C. Smith - Class Observation (Speaking Lesson)

Today I went over to Room 317 in order to observe a speaking class. I arrived ahead of time and claimed a seat. After students finished filtering in, the teacher came in and began the exercise. He passed out papers to the students and explained that for this portion of the class they would be presenting their opinion and asking others what they thought or felt about a topic. The chosen topic for this discussion was American movies.

He pretaught some useful phrases such as in my opinion/I think/I feel and also taught some questions to use when asking others about their views. These questions included What do you think about [x], What's your opinion on [y], and what do you think we/they/etc. should do? In addition to the questions, the class also was taught replies for agreeing and disagreeing with their partner.

The class was taught to justify their opinion and had to write down some justification for how they felt about a certain thing. He gave the class a 5-10 minute time limit and then had the students walk around, asking other people about how they felt. While they did this, the teacher listened for beautiful mistakes and then wrote some sample ones on the board. He asked the class to help correct the sentences, which gave them more of a chance to participate.

For homework, the class was assigned a survey. He explained what the survey was for, and how to approach people and politely ask for their assistance with the survey. He pretaught the term creepy and explained why it was not appropriate to follow students who are running, interrupt students who are on the phone, or bizarrely insist upon their participation if they are reluctant to answer. He asked some students to demonstrate how they'd ask another student a question to ensure the class understood the procedure. Instead of giving them a list of questions to ask, he instead asked them to make their own question from a set of categories (American culture, plans for the future, etc.), giving them more to do for the homework assignment. One student worried about not having enough time to ask enough people, but the teacher explained that they did not have a minimum number of people to ask.