Running head: L/S CLASS OBSERVATION REPORT 1

Listening and Speaking Class Observation Report

Yuanyuan Sun

Colorado State University

L/S CLASS OBSERVATION REPORT 2

Introduction

The class observation report was summited as part of the requirements for E 514:

Phonology/ Morphology for ESL/EFL. This paper focuses on observations and reflections on

topics and activities related to pronunciation, morphology as well as vocabulary in ESL

listening and speaking classes.

In the fall semester 2016, I observed altogether six listening and speaking classes

ranging from the beginning to advanced level at INTO CSU Academic English Program (AEP).

During the observations, I got the opportunity to see what specific topics in phonology and

morphology are emphasized in different levels at AEP. It was also a great chance for me to

learn from the instructors by observing some effective strategies and the variety of class

activities they used to help ESL students acquire tricky linguistic items. Through the experience,

I gained a clearer idea with how I want to teach topics in morphology, pronunciation and

vocabulary in my future classrooms.

The next section of the paper will describe six class observations in detail. Classes with

more relevant content will be given more focus.

Observations and Reflections

The two listening and speaking AE level 1 classes (beginning level) taught by different

instructors will be introduced first.

The first class included 1 Japanese, 4 Indonesian, 5 Saudi Arabian, 4 Chinese and 1 Thai.

The central topic of the class was if a fat tax is a good way to deal with obesity. The teacher

spent the majority of class time on reviewing homework at the beginning, then on class
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discussion when students were asked to share their final thoughts on the central topic as the

close to the chapter they were working on. There were mainly two reflections from me to the

class. First of all, students at the beginning level clearly struggled with differentiating parts of

speech between words in a word family. One evidence is that several students had difficulty

differentiating obese (adjective) from obesity (noun), which was shown by filling obese in the

blank reduce ____. Other evidence is that when a student said good for our healthy

(adjective), the teacher corrected her to good for our health (noun). It may indicate that

when students at the beginning level make mistakes about parts of speech between words in a

word family, teacher could offer feedbacks in various way to arouse their attention to

differentiate them. At the end of class, the teacher worked on new vocabulary with students for

around twenty minutes. Students were asked to read the words and expressions (absolutely, be

concerned about, take steps, affect, be in favor of) aloud, then circle the letter of the answer

that best explains the meaning of the boldfaced word(s). Two examples are listed in (1):

(1) a. A: Do you like Thai food?

B: Absolutely! Its my favorite kind of food.

a) Maybe.

b) Yes, very much.

b. Please dont cry! There is nothing to be concerned about.

a) Worried about

b) Interested in

One thing I noticed in the activity was how the teacher talked about expressions,
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particularly be concerned about and be in favor of as a whole, so that students can remember

easily in the way that words in the expression are functioning together and have meaning as a

whole. Another observation in the activity is that the teacher tried to explain take steps by

relating the expression to students personal experiences. For example, the teacher asked

students what steps did they take to get into CSU, and she got answers such as application and

registration. Then the teacher gave sample sentences using take steps and students answers.

At the end of activity, the teacher let students talk in groups for five minutes about situations

where they can apply these words. Students were observed actively engaged in discussion, and

they were able to apply the words to the formation of sentences. I think what the teacher did to

show students the semantic meaning and application of vocabulary as well as engage students

in coming up with contexts to apply words can be seen as a demonstration of teaching

vocabulary using communicative approach effectively. It also shows that other than language

knowledge, communicative competence which Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

values should also be a significant focus in language classrooms. To teach grammatical

knowledge including vocabulary, the teachers should not only emphasize the grammatical

forms, but also offer opportunities for meaningful output from students to show their ability to

use the vocabulary in different contexts.

The second Level 1 class I observed tried to finish the chapter they were working on.

The beginning of the class started with a listening activity of finding the best summary sentence

in multiple choice questions. The teacher lectured about the strategy to to exclude inaccurate

summary sentences by looking at key words in them. After listening to a passage once, the
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teacher lectured about another strategy to use: Did you hear these words at listening? I want

you to listen to those at this time. Think about your writing class. Why do we use words like

first of all and also. Its a good way to organize our information and tell our reader. So these

words are mostly used to show details and examples. So this is a clue for you. In the summary

sentence, do we want details or examples? No, we only want the big main idea. So when you

are listening, and you hear these words, the information after these words is going to be a detail

and an example. So that tells you thats not a part of your summary sentence. So listen again,

listen for these words and the ideas that come after them are going to be too small for a summary.

