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Gonzalo Miguel Gonzales Gómez

PDP Part 1

Existing beliefs and practices

I believe that in order to communicate adequately, an appropriate use of

the language depending on the context is needed. If the receiver fails to
interpret the message correctly because of the sender’s incorrect
gauging of the language, communication might be slowed down or even
broken. This I try to achieve by:

 Making students understand that errors are a natural part of their

learning process but that they must be corrected.
 Understanding their needs and adapting my classes to them.
 Indicating the appropriateness of the language.
 Making students aware of the importance of always
communicating appropriately according to the register.

I also believe it is important to use authentic material when working

with a course book and that this material should be selected by
taking into consideration the group’s profile. Materials designed for
course books sometimes do not engage students and are related to
their cultural background. On the other hand, authentic materials can
fit my student’s needs and interests, and exposes them to an
authentic source beyond the language used in the course book. So,
how I choose and adapt my material depends on what I have learned
from my students.

Strengths as a teacher

 I think that by having a good amount of cultural knowledge I can

be more helpful to my students and raise their cultural awareness.
When students fail to realize the differences between our culture
and other, I try to point them out so that students avoid creating
cross cultural conflict in real-life interactions.
 I also consider that I am good at planning according to my
students’ needs. I feel that by getting interested in my students

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and profiling my groups accordingly, I can create tailor-made
lessons which will be more relevant to my students.
 I try to monitor activities from a fair distance and I am always
available to assist my students. By doing it from a distance, I am
not intrusive and I allow my students to work independently.
Monitoring is the tool that informs me of my student’s
development and constantly complements my group profile
information.

Weaknesses as a teacher

 I believe that one of my main weaknesses is that I am not always

sure about what error correction technique to use when teaching
advanced learners and most of the times I resort to giving
immediate correction or delayed correction only, I think that
sometimes promoting self-correction could be more rewarding to
the student but I tend to forget to do it.
 Another weakness that I generally have is rapport. It is difficult for
me to purposefully create a suitable environment for learning,
which is because I find it difficult to react to some of my students’
personalities and I do not respond appropriately to non-verbal
communication.
 One of the aspects of my teaching that I have often neglected or
relegated and I aim to improve is the teaching of pronunciation.
Despite the fact that students are provided with enough
comprehensible input, I think that there are some instances where
I should put more emphasis on the teaching of phonological
features.

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PDP Part 2

The aim of the lesson was for students to simulate a presentation of a

product in order to build their self-confidence when speaking in public
(see Appendix 1). In this document I will try to explain why I believe this
aim to be partially achieved.

Strengths

I believe one of my strongest points was to be able to anticipate

situations that could arise during the class and these were tackled from
end to end of the lesson. For example, Isaura and Guillermo were about
to start using their cellphone as they had already finished with the task
at hand, whereas the other group was still working on it. So I intervened
and asked further questions to Isaura’s group. Hadn’t it been for the
detailed group profile, this lesson wouldn’t have served its purpose, for
it is because of my students profile that speaking activities helped them
become engaged to the target language. I also think that the lesson
plan was thorough and detailed and helped me to achieve my main aims

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as the activities were sequenced logically and were easy to follow. Due
to this, students were familiarized with the same process that people
usually follow in real life presentations.

Weaknesses

On the other hand, I think that by further exploiting the video material
with an extra task focused on meaning, students would have been more
aware of the language and would have had the opportunity to use the
target language more autonomously. Timing was anticipated as a
problem in this lesson. However, I failed to be time-efficient with
everything I planned for into an hour. Although the aims were met after
the hour session this was not achieved as planned because the
solutions related to timing were not prioritized realistically. Also,
choosing a range of eliciting techniques in which closed questions were
more restricted, could have led to a better response from students
during the first part of the lesson.

Overall effectiveness of planning and teaching

After receiving feedback from my observer and reflecting, I think that

this lesson was effective on some points and lacking on others.
Planning was, in my opinion, mostly satisfactory and adhered to my
principles, because I planned to make my students speak clearly and
use the target language correctly; my material was also authentic and
chosen according to what I have learned about that group’s needs.
While teaching, I believe to have effectively monitored with the
objective of providing students with relevant and accurate feedback.

