TEYL Observation 2

April 27^th, 2012

Information on the observed class:

Courses: Children 2

Teacher: Nadia Barboni

School: Our English World

Number of students: 10

Ages: Between 7 and 8

The class was a short one; it only lasted one hour and it unfolded in the following way. First, the teacher said "Hello" and asked the students how they were, initially in general and then by calling specific students. Right away, the teacher started correcting homework (practice with the verb "to be" in the affirmative form): She called on different students to read one sentence each. The student read their sentence aloud, the teacher repeated it for all students to hear clearly, and then she moved on to the next sentence. When the student had not gotten the sentence right, the teacher asked questions (in Spanish) for them to see the mistake: ¿Por qué decimos "My father is..." pero decimos "My sisters are..."?. (Homework was related to "family members" - which included pets, apparently- and "weather")

After homework-checking was finished, the "secretary," a student who would help the teacher in that class, was assigned, and the class went on with further recycling of the weather. The students had to describe what the day was like, and the teacher helped them revise the vocabulary by asking questions such as Good, today is cloudy... And is it hot?. In particular, this exemplary question led to the students remembering the adjective "cold."

Next, there was a revision of "parts of the house." Using pictures in the students' book, the teacher asked the students questions such as En la primera cerradura, ¿qué habitación estamos espiando?  or ¿Y qué hay en la habitación 1? (The students mentioned objects such as "door", "table", "chair," and a few others).

After this activity, followed tasks for practicing the "voiced-TH" sound, using the workbook; and from there, the students had to work on the words "They," "this," and "there:" they had to write down sentences using them. This activity and correction took at the rest of the class; except for the last ten minutes in which the students played "Hangman" (a vocabulary revision activity disguised as a game).

Both the students and the teacher used Spanish almost all the time. As regards the pupils, specifically, they were very distracted the whole of the class, especially the boys; and they could not help but interrupt the teacher to speak about their lives: ¡El miércoles es mi cumpleaños!, ¿Quién es el secretario la próxima clase?, Hoy tuvimos una prueba, [Name] siempre termina primero.

Reflection:

To begin with, I was reminded of something that I knew but had forgotten: that girls seem to be more responsible than boys. When the teacher started correcting homework, it turned out that none of the boys had done it, but the girls had. This realization serves as an invitation to pay attention, from now on, to the different ways in which boys and girls are likely to behave in terms of their learning process, behaviour, types of activities they like, etc.

A further realization (or confirmation of previous knowledge, at least) was how amazingly kinaesthetic young children are. The students, who were either 7 or 8 years old, could not help but keep moving all the time. They were constantly (the boys in particular) readjusting their position on the desks, taking another student's pencil or eraser, drawing, moving their feet or passing an object from one hand to the other. In addition, their attention spans really are short. They kept attentive to the tasks but only because the teacher was fast in switching from one activity to the other; if the activity took more than 10 or 15 minutes, the kids would start talking about school, or asking the teacher irrelevant questions.

Another aspect that stuck out was each child's need (except for a very shy girl) to be acknowledged by the teacher. They all seemed to seek her approbation both while on-task and when they were simply doing something else, like playing.

I also noticed, after comparing this class with the previous one I observed, that whether the students speak English or Spanish depends to a great extent on what language the teacher uses. In the previous class, the students only spoke Spanish when asking How do you say [Spanish word]?, and I believe this had everything to do with the fact that the teachers at the institute spoke English 95 % of the time – even during the break. In this class, however, in which the teacher used Spanish as the medium of instruction for teaching English, the students found it natural to simply speak in their mother tongue.

The need children have of being repeated and of repeating sentences also became salient. Before the children could actually keep a particular structure, they needed to repeat the sentences quite a few times.

Last but not least, I realized (again after comparing the two classes) that different age groups really do behave differently, and this reasoning made me think about Piaget's stages of cognitive development. Even though I could not identify particular "features" of each stage in the group, I believe that the way children of different ages behave is evidence that there is some truth to the theory.

TEYL Observation 1

April 20^th, 2012

Information on the observed class:

Courses: Children 3

Teacher: Dolores Gonzalez Ruzo

School: Interaction

Number of students: 9

Ages: Between 8 and 11

After saying hello, the teacher started the class. She devoted almost 20 minutes to drilling affirmative and negative sentences with "will" by telling each student a person, a verb, and an adverb of time for them to form the sentences. She kept up a fast pace so that students would not get bored. If they made any mistakes, the teacher clapped her hands or made a sound with her mouth to indicate something was wrong and the students corrected the sentence; if the student could not tell where the mistake was, the teacher showed him/her. Simple but challenging language was used (e.g. Verbs other than "get up" or "brush one's teeth", such as "walk the dog" or "water the plants" were used).

