CELTA – Assignment 4 – Lesson from the classroom

Trainee Name: Mazen Kosper

Word Count: 846 Words
a) My views on what makes effective language teaching changed, as a result of the CELTA course; I’ve
understood that the more the students speak the more they learn. Also rather than spoon feeding
them, it’s better to give them work and researches to do to find out more information. I could have
never imagined that skills lessons could be structured in such a communicative way, and it was
extremely beneficial to me to learn more about individual approaches to make the most of the
resource materials to maximize students’ progress.
b) One of my biggest strengths is establishing rapport with the students, and making sure they’re
involved in learning activities. During my TPs the students were very interactive with each other, I
remember during my first 4 TPs, I’ve always received a positive feedback about my rapport from my
fellow trainees and tutor. Also, one other strength is leading the students into the topic; smooth
transition as many would call it. During Tp6, I’ve used my colleague’s TPs to lead in to my lesson,
where I related my lesson to their lesson, which made the students interact smoothly. Also during TP5,
I’ve used one of my colleagues’ previous lesson from another day to lead in to my lesson in a
situational presentation lesson. I’m also happy with how my lesson planning and aim identifying skills
have improved. My monitoring skills have improved since my first lesson. I have been able to
effectively monitor the task in an appropriate way, for example: staying quiet and centred during
listening activities, and monitor around during speaking activities to collect errors to be corrected later
on.
c) One of the areas that I need to develop is analysing language and vocabulary, starting from my 3 rd TP
to my 5th, I’ve always had comments on them, even for my 6th TP I haven’t had enough vocabulary in
my vocabulary analysis sheet. Another thing that needs developing is not giving the instructions
clearly; distributing the handouts before instructing students. This problem well appeared during TP4,
TP5 and TP6, but I’ve managed to reduce its occurrence along the way as I’ve highlighted in my own
notes to give instructions before handout. One more thing I noticed during my first few TPs is that I
need to decrease TTT and echoing.
d) My colleagues impressed me with a few things. In the very first 2 TPs, Amel had the cleanest, most
organized board that I have ever seen, she made use of every single spot of the board. This helped the
students understand and keep track of what was being taught. I’ve also learned from Mirna during the
3rd and 4th TP how colourful visuals can be of good aid to the students and would look great on the
board from a distance. Ali, during most of his TPs, and in particular the 3 rd and the 5th, encouraged the
students to speak more frequently and audibly, and always rewarded them with a smile. Amel also
impressed me with another thing that I’ve used it during my TP, and that is during the TTT approach
during the 6th TP. She tested the students and then moved on to the teaching part without feedback,
in which it helped the students to understand their mistakes and correct them accordingly with full
understanding.
e) I have learned a lot from my observation of experienced teachers in the DVDs, for example during the
task based lesson on the DVD. The teacher told the students to arrange useful sentences according to
the context she had just introduced as a way to feedback. I think this is a good and effective way as
the students work together to create useful phrases with freedom relation to the topic. Then she
elicited the sentences and worked on the form and pronunciation orally without the need to write
anything on the board. Later on she gave them a paper that has all the stress, linking words and
intonation. This was a useful student based lesson. One more thing I learned from observing
experienced teachers is through the PUA teacher when she did a really good freer activity. She divided
 the class into groups of threes and made them discuss the topic together, and then come out to role-
play in front of the whole class. This built confidence to the STS and also boosted their fluency skill.
f)
g) A teacher never stops learning, beyond the course, I plan to read about education and different
teaching methodologies. “Anything you do in your work that actively seeking to help you learn and
progress is a kind of action research” James Scrivener, Learning Teaching.
Areas to work on: Action Plan:
Decreasing teacher talking time 1) Read ‘Talk less. Teach more!’ Chapter 2, The principles of
nonverbal communication by Pearl Nitsche.
2) Use gestures, group work and ask questions.
3) Observe more experienced teachers and learn how they
maximize STT.
Stop negative echoing 1) Ask peers to signal me when I echo, so I can be aware
that I’m doing it.
2) Train myself to come up with another kind of response to
STS rather than echoing their reply.
3) Check Jill Crawshaw’s video on good and bad TTT.
http://ef-teachers.com/video/good-and-bad-ttt

References:

Learning Teaching English – James Scrivener.

Practical English Usage – Swan.