A&HT 5301

Fall 2015
Boblett

Name ___________Yijun Zhong___________

Master Teacher Observation 2

This assignment is designed to help you learn to observe the language classroom as well as to
become a reflective practitioner. Most importantly, as you observe this class, position yourself as
a learner of teaching, not as an evaluator.
Teacher: Nadja Tadic
Level: ESL Conversation

No. of students: 5

ANATOMY OF AN ACTIVITY (choose only one activity: reading, speaking, listening, writing,
grammar)
Type of activity/name: Speaking activity (invitation, accepting and declining an invitation)
1. How was the activity introduced? What were the teachers exact words?
To introduce the activity, the teacher made connection between the present lesson and the
previous one by saying, so last week we were talking about intercultural relationships
There was a follow-up to the previous lesson. Students shared pick-up lines as well as dating
norms in their countries, such as whether people would ask strangers out and whether women
would ask men out. The exact words the teacher used to lead the whole-group discussion
were: In your countries, if somebody likes somebody, who asks whom out? Is there a rule?
What do people say?
2. How did the teacher prepare the students for the activity (pre-activity; activating
schemata)? Was this activity tied to something done previously? If so, how did the teacher do
this?
The teacher prepared the students for the activity by activating the schemata of
invitation. Since, in the beginning of the lesson, students were asked to talk about dating
practices, the topic moved naturally from asking people out to inviting people in the broad
sense, and after that to responding to an invitation. The teacher achieved this by asking
students how do you say no in a polite way? This was also closely tied to something they
had done in the previous lesson, which was about intercultural relationships.
3. How were students seated/grouped during the activity? Did the seating arrangement/grouping
change from the beginning to the end of the activity?
Since there were only five students in this class, they all sat in one row facing the teacher
in the beginning. During the activity, the students were grouped in one group of three and
another of two. They moved their chairs slightly so that they could face each other. Neither the
seating nor the grouping arrangement changed since then.

A&HT 5301
Fall 2015
Boblett

Name ___________Yijun Zhong___________

4. Did the teacher interact with students throughout the activity? Was there student-student
interaction? If students were engaged in pair work/group work, what was the teacher doing?
The during-stage of the speaking activity consisted of two steps. The first step was a
noticing task based on a few text message exchanges printed out for the students. Within their
groups, students were asked to find words or set phrases for invitation and accepting or
declining an invitation. The teacher made the instructions very clear by saying what I want
you to do now is maybe and also by specifically telling them to underline the useful
phrases they had noticed.
Students interacted with each other during this stage, as they frequently engaged in
negotiation of the answers. The teacher walked and answered two questions regarding the
meanings of set phrases and TTYO/TTYS.
The second step in the during-stage featured a whole-group discussion on the words and
phrases students had found in the previous step. The teacher launched this step by initiating a
general question on the final result of the invitation illustrated in the text messages. After that,
students volunteered to share specific language forms they found.
This period was abounded with teacher-student as well as student-student interactions.
For one thing, the teacher dug into students replies by asking a lot of why questions. For
example, she asked, Why do you think she says nothing special in the beginning? She also
introduced cultural aspects into the class by asking students, Do you do this much work to
say no in your culture? For another, students showed little inhibition to share their ideas on
not only the language but also the content in the text messages. They would respond to each
other, and together came up with alternatives to the expressions shown in the handouts.
5. Did any error correction take place during the activity? Was it during group work or whole
group? What type(s) of error correction was/were employed (recast, explicit, etc)? Give
examples.
One instance of error correction occurred in the post-stage of the activity, when the
students were involved in a role-play. A student said, Its up you tomorrow night. The
teacher offered a partial recast by saying up to. There was immediate take-up, as the student
reformulated the sentence and said, Its up to you.
Additionally, there was one point during the whole-group discussion in the during-stage
where a student said that it was a waste of time to be so roundabout in declining an invitation.
The teacher did not agree with this, so she explicitly told the entire class that, Being nice to
someone is never a waste of time. There was no further pursuit concerning this issue. This
was probably not an error correction of language, but more likely a cultural moment when the
student represented a culture that was perhaps more direct in interpersonal communication.
The way the teacher ended this felt a little abrupt to me, because the tone she used was quite
strong, but in this way she was able to control the class and stay on the right track.
6. What were students expected to do (what language were they expected to produce) during the
course of the activity? Did they seem to be set up to participate successfully (i.e., teacher
modeling, examples, scaffolding, etc.)? Be specific.

