I (Martin Cooke) was partnered with Tan Eik Ter for the pairwork exercise. I’ll summarise our responses to the original transcripts below. This is a little later than other participants (sorry, been quite busy this week) but I’ve had the benefit of being able to see the other comments and John’s replies and I think I can see why he runs the task this way.
On reading and analyzing the transcripts before last week’s online meeting, I had noted in many cases that, according to my own judgement, I could not see what the aims were, I could not understand why the teacher was using the material or tasks being described, and I worried about the high level of TTT I saw in a couple of instances. I also thought that many of the teachers needed to focus on their corrective feedback techniques a little.
I guess, on reflection, that perhaps I was assuming the ‘assessor hat’ (apologies to Edward de Bono) in the way that I assume my tutors on the Celta, DipTESOL and other ELT training courses might have done. But I also remember thinking, particularly when doing the DipTESOL, that the way classes are assessed can be a little unfair as the person observing your class can never really appreciate the full scope of what you do to help your learners over the months or years they spend with you – they only get to see a couple of hours, which is barely even a snapshot.
So how could I justify judging these teachers on the basis of transcripts that capture maybe three minutes of their lessons?
Eik Ter seemed to be taking a much more sympathetic approach when analyzing the transcripts. For example, he could see evidence of learning, particularly vocabulary knowledge and retention, in Ci 2, and although some of the activities did not seem to be fully succeeding, such as in Ci 3, Eik Ter was able to understand the teacher’s possible motives.
Overall, Eik Ter states that, in his own words, ‘the selection of content to be taught in the classroom has to be syllabus-specific and age-appropriate in order to achieve progress towards lesson mastery’ – from some transcripts it’s apparent that the teachers perhaps had yet to fully appreciate this, but the use of transcripts may help them to reflect on their lessons, especially in isolating potential issues that they might not have been aware of when they occurred.
On reading and analyzing the transcripts before last week’s online meeting, I had noted in many cases that, according to my own judgement, I could not see what the aims were, I could not understand why the teacher was using the material or tasks being described, and I worried about the high level of TTT I saw in a couple of instances. I also thought that many of the teachers needed to focus on their corrective feedback techniques a little.
I guess, on reflection, that perhaps I was assuming the ‘assessor hat’ (apologies to Edward de Bono) in the way that I assume my tutors on the Celta, DipTESOL and other ELT training courses might have done. But I also remember thinking, particularly when doing the DipTESOL, that the way classes are assessed can be a little unfair as the person observing your class can never really appreciate the full scope of what you do to help your learners over the months or years they spend with you – they only get to see a couple of hours, which is barely even a snapshot.
So how could I justify judging these teachers on the basis of transcripts that capture maybe three minutes of their lessons?
Eik Ter seemed to be taking a much more sympathetic approach when analyzing the transcripts. For example, he could see evidence of learning, particularly vocabulary knowledge and retention, in Ci 2, and although some of the activities did not seem to be fully succeeding, such as in Ci 3, Eik Ter was able to understand the teacher’s possible motives.
Overall, Eik Ter states that, in his own words, ‘the selection of content to be taught in the classroom has to be syllabus-specific and age-appropriate in order to achieve progress towards lesson mastery’ – from some transcripts it’s apparent that the teachers perhaps had yet to fully appreciate this, but the use of transcripts may help them to reflect on their lessons, especially in isolating potential issues that they might not have been aware of when they occurred.
Dear M and T,
ReplyDeleteThrilled to read the name deBono Martin. Re the selection of content and age and syllabus-specific which you Eik Ter mention is very difficult to determine.People have been developing course guides and syllabuses for decades as well as scores if not hundreds of textbooks. Few if any of these syllabuses or textbooks have been age appropriate for loads of reasons--kids of the same age in different places know different things in their own languages, the content in one place is of use to students and of no use to students in another place.
So to determine what is age specific or content specific, looking at transcripts and sharing them or producing them with our students will reveal what we need to teach. If we present half a dozen graded readers including song lyrics, they can select what is of interest.
Planning what to teach is a fools' errand I think. Listen to what students say and write and want to learn about and what they need to use language for.