In this hour of teaching my level 4 ESL oral communicative class, we had 4 students in the class (3 from China and 1 from Japan), two Chinese students were absent. The goal of this class was to encourage the students to articulate their opinions about fashion, improve students’ presentation skills, and practice their listening skills in capturing details. We chose fashion as our discussion topic today as it was one of the topics the students were interested in. After sharing our class outline and objectives, we did a student survey to get feedback from the students about our previous teaching. Before the group discussion session, we did a warm-up activity which also included a review of the discussion language. The discussion was followed by the presentation session, and we added a listening practice and a little instruction afterwards.
In the student survey, my partner and I provided a few multi-selection questions, including understanding teachers’ vocabulary, teachers’ speaking speed, activity pacing, students’ interest in the activities, and comments (suggestions, ideas, expectations). In order to encourage the students to put their thoughts without any pressure, we put the questions in the shared notes as we could not know who was typing in there. The students chose “agree” and “strongly agree” on the questions about understanding teachers’ vocabulary, teachers speaking being at a good speed, and students being interested in the activities. However, on the question of activity moving at a good speed, two of the students chose “disagree”. I think the students were referring to the presentation session. I felt that they tried to speak fast in presentations and kind of in rush. To give the students more time in the presentation part, we should either shorten the warm-up session or provide fewer discussion questions each time. I prefer shortening the warm-up activity as the presentation part serves as one of the main in-class speaking practices for the students, and there is a listening practice followed as well.
In the discussion, I put the students in pairs of two in breakout rooms. I observed group 1’s discussion. While they had the discussion questions on their screens, I put the discussion languages in the shared notes for their reference. The students were engaged pretty well, and they tried to use discussion language on every question. They looked much more active and communicative during the discussion, which I think was because of them getting more familiar with each other and being interested in the discussion questions. Because of the speedy pace of speaking, the students in group 1 finished their discussion earlier than the time. Also, having only two members in each group contributed to this early completion. I then encouraged them to talk in a deeper way about the reasons for their opinions and they practiced more about this way. I think this is important for teachers to encourage students to think deeper within specific areas, which enables them to have more output in communicative practice.
In the listening practice followed the presentation, the students were not all engaged to answer the questions although I mentioned that there were some questions in the shared notes and they needed to answer them after presentations. I thought of a few reasons for this situation. Firstly, they might not able to capture the information to answer the questions. Second, they might not understand the questions well. And third, they might not be fully focused on their peers’ presentations. Next time, I will explain the questions to the students before the presentation and make sure they all understand the questions.
I also added a short instruction time after the presentation this time to teach some of the common mistakes they made in the presentations. I took notes of the mistakes, but I only taught one phrase as we were short of time. In our next class, my partner and I would probably shorten the warm-up part and put a little more time on this post-presentation instruction so that the students will learn from the mistakes they made in presentations.