On the other hand, I failed to plan for linguistic problems and solutions
that could have arisen during the lesson, which would have led to a
more effective staging in the lesson plan itself. Moreover, if I had
provided students with relevant scaffolding, they would have identified
and appropriated relevant chunks of language in the text in order to use
that language autonomously in their presentations. Finally, I should

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have planned to teach stress and intonation so that students would
deliver a more convincing and authentic pitch.

PDP Part 3

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Aspects to improve

After receiving feedback from the external observer, reflecting on his

comments and on my previous experience as a teacher, and also
observing other teachers, I have decided to work with the following
aspects:

Scaffolding of speaking lessons

I chose to work with this area, because I have noticed throughout my

experience that my students are able to perform the tasks and use the
target language, but after some lessons it seems that they have
forgotten the language. Thus, students are not achieving internalization
of the linguistic items, but are just not repeating the language
meaningfully. Both the observer and I noticed that I had failed to
provide students with enough exposition to the language. In my
observed lesson, had I devised tasks where students could have more
thoroughly analyzed the video text, students would have become aware
of the target language more and, consequently, use it during the
production stage. I think that by providing students with more
awareness-raising activities and supporting accordingly, there would
have been more effective scaffolding of the task. After reading
Thornbury (2005), I can devise lessons in which could lead my students
to a greater degree of autonomy. I will address this situation throughout
the month of October. This I will try to achieve by making sure that my
lessons are planned in a coherent sequence in which students could
maximize their language production. By the end of this period, I should
be able to plan a lesson that helps students appropriate the target
language.

Teaching of pronunciation

During the observed class, I should have taken pronunciation into

consideration when planning, especially when pitching a product,
because these features can be the ones that convince the target
audience to buy a product or close a deal. So, it would have been

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crucial to make students aware of how natural and important
phonological features are and the meaning they convey. As I mentioned
on the first part of this document, the teaching of pronunciation has
been an underexplored area by me. In my experience, pronunciation is
often overlooked by teachers and that has made me somewhat oblivious
to its importance. Despite the fact that I have taught pronunciation of
individual sounds and of connected speech before, I have yet to
incorporate the teaching of pronunciation in my lessons consistently.
Throughout the months of September and October, I set to plan my
lessons in a way that allows my students to notice the importance of
sounding natural and achieving an appropriate degree of intelligibility by
considering the following general aspects taken from Underhill (pp. 58-
89, 2005): stress, intonation and rhythm. At the end of this period, my
planning will take into consideration what the expected performance of
a speaker is according to the Common European Framework of
Reference (CEFR) in regards to pronunciation.

Anticipating linguistic problems and solutions

I mentioned that anticipating problems and solutions was one of my

strengths and the observer concurred. However, he noticed that I
should have paid extra attention to anticipating problems with meaning,
form and pronunciation of the target language. Although no problems
that could have impended communication arose during the lesson, and
those that did arise were dealt with; I think that if I had planned for
linguistic problems and solutions, the phonological features I mentioned
in the previous point would have been naturally planned into the lesson.
I have devised to talk to other teachers previous to the classes I
observe so that we can brainstorm together what the potential
linguistic problems of a language lesson might be. After that, I will
observe the class and compare what we brainstormed to what
happened in the lesson. This practice, I believe will give me some
insight into what mistakes one could expect students to make and what
course of action could be taken during the lesson and will also allow me
to change my lesson plan before the lesson in order to prevent some
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mistakes from happening. I have also read specialized literature into the
topic like Learner English by Swan (2001), which has given me ideas on
what language is potentially difficult for Spanish speakers. I set to work
on this during the month of October, in selected lessons in which there
will be focus on vocabulary. I plan to evaluate my progress by
comparing what I anticipated a linguistic problem to be, what my
solution was and what actually happened during the lesson and how I
responded to it. So, I will analyze my progress in terms of how
effectively I could anticipate problems and solve them.

