Student ID: 6674980
Student ID: 6674980
261 DEL: LESSONS FOR THE CLASSROOM
SECTION 1: Teaching strengths
Gower, R., Philips, D. and Walters, S. (2005) indicate that "the aim of most language classes is usually to get the students using the language. " My tutor has brought to my attention that on most of my sessions I pushed students to follow up a spontaneous conversation, asking them about their day or linking it to the lesson that followed as a form of activating schemata, and also making sure that all learners get the same opportunity to talk. The learners pointed that they appreciated the free talk.
Eliciting new terms regarding vocabulary or grammar was increasingly easier throughout my lessons. Struggling with a tendency to lecture specially when introducing new terms, which I will explain in section 2, the more I focused on the learner to talk, the easier and more natural eliciting became and after my 3 hours of teaching, eliciting became one of my strongest strengths.
Lastly, one of the strenghts that was brough to my attention by my tutor was my ability to give clear instructions. making sure that the task is understood is crucial for the learners. On my third lesson I had to set listening for gist and detail activities and my tutor pointed that the instructions were given efficiently that the activities were performed correctly.
SECTION 2: Areas of improvement
One of my biggest goals for this teaching practice was to be more students centered. I have been teaching in the past in different institutions and I have never noticed, before embarking myself into this new journey, or calculated my talking time in a lesson. Find an appropriate balance between TTT and STT was then a challenge that I have set as a goal from day one. I was focusing on completing all my TP points, therefor I was focusing on what I was going to say next and not listening to the students. To be able to achieve this goal I have included in my TP points a vast number of occasions where learners were requested to talk, either this being answering to questions, requesting learners to talk in between themselves or elaborate on a given point. As the lessons went by my confidence increased and I understood that students will learn so much more if I motivate them to talk. This is still an area of improvement that I intend to focus on in the future.
As I was focusing on achieving my TP points, my usage of the classroom elements was reduced. Progressively, mainly motivated by my tutor, I started using the board to show the spelling of new words, to complete exercises or to explain grammar points. This is still a learning in progress. Using the board was a challenge as...