            Next, the teacher told the students they were going to learn how to ask questions with "will," wrote an affirmative sentence on the board and invited the students to figure out how to ask the questions. She reminded them of the rule "special word + person + action." The students, looking at the board, succeeded fairly soon in figuring out that inversion had to be carried out and after that the teacher wrote "the rule" for yes/no questions with "will" on the board: "Will + person (all the personal pronouns were written on the board) + action." The teacher then gave four flashcards to each student and, using the action on the cards, each student had to ask a question to the classmate next to them or to the teacher.

            After this oral practice, the teacher made students work on their handouts to practice yes/no questions with "will". The activities consisted on different images of people performing actions and short answers (e.g. "Yes, I will" or "No, we won't") with a space for the students to write the corresponding questions.

           

Note: The teacher only spoke Spanish to help students organize ideas (she said the correct sentence in Spanish for the student to say in English). Whenever students got distracted, the teacher put them back on task using a calm but firm voice – she neither shouted nor showed anger-; and she laughed together with students when these laughed at something, which created a relaxed and natural atmosphere.

Reflection:

            The first thing that called my attention was that the teacher never got angry, even when students did not do what they were supposed to. I think I would have been much stricter if in charge of the class, but the teacher then told me something that was obvious but that I had not thought about: That however bad students may behave, they are still children and can therefore not be treated like adults. While observing the class, I kept thinking at times "I would make them stop and not turn a blind eye to bad or distracting behavior; otherwise they could never listen to me" but the teacher told me that sometimes you need to ignore some things because if once tries to make children behave in a soldier-like way, they either get scared or loose motivation.

            I could also notice that kids like to know about the teacher's life. Whenever the teacher mentioned her boyfriend they suddenly looked at and listened to her more attentively. I talked to Dolores about this, and she told me that she exploits that a lot, because it is almost as if children forgot that they are learning English and feel like they are having a real conversation with the teacher, which gets them much more easily and effectively engaged.

            Moving on, that children (at least in this group) seemed to prefer oral activities to written ones was a salient feature of the class. When hearing that they were going to work on the handout, the students started automatically complaining; while doing the written activities, they got much more easily distracted; because they found it harder (generally speaking), they got tired more easily.

            Finally, I noticed that, even though children are able to correct the mistakes they make, they do it more automatically than consciously. It seemed to me that students did not really think about why what they said was wrong, nor cared about understanding what was wrong, but rather they were simply interested in getting it right and moving on.

ESP Observation 1 - School of Medicine

May 17^th, 2012

Information on the observed class:

Course: Lectocomprensión - Medicina

Teacher: Julia Mariano

Date: Wed 25 April. 8.00 to 10.00

            The class started with homework checking. Students had been assigned the translation of a text, and the teacher checked it by calling on different students to read different parts of the translated text aloud, and, when necessary, the teacher corrected bad translations: agente extranjero instead of agente extraño for foreign agent.

            Then, the students worked on a text about the endocrine system. First, they had to pay attention to the metatextual elements (titles, subtitles, and drawings), read the text for general information and identify transparent words; then, different students orally translated different parts of the text. Whenever a bad translation cropped up, the teacher explained the meaning of the English word and helped students to work out the Spanish equivalent. When the students finished reading the text on their own, the teacher asked one to explain to her what it was about. Students then had to complete a table and re-read the text with that purpose in mind.

Meanwhile, the teacher copied a sentence with contrast clauses and later on, after checking the reading activity, the teacher explained the meanings and different uses of contrast connectors, which was done by paraphrasing the original sentence over and over again (what changed was the way the ideas were organized according to the connector used: although, though, however, despite, whereas, among others).

Before finishing, the teacher worked in an activity with the dictionary. She told the students that words in English might have many different meanings, so logic must be used to pin down the correct option. Students were told to translate various noun phrases, and finally, before assigning homework, the teacher made students read an English text and then they had to tell her in what line different noun phrases were (the teacher provided the Spanish correspondences. Homework was assigned.

