The group taught is comprised of employees who take their classes at lunchtime on their company’s site. Their profile is very diverse, as the group academically includes secondary, high school and university graduates, the latter further divided into a B. A. And a M. B. A. There are six Mexican adults ranging from their twenties to their forties. Their lower middle class social background, though, is quite uniform. Gender breakdown is half male and half female.
English levels range from Intermediate to Advanced. They all work for BIMBO, and most hold supervisory levels in purchasing, except for an executive in import/export. Interests vary from psychology to sports, action films, technology, fashion, romantic comedies, music, and travel. Their strengths and weaknesses in the basic skills are widespread and differ greatly: the majority has good reading skills, is able to communicate albeit grammar deficiencies, understand most of what I say, but is poor at writing. Despite company promotion being contingent upon periodically-evaluated English proficiency, absenteeism and tardiness is frequent.
LESSON PLAN DESCRIPTION
Although my professional assignment is Conversation, the attached lesson plan addressed Process Description, which offered to help students develop narrating skills by thinking in terms of verb groups through process sequencing. My first step was a conversational warm-up with only two students. Seed what they understood by a process and, after eliciting a satisfactory answer, I narrated a life story. Students identified its structure and how a narrative can be a process. I continued with student lockstep vocal reading of the narrative handout Then, I requested they identify the sequenced stages they found within that process, keeping them in line with he breakdown offered in the second handout (See Appendix 3). Another two students arrived ten and fifteen minutes late.
I explained the purpose of our lesson and allowed them to catch up by reading the story with which we were working. The process description itself was very clear to them and the timeline relationship between tense and time resulted simple towards this purpose. We reviewed the new vocabulary and applied it to different personalized scenarios. We proceeded to the writing exercise, which was my general objective, in addition to the lesson plan’s main aim. The students wrote their story based on heir business processes, hobbies and life experiences.
Each read their written production to their classmates, who discussed them, aided their correction, and provided feedback as groundwork. Results covered the full range: from excellent to deplorable. Although his classmates understood him, one my students could not express his ideas articulately, probably due to emotional stress resulting from the loss of his mother; another wrote something very short because he had to leave for a meeting; yet another did quite well and one did very well. I noted that their production scarcely utilized phrasal verbs.
This procedure allowed us to combine both contexts of language use evidenced in Cummins’ (1981) research on the relationship that exists between language proficiency and academic/cognitive development: “Many academic tasks such as reading or listening to a lecture, are regarded as ‘context reduced’, since the learner is forced to rely primarily on linguistic cues to meaning. “Social-international uses of language, such as face-to-face conversation, are regarded as ‘context-embedded,’ since they are supported by the situation and by paralinguistic cues and allow for negotiation and feedback. ” (Richards and Hurley, 1990: 144-5)
ACHIEVEMENT OF LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Students successfully personalized the lesson, confirming that if students are involved in meaning-focused communicative tasks, then ‘language learning will take care of itself, and that plentiful exposure to language in use and plenty opportunities to use it are vitally important for a student’s development of knowledge and skill. ” (Harmer, 1998: 69) This teaching experience was a partial failure in regard to achievement of learning objectives. Timeline verbs within the process were easily understood, but I was unable to guide my students in the creation of narratives in terms of ERP groups.
I realized, too late, that phrasal verbs should have been revisited before the process description. On the other hand, this situation was offset by the achievement of my underlying objective, which was to motivate them to write. Based on an action research case presented by Althorn, Lined, Mason, Angel, and Reilly (2007) that concluded that student achievement and motivation can be improved through communicating learning objectives, I advised the students of this area of opportunity and its impact and relevance.
As follow-up, during the next classes I reinforced phrasal verbs and emphasized o my students the importance of awareness and self-improvement: “… It is very important to make a strong effort to inform students about the process of language acquisition, so they can continue to improve on their own. ” (Crashes, 2009: Introduction)
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF TASKS AND ACTIVITIES
Alp students develop narrating skills by thinking in terms of verb ‘groups’ that belong together. ” (Bearer 2001) misunderstood the instructions of the original lesson plan, whereby the Vocabulary was the first handout and the Narrative was the second. As result, I did not implement the following steps: ” Provide the worksheet. Ask students to put the verbs in the order they think they will appear in the story, Ask students to put the verbs in the order they think they will appear in the story.
