1. What is your overall impression of the lesson?

What part of the

lesson do you think went well? What part of the lesson do you wish
had gone better?
I think the lesson went well today primarily in the students using all of the
phrases for the game. While there were still times when they would simply
say, No, instead of, No, I havent been to overall, they did the best out
of any of our classes this week or last week at using the phrases for the
majority of the time and starting to use the phrases again if I pointed out
that they were not at any point. I also noticed that some of the students who
had been the least confident during one-to-ones at the beginning of our time
here ended up sitting with their backs to the screen and were able to say all
of the phrases without turning around to check the screen by the middle of
the game. I think there was not a lot of focus during the beginning and end
of the lesson. For the beginning of the lesson, there were a few students who
seemed to be preoccupied with thoughts of their impending final rather than
what I was telling them. They were still good about repeating with the class
though, which was good. At the end of class, students still had a lot of
leftover energy from the game and some had problems focusing back on the
lesson. It might have been better if I had planned in time for them to put
their desks back into an arc so that they wouldnt be facing each other
during the final ten minutes of class to help with focus. I also think that I
could have provided more scaffolding and spent more time on forming
questions so that they could have more confidence on both sides of the
conversation.
2. Were the lesson objectives met by all the students at the end of
the lesson? How do you know? Did some students achieve the
objectives more fully than others?
While some students were much more confident than others, everyone was
able to say where they had travelled by the end of class. They were also
able to answer questions about their past experiences. While I did not ask
every student individually to say where they have been, through asking
individual tables, along with listening to everyone during the activity, I
believe I can reasonably say that all students met the objectives as the
students who volunteered answers tended to double-check the answer with
their group before they said it to the class. Students were also able to repeat
what had been said with much more confidence by the end of class. The
students who did not volunteer at the end of class were able to use the
phrases during the activity, demonstrating their ability. I noticed that
students who did not face the board were generally able to achieve the
objectives much faster and completely than some of the other students, as it
was more of a hassle for them to read off the screen, so they memorized it
earlier in the game than others.

3. What kind of errors were they making? How did you treat those
errors? Was your treatment effective in improving their use of that
particular language form?
The most common error was saying visit instead of visited. If I noticed it
during the game, I pointed it out to the groups and they were generally much
better about saying visited from that point on, as they were paying more
attention to what they were saying. I also pointed this out as a common
mistake to the class as a whole as there may have been other students
making the same mistake that I did not notice during the game or students
who would make the same mistake once they didnt have the phrase written
in front of them. There were still a few problems with pronunciation of
countries, but reviewing the challenging pronunciations from last week
before starting the activity helped to fix most of those errors before they
occurred. The errors I did hear, however, I corrected on an individual basis.
Considering the mistakes were not very common throughout the group, I felt
that this was the most appropriate way to handle them.
4. What did you hope would take place during the
pairwork/groupwork activity/activities? How did you decide on this
particular activity? Was it interesting for them? Did they use
authentic language?
I hoped that students would become more familiar and comfortable with the
present perfect. To this end, I hoped that students would use all three
phrases as instructed so that the repetition would help embed the structure
into their minds and make it easier to recall the next time they wanted to ask
someone about past experiences in English. I also hoped that having set
phrases for them to say would help them gain confidence in English as they
would be able to speak in English for a good portion of the class without
having to worry about what they were going to say. We chose to use the
same game as last week because we had to spend a lot of time explaining it
last week and wanted to maximize the time students were speaking in
English by reusing a game that we would not have to explain in depth this
week. It was also a game that the students really enjoyed and many
requested that we play it again. The improvement seen in students
confidence and accuracy when using the grammar forms last week also
supported the choice to use it again. They seemed to enjoy it again this
week and were benefited by the fact that they werent confused about the
rules at first as they had been before. I believe students used authentic
language. In particular, when I asked them questions after they had finished
the game they had the opportunity to use authentic language.
5. Was this lesson that you selected easy or difficult for your
students? What part of the lesson was new for them? What part did
they already know? How did you attempt to provide them with i + 1?

The lesson was a little bit easier than the lessons that they usually receive at
EB. The students were all familiar with the present perfect. They had just not
used it in a conversational context before. When creating this lesson plan, we
tried to create a lesson that would err on the side of easy rather than
challenging because the students were going in and out of the room to take
their final exam during the class. While students only missed a few minutes
of class due to this, Maren and Dionne had requested that we not give too
difficult of a lesson so that the students would not be even more stressed
before their exams than they normally are. In order to respect this while still
providing the students with i+1, we decided to focus mainly on a set phrase
within a grammar structure they are relatively familiar with and expand upon
it slightly at the end.
6. In general, what have been your greatest successes in teaching
this group? What do you think you need to know how to do better?
I think my greatest success has been helping the girls develop a little bit
more confidence while speaking English. A lot of the girls were very shy and
didnt feel comfortable talking to us when we first came. I understand their
position very well as I also feel nervous whenever I have to speak a foreign
language with native speakers, especially if they are people that I dont know
since Im not sure how patient they will be or how supportive they will be
when I lack the linguistic skill to say what I am thinking. In order to improve,
however, we all must practice. For this reason, I think confidence is the most
valuable thing we can give to students, especially in such a short time. It
has been really encouraging to see students who were clearly scared to
speak English whenever I made eye contact with them before run over to
talk to me now. Giving students the confidence to speak to native speakers
was one of my greatest goals in coming here and I believe I have been able
to accomplish it with a good number of the girls.
7. What language teaching approach do you ascribe to and how was
this approach articulated in this particular lesson?
I believe in a cognitive approach to teaching English. Specifically, I think that
it is only necessary to correct errors that are reoccurring or prevent students
from being understood. I think this can be seen in the lesson plan through
my reviewing of errors common to the class during the extension. The format
of the lesson plan was created so that it was easy to locate common errors.
By having students repeat the same phrase multiple times, but not having
them simply repeat after me, I am able to listen and learn what mistakes
they make when left to speak on their own. I also believe in the value of
working in groups in language classes so that students have opportunities to
practice exchanges in a safe and comfortable environment. To this end, I had
students practicing natural language exchanges with their groups. I also

believe that language classes should foster a curiosity about and desire to
understand the world. For this reason, I chose travel as the theme of this
lesson. Through talking about travel I hope that students were encouraged to
think outside of their everyday and into the wider world.