Category: Reflections

For this hour of my classroom observation, I observed an online ESL class taught by Jack Massalski at Thompson Rivers University. It was a level 4 advanced oral communication class consisted of approximately 14 students from various cultures and backgrounds. The discussion topic today is education while the main objective of this class is to improve students’ discussion and presentation skills.

Before the main discussion, the instructor arranged a short experience-sharing activity. The topic of the main discussion today was education, so firstly the instructor asked the students to say a few sentences about What disliked and liked most in school. I found this a good warm-up activity as it could get the students engaged, encourage them to think deeper about the topic, and also create a communicative atmosphere. After putting this question in the public chatbox, the instructor shared his own experience with this topic first. I think this was a helpful approach to help the students understand what they were required to say as it was actually a model. Students will be able to get easily the direction they were supposed to go to.

Also, I learned from this class that when the students are supposed to present their opinions and they just stayed quiet, teachers should call them to speak up. This was something I was not sure about before. I wondered if I should push them to speak in the classroom, or I should consider their mental status as the same importance as their participation. If some students are shy to speak up, or they are not sure what to say, they might be stressed and anxious when being called by their teachers. After observing this class, I think teachers should ask them to present when they are supposed to; however, teachers should make sure that they fully understand the question and that the teachers are there to help them to learn and improve instead of judging their performances. Also, I noticed that the instructor only corrected some major mistakes in the students’ answers. I think this is also helpful for the students to have more courage to speak up and will not be overwhelmed by too much feedback on corrections.

In this hour of my classroom observation, I observed an ESL class that consisted of 8 international students from various cultural backgrounds. In the class, the teacher gave instructions around making decisions.

The teacher was very friendly with enthusiasm during teaching. I learned some useful teaching approaches from this observation. Firstly, I found that the result of the listening practice would be better if the teacher did some warm-up and instructions before letting the students listen to the dialogue. In this class, before listening to the dialogue, the teacher provided a picture and a few questions with students and taught the students some main sentences that were going to appear in the dialogue. The picture and the questions could build an impression and assumptions about the dialogue. With the impression and assumptions, students could focus better on the details.

Second, using hand gestures when teaching phonetic combination can be a very effective approach. The teacher used her fingers to show the students the phonetic combination of “I would” (I’d) by putting two of her fingers together and she used the hand gesture to remind the students when the students are practicing the sentence. This approach could help students to learn quickly how this phonetic combination works and create a visual memory, which will remind them when they are speaking.

Third, the way the teacher asked the groups to present the opinions was very creative. The teacher asked the students to talk about their ideas in pairs of two and ask the students to present their partners’ opinion instead of their own. I think this approach could enhance students’ interaction and communication with their peers as it requires them to listen carefully speak actively and memorize what they heard. The students will improve their language skills through these listening and speaking practices.

In this classroom observation, I observed a TEFL class in China. There were 12 Chinese adult students in the class, who were intermediate level. The goal of the class is to learn how to give advice to people and how to react to people’s advice.

One of the good things about the class is the seating arrangement in this classroom. The U-shaped seating could be helpful to build an open-minded, supportive, and communicative learning environment, which was necessary for language learners to participate and improve their language skills by practicing a lot. Another good thing is that the teacher constantly used body language to help students understand his tasks. The body language of a teacher is visually important in a classroom as it helps students to understand better and creates a friendly interaction between the teacher and the students.

I also learned teaching approaches that I found effective in my future teaching. Firstly, I noticed the importance of students seeking information and knowledge actively. Before starting to teach the advice language, the teacher let the students listen to a dialogue and write down the way people give and receive advice. This way students will get their brain active and focused in order to catch the information, which would improve their learning effectiveness and listening skills.

Second, it was great to set a big topic in order to manage the students to practice certain skills and many small subtopics according to students’ interests. After the instruction of the advice language, the teacher asked the students about other aspects of life that they would like to give or receive advice in. After the students gave their answers like “job, relationship, children’s education”, the teacher wrote these topics on three different corners in the classroom and asked the students to go to the topic they were interested in practice giving and receiving advice. Students practiced certain sentence structures with the topics they are individually interested in. I found this a great way to improve students’ interest in learning and increase their participation, especially in big classes.

