My own reflection on the teaching

First of all, I am glad that the micro-teaching went fairly well, actually better than I expected. I had never taught an ESL class to college students before, especially that type of class with heterogeneous students, but I had only taught true beginning Korean to college students and English to younger students from elementary to high school. Therefore, I had felt quite nervous before the lesson because of the inexperience with the context and insecurity of my competence in teaching for demonstration without real students. However, as soon as I began initial interactions with my students, I felt better and did not actually realize that the time was flowing that fast. What I liked about the lesson, above all, is that it was successful in regards to my attempting to integrate all of the four language skills based on "more 'communicative' view of authentic language use" and to extend language learning not only in the classroom but also "beyond the classroom and across culture" (Hadley, 2001, p. 182). I also feel that I successfully incorporated both formal and informal listening opportunities and one-way and two-way communication within the lesson, just as the importance of "a hybrid from of classroom discourse" is emphasized by Ferris and Tagg (1996, p. 312). Fifteen minutes were not enough to demonstrate all of my teaching philosophies, but I feel satisfied that the majority was touched.

 

If I would teach it again

I do not regret my choice of the radio talk as listening material, since I believe that material without visual clues can be great practice for college students who sometimes have big lecture classes in which they seldom have close face-to-face interactions with professors and peers. However, if I teach it again, while keeping the same listening material, I would experiment with a more dynamic and active classroom activity; for example, have the students move around the classroom and interview classmates about their beliefs. Also, I feel that my PowerPoint presentation had a lot of text but not enough other types of "meaning support" (Horwitz, 2007, p. 68) such as support pictures and a diagram showing the visual structure of the talk, which I will consider next time.

Since my class is an imaginary context, I do not actually have any realistic image of the classroom in which the majority of the students are Asians. I set up my students as very motivated and cooperative, but if I would teach the same lesson, this time I would like to have those shy Asians as "having cultural differences which inhibited their oral participation in class, willingness/ability to ask questions, learning style (memorization/rote learning)," as described by several college professors (Ferris and Tagg, p. 309). Obviously I have not considered much about these stereotypical students and their cultural variables in my current

lesson, and this will be one of the greatest challenges as another possibility for my context.

 Also, it was not easy for me to create a situation in which communication breakdowns or cultural misunderstanding would happen due to their diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and also due to their not-yet-fully developed linguistic competence in English. If I teach again, I would try to cooperate with my student actors more effectively to create those situations as well as create opportunities for error corrections as suggested by feedback on my teaching.

 

Reflection on the feedback

Overall, I gained great confidence and assurance about my teaching an ESL course only in the target language from a lot of positive feedback. It has been a tremendous experience especially since I, as a teacher student, received invaluable feedback from my peers and the professor, although I had regularly received formal feedback from my students before. I am glad that I became more lenient to and confident about my own competence in teaching in English and I now feel more comfortable about another wonderful teaching opportunity at ESL Services where I will teach real ESL students next week. It was also encouraging to hear that my pace of talking was good, providing enough wait-time for the students to think before speaking, which was one of the main concerns of my lesson and teaching philosophies. Positive feedback included my designing schema activation, writing the lesson plan on the board, and teaching a listening strategy.

In addition to positive feedback, I also received constructive feedback which would improve my future teaching. There was a moment at which I asked too many questions at once before pair-discussion, which was pointed out as causing confusion to the students. Next time, I should be careful with paraphrasing similar questions, and I would rather simplify my instruction with fewer questions for each activity with extra steps or assign each student one question. As suggested by Hadley, next time, I would consider providing the questions for comprehension checks "before" and/or having the students do "some of the comprehension exercises while listening" (2001, p. 199).

Also, showing the vocabulary list before the first listening by having the students only skim through it was pointed out as not a good schema activation activity. Even though I was planning to go over it later again, I was advised that it would be better to not show it at that moment if I would not explicitly preview it or I present it during another step of after-listening activity so that they better understand the contextualized meaning of the list. Two peers wrote that "too much vocab-hard to digest so much without time" and "ask for words that the students don't understand," which, I believe, was meant as a similar suggestion. As for the same

vocabulary list issue, I received another practical suggestion that I could "pronounce the vocabulary words so that they know how they sound." If it is my purpose to present the list before listening for schema activation, then, my pronouncing it would also be a great technique to make the students familiar with new words.

I also received some feedback on my PowerPoint presentation. I did not compose comprehension questions with capital letters and question marks, which I did not notice at all until I read the peer feedback. Another peer commented that the PowerPoint was "a little crowded" and I would "leave PowerPoint slide up," which reminded me of the importance of technical issues and visualization of the text on the screen.

In the first speaking activity in which I elicited some examples using "I believe" and "I don't believe," I tried to lead the activity with humor by dividing the class into two groups as a parody of Dr. Horwitz, which Dr. Sardegna did not understand. After her comment on this, I thought it would not be easy to maintain a sense of humor both because it should go well with my personality and because everyone in the classroom should have common cultural backgrounds in order to understand the humor.

There is also some feedback with which I do not agree or which is not congruent with the focus of my class. One peer suggested giving grammar instruction after the listening. However, the focus of my writing class is not on grammar but on meaning; that is, my goal is that the student will be able to understand the main idea of the talk and relate it to their own beliefs. Thus, grammar is not my teaching focus, although I do not exclude it when a student asks about it and when I need to address it when giving individual feedback on their writing. Another peer commented that the listening activity was too easy for the advanced level and would require more activities promoting critical thinking, which was contradictory to a few comments by other peers that the content of the listening was a little bit challenging. I believe this disagreement among peers is caused by the uncertainty about the proficiency level of real students. The last response I do not agree with is a suggestion to "possibly provide the script in class." The students do not need to understand every word, which is not what I expect the students to derive from the listening activity. That's why I decided to upload the script on BB after the class, and not go over the script in class together.

 

Generally what I learned from this micro-teaching  

Overall, through the process of preparing, teaching, receiving feedback, and reflecting on my own and others' teaching, I learned the importance of an ESL

teacher as a person who guides students to learn specific skills in their learning process. In the same sense, Hadley (2001) stresses that:

listening comprehension should not be assumed to [be] developed 'naturally' without any guidance from the teacher. The processes involved in language comprehension need to be actively taught if students are going to attain optimal levels of proficiency (p. 203).

I also confirmed the importance of the quality of teaching with which a teacher is always ready to deal with dynamic learners' and classroom variables.

 

References

Ferris, D., & Tagg, T. (1996). Academic listening/speaking tasks for ESL students: Problems, suggestions, and implications. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2), 297-320.

Hadley, A. O. (2001). Teaching Language in Context (3rd ed.). Boston: Heinle and Heinle.

Horwitz, E. K. (2007). Becoming a Language Teacher: A Practical Guide to Second Language Learning and Teaching (1 ed.): Allyn & Bacon.