Mert Çelikaslan

20201201005
EDEN318.1

EDEN318 Speaking Peer Evaluation

The demo lesson that I have evaluated was done by my peer Begüm on the topic of

questionnaires and interviews. Begüm used a context of goals and aspirations. I believe this

was a great choice because a topic such as interviews might end up becoming boring if the

topic is not suitable but it also might end up in students feeling lost if the instructions are

weak.

For her warm-up, Begüm asked her students to tell her what growing up meant to them. The

students provided various answers such as “earning money” and “not living with your

parents” which Begüm then wrote down in the mindmap section of her presentation. I really

liked this activity since I am also a fan of utilizing mind maps in my own teachings. I also

had a similar mind map in my demo lesson on the topic of listening to confirm expectations

and I once again observed that mind maps are a great way to make your students engage with

the topic in a communicative way by giving them an opportunity by utilizing the opinion gap.

Then, Begüm continued on to the next page of her presentation in which she explained the

concepts of “heading” and “interview” that were related to her main activity. I believe

introducing these concepts with suitable language before starting the activity is something

that is definitely beneficial in a classroom environment. I also have to mention how much I

like the visual layout of Begüm’s presentation. The colors are bright enough to gather interest

but not too bright or dominant so it does not look tacky or unprofessional. The visuals also

have a cartoon-like appearance which is suitable for young classrooms such as pre-

highschool level.
Mert Çelikaslan
20201201005
EDEN318.1
Mert Çelikaslan
20201201005
EDEN318.1

Before starting the interview activity, Begüm had written down specific instructions in her

presentation and that turned out to be an effective practice because none of the students felt

lost during the activity. In the next page Begüm had some example questions to ask during

the interview such as “What have you been doing for the past 15 years?” which provided

some very necessary guidance and I believe that most of her students, including me, would

feel a bit stuck trying to come up with questions on the spot.

Then Begüm was going to divide her students into groups using breakout rooms but she

could not manage to. Instead, we communicated with our peers through Whatsapp for a bit

which was difficult. We switched back to Zoom when Begüm managed to activate the

breakout rooms. Just like the rest of her teaching, Begüm managed to keep calm and manage

her classroom very well for the duration of the problem. Begüm had some titles for each

group such as “Time Flies Just Like These Two Friends” and “From Classmates to Becoming

Success Stories” which were initially a bit confusing because I thought each group was going

to interview their peer for a different topic than the other groups but I then figured out that

she just put some motivating titles which shared the same idea.

The Professor criticized Begüm’s last activity in which she makes each group present their

interview questions and answers in a dialogue form. However, I did not seem to notice any

problems on the overall course of the lesson.

To conclude, I believe that Begüm delivered a communicative lesson plan on the topic of

interviews with an engaging topic. Besides some problems that were out of Begüm’s control,

she demonstrated a very successful teaching.