Another approach I learned was to let the students correct themselves with what they learned in the class. At the beginning of the class, the teacher asked the students to give him some advice about being sick. After the whole class time learning and practicing, the teacher asked the students to give him advice about him being sick again before finishing the class. The students had learned the correct way to give advice and they could easily complete this task, what they learned in the class would be emphasized by comparing their answers between the beginning time and the finishing time.

In this class observation, I observed an EFL class in China. There were 42 six-grade students in this class who were low intermediate level. The goal of the class was to review the vocabulary and phrases about holidays, and to practice describing the holidays. This video was only a part of the class.

The teacher had very encouraging and friendly facial expressions and gestures, which was essential for teachers to build connections with students and create an engaging learning atmosphere for students.

I like the approach the teacher used to lead a reviewing lesson. The teacher put a series of pictures that showed the vocabulary and phrases the students had learned, and the students could easily recall what they had learned in their previous class. Also, it was an effective way to increase elementary school students’ interest in learning and improve their learning performances. I will employ and expand this approach in my future teaching by making the dialogues and texts into pictures to help my students to remember the dialogues easier.

Before the students practicing describing their own holidays, the teacher showed the main sentence structures and the students could refer them when presenting their own description. This way the key sentence structures were emphasized and the students could enhance their memories about the key sentence structures while practicing. Also, I like the way the teacher expanded the reviewing. For example, when practicing the sentence “You can see many animals in the jungle”, the teacher asked the students what other animals we could see in the jungle and the students reviewed also the names of various animals they had learned before. One more approach I found great was that when teaching long words, the teacher would break the word and teach by different parts. For example, she broke the word “skyscraper” into “sky” and “scraper” and used hand gestures to show the students the relation between these two parts. The students understood quickly and I believe they would remember it easily.

For this hour of the class observations, I observed an EPIK (English Program in Korea) class. In this EFL class, there were about 30 six-grade Korean students at the beginner level. The main goal of the class was to review the dialogues students learned in the previous class and practice the past tense. There are two teachers in the class, one is an American male teacher while the other one is a Korean female teacher.

There are some teaching approaches that I thought were effective in this class. Firstly, I think it was a good way for students to remember the expressions through singing as music could be a memory trigger in learning and it brought more fun to students in the process of memorizing. Second, the American teacher gave the students some so-called “tickets” when they managed to answer the questions correctly. I think this kind of award could be helpful to enhance students’ participation and interests in learning in elementary school classes. Some students may not be interested in learning and the “tickets” serve as a learning purpose for this kind of student. As they participate and practice more, they will improve themselves and possibly develop real interests in learning. The third teaching approach I found helpful was practicing the past tense with the game called “last word”. In this session, the students practiced the past tense by making their own sentences with the specific verb. As it was a competition, the students needed to think about the vocabulary they have learned and be fully focused during the game. I think this game can be used to practice all other tenses. In my future teaching, I will also use it to practice clauses that contain various tenses in one sentence.

Although there were very little instruction parts in this class, I believe it’s workable to have this kind of reviewing class once in a while. In Asian countries, students are often stressed and overwhelmed by their study and homework, which I believe affected their academic outcomes and mental health. Besides the overall intensive courses, Teachers should occasionally plan some classes for students to review what they have learned in a relaxing and entertaining atmosphere so that students can have a rest, review what they have learned, and get their energy back to face the upcoming new course contents.

The students were overall engaged well in this class. Usually, in a class with so many students, it is not easy to have every student speak up in each class. To enhance students’ participation in class, I think the teachers could break the groups in smaller ones so that students have more chances to participate and actively think by themselves.

One thing I found that should be improved in this class was lacking feedback and improvements. In the class activities, students made some grammatical mistakes and their pronunciations were not correct sometimes, however, the teachers gave very little feedback and there was no further practice on the parts that the students were not doing right. I understand that the teachers did not want to ruin the children’s fun time in the game, but there should be some instruction that follows the game as the goal of the game was to practice and improve. If I play this kind of game in my class, I will take notes of the grammars and pronunciations that students need to be corrected and give some instructions about these after the game. Also, I will do some more practicing activity to memorize the corrections, so that the goal of reviewing and practicing will be better met.

