Week 10 - Micro Teaching - self-reflection

Soooo.... [intake of breath]... this PRESENTATION micro teaching....

The first thing to say about this Micro Teaching is that I had Berlitz PPP interference with my Harmer (P)PPP. The term 'Presentation' in the Berlitz world is a lot broader than the Harmer definition, and actually includes what he would call the Preview. Due to this ingrained method (I taught this way for 8 years), and despite having re-read the Harmer chapter at the beginning of the week, I fell back in the Berlitz habit. For this reason, from a Micro-Teaching Presentation perspective, this MT was a complete mis-fire as it did not demonstrate what it was intended to. The gong went just as I was about to hand out the reading material. So, to begin this reflection, the first, most important thing was that I should've done what I was supposed to do. This reflection should have been about my presentation. Instead, it is a reflection on a lack of presentation.

I was beginning to reflect even during the MT. I heard several Evaluative T-Talk slip out, almost like a verbal tic when a student has finished speaking. I became so aware of it, that in the second half of the video, I grimace several times as "Nice" or "Very good" comes out of my mouth. I think it's less about I think it's less evaluation more about needing to say something when a student has finished speaking. Along with saying "A'right, so" every 2 minutes, this is definitely something that needs to be curtailed in my teaching.

Alright so, to reverse traditional structure of teaching feedback (the good-the bad-the good), I will fry up the positive burger to this negative bun.

Maybe it's because I was the first teacher, but the class atmosphere was positive and encouraging, which helped things go very smoothly. We even had a bit of fun with"she should have put out " response from Heidi. My teaching style was the usual pleasant manner/act that I adopt with lots of NLP-inspired nodding and a fairly energetic approach. I feel like my use of the whiteboard was just enough: Not too intrusive but there to help students construct the TL.

For MIC techniques, I used a lot of hand gestures, for example to elicit full sentences and repetition and used these gestures in some cases, without speaking, to elicit their appropriate reaction. If I can pat myself on the back for just one moment, I feel my MIC techniques are probably my strongest teaching element. Having worked with group classes for 90% of my teaching life, it has now become more or less second nature to me. For example, in the MT, I point to words in the TL sentence in order to help the student construct the question form, both negative and positive, thereby avoiding having to give the students the fall written sentence [this isn't shown in the video as the camera is on Jason giving the question as I'm doing it].

The final positive elements is that I didn't say more than two sentences without giving the students a chance to speak. This isn't something I had ever been told before starting this course, however it was a pleasant surprise to see that I was doing it anyway. One of the benefits of teaching for years is that you very quickly get sick of the sound of your own voice, and embrace the best STT techniques.

Alright so, for the top of the burger bun, let's get back to the negative part of the reflection. As I already mentioned, the most disappointing part of this micro teaching was that I failed to start the reading section of the presentation. I.E., the most important part of this Micro-Teaching.  I had taken the Harmer textbook example of teaching present continuous using the family picture. Instead of using it to introduce the presentation section (the picture slides in my ppt), I expanded it into what was actually an extended preview before the presentation. I'm pretty disappointed with myself that I could make what is a rookie error at my stage of teaching and at this stage of the TESOL course.

I could see from Tom's face that something was going wrong, but I could not mentally juggle the tasks of continuing with my plan and assessing what was going wrong at the same time. As soon as I heard the gong, I realised where I had gone wrong, as I stood there holding the hand-outs that should've been handed out, ohhhh, about 8 minutes before.

This is a good example of one of my weakest elements in teaching: my comfort zone. My reliance on what I already know. It's easy to fall back on the excuse that I was exhausted at the end of the mid term week. However, I should have known better. I went into a kind of glazed-over auto-pilot teaching.

So, in conclusion, it's ironic given the TL of my MT that my final thought on this micro teaching is that I "should have" prepared more carefully, and I "shouldn't have" made a school boy error given the preparation I've had.

Week 9 - METH - Reflection...or not

Unfortunately, the student who'd agreed for me to film her doing the presentation cancelled her class at the last minute. I'll film it next week and upload it.

Stay tuned....

Week 8 - METH - Reading reflection and other MIC experiences

Some background: I lost some students in the last month, with means I only teach 4 people now. Teaching is no longer my main source of income.

The man I am reflecting on in a patent lawyer, lower intermediate grammar and vocab, upper intermediate comprehension/communication skills. He usually wants ONLY conversation, as he says his patent English is very good, but he struggles to communicate with foreign clients as soon as the topic moves off of the product (ie, over drinks).

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This week, I tried the reading task again. As in the LP I handed in last weekend, I set up the vocab. This time I tried a more Derren Brown approach to MIC. I decided to layer in as much of the necessary vocab as possible in the warm-up. The vocab needed for the activity (putting the story in the correct order) was was words like "flash", "swerve", "sit back down", "overtake" and "indicator". Clearly, some words are easier than others to sneak into a conversation.

The fine line I was trying to tread was to keep my teacher's intent genuine, whilst layering in some vocab in context that may have the following affect on MIC later on in the class:
a) make negotiating meaning easier as they have (subconsciously) encountered the word/s already
b) if the student stops me when I say a word in a natural context, it will provide a MIC base when the word comes up later
c) the student may unconsciously acquire the word as they hear it in context and this could be consolidated when they see the same word in another context a few minutes later.