Eliciting

The reason I chose to work on this point is my perceived problem with

rapport. In the lesson implemented on the second part of this document,
the observer noticed that I had a good rapport with that group.
However, one of the weaknesses I noticed in my class was that my
eliciting did not encourage what I perceive as “useful” answers from my
students, so I disregarded them. Scrivener (p. 31, 2005) suggests that
really listening to students and giving clear appropriate feedback can
contribute to create a positive learning atmosphere. So, I reflected on
my demeanor when I give feedback to an answer from my students after
eliciting and this has made me believe that there is a connection
between the teacher’s response to a learner’s contribution and the
building of rapport. After discussing with my tutor, I was suggested to
read something about dialogic teaching, and according to Alexander
(2010) this approach requires: “answers which are justified, followed up
and built upon rather than merely received and feedback which informs
and leads thinking forward as well as encourages”. I will work to
improve this aspect of my teaching throughout the month of October.
This I will try to achieve by first observing other teachers and reflect on
what students feel when they receive feedback after eliciting and then I
will record and monitor my questions in a class, the answers I receive
and the feedback I provide and I will check if my feedback after eliciting
is encouraging or demotivating. By the end of this period, I should be
more aware of the effect my answers can have in rapport.
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Appendix 1: Lesson plan

Centre :
Candidate: Gonzalo Miguel Gonzales Gómez
Candidate no:
Date: July 25th 2015
School: The Anglo Florida
Level: The Anglo HS2. Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) C1
Age group: 15 to 25 years old
Main aim: By the end of the lesson, students will have simulated a presentation of a product of their
own in order to build their self-confidence when speaking in public
Subsidiary aim: By the end of the lesson, students will have practiced vocabulary related to presentations
in order to use those chunks of language to pitch a product.
Personal aim: To be able to deliver a task based lesson in sixty minutes.
Recent work done: Students have practiced phonetics and pronunciation as this has been a request of the
group. They have also listened to, read, written and delivered a speech. Students have
practiced identifying the target audience of a discourse.
Profile of the group, including See appendix 1.1
affective and linguistic needs:
Rationale – How the needs of the See appendix 1.2
learners relate to the main aim and
objectives of the lesson:
Anticipated problems and solutions: See appendix 1.3

Material referenced: See appendix 1.4

Stage Objective Procedure Material Interaction Time

Preparation To activate schemata T. will show a slideshow where people are Slideshow Lockstep 5 -7
about vocabulary pitching products and elicits what the situation (material 1) minutes

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related to pitching a is. 4 Dictionaries Pair work
product by asking what
vocabulary is used T. will pre-teach key vocabulary: Presentation,
during a pitch in order introduction, pitch and round of Q&A.
to engage students.
T. will ask whole group to brainstorm about
what type of vocabulary they would expect to
hear when pitching a product.

T. will write some of the suggestions on the

whiteboard.

T. will ask ss. To work in pairs to exchange

their views and make notes.

T. will ask each pair to write one of their ideas

on the board.
Linguistic To build up background T. will tell ss. that they will watch a video and Video Whole class 10 - 15
Support knowledge by they have to check if the ideas on the board (material 2) minutes
identifying gambits that are similar to the ones on the video. Handout 1
are used when pitching (material 3)
a product in order to be Ss. will be asked to sit in a circle and discuss
prepared to perform their findings.
the subsequent activity.
T. will elicit the vocabulary from the video.

Ss. will be provided a handout with the

vocabulary to ensure word-sound
correspondence.
Set up of the To pitch a product by T. will have students grouped into three Markers Group work 20

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Activity planning a presentation different teams and each one of them will Bond paper minutes
in which the target have to present a random product taken from Checklist
audience is established a box. (material 4)
and the main goals Box
identified in order to T. will provide students with a checklist in Random items
sell the students ideas which it will be clear that ss. must establish the (Bolt, sand and
to other groups target audience, identify the main goal of their pen cap)
pitch and use appropriate vocabulary.

T. will provide students with a set of markers

and some bond paper so that they can prepare
visual support if needed.

T. will promote learners independence by

monitoring from a distance and stay
approachable.

Each group will perform accordingly and the

rest of the groups will take notes on the
groups’ performance based on their checklists.
Feedback To make students Ss. will cut the handout and give the Group work 8 minutes
aware of their strengths corresponding feedback to the other groups.
and shortcomings by
receiving feedback on T. will monitor and take notes on the
content from their comments.
peers and feedback on
language from the T. will highlight on the board any
teacher in order to communication impending errors noted on the
reflect and improve on presentations.
their performance.