For my fifth hour of class observation, I observed an online ESL class taught by Jack Massalski at Thompson Rivers University. It was a level 4 advanced oral communication class consisted of approximately 14 students from various cultures and backgrounds. The main goal of this hour of the class was to let the students practice class presentation skills about the perfect trips in their minds and prepare the students to have discussions about the arts.

Before the students started to do their presentations, the instructor listed in the shared notes some key points that the presentations should include. One of the students had a very short presentation, the instructor asked the student a few questions according to the key points and the student spoke much more. I found this is an effective approach to facilitate speaking classes. As ESL teachers, we should think about what our international students are interested in and what they like to share with peers from other cultures so that we can list these as key points to motivate our students to speak more.

In the preparation of the group discussion, the instructor asked the students to have the discussion language list handy, played a video for the students about the discussion topic, and provided students with a list of discussion emphasis. Before starting the video, the instructor asked the students to turn on the subtitles to understand the video better. I learned some important things in this preparation section. First of all, it’s essential for students to know how to put what they want to express in certain sentences correctly. Sometimes, students will stay quiet because they are not sure how to use the correct sentences. With a discussion language list, students can go back to the list and check the correct usage of their expression, which enables them to practice more and get more fluent with the usages. Second, whether students should keep subtitles on or off depends on the teaching goal of the class. If the goal is to enhance students’ listening skills, the subtitles should be off but if the main priority is to understand and learn language usages, the students should learn with the help of subtitles. Third, providing students with a list of discussion emphasis can be an effective strategy to enhance students’ participation in discussion and teachers can assess in a clearer way that whether the students stay quiet because of having nothing to say or not being familiar with the discussion language.

I observed some challenges to learning in this online ESL class. At the presentation part, the instructor emphasized that English is a stress language and he corrected a student’s pronunciation of the words “sixteen” and “sixty”. It is essential to let students be aware of the correct pronunciations on time. However, students may not be able to remember them. Teachers can assign more listening practices as homework. With more exposure to correct pronunciations, students will develop a sense of English language and remember correct pronunciations.

In this hour of classroom observation, I learned many effective teaching strategies. First, before starting a discussion, teachers should provide some key points of students’ discussion, which serves as an inspiration for ideas that motivate students to speak more. Second, providing students with a discussion language list is helpful for students to refer to when they forget the usage of some expression. Third, whether students should watch videos with subtitles on or off depends on the main goal of the class. Finally, a list of discussion emphasis can motivate students to participate more in discussions.

In this hour of my classroom observation, I observed an online ESL class taught by Janis Goad at Thompson Rivers University at a mixed level (level 1-3). The class consisted of 10 international students from different cultural backgrounds. The main goal of this class was to practice students reading skills by students completing reading tasks.

Since this class was at a mixed level, the instructor divided the students into different groups and assigned them different online study rooms by their levels. She gave different reading tasks to each group and asked them to complete the tasks and help each other within their groups. Meanwhile, the instructor spent 20 minutes with each group in their study rooms to discuss the reading materials, ask students questions, and give some instructions about improving reading skills. Also, the students had chances to talk with the teacher and ask questions this way. I found that this is an effective approach to teach a big class, as in big classes, most of the students usually do not have opportunities to get involved in one-on-one communications with teachers. Another good thing about this approach is that students can be divided into different groups by the different skills they need to work on so that teachers can improve students’ language skills according to students’ individual learning needs.

The instructor talked slowly in the class because the students were at low levels (beginner and low intermediate), however, it is still necessary that she typed what she said in the chatbox for students to understand. This inspired me that, if ESL teachers are teaching in a real classroom, they should be aware of their blackboard handwriting. Instead of writing in an artistically beautiful way, teachers should write neatly and clearly so that students can understand well and easily. This is especially important when teaching students at low levels. If teachers teach online students, they should pay attention to their typing and not make spelling mistakes. Also, if teachers want to use some common abbreviations in class, they should clarify it to students so that students will not get confused.

I observed some challenges in this hour of the online class. As the students were at low language levels, it took quite a while for them to get the online materials that the teacher put. Also, there’s a student who did not have a computer or laptop, it might be very difficult for him to follow the teacher in class as it would be even harder for him to reach the online materials or use the audio sometimes. For the solution, teachers need to work more on getting familiar with each student’s learning situation so that they could provide students with other online assistance, such as emailing students the materials.

