Ali-Observation #1

I observed Ah Young's speaking class for intermediate to advanced level students last Tuesday. When I came into the class she handed me a feedback form to fill out because one of the students was going to give a 20 minute long presentation in class that day. She wanted me to take notes on her grammar, intonation, pronunciation, phrasing, and any other comments that I had. Ah Young introduced the class and had a very approachable personality and teaching style. I could see that the students responded well to her when she spoke and listened to her, as well as joked around with her. As an observer, it seemed like a classroom environment that I would want to be a part of.

The presentation was on Pixar, so the majority of the class paid attention throughout it because the students did keep it entertaining by including pictures and videos. Ah Young was also taking notes during the presentation as well. I noticed that her pronunciation of certain sounds like "th" and "or" were repeatedly wrong, and made note of it. There were several chunks of time that were dedicated to watching the videos, so that she did not have to speak for the entire 20 minutes. As a teacher, I would have limited the use of videos in the presentation and how long that video could be, only so that the student would have to prepare to speak for the majority of the presentation and not rely on a video to speak for them.

After the presentation ended the class was about over and the students started editing mistakes that they had made in a previous lesson and then Ah Young wanted me to briefly discuss my notes with the student. I did so, and she was very nice and receptive of what I said to her. I emailed Ah Young afterwards and she also liked giving tangible feedback; she said that she would like to have allowed more time for editing; and she also said that she allows for plenty of class discussion to give the students an equal amount of speaking time. Overall, I think that the class went well.