Job Analysis - Assignment 2 TESL 0160

PART 1

PART 2

Choose an existing activity from your E-portfolio and adapt it to use in the chosen context.

I have chosen an activity from one of my lesson plans from TESL -0120 with a focus on listening. The terminal objective of the lesson is for the students to be able to provide information when booking a room at the hotel.

The activity I will be modifying is a pre-listening activity where students interact as a whole class. In this activity, the teacher acts as a facilitator and starts a discussion on students’ previous experiences when travelling. The teacher asks students questions like “Where do you usually stay when you travel?’ Or “What other places people can stay at when traveling?”. Students answer the questions and the teacher writes down topic-related words on the board.

I have watched a lot of teachers using such activity as a whole class discussion before introducing the main material. As much as I love that students working together, I also know that some students are shy and scared to share their thoughts in front of others. There are additional pre- and post-listening activities in the lesson but I’ll limit myself to the one I mentioned above.

I would like to describe two scenarios - one where I teach individually and one from the original context ( group classes at one of the English Learning Centres in Russia studying English for traveling)

Pre-listening Activity - Modified

I have decided to explore two options - in my future teaching context ( one-on-one coaching) and one in the context that is presented in the activity ( classroom teaching).

One-on-one coaching - rather than having only a discussion with my student, I could do a role-play. I could ask my student to be a person calling the hotel to book a room and I could be a receptionist. We could write the dialogue on the whiteboard (Zoom). There’s another benefit to modifying this activity - later we can compare the “first version” and the “second version”of our dialogue and my student can see his/her progress.

If I were to modify this activity in the original context, I would take the following steps:

1. Divide the class into small groups of 3-4 people.

2. Ask the groups to chose one leader whose responsibility will be to make sure that everyone in the group participates in the discussion.

3. Ask the groups to chose one person who will be recording the ideas. This will help with the presentation of ideas in front of the class

4. Explain the task very clearly and make sure everybody understands it. Tell the students that they have 10 minutes fro this activity - I have reconsidered the timing, it was 15 minutes in the original lesson plan but now I believe 10 minutes should be enough with clear guidelines.

5. I would ask a volunteer from each group to present the answers to the class.

Here are the questions for group discussion:

1. Where do you like to stay when you travel?

2. Are there any other places people can stay at when traveling?

3. Why do you think a lot of people prefer staying at a hotel when traveling?

4. How can we book a room at a hotel?

5. What kind of information do you need to provide to book a room?

Rationale for Modifying

In both cases I could leave the activity as it is, it would still work for that type of lesson. However, after dispelling all the myths about group work and looking at the benefits, I would rather go for new versions of the activity.

In my first scenario with one-on-one teaching, I believe that the role-play activity could help make this lesson more student-centred as we both can participate instead of me directly asking questions and the student answering them. And another benefit of modifying is the one I have already mentioned - the student will be able to actually see the progress when comparing the first version of the dialogue and the new one after we study the new material.

In my second scenario, I believe the group work would be more beneficial for my students because we are creating an environment in which the students will feel more comfortable and less stressed. According to the Brown and Lee book, group work also “generates interactive language, offers an embracing affective climate, promotes learner responsibility and autonomy and is a step toward the individualizing instruction”.

Resources

Brown, D. & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to

Language Pedagogy (4th ed). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

Jones, L. (2007). The student-centred classroom. New York: Cambridge University

Press.