And you want the main idea. After listening to the passage for the second time, the teacher

asked a student and the student gave the right answer: Its important to wear right clothes in

the work place. Then the teacher began to explain the reason why it was the right answer: So

remember, we want to talk about how to be polite in our work place. So which word in here

can we think is similar to being polite? You can talk about the right clothing. We could also

think about important and right together is the same as etiquette, important and right way to do

it. So we have our main ideas. Lets look at the other ones. She asked students which idea

went with first of all, and a student replied letter a, which was correct. Then she asked which

idea went with also, a student gave the right answer letter c. The teacher concluded: So both

of those we know are details because they are using these transition words, connect words.

In this activity, the teacher tried to inform students that vocabulary can be effective and efficient

listening and reading strategy such as in this activity, keywords in a sentence are very useful

clue to help with problem solving. In addition, the teacher addressed that transition words
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function of organizing ideas, which can be helpful for both reading and writing, which

indicated that both language forms and functions are important for students to learn. The

teachers lecture also shows that its important to repeat information to students in the

classroom. Furthermore, the activity shows some principles that CLT values. First of all, the

interaction between the teacher and the students is necessary since the teacher can check

students understanding constantly and formatively in the classroom through questions and

answers. Secondly, the task in this activity illustrates what the communicative approach to

language teaching and learning emphasizes, the integrated skills.

The next activity was vocabulary review for the unit. Students were asked to read the

words out loud and talk about word meanings in groups. Students were very engaged in

discussion. I observed students trying to correct and teach pronunciation or explain the meaning

of words to each other. In this activity, the teacher tried to guide students to be useful learning

resources for each other by offering reflections and feedback to each other. This is an example

illustrating the approach of cooperative learning which involves students learning from each

other in groups (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011). The activity also includes peer

assessment, which is an alternative form of assessment for formative purposes. At the same

time, no matter for the effectiveness of cooperative learning or peer assessment, teachers

guidance can still be important. During the discussion, the teacher found students having

problems with consume and consumption. So she had a short lecture saying consumption comes

form the word consume. And the suffix tion changes the verb consume to the noun. The ways

she explained word differences indicated the importance to get students familiar with English
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affixes. For example, in particular word families, suffixes can be very good indicator for

students to tell parts of speech. The teacher also suggested the word stress pattern as a good

strategy to differentiate parts of speech especially when a two-syllable word may be both noun

and verb. She taught students the rule that in this case, the word with stress on the first syllable

is the noun while stress on the second syllable is the verb, however, she didnt give any more

examples. Though students didnt show explicit confusion after the lecture, I think it could be

more beneficial if the teacher offered more examples regarding to the rule to help student with

understanding.

After a quiz, the teacher conducted an intonation practice at the end of class. She wrote

down the rule and examples first on the board and modeled how intonation goes up in Yes/No

question such as Did you have a good morning? and how intonation goes down in Wh-

questions such as What did you do?. The teacher also underlined what in the second example

to show the stress is on what. After the lecture, the students were asked to find a partner and

ask the first two questions: Are you excited about the weekend? and What are you going to do?.

Students were actively engaged in the practice. They kept asking questions to each other as the

teacher required and the conversations continued around the topic. The teacher walked around

and observed students conversation to check if they applied the rule correctly. I didnt observe

the teacher correct any of the students, which indicates the students did get the rule. This

activity indicates in terms of practicing pronunciation that a good technique for teachers to use

is to set a context with a topic that students are comfortable or familiar with for students to talk

and practice without pressure. At the same time, the activity indicates that group discussion in
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class can be an informal but effective way of formative assessment to evaluate students

progress during class instructions. This kind of formative assessment helps to create an open,

low-stress environment where students are given the opportunity to use the language they know.

Meanwhile, the teachers can evaluate students performance through observations.