How could they change the story so the order followed their own choices? ” (Barer, 2011) Student unfamiliarity with grammar precluded success in that realm. Had I pre- tested my students in verbal phrases, could have avoided this obstacle. The “English Raven Guide for FEEL Young Learners” attests to the need for a general jesting system. It states that, ideally, such evaluations should be focused on individual learners to objectively assess that which students have learned in answer to the array of language learning tasks/activities executed in their classrooms.
This compensates for the reality that educators seldom have the time and/or resources to habitually design individual class/learner centered tests. Nevertheless, preventive measures can be taken, such as an introductory summary of the language within the lead-in. In reparation, further verb group reinforcement strengthened their language skills towards the achievement of the 50-minimum requirement at their compulsory periodic TOXIC@ evaluation.
CLASS ROOM MANAGEMENT
Our classroom varies from session to session but in this instance it was a company meeting room with a round table and chairs. No whiteboard or window was available. Teacher and students all sat around the table during the class. Was reasonably successful with learners of different levels, abilities and ages, having provided personal feedback to each student with excellent rapport, met their emotional and welfare needs appropriately, and managed to distract them of their personal problems, all within a safe environment.
In “Classroom Management Strategies” at The Teacher’s Guide, Teresa Washings emphasizes the importance of room environment, supplies, general information on policies, procedures, and colleagues, seating, attendance lists, lesson plan, handouts, homework, grading, rewards and incentives, and daily routines, all factors that were taken into account for this class.
TEACHER AND LEARNER LANGUAGE
Teacher and learner language was comfortably informal in LA. Students’ body language reflected their understanding when my words shifted intermittently from complex to basic, in an effort to promote vocabulary improvement.
The interaction was IA brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. Earner-centered, although TTT was higher during my useless effort to convey the relationship between phrasal verbs and processes. LA brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. Earner-centered and teacher-centered LA discourse research in interactive exchanges in the SSL classroom concurs: “The analysis of interaction shows that learner-centered discourse provides opportunities for negotiation of form, content, and classroom rules of behavior, which creates an environment favorable to LA Learning. Anton, 1999) Reading or speaking mistakes were corrected through paperwork, word prompt, and reformulation, evidenced by “Error correction has little or no effect on subconscious acquisition, but is thought to be useful for conscious learning. ” (Crasher, 2009: 10)
STEPS FOR LINGUISTIC AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
This task is yet another step towards my professional development through reflective practice, observation and analysis of my facilitators as well as my peers, assessment information to guide instruction, and related bibliography.
I’ve found that objectively viewing my class recordings, inviting feedback, ND reflecting upon the results, contributes to my self-monitoring. Towards our quest for excellence, Richards’ aha Language Teaching Matrix” provides a comprehensive checklist to guide us in evaluating and correcting our performance. It affords teachers “… A greater insight and an effective way of improving the management and understanding of [sic] their own teaching. ” (Richards, 2002: 131-2). Despite verb groups being beyond their grasp, students were enthusiastic and easily understood the verb timeline aim of the lesson.
I concluded that the former was due to their lack of phrasal-verb usage in building their narratives. I also realized that if I had broken down each activity of the lesson plan, I would have understood the procedure correctly. By the same token, recovery of the class was enabled by the planning stage of our multi-purpose lesson plan, where the choice of a ‘process description’ allowed the learners to apply their creative writing skills with the narrative, and practice their reading as well as their listening skills, notwithstanding their language skills.
Our follow-up lessons to correct the phrasal verb use deficiency promoted a higher use of this language in their daily conversations and in their writing. In avoidance of surprises in future language-based lessons, will ensure that my students are familiar with the subject matter by providing a short customized summary during the warm-up. Should it not suffice, I will be prepared to change the lesson plan in situ to extend on the topic.
Furthermore, I will continue to encourage self-improvement and use multiple-purpose strategies with contingency plans, together with personalized communication, as my basic teaching method. “l will also conclude that the best methods might also be the most pleasant, and that, strange as it seems, language acquisition occurs when language is used for hat it was designed for, communication. ” (Crashes, 2009: 1) Duke and Pearson (2002) advise teachers to grow by assuming “… All the responsibility for performing a task [taking students] to a situation in which [they] assume all of the responsibility. ” (Frey, 2011: 1).
This principle guides successful instruction despite grade level or content since it reflects what Good and Broody (2003) call “active teaching”: “Active teaching is the ability of an educator to present information to learners in ways that are effective and do not waste the students’ time. ” (Frey, 2011: 3)