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T. will provide face to face feedback on their
language to each group.
Task To gain more T. will ask students to present another product Checklist 2 Group work 12
Repetition confidence on their but now they will be provided with the option (material 5) Individual minutes
spoken production by to choose what they want to pitch. work
repeating the task in
order to improve their T. allows time to prepare their new
accuracy and fluency. presentation.

T. monitors from a distance to promote

learners’ independence and to promote sense
of progress.

T. will allow each group to perform.

After all groups have performed T. will provide

each group with a checklist in which students
will self-evaluate their performance.

T. wraps up the lesson by asking how they felt

in terms of confidence and use of the target
language after performing for a second time
and whether they improved or felt more
confident.

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Appendix 1.1

Group profile

This is, according to the Common European Framework of

Reference for Languages, a B2 Level group. The students in this
group are enrolled in a 30-hour course. They come to class every
Saturday for four-hour sessions. They normally change teachers
every course and this is my third course with this group. However,
only half of the students have been in this group from the
beginning.

As of now, there are 11 students, but the possibility exists of

having new members, since enrolment is still open. The group in
general, even though keen on learning generally arrive late. As a
consequence, and according to previous teachers, they present
problems with production since the early stages of their enrolment
due to the fact that they are not often in the classroom when
presentation is given. Despite my attempts at addressing the
group’s deficiencies through the communicative approach and
TBL, so far, the group has not shown a good level of progress in
terms of confidence in productive skills, yet they have shown
progress in receptive ones. Students tend to over monitor
themselves to an extent that produces long hesitation periods.

Information about individual learners relevant to the lesson

Isaura:

Isaura is a 17-year-old woman from Mexico City. She is studying

high school and would like to become a psychiatrist. Although she
does not find relevant to study English now, she would like to live
abroad someday. She does not enjoy speaking in public as she
feels insecure due to her previous experiences which have
hindered her motivation towards doing it and she finds it difficult

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to generate and order her ideas fast enough to produce utterances
with confidence. She wants to be able to communicate without
hesitation and mistakes, and to have enough self-esteem to talk to
people from different nationalities. Hence, working on content and
language feedback through self and peer correction should prove
beneficial.

Brayan:

Brayan is a 19-year-old man, from Mexico City. He is currently

studying Administration. Throughout this course he has exposed
his desire to improve his fluency in speaking. He does not find
difficult to generate ideas and feels confident in being able to
improve his speaking skill. However, Brayan presents a great
degree of fossilization, which he is not aware of due to his
extreme confidence. Hence, providing room for content and
language feedback during this speaking lesson should help him
raise awareness on his monitoring and cover these aspects.

Guillermo:

Guillermo is a 17-year-old man from Mexico City. He is studying

high school and would like to become a doctor or a veterinarian;
he would also like to publish a novel. He is studying English
because he perceives English as a lingua franca. He plans to
publish a novel in the USA, which means he will have to travel
there and sell his novel. He feels insecure about his pronunciation
and accuracy. He especially gets frustrated and shows a high level
of anxiety when facing language he was not able to, in his opinion,
master. On the other hand, he understands that even native
speakers make mistakes; still, he would like to take this to a
minimum. Thus, providing him with the opportunity to self-correct
during feedback and then perform for a second time should lower
his affective filter and improve his confidence.

Victor:

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Victor is a 23-year-old man from Tulancingo. He is studying
Entertainment Business Management and would like to work in
media; he is also an English teacher at Interlingua. He is studying
English because he is aware of his shortcomings and would like to
improve in order to have better job opportunities in a global
economy. For this, he notices the importance of good
communication skills and persuasion. Victor tends to over self-
monitor when speaking and fears not conveying clear ideas.
Although he feels much more secure after he has practiced the
language, he still monitors and loses fluency. With this in
consideration, providing room for content feedback during this
speaking lesson should help him raise awareness on his
monitoring and cover this aspect.

