Day 20

TEFL AT IBERO WITH FIONA BURKE

CONCLUSION

Introduction

I think it is true what they say – you only remember your really good and your really bad teachers. And for the former reason, I think that I will remember Fiona for a long time to come and certainly for as long as I'm teaching English as a foreign language.

So what have I learnt?

• The importance of properly assessing your students language ability before commencing lessons in order to address their weaknesses, aims and objectives
  
• Grading – the importance of grading your teaching material and spoken language to suit the student audience
  
• To introduce variety into your lessons
  
  • A variety of teaching techniques and materials
    
  • To encompass all types of language activities – reading, writing, listening and speaking.
    
• Rapport – how crucial this is to the whole teaching process and the need to establish both teacher – student and student – student rapport.
  

How will I apply to it to future teachings?

• I now think that teaching can be a fun interactive process involving activities, games and role play.
  
• I am unsure as to how I will apply, since I need to think carefully about my target market.
  
  • However I have decided to focus upon the corporate market in Cuenca, where I can bring to bear my business knowledge and experience along with my TEFL course to target premium clients, who will pay for last minute cancellations.
    
  • For the remainder of my time in Buenos Aires, I wish to practice teaching once a week for free, Sasha, the student, that I assessed for the course. This will help reinforce the relatively brief teaching practice that I've had and since it's free give me an opportunity to test some boundaries as I think about attacking the corporate market in Cuenca.
    

 

Things Ibero could change…….

• A dedicated printer in the class room
  
• Ex-student Fred was not a relevant choice for our class profile. Andrea's friend, Nicola, would have been more appropriate.
  

Day 18

Today we covered:

• Teaching ESP
  
• What if? (scenarios)
  
• Grammar review
  
• Teaching futures
  

I was late for class & so missed the teaching ESP session, since I was assessing my student, Sasha – initial notes of my assessment are included below:

STUDENT PROFILE ASSESSMENT: SASHA NORENA

DATE: 11 NOVEMBER 2009

Conclusion: Intermediate to Upper Intermediate

Methodologies/ Format of assessment

• Student self assessment questionnaire (reading and writing)
  
• Comprehension article on Bolivia (reading and speaking)
  
• Past ("what did you do last weekend?") and future ("what are you doing for Christmas?") (speaking)
  
• "Getting to know you" game (speaking and listening)
  
• Writing about "Where I was born" (writing)
  

Student aims

Speaking, pronunciation and listening. Currently works in two restaurants in Palermo, which provide an opportunity to practice English.

Observations

The student still translates English into Spanish and then back again as evidenced by the self assessment exercise, where she started to write the answers to the questions in Spanish.

She has the vocabulary for the names of countries, but lacks the slightly different words relating to language or nationality.

Prepositions, pronouns – omission and false inclusion of "to" or "the". Also falsely follows some verbs with "ing" ending.

Vocabulary:

• "attend" instead of "serve"
  
• "jake" instead of "joke"
  
• "realise" instead of "arrange" (interviews)
  
• "chair" instead of "job"
  
• "have to better" instead of "have to improve"
  
• "metres" instead of "kilometres"
  

But generally there is a lack of hesitation, when speaking and the overall impression is of good fluency despite the occasional mistake.

 

Recommendations for future activities

• False friends
  
• Countries, language and nationalities – vocabulary
  
• Language specific to restaurant work in Palermo – role play
  
• Prepositions
  
• Future tense
  
• Past tense
  
• "ing"
  
• Pronunciation & drilling
  

I enjoyed the meeting to assess my student and plan to have weekly lessons with her for the next 4 weeks.

The "What if" session was more of a teacher to teacher debate about various issues, that could arise in a class, such as:

• Different student levels
  
• Big class size
  
• Students use own language
  
• Students don't do homework
  
• Students are uncooperative
  
• Students don't want to talk
  
• Students don't understand the audio track
  
• Some students finish before the others
  

None of the solutions sounded like "rocket science", but it was reassuring to discuss such issues before they happen to us for real and also to have a piece of paper to take away with all of this written down. But having spent a lot of time as students in our youth and also now as foreign language students – most of these techniques were familiar even if lodged somewhere in our subconscious.

We finished the class with a grammar review and discussed teaching futures.

Day 16

Today we covered the following topics:

• Teaching conversation classes
  
• Using games and songs
  
• Phonology stress
  
• Assignments
  

I like the idea of teaching conversation classes, particularly to higher level one-to-one business students. The process seems fairly instinctive, although appropriately graded teacher language and context setting are essential to the exercise. This can be supplemented by teaching key topic-related vocabulary prior to commencement.

We then progressed to covering games and songs. I've enjoyed the games throughout the course, but although effective wondered how well received they would be by certain (say mature business) students. Fiona filled in any gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the games armoury to use during lessons. We then did a song exercise, which I thought might involve singing, but was centred around an Artic Monkey's song "Red Light Indicates Doors are Secured" – Fiona set the context and we then had to correctly order the lines from the first two verses. Thereafter there was a gap fill exercise. This seemed like quite an effective language teaching technique, that I could use in the future. Fiona recommended Abba songs and also warned against Beatles songs, since the lyrics are so well known by foreign students.

Finally we moved onto phonology and stress, which seemed fairly instinctive to native speakers.

Day 15

Today I taught Amelia, one of the Ibero Spanish teachers. She was over half an hour late for my class, which slightly put me off. But she had given me a good steer as to what content she wished to cover and she was a very agreeable student.

Attached below is my self assessment for the lesson:

Teaching Practice Evaluation

 

Please fill in below as soon after your observation and file in the appropriate place. Comments made here are designed to help you focus during feedback.

