Observation Report on Classroom Context and Language Tasks

Week 7-8                                                        

Class: 8/C, 8/D                                                                    Muhammed Emin Yüksel    
Date: 27.11.2015/ 04.12.2015                                                                   Caner Koca
School: Celalettin Sayhan Primary School

7th Week

During the 7th week of our internship training, we were required to focus on the point whether the conditions of the classroom, the activities, the teacher and the students are appropriate for effective learning or not. In this observation report, the elements of the classroom, the activities, the teacher and the students will be examined by referring to their positive and negative sides that affected learning.

Firstly, the classroom was a typical of a state school, which does not provide any positive effectiveness for the students. That is to say, it was an ordinary classroom for 8th grade students. In this respect, the outlook in general can be regarded as a negative aspect. The first negative thing we could definitely say is that the distribution of the school desks were so congested and messy that it was hardly possible to sit still and in comfort. This matter can hinder students from concentrating on the lesson. The organized distribution of the desks are important for the students. There were also no visual materials concerning English on the walls. The classroom seemed rather pale and dull in appearance. The other thing was that most of the students were insistent on leaving the windows open even early in the morning, while other a few wanted them closed. As a result, the classroom was nearly always cold.

As for the activities held in the classroom, they were simple enough for the students to understand and instructed well. The blackboard mostly, and also the course book were used to carry out the activities. The students were also supplied with activities from various sources. However, the problem was that the activities were written on the blackboard all the time, which caused a huge time loss. It could have been much better if the activities had been copied and handed out to the students instead of spending a lot of time on the course of writing the activities on the board. The activities also lacked visual and audial aids, which we will mention in the forthcoming report.

The teacher, as the third element to be observed, was friendly and patient towards her students. She held the control of the classroom well, but the negative thing about her was that she barely moved in the classroom. She mostly preferred to sit on her desk and gave instructions. Instead, she could have revealed herself more and used body language to make the learning more effective.

Last of all, having been aware of the importance of English in TEOG exam, the students seemed to be involved and interested in the lesson. Almost all of them took part in the tasks and activities. The negative aspect would be that they sometimes quarreled noisily over trivial matters which can be attributed to their puberty, when they become stressful and obsessed with little matters. Except for that, every other thing was acceptable.

8th week

In this task, we were supposed to observe whether the activities in the lesson were oriented towards fluency or accuracy. During the lesson, the teacher carried out 6 activities in total, 5 of which were written based while one of them was spoken based. They were ‘vocabulary’, ‘match the sentences’, ‘grammar practice’, ‘dialogue completion’ activities. All of the activities held in the lesson were oriented towards accuracy rather than fluency. Students were given enough time to think over the activities. In this case we barely witnessed interaction between the students and the teacher in terms of communicative competence. The reason is that the students are preparing for the TEOG exam. They are constructing English with a basis of  grammar knowledge based on accuracy, which is acceptable in a way. However, the actual problem is that they almost completely omit the section that focuses on communication. At this point, the question of ‘what would they do with an English that they could never use actively in different situations?’ comes to our mind. Therefore, there were, of course, instability and imbalance between the activities.  What we would suggest is that the teacher should keep a rough balance between the activities in terms of accuracy and fluency. In fact, fluency should be the actual priority.

Since language is a tool for communication that is to be used actively, language teaching methods should be adjusted according to this purpose. In this case, as a prospective English teacher, we will use authentic language material and tasks that are linked to the outside world as much possible as we can in the classroom. However, in order to avoid inaccurate use of the target language, grammar structures should also be referred. We are strongly against the idea of teaching a language in a single-track.

Though the book used in the class has a communicative approach, it is not sufficient enough for students to acquire real-life English. In this case they need more authentic materials which give them an opportunity to receive comprehensible input followed by productive output.

In conclusion, the only thing that we observed was a lesson focused predominantly on grammar proficiency, which is crucial to pass the TEOG exam. Here comes the argument that we should not blame the teacher or the students for instability of the activities. The problem arises from the irregularity and disorder of the education system of Turkey. We, as prospective English teachers almost in a year, should try to minimize the unfavorable effects of the system on our students by keeping the balance between the activities as much as possible.