"Food for Thought"--A new class with GE 4!

Monday, June 30

This week I was assigned to help teachers in the GE4 class. This is an upper-intermediate level; therefore, the students in the class are self efficient in English communication. As a result, the classroom is more dynamic than the beginners class in regard to communicative activities performed in the classroom. There are 8 students in the classroom: Judy, Megumi, BoYoung, Yun, Stefono (Korean), Rachel, Saori (Japanese), and Oscar (Columbian). Aliki, the teacher, is Greek, but was born in Sydney and raised in Greece; she has been teaching for 20 years plus. She speaks two lanaguages Greek and English, thus, I guess, that makes it a bit different in terms of teaching. She is able to explain grammatical points explictely. Coming from another culture, she shares her cultural perspectives with the students. Since her students's English is competent, she has the opportunity to do more than just teach. "Food for Thought" is what she attempts to impart to her students. She often shares with them her belief in things and the things that important in life based on her past experiences in life. I really enjoy sharing it with her and the class as well.

Today, we had Integrated skills (2 hours), Language Lab (1 hour), Listening and Speaking (2 hours). In this level, they are using Cutting Edge textbook and this week's module is about communication. The teacher prefers to start her class with a warm-up activity, then gives them theorical framwork of a subject matters in the textbook. At the end of the class, she prefers to have them work on something more relaxing sine it's only one hour. The philosophy behind it, according to the teacher, is to get students ready to the lesson and to make sure that there will be no students who come in late whould be left behind from the rest of the class and create a relaxing classroom atmosphere. Hence, we started the class with a little catch up from the weekend. Then, we started off with their short story reading on Four Wedding and a Funeral (Penguin Readers). The teacher threw lots of questions about the story, so they had the same story background. Then, they watched the movie and this time the teacher asked questions again, but this time she asked them for opinions about the story and tried to mingle it with their own cultures.

Later on, we moved to the lab. The teacher paired them up from the main computer and gave them each the sheet of a phonetic activity. Students had to pronounce words to their partner from their headset and figure out the name combination. From my observation, students actively communicate with each other and they enjoyed helping and teaching each other on pronunciation.

Last but not least, after they came back from lunch, students practiced speaking and listening skills. They were given an article on Stranger than Fiction (a mysterous story). The story was very interesting since the activity covered great integrated skills. Students had to read, then analyze it and shared it with their partner. There's a lot of talking in the class. During the conversation, the teacher would write down new vocabulary words up on the board and often write down qestions and instructions as well.

The teaching style, as well as methodoloty, that I learned from the teacher today was signaficant. I picked up a bit of peices in teaching and will certainly adopt them with my class. Teachers here always keep track on their teaching activities and exercises daily and sometimes take notes if they are successfully done in the class, which, I found, very crucial.