 

Criteria to consider – comment on any of the following:

- Language awareness        - Error awareness & correction        

- Staging of lesson        - Atmosphere / rapport & ability to motivate students

- Use of equipment        - Checking learning & understanding        

- Classroom management    - Pace & timing        

- Attention to pronunciation    - Teaching materials        

- Balance of skills        - Variety of activity & interaction

 

Make sure you comment on all the following points in every evaluation:

• identify achievement/non-achievement of aims, explain why they have been achieved (or not) and assess the feasibility of lesson aims
  
  • make suggestions for adaptation of methods or materials for a future class or learner
    
  • identify overall strengths and weaknesses
    
  • make reference to personal teaching aims for the next lesson
    

 

Things you were pleased with

 

• Rapport achieved with the student
  
• The TPR exercise used on phrasal verbs
  
• Exercise, where express opinion, and other plays devil's advocate
  
• Feedback during and at the end of the lesson
  
• General level/ amount of conversation
  

 

Things you would have done differently

 

• Teach more vocabulary prior to starting the opinion statement/ debate exercise
  
• Do the gap-fill exercise myself prior to giving it to the student
  

 

Things you would like to focus on next time you teach

 

• More phrasal verbs – since the student has expressed a desire to focus on this area
  
• Exercises to reinforce situation specific verbs, such as situations relating to her job as a Spanish teacher
  

 

 

 

 

 

Day 13

Today taught Juaquin – the student with the most basic English knowledge and possibly the most challenging. My self evaluation appears below:

 

Teaching Practice Evaluation

 

Please fill in below as soon after your observation and file in the appropriate place. Comments made here are designed to help you focus during feedback.

 

Criteria to consider – comment on any of the following:

- Language awareness        - Error awareness & correction        

- Staging of lesson        - Atmosphere / rapport & ability to motivate students

- Use of equipment        - Checking learning & understanding        

- Classroom management    - Pace & timing        

- Attention to pronunciation    - Teaching materials        

- Balance of skills        - Variety of activity & interaction

    

Make sure you comment on all the following points in every evaluation:

• identify achievement/non-achievement of aims, explain why they have been achieved (or not) and assess the feasibility of lesson aims
  
  • make suggestions for adaptation of methods or materials for a future class or learner
    
  • identify overall strengths and weaknesses
    
  • make reference to personal teaching aims for the next lesson
    

 

Things you were pleased with

 

• Rapport achieved with the student
  
• Choice of material linked to the students interests
  
• Initial task of the student asking me questions
  
• Occasional drilling of student
  
• General patience of T in waiting to elicit response from S
  

 

Things you would have done differently

 

• Different teaching material – some of the items were too complex in language or presentation - Corleone family tree & Delia Smith "how to cook a duck" video?
  
• Additional whiteboard help/ word prompts to elicit answers for the first "getting to know you" exercise
  

 

Things you would like to focus on next time you teach

 

• Basic vocabulary about the family
  
• Basic sentence structures
  

 

 

 

 

 

Day 12

I started the day by observing James teaching Joaquin. Joaquin is a challenging student and it was interesting to see how James handled the challenges presented by this task. This was also beneficial since I was due to teach Joaquin the following day.

We then started "normal" class in the afternoon and began by discussing the James's lesson – first of all James's own thoughts followed by those of the observers - myself, Toms and Fionas.

We then covered teaching reading followed by errors and correction.

At the end of the lesson, the bad news was delivered, that journal entries were required on any days that we did not teach. Having received this news at the end of the lesson and given my failure to take any notes during the lesson – this entry is embarrassingly brief.

Day 11

This was my first day of teaching practise – teaching Juan Ignacio (a member of Ibero staff). This was structured as a 4 part lesson, around a 3 minute video extract from the Office. The specific areas covered were:

• Listening (& visual) comprehension
  
• Art vocabulary
  
• Reading & comprehension of One Stop English story about Bolivian prison
  
• Pronunciation and idioms based around reading script from video in session 1
  
  

The standard Ibero feedback form is filled out below:

 

Teaching Practice Evaluation

 

Please fill in below as soon after your observation and file in the appropriate place. Comments made here are designed to help you focus during feedback.

 

Criteria to consider – comment on any of the following:

- Language awareness        - Error awareness & correction        

- Staging of lesson        - Atmosphere / rapport & ability to motivate students

- Use of equipment        - Checking learning & understanding        

- Classroom management    - Pace & timing        

- Attention to pronunciation    - Teaching materials        

- Balance of skills        - Variety of activity & interaction

 

Make sure you comment on all the following points in every evaluation:

• identify achievement/non-achievement of aims, explain why they have been achieved (or not) and assess the feasibility of lesson aims
  
  • make suggestions for adaptation of methods or materials for a future class or learner
    
  • identify overall strengths and weaknesses
    
  • make reference to personal teaching aims for the next lesson
    

 

Things you were pleased with

 

• Ice-Breaker
  
• Speed and level of rapport achieved with student
  
• Effectiveness of video session and duplicity of use for both sessions 1 and 4
  
• Easy filler nature of online material
  
• Flow – time seemed to pass very quickly
  

 

Things you would have done differently

 

• Try to cover/ correct the students mistakes better - either during the lesson or within the wrap up at the end
  
• Be better prepared (re cutting bits of paper, or cueing Youtube videos) OR change structure of future lessons so that ice-breaker is immediately followed by a student exercise giving me time to do such last minute prep work.
  

 

Things you would like to focus on next time you teach

 

• Improve upon real-time feedback to the student and end of lesson feedback/pointers
  
• When planning and preparing - rely more upon using online sources and apply my creativity around those – in order to save time & reduce overall preparation time