Report 3 - Week 5&6 - Ozan Berk & Hilal Cemre Altıparmak

Report 3 - Hilal Cemre Altıparmak / Ozan Berk

 Report 3

Hilal Cemre ALTIPARMAK - Ozan Berk

Week: 5&6
School: Celaleattin Sayhan Primary School
Class: 4/D - 4/E

Yonca ÖZKAN
Yasemin ÖZDEMİR

Task 1:

We have observed the fifth and the sixth weeks and we have focused on our teacher’s instruction-giving skills. Except for one of the instruction giving skills the teacher uses all of them effectively during the class. Only negative thing we can say about her usage of instruction skills is her choice of using explanations rather than demonstration.

Before she starts the activity she mostly uses “Be quiet!”, “Listen!”, “Attention please” and other similar imperatives to signal start of an activity. She always prefers simple language when she is talking in target language. While giving instructions she usually uses short sentences to give the message more clearly. She tries to use the target language as much as possible but she relies on source language when she wants to explain something in detail. We think that her usage short sentences, simple language and usage the target language as much as possible contributes to her lesson positively.

She also repeats instructions in a different way when the students have difficulty in understanding what she says. For example she says “Open your books”, if she sees that there are some students who don’t understand the instruction she shows it by using her body language and if there is still a problem she uses the source language. She also uses visual aids while teaching. Sometimes, she uses board to draw something. For example when the teacher wanted to teach the differences between “He, she, it, they” she drew a girl, a boy and a group of people playing football.

She prefers explaining over demonstrating and this is her biggest shortcoming. It has negative impact on the lesson because students need to see real life usage of the language instead of listening explanations. Students should internalize what they have learned during the lesson and it is only possible through demonstrations.

Personally, we think that logic and clarity, voice quality, eye contact and using body language, mimes and gestures effectively are the most important factors when giving instructions. These factors make it easier for students to understand what teacher wants them to do. They support the meaning, message behind teacher’s instructions.

As it is clear to see the teacher gives instructions effectively except for demonstrating things over explaining. We think that demonstration is also important while giving instructions and we would incorporate it into our own teaching to make our instructions more clear.

Task 2:

In this week we were supposed to observe a group and a pair work in the classroom but our teacher doesn’t prefer to use group and pair work activities while teaching. Because of that we are unable to give specific examples from classroom and that’s why in this report we are going to talk about potential benefits of using group and pair work activities while teaching a foreign language.

First of all, we can say that biggest advantage of using small group work and pair work is that it helps students to grow autonomous. In Turkey “helicopter parenting” is on the rise. “Helicopter parenting” means that some parents are paying extremely close attention to the children’s experiences at educational institutions and it severely damages children’s autonomy. Pair and group activities help students to become more independent as they take initiative to learn new things by themselves, work with their peers, and work independently from the teacher all the while having more time to speak in the class.

Pair and group activities also help students to make them familiar with working with a group of people collaboratively. It allows the students to work together with others while sharing a common goal and make them lead and to be led while working together to reach said common goal. The teacher just has to go around and listen to the children to monitor their progress. It is unrealistic to think a single teacher can monitor everyone at once so she can get help from the students. Students can take turns to monitor other group members while they are talking.

There are also some factors which teacher needs to pay attention while doing a group activity in the classroom. Those are organizing the groups, seating, teacher’s position, giving clear instructions and using signals to point out the beginning and the ending of the activity. If she doesn’t pay attention to those points, teacher may lose the control of the class.

To put everything in a nutshell it can be seen that pair and group activities are important while teaching a foreign language as they provide many benefits, like helping students to become more autonomous, work collaboratively and we think that we will use those activities when we have our own classes.