The first came easily. I entered the room and the student stood up. Clearly, but friendly, I slipped in "No need to stand, you can SIT BACK DOWN" with a small nod and an open hand movement to indicate moving down. Total Physical Response - he sat back down. One-Nil. There was some usual small talk, and, as he was turning off his phone for the class, I slipped in the second, "Ah, good idea, you don't want it to flash [flicking the fingers of one hand to mime the light going on and off] during the class". He nodded and I hoped that the combination of the hand movement at the same time as the word might have combined to give meaning (plus he may have already known the word, so I'll count that as activating "light" schema!).

The rest of the warm up, it was difficult to put in many more words without compromising teacher intent. The only other word I got in was "indicate" which I hoped would at least make "Indicator" guessable in the activity.

When the activity came, I had him read the strips of paper to me (they were not in order) and did some CCQ-ing on any sentences I thought would be difficult.

Now, not having done a pre-test to establish a base, it's impossible to know exactly how effective my NLP/Derren Brown techniques were in the beginning. It's possible her knew them anyway, of course. However, the most interesting was "sit back down" which, in the story, actually has a meaning more like "hunches down in his seat" - you can't really stand up in a car! As I pointed this phrase out to the student, in a questioning tone, "The man sat back down?". The student thought for a second and then leaned forward, hovering out of his seat like the murderer in the story, then sat back down in his chair.

I took this as a victory of sneaky/naturalistic MIC. Hopefully, from the student's perspective, I had genuinely or believable teacher's intent. The activity went smoothly. Again, I've no empirical evidence that my introduction technique had any significant effect on the student's understanding of the activity input, but even if he did already know all the vocab, it didn't do any harm at all to get him thinking of those words in advance.

As a technique, it's not something that can always be worked in easily. However, the odd word can be neatly placed in an interaction earlier to keep the student's neurones firing.

Week 7 - METH - Class reflection

This week's class reflection is on the same two patent lawyers as last week, as a way of comparing and contrasting my progress and my interactions with the class.

The TO of the class was to describe the different personality types needed for occupations using more high-intermediate vocab (tactful, fair-minded, imaginative, etc...) plus negotiating that level of vocab referring to their own positions. The class was successful in as far as we got, but vocab negotiation and job discussion ran longer than I had planned so the final P in the process is waiting till next class. I'll begin with the schema, then recycling to get the vocab back fresh in their minds, then straight into the Performance/Production.

There was a lot more energy in the class today following the Preview practice I had done last time. Partly because we were less (obviously) structured and partly because they felt more comfortable with the usual lesson. The vocab eliciting and negotiation went particularly well as, like most students, they feel their major weakness is lack of vocab. The negotiation of "tactful" was particularly interesting as they got stuck in a confusion loop because they couldn't get "tactic" out of their head as a related meaning. A few context-specific sentences soon started to dislodge that tenacious idea and they produced some good examples of when they had had to be tactful. This was a good example of negotiation without being explicitly told.

As mentioned in previous blogs, as tried and true as the basic Greeting/Relaxing/Recycling/Schema Preview method may be, it really isn't welcome in this particular class. I disguise it as well as I can. My current eliciting technique is to pretend that I've been here so long that I've forgotten a particular word and try and get them to help me. Got to use it sparingly or they'll think I have early-onset Alzheimer's.

Week 6 - METH - Micro teaching Preview reflection

The lesson that I had chosen for my micro-teaching was future with "going to". My class was two patent application managers who I have taught for about 6 months. They are mixed ability but average out at about intermediate high. Clearly "going to" is well below what they are already capable of. While this is fine for high novices, I don't teach anyone of that level, therefore, I tried to make it more flexible for my high intermediates and use "going to be ___ing" as well as focusing on more natural pronunciation. The goal of this class was for the students to be able to discuss future events using consistently correct structures and more natural pronunciation. They should be able to use the taught structures flexibly to express their own ideas.

The lesson was successful in some ways and not in others. They did increase their proficiency in the areas mentioned above. The schema-sparking meeting schedule (a more elaborate version that the high novice one) was successful in starting to generate ideas and get the students thinking about business trips. However, the students seemed frustrated with the PPP cycle, which they were more than familiar with in their vast experience of Hagwons in Seoul. Because, in our usual lessons, we have a more relaxed (though structured) class which allows for any deviation if the student requires it, they were less than pleased at the return to what they saw as a 'school' style lesson. They were happy to go off topic but were unusually reluctant to return to the cycle (even though, for me, the Preview was the only vital part that HAD to be finished).

In a post-class reflection, the students said that, while they can understand WHY the PPP method is used in Hagwons etc, they were not happy to see ir return to their lessons. Which leads me to my own reflection on the balance between giving a PAYING student what they want vs what they need. Having discussed it with other teachers both on and off the TESOL course I know I'm not alone in the predicament, that it's the tightrope we walk between doing what we know if beneficial to their progress and giving them the kind of class they actually want. Some students have openly said to me "I pay you to give me the information because I don't have it. I don't want to sit here guessing, because I have to do that in meetings, I don't want to have to do it in class too". It's a fair point, I suppose, but it leaves the dilemma of whether to continue with the 'right' way and risk losing the student (and the income) or give them what they want and risk limited progress.

The Preview class was a good example of this. Two students who I'd always had a good relationship with suddenly went cold when they recognised what they consider a slightly patronising method rearing its head in their class. They even asked if I was doing it as part of my TESOL course! I didn't mention to them that we actually do use the PPP structure in our classes, but not the warm-up, contextualising, schema-brain-storm method.

There's certainly one class that I won't be using the tried-and-true method in.