Self-Reflection form

Self-Reflection form 1] Achievement of learning objectives I feel that the communicative objective was partially met as I felt students didn’t spend enough time debating. My original plan was for them to debate for 15’ but they ended up debating for a little over 5’. This was because the language input and pairwork/preparing ideas overran the original timing. However, I’m quite happy with the actual interaction and the turn-taking that took place during the debate. All students seemed to have at least two or three opportunities to talk and I could see Group B in particular engaged in discussion. Splitting students in two different groups helped make this happen. It was interesting to notice Group B interacting a lot more than Group A as presumably they were the weaker group. I think Nismon, in specific, has very good people skills and easily becomes the ‘life and soul of the party’ (the debate, in this case). As for Group A, I think the reason why they didn’t take off straight away was because Tony controlled the turn-taking, whereas Chinju was a quieter moderator. Therefore, Group A students might have refrained from interacting with their peers because they were waiting for Tony to give them a turn. However, when I told them that they had one minute left they picked up pace and their discussion became much livelier. In terms of the conversational skills, I heard Anisha, Paul, Nismon and Jorfi use some of the fixed expressions, e.g. Come on! Are you saying that …? Hang on! etc. Interestingly, all of them were expressions for disagreement. I had drawn their attention to these before they started the debate in order to introduce the phonological objective. I wonder whether they would have used some of the other expressions for giving opinion and agreeing if I had done the same, ie drawn their attention to them, drilling them as a whole class, etc. I also think my instructions might have been confusing as students thought they had to choose one category, whereas I expected them to use one expression from each. Perhaps I was being overambitious? Maybe I should have focused on just expressions for disagreement. This might have made my expectations a lot more feasible and clearer for students. Having said this, I heard students joking amongst themselves saying Come on! What are you talking about? after the lesson, so I think this has stuck to their minds and it’s proof that the skills objective was met to some extent. To conclude, I think students would benefit from other occasions/tasks in the future where they are required to agree/disagree politely. As for the secondary language objective, I believe this was also partially met. Students were quite confident using used to/didn’t use to both during the pairwork and during the debate. The feedback I gave them on this helped them consolidate what they already knew. However, I’m not sure the language presentation and examples were enough to get students using would naturally. Although this didn’t cause any problems for the debate, it was clear that students need more practice with both structures. I didn’t hear any student using would in context and I heard Paul once or twice use usually instead of people, e.g. Families in the past usually lived under the same roof. I drew their attention to this in feedback, but I don’t feel the target language was consolidated. As explained above, the phonological objective was met to a certain extent. I think students were already aware of how they could use intonation to show attitude, probably instinctively. I did hear instances of showing attitude through intonation, but not as many as I was hoping for. I don’t think this was because students lacked the skill. Rather it was a combination of poor instructions on my part; not making the aim narrower and clearer; and possibly the fact that students were more focused on expressing their ideas using the target language. 2] Evaluation of appropriacy and effectiveness of tasks, activities, aids and materials The pairwork discussion didn’t seem to work as well as I thought it would. Students needed a lot of support understanding what they were doing and in hindsight, I should have provided them with the note-taking part of the handout in the previous lesson. The vast majority came to class with whole paragraphs and extensive texts of their pre-prepared ideas, which wasn’t the point of the task. I noticed students referring to their texts and this might have contributed to the confusion. Having said this, I think it was useful practice for students to clarify their ideas and reasoning, as well as useful note-taking practice. The debate went quite well, especially for Group B. Group A took longer to take off and as mentioned previously, this was probably because of the role the moderators took on. Perhaps I should’ve given Tony clearer instructions as to what I was expecting of him. Nevertheless, I think both Tony and Chinju did a great job and I’m really pleased with my choice. In terms of the materials, I think having the handouts helped to draw lines across the different roles and tasks. It was clear what students were doing and when, although it did take a lot of coordinating on my part. I did manage to step back and observe during the debate which I don’t think I would’ve been able to do without the handouts. I’m not sure whether students referred to the expressions much during the debate, but at least they can go home with something tangible in their hands. I felt the self-evaluation questionnaire was a nice addition to the handout and it was interesting to see how students reflected on their performance. For instance, Paul hadn’t ticked the box for ‘used a range of vocabulary’. This surprised me because he was the strongest speaker in terms of lexis. Furthermore, all of them thought they had spoken clearly and loudly, which I thought didn’t reflect reality or at least my perception of what is clear. Hopefully, this reflection and self-evaluation task will encourage students to become more autonomous although I believe it needs to be reinforced in the future. 