typicaltourist

Description of class situation:

  The teacher used the target language in the classroom appropriately and effectively. Because these students are primary English learners, so the teacher did not exert some complicated or hard to understand words, instead her use of English was appropriate to students needs. Especially her illustration words, like demonstrate a grammar, are easy and suitable for the elementary learners.

  Because these are adult learners, the teacher encouraged her students to use their own life experience in the learning process. For example, she asked the students to put plus sign or minus sign to the activities he or her used to do. The teacher modified her teaching methods to suit her students. She diminished the fear of failure by offering activities that are achievable and by paying special attention to the level of challenge presented by exercises. Such as she put forward the easy question to the students to encourage them to take part into the on-class activity and she encouraged them to talk with each other.

  Also I think the activities chosen to achieve the objectives were effective. The time allotted for activities was appropriate. The amount of teacher talk and students talk was appropriate.

  Grammar is a little abstract to primary learners, but the teacher vividly put the easy but inspiring activity into her teaching process and made everyone participating in it and thinking actively. The teacher divided her attention among students appropriately. Also the teacher was well prepared and she made a good interaction with students. Also she is flexible, for example, when talked about that everyone eats ice creams in the winter she quickly change her question to another items. She integrated cultural instruction into class activities. For example, after talking about the snowman she told students something(which I cannot hear clearly)

  But I think she could better improve her teaching method. For example, a little use of audio-visual technical materials would be better for learners’ understanding.

Classroom atmosphere

  Students’ participation was active and lively. The class atmosphere was warm, open and accepting. The teacher was sensitive to students’ difficulties and abilities.

Q2: The learning aims did not made clear to the students at the beginning of the class.

Q3: The aim of instructing students to understand the grammar is the preponderance aim. There are many aims during the teaching process, including aim of let all the class students participate in the activity and make an easy environment of language learning, and aim of let every students speaking in the class to make them familiar with each other and practice oral speaking on the class. But the preponderance aim is still the grammar, to let the students acknowledge the grammar.

Q4: The teacher gradually communicated and clarified the aims to the students, by holding an activity that let all the students participate in.

Q5: I think that she won’t tell me about the specific aims, only the general one. The specific aims are changing during the process of teaching according to the feedback of the students. For instance, in the video the teacher asked students do they eat ice-cream in the winter and all of the students replied yes, but the teacher suppose that maybe one or two students may reply no so that she could make a negative sentence according to the answer. Then she quickly changed her aim and made other sentences. That is a tiny example of the on-changing specific aims. As a teacher, she probably won’t tell me the plans she had.

Q6: Teachers should let the students know the general aim of the class not the specific one but in the general. In this way, the students could have some expectations of the class and adjust their minds to the coming knowledge. I don’t think this is level-dependent. Teachers should give students hope or expectation of their learning. For example, in the long run, a student can achieve some certain improvement after having several times of class. A teacher should let the students know the general picture of the class, and schedule the specific procedure of the instruction.

Q7: I think the students need to know where the teacher is going in a general direction but the students should not know how the teacher intends to illustrate the knowledge. Because let the students be curious about the teaching procedure is a way to prevent them for getting bored from the class and let them always interested in the class.