DVD OBSERVATION: TEACHING GRAMMAR [T-T-T]

DVD OBSERVATION: Grammar [T-T-T] | LOW-INT | 8 Ss | 60 min.

You will watch a recorded lesson in which the teacher (Catherine) deals with grammar using the Test-Teach-Test
approach. The video has been edited to allow you to focus on the teacher and her techniques.

As you watch the lesson, answer the questions. Remember to read the questions before playing the video.

Each stage of the lesson has clear transitions to allow you to pause the video and compare your answers with the answer
key.

LEAD-IN

1. How does Catherine get the students interested at the start of the lesson?

Started her lesson by asking so many questions to check what they have learned before.
She asked some when, why, where these kinds of concept checking questions to introduce the context and explain
it to make sure the recap worked for everybody.
She used some techniques by addressing students’ names in this session.
Last but not least, she personalized the story to fit in the text they wanted to learn for today.

Pause the video and compare your answers with the answer key.

TEST #1

2. Before students do the first ‘test’, what does Catherine do when giving instructions?

She pre-taught the word ‘warn’ by giving instructions, ‘don’t do that’, ‘stronger than recommend’ to let students
guess what the word is.
Then she presented the handout to everyone by modelling the text and explained it by using body language.
She used the context well and pointed out to learners to stress key points.
At the final stage, she used some CCQ (Concept Checking Questions) to make sure everyone understood the
instructions she just gave.
She also mentioned that more than one answer could be possible so that students won’t be limited by just one
answer scenario.

3. As the students are working on the ‘test’ alone and then in pairs, what is Catherine doing? Why do you
think she’s doing this? Write down some examples of what she says.

She was walking through each pair and gave some constructive feedback while she was monitoring. In this case,
she could check whether every participant they are on the right track doing the right thing. Meanwhile, she was
guiding the students if there were any problems with the comprehension of the task.
The specific questions she asked could as follow: Remember more than one is possible. / Think about the tense. /
When did this happen? Etc.

Pause the video and compare your answers with the answer key.

TEACH

4. After the students have finished, how does Catherine keep the students involved in the clarification?
 She only checked the first answer and elicited with everyone by demoing it. Same as previous stage, she used so
many concept checking questions to check whether the students fully understood the first example. Then she gave
the students to let them do pair checking, through this stage, she was still walking around and walking in the group
to monitor again the learners and her role was not a teacher anymore, then, she was the facilitator. In terms of
correcting pronunciation problems, she did some inclusive activities with learners so that it wouldn’t hurt learners’
motivation.

5. Catherine focuses on meaning, form and pronunciation in a systematic way. Write down some of what she
says.

Questions to check understanding of MEANING

Did he take his wallet?
Did I think it was a good idea?
Can I change it? Etc.
These questions would help teachers understand and justify her teaching stage to the following teaching activities.

Questions to elicit FORM

For example, she used
What’s the name of this?
What’s should?
Continue to discuss… etc.
This stage will definitely help teacher herself to make choices of the next activity and then decide which part
should go into detailed explanation.

Techniques to raise awareness of PRONUNCIATION

She addressed the specific stressed words in isolation and also tried some sentences stressing.
Also she used choral and individual drills to make sure the whole performance and individual performance would
be chance equally to everyone.
When there was an error, she corrected in small groups rather than big groups.
Last but not least, she put the mistakes on board and didn’t show the names to everyone, so that could address the
problem more vividly and visible to learners.

Pause the video and compare your answers with the answer key.

TEST #2

6. Students have a handout to work on now. What does Catherine do and say to make it clear what they
have to do?

She presented the handout first, showed it to everyone clearly by using body language.
Then she numbered the questions, all in total six questions and staged them.
What’s more, while she was explaining she highlighted the example and pointed at the key words so that these
activities would attract learners’ attention and focus on the handout she just gave.
In terms of error correction, she reminded that there was a one to one correlation between key words and the gaps
through the text.

7. Then Catherine checks the answers with the students. Apart from that, what other feedback does she
give?

While students making mistakes, she gave praise to them and encourage them to do it well patiently.
She corrected the pronunciation both individually and in the main classroom as a whole, by the way, in this
section, she provided some alternative answers let them choose so that they would have a specific direction they
could draw upon.

Pause the video and compare your answers with the answer key.
FREER PRACTICE

8. Students have an activity with cards now. What does Catherine say and do to make the task clearer?
What kind of feedback does she give at end of the task?

She gave praises and encouraged students to extend their language diversity. When learners needed help from her,
she was always there for help and monitor and assist the learners if necessary.
As for feedback, the feedback she gave was related to the language but not related to the content itself, in order tp
make sure this is the language course.
When some errors occurred, she noted down and corrected them later on.

Stop the video and compare your answers with the answer key.

Upload the worksheet on the moodle.