Observation

Observation:

One of the assigned projects of the teaching methodology course was to videotape a class for the evaluation purpose. To do so, I observed a class of upper intermediate level consisting of 7 female students. Ages ranged from the early 17s to late 30s.

The teacher conducted the class from the center of the front of the room. From this position, she had easy access to the whiteboard which was the only resource in the classroom other than the textbook. Moreover, the class was too small to have enough space for teacher movement.

To start the class, the teacher greeted the students warmly. In Persian, The students asked the questions they had about their assignment. They had 23 sentences to translate from L1 to L2. As the students read their sentences, the teacher helped them to make necessary modifications as far as possible. The students’ correct responses were reinforced by the teacher .Furthermore, their pronunciation and grammatical errors were corrected directly. Then, they were asked to read their sentences in the correct form.

Afterwards, grammatical rules were presented by the teacher. After focusing on the grammatical points, the teacher narrated a story to contextualize some new vocabulary items. While telling the story, the teacher drew some pictures on the board to attract the students’ attention and to clarify the meanings of the concrete words.

The last fifteen minutes of the class was devoted to students proposing their ideas about the story to find out whether they understood the concept of the words correctly.

Comments:


Though being more or less proficient and accurate, the teacher behaved authoritatively as it is common in traditional classes. She used a combination of GTM, ALM, and comprehension-based approaches. Grammar was taught deductively, accuracy was overemphasized and mostly the native language was used as a medium for explaining new items .Moreover, no systematic attention was paid to listening and speaking.

Generally, the common pattern was that of an active teacher and passive learners. It was a totally teacher-centered class. No attempt has been made on the part of the teacher to encourage students to interact. Indeed, there was no interaction among the students and the interaction between the teacher and the students was initiated by the teacher herself.

Considering their level, the students were not proficient enough. They seemed to be afraid of speaking and risk-taking; however, the teacher considered their emotional state and tried to keep their affective filter low.