ESL Level 5

[Admin]

Post any experiences about your observations of a Level 5 ESL class

[Admin]

My first ESL observation was yesterday with Stanley. The class I observed was presentations by students for the teacher to grade them and decide who should be moved to Level 6 next semester or not. It surprised me how interested almost all of the other students were as they listened to the presentations. The specific task was to present a famous person, just a short presentation, but the entire class was very supportive of the presenters. I was surprised at how supportive of each other they were.

I was very impressed with the more difficult words the students would use, and struggle with what I would have though were simpler. Prior to the presentations, the teacher wrote on the board a list of words that she then went through quite quickly just explaining how to properly pronounce words with 'x' in it. The class followed along very well. I realized that the teacher had done this because she doesn't interrupt students who are presenting at all, the only time she would say something is if the students was struggling to remember a word, not if they quickly made an error and continued without noticing.

I felt that this assignment worked very well, as the students all seemed very interested in their topics, and enjoyed presenting them and using the English they had learned. It made me think of other similar presentations that may go over well, due to the interest of the students as well as by utilizing their own previous life experiences. Translating and explaining a childhood song or story for the class, this would work very well in my opinion because they wouldn't necessarily need to memorize words or facts they may need to when it comes to learning new information and presenting it, but instead they would easily be able to rephrase their own thoughts and memories with whatever English they were able to use.

I very much enjoyed my first observation, it certainly helped me feel more relaxed after many members of the class welcomed me and some even thanked me for coming. I can tell the environment is quite conducive of learning and that these people really do want to be there. I very much look forward to future observations, though am still quite nervous about the idea of teaching the students myself.