Mariana:

Mariana is a 25-year-old woman from Mexico City. She is an

economist at a brokerage firm. She is studying English because
she would like to study a Master’s Degree program in Europe.
Thus, she needs to prepare for the TOEFL IBT or IELTS and
achieve a C1 level of competence. She sees English as a way to
understand culture and people from around the world. She wants
to be able to communicate without hesitation and fluently. By
giving her time to prepare her discourse and providing feedback on
her performance, she should have the opportunity to attain a
better degree of fluency.

Maria:

Maria is a 20-year-old woman from Mexico City. She is studying

Geophysical Engineering and would like to study a Master’s
Degree program and work as a researcher. She is studying English
because it helps her understand the information on the most
recent articles about her major. She wants to get a scholarship
and study a Master’s Degree abroad. For this, she knows that she
needs a TOEFL IBT or IELTS certification. She is aware of her
pronunciation mistakes and considers that her greatest weakness.

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Hence, continuing with awareness raising strategies by examining
the target language and giving her room to self-correct should
prove beneficial.

Adrian:

Adrian is a 15-year-old man from Mexico City. He is studying high

school and he is still not sure about his expectations, but would
like to do something related to travelling. English is relevant to
him because he often travels to English-speaking countries. Adrian
feels pretty confident when speaking with non-native speakers.
However, he shies away from speaking to native speakers due to
his fear of mispronouncing. Thus, language feedback will be
provided on his utterances so that he should be better able to self-
monitor his pronunciation.

Diego:

Diego is a 21-year-old man from Mexico City. He is studying

Mechatronic Engineering and would like to work in the automation
area of a car manufacturer. He is also a musician. He is studying
English because he likes being able to understand the music he
likes and because he would like to live in a foreign country. When
speaking, he wants to be able to communicate with lexical and
grammatical accuracy. As a consequence, giving him language
practice and feedback on language should cover these aspects.

Appendix 1.2

Rationale

This class came to life taking into consideration the needs of this
group. This group of learners have been taking Guided Learning for
more than five hundred hours, as they are at a B2 level at the
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and are
working towards a CEFR level C1. The majority of this group of
students are driven by working and learning purposes to present a

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C1-level certification or linguistic competence. According to the
CEFR at level C1, students should be able to understand and give a
presentation in the workplace. This is why providing them with
appropriate training will enable them to achieve their educational
goals.

Based on the concerns that my students have regarding speaking,

which they have voiced throughout the course and include: “I don’t
have enough vocabulary”, “I feel nervous when I need to speak in
front of people in English”, “I am afraid of using a wrong word” or
“I don’t want to make a pronunciation mistake”. These inform the
lesson as what they seem to lack is confidence on their use of the
language. As a result, there is a need for them to work on fluency
and accuracy and a class that tackles them both should help to
reduce their affective filter as well.

By providing students with appropriate input, feedback and enough

time to reflect on their performance, both fluency and accuracy
will be addressed in this class through task repetition. Studies by
Bygate (2001) have revealed the positive effects on fluency and
accuracy of task repetition. This will ensure that students have
enough room to reflect on their performance and improve,
providing support to those students with poor performance or
those who lack confidence when speaking.

By focusing on lexical items before the production, learners should

find it easier to produce language more fluently and accurately
during the presentation itself. Also taking into consideration that
some of the learners feel more confident when having enough
background knowledge will ensure that they are able to focus on
other aspects of their discourse and away from worrying about
making mistakes with lexis.

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I agree with White (1998) when he mentions that video can be very
motivating for language learners. In this group, they can actually
relate with the person pitching the presentation as he is of a
similar age as this group’s average and has similar interests to
some of the members of the class. For a group where some
students prefer visual input, I agree with Wilson (2008) in that
“being able to see the speakers, their context and body language…
and seeing people in their natural habitat” can provide meaningful
context for this group of learners.

Another aspect of this lesson is how learners will be grouped.

Even though this group of learners seems to have plenty of things
in common, there are key differences that can make differences in
their performances. Age is fundamental, the youngest students
have no experience whatsoever in working environments and most
likely have the least background knowledge. Hence, peer-provided
scaffolding by older students to younger students should reduce
the latter stress level and motivate their younger peers.
Furthermore, working with three groups will give enough variety to
the opinions on how to tackle the task, but will also hopefully keep
the timing checked. Moreover, groups of three or four will be able
to give and receive feedback with a higher degree of confidence
as opposed to working individually or in pairs.

