. The teacher and all the students profited from this in
that they could get to know different perspectives on the same issue. I stopped
to think about that, and came to the conclusion that because the ESP class is
likely to be heterogeneous, this sort of situation may be very common and I
think that, if channelled properly, it is a very enriching and mind-opening
experience. That is a new advantage of the ESP course that I could ascertain.
Last but not least, I
noticed that the instructor gave a lot of importance to glossaries. I am not
sure whether she did this so that students would be forced to revise the
technical vocabulary they had learned, or for the sake of getting students to
practice how to organize the large amounts of information that they have to
process to learn how to read a new language; but I could tell that preparing
glossaries was an important task of the ESP course.
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