My third class observation was Jasmine Carnell's 1A Speaking class. This class was the most illuminating to me because of the low English speaking and comprehension levels of the students in the class and the teaching techniques that were required to communicate the lesson and activities to the students. The class focused heavily on introducing vocabulary related to the theme of making and accepting offers and asking or giving permission to and from another person. Jasmine spoke very clearly and was very good at giving examples and synonyms to convey the meaning of words and phrases, asking a lot of questions to confirm comprehension before moving on. This method of teaching provided many opportunities for formative evaluation and seems to be necessary in low level speaking classes.
After the introduction of vocabulary and contexts for using it, students worked in pairs on a fill in the blank activity to complete a dialogue with the correct vocabulary words, and then each assumed a role and acted out the dialogue. While this was in process, Jasmine walked around and instead of correcting any errors in word choice that the students made, she tried to ask questions in order to help the student to realize their own errors, then providing in-context examples to show how certain words and phrases are used. I observed that positive feedback and recasts are essential and need to be frequent when teaching at this level.
One extra strategy that I observed was that when assigning homework to a class, especially one at a low comprehension level, it should be done in the middle of class so that it can be confirmed that the students understand what is expected for them to complete before the next class.
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