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TEACHING AN I.E.K. CLASS INTRODUCTION

The assignment that is going to be presented focuses on a recorded session that was presented by the teacher in a class at a public school. It will be described the teaching context and the learners profile. In addition, there will be a small description of the recorded lesson by placing photocopies from the handouts used during the lesson. The rest of the assignment will focus, in a more detailed analysis, on the recorded lesson and the reflection on the teachers practices and the impact they had on the learners.

1. TEACHING CONTEXT & PROFILE OF THE LEARNERS

The class that the teacher had taught can be classified as A1 according to Common European Framework (2001:24) as most of the learners can understand and use every day expressions as well as very basic phrases from L2. They can also introduce themselves, and ask and answer basic questions about personal details The class is constituted by adults whose aim of going to this class is to try and learn English for business purposes. They attend classes mostly because it is obligatory and not because they are interested in the subject. Therefore, the teacher is not addressed to a very keen audience but tries to make them aware of the difficulties they are going to face, as their main studies refer to the technology of medical instruments, which is extremely developed in countries, which use English as the main language. Another problem faced by the teacher is the evening classes where usually the learners are either absent or too tired to participate or even follow the procedure. Moreover, the classroom is a typical

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2 classroom of a Greek public school with destroyed desks and chairs, even without outlets for a tape recorder for the listening tasks. The profile that follows describes the situation better and follows Woodwards (2001:19-21) suggestions on profiling students. (A).General characteristics. (i)features readily avalaible Number of students: There are 26 students in the class. There is no choice of room as it is decided in advanced by the supervisor of the I.EK. and there is no extra seating arrangement because it is not the only class which has a lesson in this particular classroom. Sex ratio: The class consists of members of both sexes but they usually do not cooperate with each other. Age range: The age range varies from 18 to 30 years so there is a different energy level because those learners who are up to 30 are interested in the lesson, where the students who are 18 and more, are more energetic and sometimes annoy the class. In addition, the choice of the topic should vary in order to catch everybodys attention. Aside from that, the concentration differs due to the age variety. Mother tongue: Although the majority of the class speaks Greek, there are some learners whose mother tongue is Albanian or Russian .But they all communicate in Greek. Nationality: As it has already referred, the learners come, in their majority, from the same country but there are students whose nationality is Albanian or Russian. Other languages learners speak : Most learners have been taught English but their learning was fragmented or stopped at a very low level . Some others as they come from different countries they have learned Greek as a foreign

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3 language. Target language level: The level of English of the students is quiet low except of two, who have already taken their first certificate. The rest have different levels of competence but because of the lack of time it could not be possible to have a placement test in class , although the teaching material ,which must be taught in class is much more advanced than their actual level. Profession and/or other interest: All the students work in different professions but the reason of coming to this school is to learn a new profession so they are motivated by materials that focus on their subject of interest. Books and materials currently and previously used: The teacher has to teach specific materials which were given by the organization to whom belongs the school. As a result, the teacher is not able to form a curriculum that will be more appropriate for the learners' interest. In addition, because there were different teachers each semester, it was not known to the teacher of this semester what was the previous material taught in class. Learners target situation: The purpose of teaching English in this class can be identified as ESP because the learners should be taught the terminology of their science. Educational background : All students have finished all levels of secondary school. Other commitments during the course : The learners try to avoid classes as they come late at class or they do not do the activities. There is no homework because all work is done during the lesson. As a result, the learners are very relaxed. View of the course: Most learners know that their knowledge of English is limited but only a few of them have the will to learn. The teacher also wants to fulfill

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4 their needs and expectations to learn the terminology. (ii) Features that take longer to find out. Group dynamic and personality : Usually the students sit with people they like so there is no particular seating arrangement . Some of the students do not attend classes regularly and when they do, they are extremely noisy. Generally speaking, there is much noise during the session. Learner style represented in the group: Until now there have been different learning styles as the students have been exposed to learning by seeing or hearing. There is no evidence of their type of intelligence. Learners perception of their own competence: There was no time to establish self-confidence to the students as there were a few meetings with the teacher (B).Different class types. The class in the recorded lesson can be characterized as heterogeneous class as it is mixed on the basis of the learners skills, levels, age, etc. It is also a very large class because the number of learners are more than enough for this level. Moreover, the class is very difficult to be controlled because of the size.

2. SMALL DESCRIPTION OF THE SESSION

First, the class made a small warm up on the subject of the reading material which was a reading exercise (appendix1) where the students had to read and understand the meaning and put the words underneath in the gaps .They had a small conversation about the main theme. The students participated using mostly their mother tongue/L1. Then the class read the reading part and underlined the unknown words they had. As they asked and then wrote down the meaning of the words in Greek, the teacher gave them the derivatives of the main words. This continued through out

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5 the first teaching hour. The second hour the students had to find out the answers and justify their choice.