Reflection

The students were made part of the learning process, probably for learning to be more memorable, by, for example, being forced to deduce meanings on their own and being encouraged to use different tools individually (the dictionary, glossaries). The teacher probably advocates for an "active" construction of knowledge on the part of the learners. Moving on, the fact that Spanish is used as a medium of instruction is probably due to the students' different levels of the English language; the use of the mother tongue allows for all students to understand easily. The activities, on the other hand, were very much goal-directed. Each task aimed at developing a particular strategy, and therefore the teacher made sure to tell the students what the expected outcome was so that they could work towards that. Thus, students paid attention to meta- and paratextual elements as aids to understand the meaning of texts, read texts for general and for specific information, translated noun phrases so as to fully grasp how they are formed in English and what their Spanish equivalents are (to see the differences in structures and, from there, facilitate comprehension), and looked out for false friends. To continue, for the presentation of the new topic (contrast connectors) the teacher used an inductive approach: she started from an example and made students deduce the meaning of what was said. She resorted to the students' "logic" for their deduction of the particular meanings of different connectors. A few more things I should mention is that before working with a text, the teacher drew on the students' knowledge of the subject area (schemata activation), and that scaffolding was (on a minor scale) provided: with each task, the teacher first helped the students solve the first exercise before making them do it on their own.

As regards my learning outcome, I should first say that I was surprised to learn that Spanish was used all throughout. I understand why that is, and I believe it is the best option, but I had simply assumed that English would be used. I also realized that ESP course was tailored to the specific need – reading comprehension – exclusively. Again, this seems like a silly discovery, but I used to think that the teaching of grammar would play a big role, when, in fact, providing students with strategies (at least in this case) is the main goal. I was surprised (and pleased), too, that a knowledge of Spanish on the part of the teacher seems to be as important as a knowledge of English. Finally, I became aware of how important it is for an ESP teacher to constantly pay attention to "subtleties" such us endings. If the ESP instructor does not, for example, teach students that the –es ending marks plurality in, for example, "syntheses," comprehension will be very difficult to the inexperienced English reader. I point this out, because I have seen many General English teachers neglect this fact.

ESP Observation 2 - School of Business

May 31^st, 2012

Information on the observed class:

Course: Lectocomprensión - Business

Teacher: Julia Mariano

Date: Wed 25 April. 11.00 to 13.00

            Brief narrative of the class

            The class started with a revision of specific vocabulary. For about thirty five minutes, the teacher went through the handout and read different noun phrases and expressions aloud for different students to translate into Spanish. During this revision, the teacher reminded students to pay attention to endings that would indicate, for example, whether a word was plural.

            Next, the teacher checked homework. She read the assigned English sentences aloud and different students translated them into Spanish orally. The teacher took the opportunity (whenever the chance arose) to help students revise vocabulary other than the one contained in the homework. For example, a sentence that referred to "prices going up" came up, and the teacher capitalized on this to help students go over different verbs that indicate increase and decrease.

            Then, a reading-for-specific-information task was carried out and the teacher also revised linking words and expressions (such as "like", "furthermore", and "that is"). A vocabulary activity came next and two more reading comprehension activities followed. In one of these the students had to identify whether some texts referred to the Wall Street Crash or not; the other one required answers to questions about a text.

            The last activity was related to reference. The teacher made students highlight reference words and she helped them find the referent for the first of them. The rest of the reference words were assigned as homework.

            Reflection

            This time, I can claim the rationale to be “reading comprehension” itself, for I realize now that the enhancement of reading skills underlies all types of activities and methods. This seems obvious, but in my previous report I had found other aspects which - only now I can see - stem from the “bigger” rational of reading-skills enhancement. This is how much the target competence governs course design, including materials and method.

            On the other hand, I should mention in this report too that advocacy for an active learner who constructs knowledge and the use of Spanish to “level the playing field” for students could be observed.

            As for my learning outcomes, I should mention the following. First, that because of the course objective, even though some subtleties are observed, what matters is for students to understand the overall meaning of what they read. That is, the teacher is not picky; s/he is simply attentive to details that may help or hinder comprehension. This is what is expected of students, as well: it does not matter whether they translate a particular noun phrase into the correct equivalent, as long as the translation carried out in their minds is good enough for them to understand what they are reading. Second, it struck me how much translation is used; it really seems to be the essential technique to teach reading comprehension. Of course, many different tasks are carried out during the ESP class, but translation permeates almost all of them. I was surprised, too, at how much the students could understand English texts, having only been in the course for less than three months.

            Moving on, I got to know a few more aspects of the English language that are taught in reading-comprehension courses. In the first class, I could become aware of the importance of teaching connectors and how to read an English noun phrase. With this class, I could notice that the importance given to reference words is also a feature of ESP.

            Finally, in this class I could really see how knowing about the subject area is useful for the teacher. There was a part of the class in which the teacher asked students what they would invest some assets in. When one student answered something (I did not get what), the teacher understood what he was saying and therefore could guide him to the expected type of answer by asking him what he would invest in now. If the teacher new nothing about economy, she probably would not have been able to do so.

ESP Observation 3 - School of Psychology

June 16^th, 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.