Appendix 1.3

Anticipated problems and solutions

Problem: Lack of background knowledge. Taking into

consideration the students’ ages, they will most likely struggle to
grasp some of the concepts for selling a product that will be used

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during the lesson such as usual lexis and how to organize a
presentation.

Solution: Pre-teaching at the early stages of the lesson should

cover some of the expressions to be used in latter stages and
peer-provided scaffolding should cover the production stage of the
lesson. Students will also be allowed to use their mobile devices
and dictionaries in case it is necessary.

Problem: Some of the students, especially Adrián and Guillermo,

tend to be fast finishers and, if left idle, will deviate from the task
at hand and use their cellphones.

Solution: Students will be grouped in trios and one or two

foursomes are expected. These groups will include stronger and
weaker students; this should balance the time they spend during
the tasks. If they still finish fast, the teacher will ask follow up
questions.

Problem: The process of having to offer a product may not be

engaging to all the students.

Solution: The material and pace of the lesson have been chosen by
taking into consideration their attention span, even if they get
disengaged from the lesson, there will be enough activities to
keep them busy at all time. Students will also get a chance to
personalize at the last part of the lesson.

Problem: When using a task-based approach, students tend to take

longer periods of time than expected.

Solution: Activities, materials and groupings have been carefully

selected in order to prevent this problem. If at any moment, a
stage seems to be taking longer than expected it can be cut short
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as long as students have had the chance to use the target
language. Therefore, close attention to the time spent at each
stage is paramount. However, presentations and feedback stages
cannot be cut short.

Problem: As enrolment is still open, there is a chance that a new

student, who could have a totally different profile from the group
or a bad attitude, integrates. This could mean the lesson to be
unsuitable for the learner.

Solution: Getting to know key information and quickly profile

him/her is vital. With this information, the student can be
integrated with the group he/she shares most things in common,
which I will find out by asking questions. Encouraging and
monitoring his/her behavior should keep any threat to the lesson at
bay.

Problem: Some students like Isaura, Veronica and Naomi tend to

resort to L1.

Solution: By providing enough opportunities to build self-

confidence in the target language, resorting to L1 should be kept
to a minimum. However, if the situation starts to be disruptive,
teacher will have to intervene and encourage the use of L2.

Appendix 1.4

Materials

Material 1 (Presentation)

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Created by Miguel Gonzales, based on pictures taken from Google

Images retrieved on July 23rd 2015.

Material 2 (Video)

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Dragon’s Den South Africa Episode 12

https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=KbYwD6_rbVw retrieved on
July 24th 2015.

Material 3 (Key vocabulary)

Key vocabulary: How to pitch a product

Presentation

 Good day, my name is …

 I’m here today for …
 I’m here today to offer you …
Introduction

 We have all had…

 How many of you have…?
 Ok, so what is…?
Pitch

 The problem … aims to solve is…

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 This is actually…
 The major advantage is…
 What exactly is …
 I’m asking for an investment of…
 In order to…
Q&A

 Are there any questions?

 Thank you. Any questions?
 As I mentioned early…

Created by Miguel Gonzales.

Based on excerpts from BBC. Dragon’s Den S04E01, Dragon’s Den

S05E08 and Dragon’s Den SA EP12; and Cotton, David. New Edition
Market Leader. Pearson Longman 2009. pp. 59 and 113.

Material 4 (Checklist 1)

CHECKLIST

NAME: _______________________ DATE: ________________

Before you pitch your product, make sure you have taken this into consideration.

A. Read the questions and tick ().

1. Have you established the target audience? 

2. Do you know what the main goal of your pitch is? 
3. Have you planned to use appropriate vocabulary for the target audience or context ? 
4. Is your pitch divided into different stages? How many? 
5. Are you ready to answer questions from the public? 
6. Have you planned your pitch to last less than three minutes? 
B. Pay attention to the other groups.

Make notes on their performance based on the checklist above.

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GROUP _____

GROUP ______

Created by Miguel Gonzales.

Material 5 (Checklist 2)

CHECKLIST 2

NAME: _____________________________ DATE: ______________________

After your second presentation,  reflect on your performance.

