A&HT 4077

Boblett

Name__Yijun Zhong________________

A&HT 4077 Classroom Practices

CEP Teacher Observation 1
This assignment is designed to help you learn to observe the language classroom as well as to
become a reflective practitioner.
CEP Teacher: Barbara Sian Morgan
Level: Advanced
LESSON INTRODUCTION
1. What was the first thing (verbatim) the teacher said to his/her students?
The teacher asked one of the students to share her experience in the elevator before class:
Hiromi, why dont you share with us your experience...in the elevator? What were the others
talking about? Hiromi said that she heard them talking about the weather and using the word
muggy. The teacher wrote the word on the board together with phatic talk and small talk.
She explained the two sociolinguistic terms to the students, adding that the weather was a
common topic for people to engage in small talks.
Afterwards the teacher asked the students to come up with expressions to describe the
weather. They replied with expressions such as foggy, drizzling, showering, cats and
dogs, and heavy rain. Then she drew their attention to expressions about water, and wrote
trickling, pouring, and flooding on the board. She taught them about the differences
between these words and the metaphorical use of pour with example sentences.
The pre-class task ended with a student coming up with the word soaking, which was also
related to water. The teacher explained the use of the word with a scenario Oh, you are soaking
wet. Finally, the teacher reminded the students pay attention to casual conversations and small
things1.
2. How did the teacher introduce the lesson objectives? Write exactly what he/she said or wrote.
The teacher did not introduce the lesson objectives. She told us after class that the objective
was enabling students to achieve the four language skills (reading, speaking, listening, and
writing) and to use the language fluently. It seemed that she introduced them in the syllabus of
this course2. She tried to target these four skills in each class, although sometimes one or two
skills might receive more attention than others.
Nonetheless, the lesson objectives were clearly integrated in class activities, which included
text reading, pair work, group discussion, vocabulary study and in-class writing.

1 When we approached the teacher after class, she told us that she met Hiromi on her way to the
classroom and they were both in the elevator where the conversation about muggy took place. She then
figured it was a good way to introduce students to expressions about the weather and water.
2 I feel that the teacher might be talking about the goal of this course here, but since the class we had
observed only covered a very small fraction of the whole chapter, it could be that the teacher introduced
the objectives when they started the chapter.

A&HT 4077
Boblett

Name__Yijun Zhong________________

3. How did the teacher connect the lesson to previous lessons or students previous experiences?
The teacher connected the lesson to previous lessons and students experiences in the
following three ways:
1) The teacher directly asked students to narrate their experiences and refreshed their
memories of learnt vocabulary. For example, she asked Hiromi to talk about what she
heard in the elevator, using the opportunity to teach students expressions about the
weather and water. She also made them tell each other what they did during the weekend.
When one of them said, You should take your coat, the teacher told them the
differences between take and bring. In addition, she led them to review expressions
of giving advice, including youd better, you may want to, if I were you, Id and
why dont you, all of which had been brought up by the students.
2) The teacher held in-class homework discussion. Three of the students were asked to read
out aloud their sentences written with the preposition for. The teacher wrote them on
the board and asked the rest of the class to look for grammar mistakes in them.
3) The teacher asked the class to write an essay about how to relieve stress. Students were
required to use newly learnt vocabulary in it. Afterwards, they were asked to give each
other advice on how to relax oneself, so that they practiced how to offer advice as well as
how to describe stress, emotions and feelings at the same time.3
4. Did the teacher build background in preparation for this lesson? How?
Yes, the teacher prepared the students for the new passages (about relaxing the body by
drinking tea and doing yoga).
To begin with, she assigned two students to read the passages for the class. She then asked
Jenny, one of the students, whether she did yoga. Jenny talked a little about it, and then the
teacher asked another student whether she had ever jogged and if yes, how long had she been
jogging. The class talked about what they did during leisure time for a while.
After that, the teacher asked students to identify some newly learnt words in the passages.
For instance, one of them picked the word quieten, and she reminded them of the word
formation rule that when the derivational morpheme -en was added to an adjective, the word
became a verb4. Students were able to shout out more verbs such as soften, strengthen, and
weaken. Further, the teacher picked the words left out by the students and discussed their
usage. For example, when she tried to illustrate the usage of the verb crave, she asked Jenny, a
mother of two, what she craved for during her pregnancy. Jenny replied, Meat, but I was a
vegetarian before that. The class burst into laughter.
Finally, the students were asked if they could find useful expressions in the new passages.
They found expressions such as education system, stay motivated, and a feeling of wellbeing. The teacher applauded their work, and explained the use of these expressions with
example sentences.

3 In fact, the third class activity happened by the end of the class, so it probably did not belong to Lesson
Introduction. Nonetheless, the activity did quite successfully connect the present lesson to what the
students had learnt.
4 The teacher did not use metalanguage such as derivational morpheme except for verb and
adjective.