I also observed two intermediate level AE 2 classes. The first class had 1 South Korean,

1 Taiwanese, 4 Saudi Arabian and 9 Chinese. The majority of this class time was devoted to

pronunciation. The teacher started class with an activity reviewing the rule of syllable stress

discussed in the last class. She began with reviewing the rule by writing them on the board with

example words, which are shown in (3) as below:

(3)
2 syllable nouns/adjectives: 1st syll. China object(noun)

2 syllable verbs: 2nd syll. begin object (verb)

Compound noun: 1st syll classroom

Phrasal verbs: 2nd word/syll carry out look after

-tion/sion, -ic, ious: syll before (suffix) instruction

-cy, -ty, phy, -al, -ise, -ate: 3rd from end communicate

Then the teacher asked students to work with a partner to divide the words into syllables,

look for clues on the board, underline the stressed syllable, and practice saying the words. At

the end of the activity the class checked the answers together, what ended up on the board is

shown as follow in (4):

2 syllable nouns/adjectives: 1st syll. Chi/na object(noun)

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(4) 2 syllable verbs: 2nd syll. be/gin object (verb)

Compound noun: 1st syll class/room

Phrasal verbs: 2nd word/syll carry/ out look/ after

-tion/sion, -ic, ious: syll before (suffix) instruction

-cy, -ty, phy, -al, -ise, -ate: 3rd from end communicate

In this activity, the teacher summarized the stress pattern rules for students, which can

be helpful for students in many aspects. For example, the stress pattern being usually on the

first syllable in English compound noun could help student differentiate some compound words

from phrases: e.g., White House (compound word) from white house (phrase). Moreover, the

stress pattern could help tell the different parts of speech of the same word, such as object

(noun) and object (verb), as the teacher listed on the board. The teacher also offered sufficient

class time for students to review and practice until they were familiar with rules enough and

comfortable with working by themselves. After this activity, the teacher said its fine if students

cant remember the rules now, she recommended students to always check dictionaries. This

indicates that it can be time-consuming for students to master the rules and instead of exerting

pressure on students, the teacher could help students facilitate memorization by reviewing and

practicing the rule repeatedly in class activities, or make suggestions to benefit students out-

of-class learning. Next, the teacher demonstrated online how Longman dictionary and

dictionary.com present syllabilification and stress on words. On the other hand, she warned

students that some websites may show pronunciation not in IPA but in the way they are not

familiar with. For example, the pronunciation of refrigerator is shown as RE-FRIJ-UH-REY-

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TER on dictionary.com. She told student compared to English learners, native speakers may

be more familiar with this form of presenting pronunciation. What I learned from the teachers

lecture on dictionaries is that teachers shouldnt be the only reliable source students feel they

can trust in, and students can study and practice more on their own outside the classroom

relying on other forms of help such as dictionaries. As a teacher, it is also beneficial to

recommend resources for students and guide them to make use of the resources more efficiently.

In addition, rich online resources such as online dictionaries etc. can be helpful to language

teaching and learning, which illustrates the value of the approach of computer assisted language

learning (CALL). For example, the online resources provide visual and auditory modality to

help with learning. Students are able to refer to audio pronunciations in online dictionaries.

This can be an extremely beneficial function for EFL learners since they barely have

opportunity to listen to native speakers pronunciation in the classroom.

The next activity the teacher worked on was designed to focus on the pronunciation of

// and // she found many students in her class were having trouble with. The teacher started

with showing a video, and in a video the man exaggerated his mouth motion to show how to

articulate // and // accurately. After the video, instead of explaining how to pronounce the

sound, the teacher asked students to think and answer the questions: What do we do with our

tongue when we make these sounds? What do we do with the air that comes out of our mouth?

How is the voiced (buzzy) sound different from the voiceless (soft)? The teacher concluded

the discussion by explaining in general how to pronounce the two sound more accurately. She

said that the two sound should be made by putting tongue between teeth first. Next she
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introduced the major difference between two sounds by describing // as voiceless and soft, //

as voiced and buzzy. Then she let students read the words in the following two tables one by

one:

Table 1

Words with the pronunciation of //

Beginning Middle End

think bathtub math

three toothbrush cloth

Thursday marathon fifth

thing healthy month

thin athlete earth

thought birthday strength

Table 2

Words with the pronunciation of //

Beginning Middle End

that weather breathe

than together teethe

they father/mother/brother bathe

there/their/theyre either loathe

these other clothe

The teacher wrapped up the activity by a tongue twisters practice. The tongue twisters
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focused on practicing // and //, which is shown in (4) as below:

(4) Thirty thousand thoughtless boys thought they would make a thundering noise.

