Mitchell CO#3

This afternoon, I observed a speaking class conducted by Professor Wallace. This was by far my favorite class I observed. I was actually lucky enough to be able to participate in his class activity. His speaking activity was very creative and definitely induced his students to speak. He called it “speed dating” style conversation sessions, in which the class was set up in two rows, and everyone had to take a turn talking to the person sitting across from them. There was a prep time of 30 seconds, and then 2 minutes to discuss the topic. The topics professor Wallace picked were topics that were definitely something everyone had an opinion about, therefore promoted talking. The first question was “what is the most impressive thing in your country.” I learned about the food in Kuwait, and some grand museums in Angola. For me it was like going around the world in 50 minutes. The next conversation was about food in their countries and then about religion in their countries. I was impressed by the level of focus and drive of the students in the class. Some things I liked about his class was that it really did make everyone talk, and it was impossible to avoid talking because of the small class size. I also think it pushes the students out of their comfort zone a little, thus simulating what it might be like to talk in a situation that might be nerve racking. He also wrote mistakes that the students made up on the board, and made other students in the class correct them, thus involving the class a lot. Professor Wallace really did not talk much during the class, but rather pushed the students to talk and explain things to each other. It was more of a monitored discussion rather than a class. This class definitely gave me quite a few ideas of how I would conduct a speaking class, and was useful to me because I am most likely going to have a conversation class when I go to teach in Spain.