3. DESCRIPTION OF THE CLASSROOM & REFLECTION ON THE TEACHERS PRACTICES.

1. The lesson aim and objectives. The aim of this particular lesson was to teach the students new vocabulary and their derivatives using a reading text { Bottom-up process }.In addition the teacher wanted to teach students how to read a similar reading text in order to make them understand the meaning without paying attention to the gaps { Topdown process} .(appendix 2). The objectives were to make the students understand how to produce new words and also find the missing words using their knowledge on vocabulary. 2. Teacher talk . As Chaudron (1988:ch3) mentions the teachers usually do the talking in the classroom discourse. The teacher in the recorded session does the same as s/he is in the place to be both management oriented and communication oriented. The teacher speaks most of the time in order to give explanations (appendix3i) disciplining the learners (appendix3-ii) or praising the learners(appendix3-iii). The language s/he used, was the L2 but where it was necessary and in this class most of the time, s/he used L1. The content was also simple in order to make the students familiar with classroom language. So the teacher used the L1 to explain the vocabulary (appendix3-iv). The same continued throughout the session with the teacher trying to balance between L1and L2 .

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6 So the teacher's role in the classroom can be described as the teacher as facilitator (Brown, 1994: 160 -2) as s/he was responsible for making the learning of the learners easier and motivate them to learn how to learn. 3. Learners talk. The learners in this particular class had no motivating tasks in order to use L2. So they were eavesdroppers of what the teacher said, but they used L1 to ask questions (appendix3-v) or to respond to the task (appendix3-vi). There were no self correcting mechanisms as the use of L2 from the learners was absent . 4. Language-related issues. The use of both L1 and L2 was mostly made by the teacher ,having L1 to be the predominant language. From the learners point, the use of L1 was the only means of interaction with the teacher and among them. There was no practice of the new language as there was no time for reading comprehension. 5 .The role of the teacher. The role of the teacher was mostly monitoring in order to see if the learners have done the tasks and also responding to what the students asked. In some cases s/he praised the learners(appendix3-iv) or s/he tried to discipline them (Appendix 3-vii). 6. Time management . The teacher used a lesson plan (appendix2) in order to organize the lesson . Using the plan s/he tried to keep the time for each tasks but because of the many interruptions s/he could not follow it exactly. Moreover, the second task took more time. Also the vast number of the unknown words left no time for reading comprehension.

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CONCLUSION
The previous assignment tried to describe a session in a I.E.K. classroom and also make the teacher understand his/her teaching context. It also provided the teacher the opportunity to reflect on his/her practices and understand better the needs of the class s/he had taught.

LIOURA OLGA,26038 ,52 ,MINI ASSIGNMENT 1,25/10/2004.

REFERENCES
Brown, H. D. (1994)Teaching by principles :an interactive approach to language pedagogy,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Chaudron, C.(1988)Second language classroom :research on teaching and learning.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Council of Europe (2001)Common European framework of reference for language: learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sifakis, N. Georgountzou, A. Hill, M. (2004)Language Learning Skills and Materials.
Hellenic Open University.

Woodward, T.(2001)Planning lessons and courses: designing sequences of work for the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

LIOURA OLGA,26038 ,52 ,MINI ASSIGNMENT 1,25/10/2004.

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APPENDIX 2
LESSON PLAN CLASS: TECHNICIANS OF MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS OBJECTIVES: To teach new vocabulary from the content and the context .Derivatives. ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS: Low level of the class in terms of vocabulary. MATERIALS: Photocopies of the text. STAGES Warm up ESTIMATED TIME 1O min ACTIVITY Talk about the Text Reading Vocabulary PROCEDURE Questions: what they know about inventions and inventors Read the text in order to Understand the meaning. Write unknown words and Derivatives. DATE: 13/10/2004 TIME: 35 MIN.

Presentation 1 5 min. Presentation 2 15 min.

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APPENDIX 3
I.

II. III.
IV.

V. VI.
VII.

Read the text /what+ did+ he+ invent?ti+ vrike? Zip it I like your English Electric bulb ++ ilektrikos lamptiras / it is a +noun +usiastiko+ +epanastatikos Pos proferete? Re+vo+lu+tion+na+ry Pos proferete afto? Girls!

LIOURA OLGA,26038 ,52 ,MINI ASSIGNMENT 1,25/10/2004.