Hayley CO #3

I observed Vicky’s Group 1A Speaking Class. She started the class by asking students the day of the week, date, and month. Then she wrote her lesson plan on the board. First on the agenda was reviewing their midterm exam which was a typed transcript of what they said. Some mistakes were highlighted in yellow. The students wrote in the corrections and the two teachers went around to each student to answer questions offer help. I noticed that as far as pronunciation corrections go, errors were corrected almost every time.  This is because they are beginners and errors were definitely interfering with communication. She transitioned out of this by asking if the students remembered how long their diagnostic transcripts were and saying that everyone almost doubled the amount they said which is a huge improvement!

Next all of the students got handouts about timed speech. They were practicing for the TOEFL speech section. She was lecturing but she had the questions she was asking typed out on the handout. The first was: What is timed speech? The students were guessing times of the day so she explained it is when you are speaking with a limit of time. Then she wrote the times allotted for the TOEFL and right after stood in front of them and asked someone, so how long do you have to think? It was very is everyone paying attention? The next question was rationalization. What is this important? Well, you need a good TOEFL score of course! And lastly, What will they score me on?

On the flip side of the sheet was a worksheet with a prompt: Who is your favorite family member and why? She explained the format and gave some time to fill in the blanks which gave a sample answer.  (My favorite family member is ________ because ______ and ______ . For example, ________. Finally, __________. ) As a class we came up with many possible answers with examples and then she had two students actually try it with a timer going on her computer screen.

I really enjoyed Vicky’s class because her teaching style is so engaging. She is really enthusiastic, energetic, and positive. I especially liked how animated she was. She was basically acting out everything she asked the students. I really liked when she acted out the word gallant by acting like a soldier on a horse, singing, and flexing. It was just really silly, actually informative, and kept the mood light.

Lastly, she briefly introduced transition words by explaining how the word finally would function in a speech. I would assume this is what they are going to cover tomorrow.