A. Read and circle  according to your reflection.

1. Were you able to identify and establish the target audience?

NOT ACHIEVED ATTEMPTED ACHIEVED

2. Did you know what the main goal of your pitch was?

NOT ACHIEVED ATTEMPTED ACHIEVED

3. Did you use appropriate vocabulary?

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NOT ACHIEVED ATTEMPTED ACHIEVED

4. Was your pitch divided into different stages?

NOT ACHIEVED ATTEMPTED ACHIEVED

5. Did you feel ready to answer questions from the audience?

NOT ACHIEVED ATTEMPTED ACHIEVED

6. Did you plan your pitch to last less than three minutes?

NOT ACHIEVED ATTEMPTED ACHIEVED

B. Write any ideas for your own improvement.

Created by Miguel Gonzales.

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Appendix 2: Observer’s Feedback

TPC

Observation Form

Candidate name: Gonzalo Miguel Gonzales

Date: 25/7/15

Observer: Andrew Watson

Dear Miguel

Thank you for having invited me to observe your lesson. The

following are comments on what I noticed in your lesson. I hope
you will find them useful for reflection.

The Lesson Plan

Strengths

It was clearly a speaking skills lesson with vocabulary and

pronunciation development as subsidiary aims. There was a
logical sequence of activities. It was good to have an authentic
video to set the context (pitching a product) and you asked some

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comprehension questions about the content of the video after they
had seen it. You provided an inventory of key words and chunks
that they could use to sell their product. Materials and visuals
were professional-looking and the ‘check list’ you designed to help
them prepare their speaking task was helpful. Miguel, it was a
good idea to build in task repetition into the lesson plan as this
would allow them to turn your feedback on the language to good
use and hopefully, generate fluency and accuracy. You had stated
your main aim in terms of an observable outcome (presenting a
product). There were plenty of anticipated problems and solutions
and these were well focused on organisational problems and
issues with individual learners. The profiles of the individuals were
very comprehensive. You had obviously based your lesson aims on
their needs and the rationale was well grounded in theory (Bygate
on the importance of repeating tasks to develop fluency and
accuracy). Timings matched those assigned in the lesson plan
fairly closely.

Weaknesses

Miguel, the video text seemed underused as a resource and I didn’t

see evidence in the lesson plan that you had thought carefully
enough about processing it for meaning. For example, there was
no pre-teaching of difficult vocabulary (e.g., rand, drop out of) that
might ease their understanding, nor gist questions, nor while-
listening questions or tasks. You did ask one or two questions
after the viewing but these were about the language used (and not
included in the LP). This left me thinking that may have forgotten
the procedures (pre-, while, and post-) for receptive skills
teaching. Any text used should be thoroughly processed for
meaning before you attempt to use it for focus on language or
skills. It seemed you omitted linguistic problems and solutions
from your LP as there were plenty of potential issues with

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meaning, form and pronunciation of the chunks of language in the
video.

Your Teaching Skills

Strengths

Miguel, you have a good rapport with the group, dialogue well with
them and show interest in what individual students are saying.
You monitored and assisted well while they were planning their
sales pitches. The ‘key vocabulary’ and ‘checklist’ worksheets
both helped to focus students’ attention on what was expected of
them. You also gave clear instructions for the task. There was a
high level of participation in the pitches. All students had a chance
to talk and the level of student talking time was high. There was
plenty of interaction between students when they had to ask
questions about each others’ products and it was a great idea to
let peers provide feedback. You gave them some feedback on
language performance at the end of each presentation.

Weaknesses

Effective teaching of the exponents/useful phrases seemed to be

lacking. The text was underexploited as a resource to help them
with their own sales pitches. There was only one chance to see
the video. This appeared to be insufficient opportunity to identify
chunks in the text (awareness raising) and then help them
‘appropriate’ the chunks so that they could use them
autonomously in their pitches. A common strategy on 2nd or 3rd
listening would be to have them tick the phrases they heard on the
‘key vocabulary’ worksheet and have them categorise them

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according to function, and then perhaps work on the emphatic
stress or intonation by underlining the content words in the
tapescript. Ask yourself: could there have been vocabulary input,
such as fixed expressions and noun phrases to allow them to
describe the product itself (e.g., It’s a kind of … it’s made of
reinforced stainless steel … water-resistant)? Could this have been
supplied before performing the task again? While you gave
feedback to groups after turn 1, you focused on pronunciation of
individual words rather than whole chunks or phrases that would
be useful for the task repetition. It appeared to me there wasn’t
enough effective scaffolding for the task.

