PEER OBSERVATION Trainee: Simona Varzan Trainee teaching: Theodore Teaching practice: TP 15; August 30, 2011 Lesson

type: Guided discovery of a structure Focus: lesson balance and language awareness Theodores lesson was something unexpected. He always manages to surprise us in the way he likes to teach. The guided discovery lesson is a difficult step and careful preparation is needed. I could notice that it was Lesson balance: Theodore chose to present language through a video, which as not a good choice as it proved difficult to the students to grasp the innuendoes. The context was not actually set and the communicative activity at the beginning didnt nicely relate to the listening and watching tasks. There was no gist and the detailed task was too long and demanding on the students, Theodore having lost valuable moments for production at this point. The skills part in the lesson did not smoothly run into the guided discovery stag and when Theodore wanted to elicit reported speech he couldnt because the language was not there and the previous task seemed unrelated to the following one. His practice activity was good but the students remained confused on some of the corrections. The time for production was consumed at previous stages so that what couldve been a very nice production was doomed. There was some revision and delayed error correction. Language awareness: First of all I didnt consider his video clip a good choice as it contained some bawdy language which some students couldve found offensive had they got the gist of it. The video made use of slang the students are not accustomed to so Theodores language was not graded to suit their level. The video didnt contain the T.L. under any form becoming irrelevant in the guided discovery process. I also found that Theodore didnt master the T.L. he was supposed to teach and that is what endangered his lesson outcomes. The students asked him questions he hesitated in answering and they sensed his insecurity.

Conclusion: integrating both skill lesson and guided discovery lesson is a difficult task and it puts so much pressure on the teacher and the students. There are many aspects to consider and you have to make every stage flow into the other and create a sense of relatedness. I learned today that I have to prepare thoroughly and look for texts that dont make things harder for the students. T.L. has to be there for students to elicit it. The teacher needs to build a bridge between skill lesson and structure presentation.