Jordan – CO2

On July 12th, I had my second observation, Ah Young Kim’s Intermediate Listening class. The teacher started class by having me introduce myself to the students. They expressed interest in why and where I wanted to be a teacher, and the teacher encouraged this questioning. I felt I was interrupting the class, but Ms. Kim assured me this was good practice, so we spent about 10 minutes talking. She used this discussion as a springboard into a talk about how important it is to break the habit translating from their native language into and out of English. Whether speaking, listening, reading or writing, she stressed “thinking in English” as imperative for real language fluency. We also talked about how the first language of a student automatically makes certain foreign languages easier, and others harder, to acquire (sparked by a question about which language I found easiest to learn). Before returning to her lesson, Ms. Kim illustrated the distinction between learned and acquired systems for language learning. They come from different styles of learning and study (‘learned’ from the classroom, and ‘acquired’ from real-life speaking practice), but both monitor each other and aid in communication. She said that listening to me speak helped with the acquired systems of the students.
Then we moved on to her lesson, a modified dictation. We watched a clip of the movie Ratatouille online, while students followed along on printed scripts. The scripts were incomplete – missing words, phrases and sometimes sentences – and it was the students’ task to fill in these blanks as they went along. Ms. Kim paused the movie several times and checked for both answers to the blanks and content comprehension of the movie. The students had some difficulty with the listening, but the script, pausing and action of the movie all helped to make the activity enjoyable rather than frustrating for them. I would like to use this kind of activity in the classroom, tailored to the available resources, if necessary.