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.