Journal entry # 1

Reflective Journal # 1

Date: September 23^rd, 2015

Elementary English class

Today, I observed an English class. The purpose of this class was to introduce others by giving personal information. To begin with, the teacher greeted her students in English, but when she was doing it, she was not sure about the pronunciation of “How are you doing?”, “I’m doing great”. In this sense, her students made the same mistakes as she did. Then, she started doing a review from the last class. Hence, she asked students for the pronunciation of numbers from one to ten. After this, she played the song and the students started singing. I could realize students’ active participation. Also, they were motivated to take part of the numbers’ pronunciation. Something important is that the use of technological devices drew students’ attention because they were watching the video and singing at the same time. 

There are some problems with the pronunciation of “How are you?” and “How old are you?” Teacher and students do not make the differences between them. Moreover, when students were saying the meaning of “how old are you” in Spanish, they said “¿Cuántos años viejos tiene?” this is kind of literal translation of words. Likewise, I noticed that teacher used Spanish to give instructions, commands and give examples to her students. Besides, there were some difficulties when asking for personal information in third person, as seen in the example: The teacher used “Where are you from?” instead of asking “what is he/she from?”

According to the activities, these were varied and gave a fresh notion of the vocabulary that was related to personal information. When students were working on some pieces of cardboard the teacher was carefully monitoring her students work. Also, it was required giving feedback, because students were confused about the pronunciation of some words. She was attentive and available to answer questions. Something remarkable during the class was the use of commands to avoid laziness and make students be more active. This teacher used this strategy and it really worked.

As a closure activity for this class, students worked on asking and answering questions using their personal information.  Finally, students interviewed other classmates. In my view, this class was organized because all the activities were previously planned. Nevertheless, there are some mismatches in pronunciation. Even though she is not majored in English teaching, she strove to have a good class.