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.