“Observation from English language class in the Jam English Academy in Tehran”;
The following report is my observation from the English language class in the Jam English Academy in Tehran. They did not allow me to observe the whole class and I could not complete my observation. I have tried to find the related video on YouTube to complete the report. Observing the class and watching the videos helped me to have a good experience of teaching.
Before explaining the detail about this observation, it is important to know the goal of the language academy. The overall goal of that particular class was to improve students’ conversation skills while the teacher’s attention was in teaching grammar rules. There were around 10 high school student in the class and they were in the medium level. The objectives for that day’s lesson were on the speaking part and each student had to narrate a story about their problems in the first week of high school. They also had to write an essay in the subject of ‘Mehr Difficulties’. The teacher asked them to narrate the story but she allowed them to have a look at their essay while they were presenting. In my opinion most of them memorized the essay and they could not easily narrate the story.
The instructor had a clearly discernible lesson plan. She had many overall goals for the class. She strives for her students to improve their writing skills and the speaking fluency. She had a very clear and understandable accent and tried her best to explain everything in English language while most of the students did not understand her lecture. Her plan was to improve their self-confidence in speaking English and it was very hard for the beginners to speak in English language. If I was the instructor, I wouldn’t allow them to use their paper because they just memorized their essay without understanding. I would ask them to write a 150 words essay and present a summarized paragraph to the class.
The instructor used a communicative activity which I appreciate and I learned a new strategy. She asked every presenter to have a short conversation with one of the students in class about the subject of the essay. Some of them tried to repeat the previous student’s conversation but the teacher changed the atmosphere of their talk by asking questions. It seems that class was just the conversation class and the instructor did not use the book. She just corrected their usage of verbs and explained some grammar rules to them.
The observation showed me that most of the students did not understand the instructor when she was narrating her own story in the high school. She used complicated words and there were only 2 students who checked the dictionary and asked her the meaning of the words. In my idea, it was better to use the target language effectively by showing pictures or videos. Her use of English was grammar based and she explained the rules of tenses during the students’ presentations.
The time allotted for activities was not appreciate and she spent the class time on presentations but the amount of teacher talk and student talk was fair. According to the goal of the class they had enough conversations during the class time. There were some shy students who scared to speak English and she encouraged them by some funny jokes about students. The type and amount of teacher feedback was very effective and she spent sufficient time on their presentations and gave them useful feedbacks with a nice tone. The instructor also tried to explain them the high school system in the other countries and students were excited when they had information about other cultures.
The instructor did not use group work and she just used pair word for the conversation activity and unfortunately she did not ask her students to participate in the conversation. It is better to ask students to participate because they can improve their speaking by group conversation. The seating arrangement was like other classroom arrangement and students could not look at each other during the conversation. It would be better if the academy arranged a circle seating arrangement for them. The teacher did not use any material to explain her lecture and she just used the whiteboard to write the grammar rules.
The instructor was very young and she looked 24 years old so she could not divide her attention among the students. Students like her because of her age and the atmosphere of the class was warm, open and accepting. I think all of the students came to English class for their improvement and they did not have any problem with their weakness in understanding. They had lots of fun during the presentation. I did not observe the whole class but in my idea the instructor had her own technique and she was not sensitive about her students’ abilities or difficulties and she just followed the syllables.
In conclusion, the classroom observation is a good experience for our field of studying. The English class which I observed was based on speaking and the instructor tried her best to improve their English language and she was able to speak English fluently so students were encouraged to speak English. The only problem which is the problem of all the Iranian is the focus on grammar which is not much important and the instructor could use other strategies to correct their grammar. She also could use simple sentences to explain her ideas instead of using hard vocabulary.