3] Discussion and awareness of motivation and learner strategies I think students were motivated throughout the lesson and particularly so in the second half. As explained previously, Group A didn’t seem to have a lively debate and only just started to pick up pace when I asked them to conclude the debate. I was pleasantly surprised with Group B, however. Nismon and Jolly seemed to be enjoying themselves, presenting their ideas confidently and interacting with their partners. I’m really pleased with Jolly’s performance. On the other hand, I expected more of Alwin and Paul and I think Anisha and Prasanth did well with keeping the energy level up in Group A. I’m also very pleased with how Tony and Chinju performed. They kept good notes and conducted the debate professionally. I did notice Tony would at times take off his ‘moderator’ hat and give his own opinion, but I don’t think that affected the debate dramatically. In terms of getting students to think of ideas beforehand, I think this was beneficial for all students and most of them brought very detailed notes. This preparation work probably contributed to nice language input from the students, e.g. nuclear family, focus on, etc. 4] Discussion and awareness of cultural and L1 factors and class dynamics During the self-evaluation stage, I noticed that in the ‘What I can improve section’ many students ticked the box ‘ask my partners to repeat something’. Discussing this with Prasanth and Jorfi, I came to the conclusion that although students seem to be understanding each other this may not be so. Perhaps there are times when they are struggling to understand what a classmate is saying, just like I am. However, they let it pass rather than interrupt and ask for repetition or clarification. I think perhaps it is something related to their culture. Perhaps it’s rude to say you haven’t understood what someone said. It might be worth addressing this in a future lesson and looking at different ways of asking for repetition and clarification. 5] Discussion and understanding of balance of group/individual needs, including differentiation of task and outcomes I think Tony and Chinju enjoyed having the responsibility of being moderators. Although other students could’ve taken on the role and done a satisfying job, Tony and Chinju were able to put their language skills to good use. In terms of the speakers, I think Paul and Alwin might not have been as motivated in their group. They’re quite close to Nismon and Forji so perhaps they were keen on debating with them. They’re also the youngest in the group and this might explain why the grouping affected their performance. Some students did use the target expressions, whereas others didn’t or at least, I didn’t catch them using them. This didn’t affect the communicative outcome but providing the fixed expressions in the handout, meant that the more confident or motivated students could use them. 6] Discussion and awareness of potential alternative methods, approaches, techniques and strategies It felt that the debate was structured but the content lacked boundaries. The debate would’ve been more straightforward had I assigned students a for/against position. So, in Group A, Anisha and Prasanth could be ‘for’ the statement and Prasanth with Paul could be fighting ‘against’. This would have motivated them more because there would be a battle between the two sides and the moderator could then decide at the end which pair was more convincing. This would also lead to a more focused communicative aim: disagree politely. In other words, I would ensure students were disagreeing with each other and they would be more pressed to use the selected expressions, thus leading to intonation practice and consolidation. Also, I think students needed more time to consolidate the language before moving on to the production stage. This was particularly evident with would. I could have prepared a controlled heads-down task for them before moving on to the debate. I could also have provided students with some prompts for each category/topic they were assigned to discuss although they didn’t seem to struggle to come up with ideas. 7] Discussion and awareness of how the lesson relates to the teacher’s general beliefs I really enjoyed taking a step back and observing students work independently. I believe that autonomous students are stronger, better-prepared students. I see myself as a coach rather than a teacher and I think the impact I can have on students is maximized if I manage to make them independent learners. Starting small is important with little things like giving learners the teacher’s role and making them evaluate their performance themselves. I’m happy that I’ve consciously addressed these issues with this lesson.