Hayley CO #1

I observed Angel Rios’s grammar class for Group 2B. The class began by quickly going over the diagnostic tests that were taken. I noticed quickly that his approach to teaching was very different from what I was used to in my foreign language classes. He was really relaxed and the way class flowed seemed more conversational than traditional lecturing. He was quick to correct the problems with the test itself admitting when things may have been misleading and then explaining why the answer is what it is and then he gave a clearer example. He always wrote examples on the board such as the verbs to be and to have with all of their conjugations while saying those were common and irregular verbs so they must be memorized. After 5-10 minutes of going over the test they started working out of their books.

The book was used more as a guide to the lesson rather than reading directly out of it. The lesson was about using common English idioms. A student would read the idiom and then Angel would get different students to basically try to guess what the meaning was. He would write what they said on the board and after a few people explained it he would give them the actual meaning. The students were able to guess them correctly for the most part and some students shared similar idioms they have at home. For example, an Arabic idiom translates to it takes two hands to clap while we have it takes two to tango. Corrections were really only given for pronunciation errors probably because even though this was a grammar class, the lesson was focused on speaking. It was one of their first classes so he definitely didn’t want to make anyone nervous and lower their effective filter.