A&HT 4077
Boblett

Name__Yijun Zhong________________

CLASSROOM CLIMATE AND TEACHER PRESENCE

5. How would you characterize the classroom climate?
As I see it, the classroom climate was warm but not hot. Students were willing to
communicate, but maybe since they were adult students, there was not the kind of excitement
one would observe among younger students. Nevertheless, they were all cooperative and some of
them spoke with much interest and passion.
6. Describe the teachers facial expressions and body language during the lesson (e.g., animated?
smiling? interested?) Did you notice teacher scanning?
The teacher was smiling all along. She showed much interest in her students experiences,
feelings and opinions, and looked directly into their eyes when they were talking. Additionally,
she employed a reasonable amount of gestures so that while she made the class lively she did not
seem over-dramatic. For example, she pretended to be taking a bath when she tried to explain
one possible meaning of showering. The class all smiled at this.
Furthermore, instead of standing in the front of the class all the time, the teacher often
walked around the classroom, stopped for a while and walked to another spot. Nonetheless, no
matter where she stayed, she never stopped scanning the whole class. She would look at a
student for one or two seconds and moved on to the next she scanned the observers as well!
During pair work, the teacher also walked from pair to pair, sometimes joining the students
in their discussion and asking questions. Other times she simply stood there, listened, and saved
her questions for the whole class. However, when students were writing essays (for about twenty
minutes), she did not sneak a peek at their drafts but just sat in the front of the class.
STUDENT PARTICIPATION
7. Comment on the level of student participation (e.g., did students seem engaged? were they
responsive to teacher/student initiatives? were any students left out? Did students contribute
voluntarily, were they called on, both?)
Generally speaking, the students were quite engaged. Class participation presented the
following characteristics:
1) Students were responsive to what the teacher and other students said. They nodded from time
to time, and said Hmm Aha and Oh unintentionally when they heard new information
or something they agreed with.
2) For most of the time, students answered the teachers questions voluntarily and asked
questions when they felt confused. For example, one student interrupted the teacher and
asked about the difference between matter and issue.
3) The teacher called on students to answer certain questions. These questions were about
students experiences, answers of the homework and feedback of pair work, such as Jenny,
why dont you read us your sentence? and Mikey, what about you? A student sitting in the
front of the class barely volunteered to speak and the teacher had to call on her name so that
she would contribute.

A&HT 4077
Boblett

Name__Yijun Zhong________________

8. Were there times when students were reluctant to speak or when a student dominated others?
How did the teacher handle this? Give an example.
There was only once when nobody responded to the teacher. The question at that moment
was What are the useful expressions you can find in the passages? The students all started to
read through the passages attentively and for a while nobody spoke. Under such circumstances,
the teacher said, Okay, Ill give you a minute to think about it. Afterwards students were able
to tell the teacher what they had found.
I didnt notice any time when a single student dominated the others, but two students were
particularly active in class they answered every question the teacher had asked. To deal with
this the teacher adopted the following techniques:
1) She called on names. Sometimes she did not say the students name directly but looked
directly at the student being called upon and asked What about you? Why dont you...
and Could you please... She never pointed at her students.
2) In order that every student had the chance to practice using the expressions in their
conversation, the teacher asked them to work in pairs and take turns to give each other advice
on relieving stress.
ERROR CORRECTION
9. Did you notice error correction taking place? How did the teacher handle student errors? Give
examples.
Error correction took place a lot of times, and I marveled at how the teacher handled student
errors:
1) Teacher correction: the teacher corrected the students by recasting the sentence with the
correct expressions. For example:
a. S1: ... so I go forward.
T: Yes, you go ahead.
S1: So I go ahead...5
b. S2: Can I say I have a lack of self-discipline?
T: You could say I lack self-discipline. So you use lack as a verb.
2) Peer correction: the teacher asked other students to come up with the correct expression. For
example:
S1: ... I do this for relax.
T: Anyone wants to change the preposition here?
S2: To relax.
3) Self evaluation: the teacher led the students to reflect upon their problems and progress. For
example, she asked the students to work in pairs and gave each other advice on how to
relieve stress. After that she asked them what expressions their partners had used and in what
aspects they thought they could do better.
T: How do you think of your performance, Mia?
S1: Well I think...
T: Mikey, did your partner use any new words?
S2: Yes, she used...
5 S means Student and T means Teacher.

A&HT 4077
Boblett

Name__Yijun Zhong________________

T: Hiromi, do you think you can do better next time? In what aspects?
S3: I think...
Then the students were asked to exchange partners, refine the dialogue and do the advice
again. Afterwards the teacher asked them whether they felt better this time. Most students felt
they were more confident and more fluent during the second time.
GENERAL COMMENTS
10. Were you surprised (in either a positive or negative way) by anything you saw in class
(relating to teacher or students)? Be specific.
Yes.
1) Before the lesson, the teacher could not find the sheets she photocopied for the class. She
then asked her students to talk about what they did during the weekend while she looked for
them. During the process, she sometimes glanced up from the desk and joined their
conversation by asking questions. I was surprised that she was able to assign the students a
task on spot, so that she could do what she needed to do without making the class simply
wait and do nothing.
2) When a student asked the teacher about the difference between matter and issue, it
seemed that the teacher was not able to come up with a very satisfying answer at the moment.
She then said, Let me look for more examples for you, and well talk about this later. This
reminded me of what Professor Nancy had told us many times in class: Its okay if you can
not come up with the answer on spot. You can ask your students to wait and give them a
satisfactory answer later. The incident was not so surprising as impressive because I actually
witnessed a teaching technique taught in play.
3) In the middle of the lesson, the teacher asked the students to write an essay about their own
ways of relieving stress. They were given twenty minutes, and the classroom was deadly
quiet during that time, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable considering that the class had
been quite lively all along. When the class was over I asked the teacher her reason behind
this class activity. She replied that the lesson lasted for two hours, so there had to be some
quiet time. The students could not remain talkative for a whole two hours they needed an
opportunity to rue things over and think about how to use the language. The activity made a
lot more sense after she had explained it to me. I realized that students always needed time to
work through the learning process, so it was important that they were given a chance to
digest what they had learnt.
4) My biggest takeaway was that the teacher asked students to reflect upon their dialogue and
talk openly about their problems. I was very surprised when I saw this maybe because I had
never thought about teaching students about learning strategies in this manner. Students
really were able to think about how to make their language better. When they had talked
about it, their problems were imprinted on their mind so that they would pay attention to
them in the future. Further, since everyone had to talk about their problems, it lowered the
students anxiety in learning the language. Their language ego was boosted by the realization
that they were not the only ones that made such and such mistakes everyone had room to
improve.