ICC Final Reflection on Microteaching
(NOTE: Thank you to Michael for recording
my lesson. Had some trouble embedding YT video directly, so the link is above and I'll try to embed again later.)
Overall, I’m quite happy with the activity
and how I conducted it, but it’s far from perfect. The first problem is when it
starts and I greet students, I give simple one word evaluative and closed answers
like “excellent” (:46) when I ask the students how they’re doing. I have to
remember to try and build them towards more substantive answers. In the context
of this lesson, I had ten minutes and a lot of material I wanted to cover for
my presentation stage, so that’s one reason I rushed through the greetings.
However, in this case, since the focus is on interpersonal interaction,
follow-up questions and understanding how others feel, I could have
incorporated a little more extensive IRF language into my greeting instead of
rushing through it. I think my problems with too much teacher-talk, while still
present, have improved greatly since my first micro-teachings and I have
learned to trust the students more instead of feeling the need to explain
everything.
After
eliciting some words to associate with USA, I listen as the students interact
with one another and then when the students volunteer their answers I elicit
some responses for why they came up with those particular associations.
The
review of new vocabulary is gone through too quickly, partly because I’m
worried about time running out, but I think I also didn’t know how to properly
integrate the vocab tasks with the next section about Janine’s schedule (4:10).
While my activities are good and I’m happy with them, they are not integrated
that well with one another. In rapidly going from identifying cross-cultural
similarities, to review of new vocabulary words to expressing the highlights of
one’s native culture, there are too many jarring transitions that lack a
natural flow. Besides an awkward teacher-talk segue, this also has the
side-effect of possibly diminishing the students’ ability to store the new
information relayed from these activities into their long-term memory. In the
future, what I could do is incorporate the newly learned vocabulary into the
next activity so it’s passively retained by the learner instead of forgotten.
The
students compare their generalized associations of USA with their more specific
associations with Janine, a student from the USA. I thought this was a good
activity with a focused goal of increasing intercultural awareness in mind, but
I wonder if writing the associations in silence was the most useful way to
pursue it (5:00). Although we learned in methodology that writing gives
students more time to consider their answers, it also seems to temporarily rob
the class of its energy and deny them the chance to interact with their peers
more.
Like
I said I’m satisfied with my activity, but unpredictable answers could be a
problem. At about 5:25 I ask Evan for his 1a) generalized word associations
with America and he had terms (such as “LA Dodgers” and “Obama”) that would be
hard to contrast with the words about Janine in order to promote cultural
awareness. I inform him they’re “not quite the words I was looking for”, which
might inhibit the learner and make him think he did something wrong, thus
raising his affective filter. In reality, the fault lies with me relying too
much on success-orientation and not anticipating the variety of unexpected
responses I may receive. Also, again, near the end of asking the students for
their terms I moved on too fast, instead of eliciting further information about
why the learners picked the words they did. And once again, a better transition
should be considered for going from word-associations to discussing Janine’s
Seoul schedule.
Some
useful interaction occurs between the students when they discuss places they
would take Janine to buy clothes. They personalize the information and engage
in student-led IRF. After I end that part and ask Evan (9:00) how we can think
of new questions for Janine, he doesn’t immediately give me an answer. This is
useful because it replicates a real teaching environment where desired answers
aren’t always given. Instead of staying with Evan, I give up on him after a few
seconds of silence and go to Swati to ask the question again. If Evan were a
student, he would feel discouraged at this point and might not participate in
the rest of the activity with any real effort or enthusiasm. At 10:00 I finally
model some dialogue on the WB (with the “could you…?” question structure), but
this should have been done much earlier and, although difficult, I should try
and avoid putting my back to the students. At the very least, I repeat Swati’s
words as I write them down, maintaining interaction with the learner. Afterwards,
I think I do a pretty good job of prompting students for more clarification and
specific detail about the question and why those particular questions would fit
what we’ve learned about Janine from the reading.
Overall,
I believe the lesson was a success. While I wrote about areas I could improve
in my writing, I don’t believe there are any major problems and I think it
would be successful in achieving my goals of broadening target-culture awareness,
helping the learner to relate aspects of his or her own native culture to
foreigners and passively building vocabulary, I think there are ways it could
have been executed in a more efficient manner. I could have used a listening
component in conjunction with the reading to provide further context. However,
I don’t know what fashion this listening would take since the writing was of my
own production. Furthermore the expected vocabulary should have been modeled on
the WB in advance, and I should have used that to elicit surrounding sentences
from the students to increase their chance of absorbing the new terms. The
whole vocabulary focus should be reworked, expanded and better integrated,
because as it is it seems like a bit of an afterthought. Next, I need to
anticipate how to respond to students’ answers that veer from my expectations
in a way that prompts more discussion from them, instead of shutting them down
and moving to the next student. Finally, the extensive and superfluous
teacher-talk, while diminished, is still too much and too self-indulgent.
The
aspects of the lesson that worked included leading students to contrast their
assumptions and stereotypes of a culture with the reality of the individual,
without explicitly feeding them the answers. Within the reading were advanced
vocabulary terms, and while the reinforcing of these terms was flawed as I
said, there is still an attempt to push the student towards an understanding of
new vocabulary using a top-down approach. The activity also did a good a job of
slowly building in difficulty and encouraging the student to search the reading
for key information. It used the information in a way that enabled the students
to personalize it and compare it to the similarities in their own culture,
while still encouraging them to respect the differences. Finally, they had
chances to interact with their peers and compare their answers, which as
mentioned prompts dialogic discourse, but also reaffirms for them there’s no
universal truth, but diverse perspectives even within their own class and
native culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment