I observed an audiolingual-visual class on 19th November which was given by Mrs. Ye. Topic for these two periods was about whether. Students had finished section A in Part 1 in the last class. So the teacher began the class with reviewing the words and phrases which were related to weather such as freezing point, relative humidity and cold snap. Four students were invited to read the words and phrases for the teacher to check their pronunciation. One of the students pronounced the word, relative, with wrong stress and the teacher corrected her mistake directly informing that she should pay more attention to the word stress. The student was instructed to pronounce the word again.
In the beginning of section B, Mrs. Ye introduced the difference between degrees Centigrade and degrees Fahrenheit which are used to measure temperature. Then students were asked to write down all the degrees in both Centigrade and Fahrenheit after hearing five statements about temperature. Five students read the sentences one by one. The first student mispronounced the word Fahrenheit. It’s likely that most students would make a mistake when pronouncing the word and the teacher asked the whole class to read after her. When students came across the new phrase, freezing point, the teacher encouraged them to accumulate new expressions as well as their usage. The fourth students answered the question in a low voice and the teacher inspired her to be more confident. Mrs. Ye summarized that this section was relatively simple and students were required to read the new expressions correctly.
In section C, students need to complete a table after hearing a report on weather around the world. The table was made up of time, weather and temperature about 11 cities of different countries. Students mainly figured out the time, weather and temperature from the listening material. Similarly, 11 students shared their answers. The first student was puzzled by the time and was not sure about whether it was in the morning or in the afternoon. The teacher taught him to infer from the background information. The sentence, the sun is shining, proved that it was in the morning. Mrs. Ye listed another sentence for students to contrast, the sun is glaring. She emphasized the different contexts of shine and glare and made two more examples. The second student gave her answers with separate words and the teacher reminded her to make complete sentences. During checking other students’ answers, the teacher said that they need to familiarize with various expressions of the same meaning. When interfering with unimportant statements, students need to be adaptable. The teacher also concluded that most students cannot pronounce ten correctly and they were advised to practice as much as possible. There were some small but important words that were emphasized.
Part 2 was leaded in with the reasons why people tend to talk about the weather in Britain. Before listening to section A, the students were showed a map of the UK. Together with introducing different parts of the country, Mrs. Ye recalled her travel in Belfast last year. She gave a vivid description of her travelling as well as the interesting history happened Ireland. During this part, students’ interest was motivated and they were all ears to her narration. Then students need to write down all the words that the weatherman uses to describe the weather after hearing a weather forecast for the UK. The listening material was a little difficult for the students so it was played twice. For the first time, students grasped the main idea by themselves. Mrs. Ye stopped the recording at proper time in the second play for key words could be noted down. Students didn’t have to answer the questions one by one. When dealing with this difficult section, they were at ease and felt less anxious. The teacher explained several important words such as depression, breeze and fog patches, which helped students have a better understanding of the material. At the end of this section, the teacher emphasized the importance of common sense. Meanwhile, she suggested that travelling abroad broaden people’s horizon and students seize more opportunities to gain experience.
Section B was short in content but hard to understand for it was concerned with complicated expressions. Mrs. Ye used the same teaching pattern in section B and C as the former part. she explained how to read decimal and the concrete usage of words like clam and fair. That’s all for the teaching process.
The class was arranged in the afternoon and I was too sleepy at the second period. Chances are that part of listeners have the same drowsiness like me because the student next to me fell asleep at his table too. Actually I was interested by the name of the course for it’s new to me. It turned to be the same listening class which I attended four years ago. However, I really appreciated the teacher’s pronunciation that was really elegant and graceful.
One thing puzzles me is that teaches are always instructing us to make class alive. Why don’t they put the methodologies into practice? Even if we are college students or post graduates, we also hope to attend dynamic and colorful classes. I think that if we are going to be an innovative teacher, not only need we acquire the methodologies of teaching but also the experiences. The experiences form learning process leave a deeper depression on us.
Take me for example, I had classes where the classroom was arranged in a square way in high school. That is to say, eight students of a group sat face to face. Three students sat opposite to another three. And two students sat at the both ends. Mr. Zhang also changed his teaching modes into a student-centered way. He became an organizer and mentor instead of only being a lecturer. we were asked to present the content as well as comment on the presentation by ourselves. Then the teacher gave a summary and supplementary information. Every student was involved in the class and we had more discussion and chances to express our own feelings and understandings. It’s important that the atmosphere was relatively relaxing and harmonious so that we didn’t worry about making mistakes or losing face. Unfortunately, the teacher changed this teaching mode at the last semester in senior high school and we became the machine of study with the pressure of college entrance examination. Still it’s a wonderful learning experience. I’m more likely to implement this teaching mode in my career for I knew how it’s going like after involving in it. All in all, in my opinion we need more experience of engaging.
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