ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT : FROM THEORY INTO PRACTICE

“OBSERVING LEARNING AND TEACHING IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE

CLASSROOM”

Lecturer : Rosina F. J. Lekawael, S.Pd. MA

GROUP 2:

1. M Syamsul Nukuhaly
(201736054)
2. Ikram Yusran
(201836003)
3. Faradila
(201836004)
4. Dwi Atika Nusalelu (201836030)
5. Muhammad Asgar Kamarullah (201836048)
6. Naddynda P. Nythieazita (201836052)
7. Riska Ramadani Bugis (201836100)
8. Sifra Huwae (201836012)
9. Aghnes Sarimolle (201836135)

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
PATTIMURA UNIVERSITY
AMBON
2021

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

 A. NATURAL AND INSTRUCTIONAL SETTINGS

In the acquisition of a second language, there are many methods that the teachers can
use in order to improve the knowledge of the students. A second language can also be learned
in two ways, it can be acquired from natural setting which means that students learn it and
receive it from outside the classroom or society and it can be learned formally in the
classroom setting. There are three different learming settings for acquiring a second or
foreign language :

1. Natural Acquisition Context

It is where the learner is exposed to the language outside the classroom such as at
work, school, or in social interaction. The instruction itself is directed toward
native speakers rather than toward learners of the language.
2. Structure-based Instructional Environment
In structure-based instructional environment, the language is taught to a group of
second or foreign language learners. The focus is on the language itself, rather
than on the message carried by the language. The teacher’s goal is to teach
students the vocabulary and grammatical rules of the target language. In stucture-
based classes, students can continue to learn outside the classroom and also can
choose to continue learn in the classroom. For most students, their goal is only to
pass the examination rather than to use the language itself in daily conversation.
3. Communicative, Content-based, and Task-based Instructional Environment
The goal of these kind of environment is to learning the language itself. However,
the style of instruction places the emphasis on interaction, conversation, and
language use, rather than on learning about the language. The discussion of topics
in communicative and task-based instructional are often of general interest to the
learner(for example, how to reply to a classified advertisement from a newspaper).
In content-based instruction, the focus is on the subject matter such as history and
mathematics of what students have learned through the medium of second
language. The teacher’s goal is that students can finally interact in a variety of
contexts and to get things done using the language itself.

Each of these settings must have a specific characteristics to know. Simply below,
here is a tabel comparing the characterictics in different acquisition settings for second
language :
 Natural Structured-based Communicative Instructional
Characteristics Acquisition Instructional Settings
Settings Settings Teacher-Student Student-Student
Learning one thing at Exposed to a One item at a time Simplified and Erroneous
a time wide variety of comprehensible
vocabulary and input
structures
Frequent feedbak on Rarely Frequently Limited error. No error
errors corrected corrected Form focus correction.
Meaning focus
Ample time for Ma ny hours Limited to a few Short response Greater amount
learning each day hours of a week and variety of
language
High ratio of native Encounter many Teachers are the Only teachers Expose to
speakers to learners proficient target only target language interlanguage
language users user
Variety of language Variety of Limited range Instructional Sociolinguistics
and discourse types language events IRE(Initiation, strategies
Response,
Evaluation)
Pressure to speak Not forced Forced Little pressure in an accuracy
Access to the modified Access Access Access
input

However, the description on the tabel cannot capture the individual characteristics of
particular classroom. For this reason, the researchers have developed two ways to study
classroom learning and teaching. The first is observation schemes, an approach to anticipate
the occurrence of particular events and behaviours and make note for students within
preplanned frameworks or checklists. The second approach is classroom etnography. It is
where the observer is required to describe what happens in the classroom.

B. OBSERVATION SCHEMES

According to Nina Spada and Maria Frohlich (1995), they mention one of a scheme
developed specifically for second language classrooms which is the Communicative
Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) Observation Schemes. COLT is divided into two
parts; Part A and Part B. Part A describes teaching practices in terms of content, focus, and
organization of activity types. For example, the observer can observed whether the
pedagogical activities are teacher or student centered, whether the focus is on language form
or meaning, etc. Meanwhile Part B describes specific aspects of the language produced by
teachers and students. For example, how much language students produce, the kinds of
questions teachers ask, the way teachers respond to students’ errors, etc.

To know the characteristics of input and interaction between teachers and students
also between students and students, comparisons were made.

1. Classroom Comparison : Teacher – Student Interactions

Classroom A
Characteristics
(Structure-based Approach)
Errors  Very few on the part of
the teacher
 Question in statement
form
Feedback on errors When students make mistakes,
the teacher reacts
Genuine questions A few and mostly related to
classroom managemnet
Display questions Almost all of them
Negotiation of meaning  Very little. Teachers
focus on formal aspects
of the language
 Students have no
opportunity to determine
Classroom B
(Communicative Approach)
 Students make errors
 Simplified informal
speech
 Incomplete sentences
 Teacher repeats
students’ speech with
the correct form
 Correction is not
consistent
 Focus on meaning
 Almost all of the
teacher use it
 To get information
from students
 Students don’t ask
question in exchange
No. Because the focus is on
meaning not accuracy
Yes, from the teacher’s side

Metalinguistic comments
the direction of the
discourse
 Always from the start of The teacher doesn’t say
the lesson anything
 Students know what
really matters

2. Classroom Comparison : Student – Student Interactions

Communication task A : Communication task B :

Picture Description
There are many grammatical and
pronunciations errors from both learners
There is no error correction
There are many genuine questionst to get
information and ask for clarification
There are no display questions because they
engaged in a real communication exchange
There is negotiation of meanings because both
learners are trying to understand each other
There are no metalinguistic comments
Focus on meaning
Jigsaw
Both learners make several grammatical
errors
There is no actual error correction
The question that are asked are genuine.
Students shared the information about how
to complete the task
There are no display questions. Students are
actively collaborating to reconstruct the
story
There is negotiation of form to discuss about
whether they are using the correct form
Students are talking about language as they
focus on trying to find the right form
Focus on both form and meaning

Based on the comparisons above, the six categories(errors, feedback on errors,

genuine questions, display questions, negotiation of meanings, metalinguistic comments) are
really helpful in order to decribed and compare teacher-student and student-student
interaction as for the observation schemes.

As the following sections, there are eight studies in which one particular feature of
instruction has been examined. The four first studies examine corrective feedback, and the
other four investigate teachers’ use of questions.

 CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN THE CLASSROOM

1. Study 1 : Recasts in content-based classroom
 Roy Lyster and Leila Ranta (1997) developed an observational scheme which
described types of feedback teachers give on errors and examines student
uptake(how they immediately respond to the feedback). There are six types of
feedback that has been identified by them. First is explicit correction, which refer
to the explicit provision of the correct form. Second is recasts, which involve the
teacher’s reformulation of all part of a student’s utterance, minus the error. Third
is clarification requests, which indicate to students either that their utterance has
been misunderstood by the teacher or that the utterance is incorrect in some way
and that a repetition or a reformulation is required. Fourth is metalinguistic
feedback that contains comments, information, or questions related to the
correctness of the student’s utterance, without explicitly providing the correct
form. Fifth is elicitation that refers to at least three techniques that teachers use to
directly elicit the correct form from the students. Sixth is repetition which refers to
the teacher’s repetition of the student’s erroneous utterance. Lyster (1998) argued
that students in content-based second language classrooms are less likely to notice
recasts than other forms of error correction.
2. Study 2 : Recasts and private speech
Amy Ohta (2000) examined the oral language that learners addressed to
themselves during classroom activities. The classroom interaction consisted of a
focus on grammar and metalinguistic instruction. In this context, Ohta dicovered
that learners noticed recasts when they were provided by the instructor.
3. Study 3 : Recasts and uptake
Rod Ellis, Helen Basturkmen, and Shawn Loewen (2001) observed the types of
corrective feedback provided by teachers and the learners’ immediate responses to
it. In here, the study shows that it is where teachers and students perceive recasts
as feedbask on the form of their utterances.
4. Study 4 : Corrective feedback on context
Rhonda Oliver and Alison Mackey (2003) investigated whether teachers’
provision and learners’ use of corrective feedback differed dependng on varying
contexts for interaction in a lesson. They found that learners produced
significantly more errors in the communication exchanges. Thus opportunities for
feedback were gratest in this context. The researchers found that feedback was
provided in all instructional but it was most frequent in the explicit language
exchanges, followed by content, communication, and management.
 QUESTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM
5. Study 5 : Teachers’ questions in ESL classroom
Michael Long and Charlene Sato (1983) examined the forms and functions of
questions asked by teachers in ESL classrooms and compared them with
questioning behaviours observed outside the classroom between native and non-
native speakers. The researchers concluded that teacher-learner interaction is a
“greatly distorted version of its equivalent in the real world” and they argued that
the interactional structure of classroom conversation should be changed.
6. Study 6 : Scaffolding and siplay and referential questions
Dawn McCormick and Richard Donato (2000) explored how the teacher’s
questions were linked to her instructional goals. they argue that the teacher’s use
of the display question “Who usually lives in palaces?” serves an important
pedagogic function because it draws the learners’ attention to the word “palace”
through the display question and facilitates the learners’ comprehension of the
word.
7. Study 7 : Open and closed questions
Christiane Dalton-Puffer (2006) observed and audiorecorded the type of questions
asked by teacher, as well as the responses students gave to them. Dalton-Puffer
concluded that asking more complex open-ended questions would benefit learners
in these CLIL classrooms but that this level of question/response interactions
requires a high level of competence in the foreign language on the part of the
teacher.

8. Study 8 : Wait time

Joanna White and Patsy Lightbown (1984) did a quantitative analysis of wait time
in ESL classes that were audiolingual in their approach. They found that teachers
typically gave students no more than a second or two before they directed the
question to another student or answered the question themselves. They also tended
to repeat or paraphrase the question several times rather than silently wait for the
student to formulate a response.
 C. ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that invloves immersing youself in a

particular community or organization to observe their behavior and interactions up close.
Ethnographies in second or foreign language classroom do not focus solely on learning or on
teaching but also on social, cultural, and political realities and their impact on learners’
cognitive, linguistic, and social development. There are three ethnographies carried out in
second and foreign language classrooms(South Pacific, Canada, anda Europe) :

1. Study 9 : Language in the home and school

Karen Watson-Gegeo (1992) explored language use practices in the home and in
the school. She uncovered many differences in language use and values between
the home and school setting. There was no use of the children’s first language in
school. Their first language was replaced with a restricted and often incorrect
version of English.
2. Study 10 : Separation of second language learners in primary schools
Kelleen Toohey (1998) identified three classroom practices that led to the
separation of the ESL children in the classroom. First, the ESL children’s desks
were placed close to the teacher’s desk, on the assumption that they needed more
direct help from the teacher. Some of them were also removed from the classroom
twice a week to obtain assistance from an ESL teacher. Second, instances in
which learners interacted more with each other usually involved borrowing or
lending materials but this had to be done surreptitiously because the teacher did
not always tolerate it. Finally, there was a rule in the classroom that children
should not copy one another’s oral or written productions.

3. Study 11 : Socio-political change and foreign language classroom discourse

Patricia Duff (1995) examined the impact of socio-political changes on
pedagogical practice. She compared the structure and participation patterns of two
classroom activities. She’s finally concluded that socio-political transformation
impacts on classroom practice and ultimately on second language learning.
 REFERENCES

Lane, A. L. (2012). Chapter 5: Observing Learning & Teaching in the Second language
Classroom. 2006.

Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). Observing learning and teaching in the second
language classroom. How Languages Are Learned, 109–136.

M Caner. (2013). Ch.5. Observing Learning and Teaching in the Second Language
Classroom [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=__kMVkGNRFE

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