Carlos-CO1

On Tuesday, I sat in on Jennifer Babjak's speaking class. Her classroom consisted of a diverse group of 7 students. The students came from South Korea, Colombia, and a number of countries in the Middle East. Jennifer began with a scheduled vocabulary quiz so my shadowing was a little dull at first. Once the class began, I immediately caught on to Jennifer's teaching style. She had a very relaxed and comfortable teaching style that I would like to emulate when I begin teaching. She is very personable with each individual student, making sure she gives proper attention to everyone. She broke the ice asking about everyone's holiday weekend as well as sharing her own story. She really made an effort to get conversations going, despite some reluctance on the students' side. One thing I noticed about the way she taught her class was that she continuously wrote down any words the students had trouble spelling, pronouncing, or understanding on a designated corner of the board. I want to do this when I teach in order for the students to continuously learn words that they may want to use in every day speech. Many of these words may not fall into a specific vocabulary word list, so this board will serve as a practical/random vocabulary list. The activity she had planned for the students involved them getting into pairs and having random topics assigned to them. The students were to discuss and take one side of the opinion, as well as form examples to support their opinion. This activity was planned to spark conversation between the students as well as an exchange of ideas. Sitting in on this class has shown me how to utilize certain teaching methods I've read in my book to my own classroom in the future. Also, I have a better understanding of why my former language teachers taught the way they did.