A&HT 5301
Fall 2015
Boblett

Name ___________Yijun Zhong___________

It would seem that, although the students were quite prepared for the general theme of the
lesson in the pre-stage, they were not quite sure about what to look for in the beginning of the
during-stage of the activity. The teacher used some linguistic terms such as set phrases
without explanation. Neither did she give concrete examples, which was probably why during
the group discussion one of the students asked her the meaning of set phrases.
In the whole-group discussion, the students were quite set up to participate, because the
teacher asked very specific questions. For example, upon the discussion of one line where
refusal took place, she asked, Would you understand this as a no? Did she say no? After
that she carried on the discussion by asking, What are some particular words that she used to
make things softer?
7. Were students assessed? How was that managed?
Students were assessed mainly during the post-stage of the activity. As a practice of the
language they had learnt previously, they were asked to construct a role-play in which there
was invitation as well as soft refusals of it. This stage was broken down into two steps. To
begin with the students were given 30 seconds to think of something that they wanted to invite
a classmate to. Afterwards they carried out the role-play within their groups.
Language assessment took place during the group work. The teacher moved from one
group to another and listened to their conversations. After each conversation she would jump
in and provided feedback. For example, she said to one student, You leave it open. Thats
why she keeps asking when the student kept receiving further invitation from her partner.
8. If students were expected to report back to the whole group, what did the teacher do to ensure
that the other students would be attentive? In other words, were students held accountable for
the language that others produced?
Students were expected to report back to the whole class after the group discussion in the
during-stage of the activity. The teacher tried to engage everyone by asking culture-related
questions from time to time, so that students would have to know what the others had said in
order to participate. Since it was a small class, students were quite attentive even though no
other practices were done to ensure that.
9. Summarizing:
(a) How would you label the different parts of the activity (pre, during, and post)
Pre-stage:
The teacher connected the present lesson with the previous one, and students talked about
dating norms and related linguistic practices in their countries.
During-stage:
The during-stage began with a noticing task, which required the students to underline the
words and phrases about invitation and the acceptance or refusal of it in a few text message
exchanges. This was followed by a whole-group report in which they shared their discoveries
and the teacher led them to know more about the language as well as the culture behind it.

A&HT 5301
Fall 2015
Boblett

Name ___________Yijun Zhong___________

Incidental vocabulary teaching also took place during this stage. The teacher selected a
few phrases from the text messages, such as back down and count me in, and asked the
students if they knew the meanings before she offered the answers. She also pushed them to
come up with more expressions that carried similar meanings.
Post-stage:
The post-stage featured students practice of using the language they had learnt
previously in a role-play within their groups. Language assessment took place during this
stage, and the teacher gave feedback regarding each groups performance.
(b) At what points in the activity did T-S and S-S interaction occur?
T-S interactions occurred throughout the entire activity. The lesson was very interactive,
as the teacher kept probing into the details of the language and asked students to reflect upon
them. Even during group discussions, the teacher was there to help and provided feedback as
needed.
S-S interaction occurred mainly during group discussions. There was frequent negotiation
of meaning as well as output of the target language forms. There was some S-S interaction in
whole group discussion, as sometimes students would voluntarily respond to their classmates
contribution. This was achieved perhaps because the teacher really highlighted the cultural
aspect of the lesson, so the students were all very motivated to share.