Other comments

Overall, it was a well-planned and structured lesson, but the

speaking element seemed to require more scaffolding by focusing
on the language features in the video. To sell their product
successfully, Miguel, the students appeared to need more help to
retain and use fluently the key vocabulary you gave them. In my
view, they needed a little more assistance to develop emphatic
stress and intonation in order to make an enthusiastic pitch.
Mostly, the students’ pitches sounded a little flat, unconvincing,
and they left out many of the key phrases. If you were to teach it
again, ask yourself whether you could have focused on the
‘Dragon’s Den’ video earlier to leave more time for supporting
language work.

You could do some follow up reading on awareness-raising,

appropriation and autonomous use from Thornbury’s How to Teach
Speaking, and read more about the rationale for teaching language
chunks and how the lexical approach is used in TBL. Jane and
Dave Willis have written about this.

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Appendix 3: Instruments

INSTRUMENT 1

OBSERVATION – SCAFFOLDING OF SPEAKING LESSONS

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Stage Objective Procedure Material Interaction Time

Did the teacher take the learners in a logical sequence?

Did the sequence maximise production?

How does the scaffolding aid/hinder learner’s production?

Did teacher undermine learner’s autonomy by over scaffolding?

INSTRUMENT 2

OBSERVATION - ANTICIPATING LANGUAGE PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

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WHAT IS EXPECTED DONE/NOT

POSSIBLE POSSIBLE WHAT WOULD I
FROM LEARNERS AT DONE?
PROBLEM SOLUTION HAVE DONE?
THIS LEVEL?

Were there any other unforeseen problems that arose during the lesson? How were
these dealt with?

To which extent did the teacher take previous evidence to plan this lesson?

What have I learnt from this observation?

INSTRUMENT 3

OBSERVATION – WORKING ON PRONUNCIATION (CHUNKS OF LANGUAGE)

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WAS THERE ANY EXPLICIT

POINTS TO CONSIDER TEACHING OF THE FEATURE IN COMMENTS
THIS LESSON?

Modelling:
Did the teacher
provide students
with clear models?

Intelligibility:
Were students
intelligible?

Rhythm:
Were there
changes in the
students’ voice
rhythm?

Stress:
Did students stress
sentences
appropriately?

Intonation:
Did students
convey meaning by
their intonation?

What should I attempt?

INSTRUMENT 4

OBSERVATION – ELICITING

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TEACHER
STUDENT TEACHER NON-VERBAL EXPECTED
DISPLAY
RESPONSE RESPONSE SIGNALS ANSWER Y/N?
QUESTION

How might students have felt while the teacher was eliciting?

What effect did the teacher’s behaviour have on the students?

How important is the teacher’s response to learner’s contributions?

Did the teacher find the answers he was looking for? Why/why not?

REFERENCES:

Alexander, Robin. Dialogic Teaching Essentials. University of

Cambridge. 2010.

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Bygate M. ‘Effects of task repetition on the structure and control
of oral language’. In: Bygate M, Skehan P, Swain M, editors.
Researching Pedagogic Tasks, Second Language Learning,
Teaching and Testing. Longman. 2001.

Scrivener, Jim. Learning Teaching. A guidebook for English

language teachers. Macmillan Education. 2005.

Swan, Michael and Smith, Bernard. Learner English. A teacher’s

guide to interference and other problems . Cambridge University
Press. 2001.

Thornbury, Scott. How to teach Speaking. Pearson Education

Limited. 2005

Underhill, Adrian. Sound Foundations. Learning and teaching

pronunciation. Macmillan Education. 2005.

White, Goodith Listening. Oxford University Press. 1998.

Wilson, JJ. How to teach listening. Pearson Education Limited.

2008

CEFR Level C1 from: http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/cefr/

retrieved on July 24 2015.
th

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