Barbara CO#3 Speaking Group 2A

My final class observation was in Mr. Andrew Wilson’s Speaking class and I was able to participate with the students here as well.

  He started the class with the word of the day which was “creative.” Students were asked to define the word and then to clarify the part of speech that Mr. Wilson used in a sentence.  Next, he gave a 4 minute warm-up activity asking students to discuss whether or not higher education (specifically a college education) should be free. As the students talked to each other, Mr. Wilson listened to their conversations and corrected the grammar throughout.  When this exercise was complete, he said that he wanted to share some “beautiful mistakes” with the students and the conversation revolved around the terms “enjoy” and “like”.  For example, it is not “I enjoy to read” but rather “I enjoy reading” with the emphasis on the using “ing” with enjoy.  However, it was fine to say “I like to dance” or “I like dancing.” The key to this exercise was differentiating between words and understand the meanings in conversation.

The final exercise gave students 5 minutes to come up with “wh” questions using why and what.  One example was “what are you passionate about?”  The students were to come up with these questions to ask Mr. Wilson and me.  He used an interesting format in which he had a method for calling names at random.  I was asked to call 4 names which gave me the experience of speaking to the class and answering “what country or area would you like to go to?” and “what country or area would you like to go back to?” questions. 

This class had a lot of energy because the students were engaged in speaking and in asking questions.  They seemed to enjoy debating each other on some points and Mr. Wilson not only led them in conversation but it also participated to give them something to react to.

After observing all of these classes on the same day, I came away with the idea of how the inductive teaching method worked because all of the instructors used this method throughout their classes.  In grammar, conversation was used to focus on specific grammar points.  In reading, conversation was used to build vocabulary and understanding through narratives.  Finally, in speaking, students used speech to go back to grammar and reading terms.  I am very glad that I saw all of these methods on the same day because they changed my point of view about deductive versus inductive teaching.  I learned how using inductive teaching strategies throughout three separate classes benefited the students.