Log_Observation_Tesol

The two aspects of teaching that will be focused on are classroom arrangement and student grouping, which will be considered as one aspect, and monitoring. Each teacher observed, has a class of different level consisting of adults; T1 has the ‘Elementary’ level while T2 has the ‘Lower Advanced’ (LA). CLASSROOM ARRANGEMENT During the observations, I learnt that seating arrangements is an aspect worth considering due to its relevance to student interaction, which also depends on the tasks. T1 set up a horseshoe arrangement whereas T2 had students sitting separate tables, otherwise known as ‘café style’ arrangement (Gower et al.,1995, p23). In their writings, Harmer (1997, 2007), Gower, Phillips and Walters (1995) and Scrivener (2005) praise ‘horseshoe’ and ‘café style’ arrangements due to the possibility of greater student interaction and the fact that they encourage cooperation and learner autonomy. For both arrangements, there was no obstacle between the students and the whiteboard, situated in front of the class. Moreover, there was enough room for ‘traffic flow’ and movement. For example, at the beginning of T1’s lesson, the students had to obtain information from other students (App.1), who were not their immediate neighbours. In T2’s café style arrangement, there was also ample space for students to walk to one side of the class where T2 had stuck the examples of modals of possibility for them to read. According to Gower, Phillips and Walter (1995, p22) and Scrivener (2005, p88), the horseshoe arrangement is the most suitable in English classes as it allows direct interaction, ‘face-to-face’ contact between the students as well as between the students and T1 and thus resulting in a more natural interaction between students. I believe that this is also achievable with café style arrangements. STUDENT GROUPING For pairwork, T1’s students worked with their neighbours and groupwork was done in threes. T2 had already divided the students into groups of four so pairwork was between any two students within the same groups. Both teachers had speaking tasks done in pairs; T1 had her students chat about what they did in the past (App.3) while the students of T2 had to talk about (mis)trusting a person, judging from their appearances and to explain why. According to Harmer (1997), pairwork encourages co-operation between students which is essential for the class atmosphere and “for the motivation it gives to learning with others” (p.244). It was evident that the students helped each other in using and learning the language in both levels; peer-correction was often heard during these sessions. Both teachers also had groupwork tasks, which effectively led to discussion. Whether it was a ‘matching the modals’ exercise or talking about their past year, group discussions proved to be effective and more dynamic than pairwork. Harmer (1997) reasons that the more people a student has to work with, the higher the chances of discussion. Students tend to communicate with other group members and co-operate amongst themselves. He explained that it is more relaxing, working in groups than working in pairs as “there is a greater demand on the student’s ability to co-operate closely with one other person” (Harmer, 1997, p245). Despite the advantages, during my observations, the seating arrangements were not without problems. In T1’s case, there were times when the dominant pairs spoke more, which led T1 to focus only on them. T1 solved this by nominating a student from each pair or group for feedback. T1 also ignored answers from more dominant students. At first, I was doubtful of the ‘ignoring’ technique but it proved to be useful as it gave the others the chance to contribute in class while the dominant students learnt to give answers when prompted. One major problem in T2’s seating arrangement was that L1 speakers tend to sit together and possibility of translation is high thus decreasing language practice as predicted by Harmer (1997; 2007). However, at the beginning of the lesson, T2 solved this by numbering the students, who will then sit with the others with the same numbers, for example, the number ‘two’ would sit together, thus forming a group; this technique is something I would consider using in the future, especially in a multilingual class. Despite that, I do believe that both seating arrangements would benefit the students more due to the student grouping option. Moreover, these factors increase student speaking time (Harmer, 1997;Scrivener, 2005). MONITORING After giving instructions, T1 often monitored “to check the mechanics” (Scrivener, 2005, p.93), which was done quietly and unobtrusively. Throughout the whole lesson, T1 monitored both actively and unobtrusively, going from one end to the other. While monitoring closely, T1 did an error correction; one student produced a sentence that had a lexis error, “At the weekend, he drunk a lot of beer.” T1 echoed the sentence with the correct past simple irregular verb form, “He drank a lot of beer'” with a questioning intonation. He immediately repeated after T1. Echoing with a changed intonation and echoing the same sentence with the correct forms are both mention in Gower, Phillips and Walters’s writing (1995, p170). The focus is on grammar accuracy rather than fluency and peer correction was also possible here, instead of teacher correction. T2 moved around the room from one group to another for active as well as discreet monitoring. For pair and group discussions, T2 monitored discreetly; for written exercises, T2 monitored actively but whether it was pairwork or groupwork, the students seemed content on working together. Hence, T usually went back to the position in front of the class while waiting for them to finish. Harmer (2007) believes that the café style arrangement makes it easier for the teacher, to monitor and to help reformulate ideas in more discreet way with one group, while the others continue working. This I believe was evident in the class. However, the LA students did not seem to need any help from T2 so active monitoring was done less at this level than at Elementary with T1. Furthermore, T2 seemed confident that, at that level, co-operation, peer correction and discussion would come easily in pairwork and groupwork. Both T1 and T2 had opportunities to focus attention on individuals whom might have been weaker students, despite the different seating arrangements. However, in T1’s case, other students were tempted to listen in and therefore were distracted from their own work. Perhaps T1 should have waited until everyone had enough to do before going around as suggested by Harmer (1997). Thus in this sense, I feel that café style arrangement is more intimate and as Harmer explained, it allows the teacher to focus attention on a particular student without diverting the focus of others. BIBLIOGRAPHY Carter, R., Nunan, D.(2001), The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gower,R., Phillips, D., Walters, S. (1995), Teaching Practice Handbook, 2nd edn, Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann English Language Teaching Harmer, J (1997). The practice of English language teaching, England: Longman Group UK Limited. Harmer, J. (2007), How to teach English, England: Pearson Education Limited. Scrivener, J. (2005), Learning teaching, 2nd edn, Oxford :Macmillan Education