I learned a couple of helpful teaching approaches from this observation. First, setting students in different groups by certain criteria could be an effective method to provide students with opportunities to have one-on-one communication with their teacher as well as to enhance teachers’ familiarity with students’ individual learning situations. Second, teachers should be careful with their writing or typing so that students can understand easily. Third, teachers should have constant conversations with the students and get familiar with their learning situations and difficulties in order to provide the necessary assistance.

As a human being, I consider myself a careful, attentive, and perseverant person. In my relationships with family, friends and others, I tend to be patient, empathetic, considerate, and care for other’s feelings. In my study and work, I’m disciplined, diligent, detailed, with a sense of responsibility. In my spare time, I love playing the piano and reading a lot, especially history, philosophy, and literature. I like to think deeply and thoroughly and to be a life-long learner. In my life, I love to do reflections and learn from my mistakes. Also, I’m perseverant in rocky patches.

The third hour of my classroom observation is the second part of Jack Massalski’s level 4 ESL advanced oral communication class. The main goal of the class was to enhance students’ language skills to discussion and presentation about discussions while the instructor focused on vocabulary.

The instructor enhanced students’ vocabulary by facilitating three vocabulary practices in this hour of the class, which emphasized the importance of vocabulary to develop students’ oral communication. The instructor employed the teacher-centred by reading out the passage for the students before free practice. Students could practice listening by hearing the accurate pronunciations this way, which was essential for language learners to improve their speaking skills.

Also, I learned the approaches to increase students’ participation from the instructor’s class. In a discussion activity, the instructor assigned different roles of members in each group, including a leader, a note-taker, a devil’s advocate, and a presenter. I found this was a very effective way to get students involved in the group work and class as they each had particular responsibility in their groups. The devil’s advocate was a wonderful idea because it provided students with purposes to speak more. The purposes of learning are actually motivations for students. I also think that teachers can assign different group presenters each time so that students will have chances to practice their public presentation skills and become more confident.

In the classroom observation, I learned various class activities that provide students with interesting practices. Meanwhile, the instructor’s flexibility towards the class situation was very inspiring to me as well as his approaches to increase students’ participation. One more thing I learned was the instructor’s well balance between control practice and free practice.

For my second hour of class observation, I observed an online ESL class taught by Jack Massalski at Thompson Rivers University. It was a level 4 advanced oral communication class consisted of approximately 14 students from various cultures and backgrounds. The main goal of the class was to enhance students’ language skills to discussion and presentation about discussions.

I learned a lot from the instructor’s teaching methods and being flexible and resourceful towards the class situation. I observed how the instructor mixed controlled practice and free practice. Before the discussion started, the instructor firstly reviewed a list of discussion language with the students, including confirming meaning, asking for opinions, responding, and so on. This could help students be familiar with the basic sentences they needed to use in discussion to express themselves and communicate with their peers. This teacher-centred part is actually essential to prepare students for the communicative and student-centred phase.

After giving the students a discussion topic, the instructor firstly arranged a discussion of the main word in the topic by asking the students to put the synonyms of the word. I found this was a very inspiring approach as it contained several advantages. First, it was an assessment of students’ understanding of the main word and their vocabulary levels. Second, by putting the synonyms, students’ understanding of the discussion topic would be enhanced. And third, students’ vocabulary could be expanded by connecting the same meaning words in their brains, which could eventually enhance their discussion and communication skills.

Another thing I learned from the instructor’s teaching was how teachers should facilitate learning during the student-centred time. In the discussion, the instructor firstly encouraged the students to put their own opinions and reasons freely, which was an open-minded communicative free practice. Then, the instructor provided a certain opinion and ask the ideas of the students from different cultures and backgrounds. I found this approach very effective for oral communicative class because it provided students opportunities to expand the topic. This approach enables students to express their ideas in a multi-angle way, which decreases the possibility of students not participating because of lacking ideas in discussions.

I think the main challenge of learning in this hour was that students were in low participation. The most probable reason for this might be the online class format. Students may feel a lack of connectedness with their classmates and teachers. Also, because teachers cannot see the situations of students, they cannot see if students are quiet because of not understanding the material or they are hesitating to speak up for fear to make mistakes. This online class format can be a challenge for teachers as well, especially when they are not yet familiar with their students.