So the thirty thousand thumbs thumbed on their thirty thousand drums.

The teacher let students read first then left the last few minutes of the class for students

to practice on their own. Students were very interested in practicing the tongue twister and the

teacher had to stop them several times when the class time was up. Finally, she closed the class

by assigning the tongue twisters practice as homework for students. This activity shows that if

students have trouble with pronouncing certain pair of sounds, such as consonants // and //,

it may be helpful to show them the manner of articulation of individual sound in detail. It may

also be beneficial to have students practice the sounds in various positions within words and

sentences. Furthermore, for practicing pairs of sounds with minor differences, the tongue

twister may be a useful technique for students to focus on the challenging pronunciation and

practice in a fun way at the same time.

The second intermediate level class I observed had 5 Chinese, 1 Taiwanese, 1 Korean,

1 Brazilian, 1 Mexican and 1 Saudi Arabian. This class featured an activity on the

pronunciation of vowels.

The class started with a pronunciation game working on the vowels // and //. The

teacher read pairs of word with the vowel // and // respectively, and asked to students to

write the words down, and the words are: hug/hog, nut/not, cut/cot, cub/cob, duck/dock. Then

the teacher asked students to talk about the major differences between pronunciations of the

two word. She also showed students how to produce the low central vowel // by opening
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mouth wide and opening lips neutrally. This activity illustrates that the minimal pair exercise

can be a useful exercise in pronunciation practice. The activity using minimal pairs also

shows students the importance of practicing vowels more accurately so that their listeners

understand them more easily.

The last two classes were advanced level Listening and Speaking AE 5 taught by the

same instructor. It is a class consisted of 1 Taiwanese, 3 Chinese, 1 South Korean and 12 Saudi

Arabians. The first class I observed in this level started with a pronunciation practice with

vocabulary. The teacher wrote the following line on the board:

1st syllable, 2nd syllable, 3rd syllable, 4th syllable, 5th syllable (where the stress is)

Then each student was asked to pick three words from the word wall, which had key

vocabulary they had been working on for the whole semester, identify their stressed syllable

and put words on the board in the proper place according the position of their stressed syllable.

After the students were done, the teacher read each word, and students were asked to listen

carefully to see if the word are in the right spot. The outcome of the activity is shown below:

1st syllable: temporary, branch, settle, permanent, poverty, principle, trend, feminine, role,

ethnic, gravitate, community (2nd), emigrated, masculine, autonomy (2nd), gap

2nd syllable: assimilate, abroad, assertive, societal, reverse, intensive, stereotype (1st), native

(1st), retain, minority, co-op (1st), cooperative (2nd), original, nomadic, community

3rd syllable: immigrant (1st), chronological, regulatory (1st), democratic,

4th syllable: discrimination, socialization, entrepreneur

5th syllable: (no word listed)

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Within the parentheses are corrections from the teacher. I have a few reflections on this

activity. First of all, stress pattern is a significant issue which I observe all teachers from

different levels worked on to some degree. Secondly, students in different levels show different

abilities of working on word stress pattern. For lower levels, teacher always asked students to

work cooperatively, but for advanced level, students are expected to work by themselves.

Thirdly, English stress pattern is a very hard for international students to learn, which can be

proven by the fact that students in the highest advanced level were still making mistakes on

dividing syllables and placing stress. Furthermore, even though students have correct ideas on

stress patterns, it is still possible for them to mispronounce them in the speech, for instance,

the majority of students pronounced the word permanently wrong by putting stress on nent in

their selfie homework. Last but not least, creating a key word wall by students is a smart

strategy to have the words reviewed anytime in various class activities, which helps to reinforce

students memory on vocabulary.

The last advanced level class I observed focused mainly on helping students to prepare

for their final presentations, so there was not much content related to E 514. The class started

with listening to a short piece of audio about extroverted and introverted personalities. The key

vocabulary in the audio were extroverted and introverted, and students were able to compare

and contrast these two words. It indicates sometimes putting related words such as synonyms

and antonyms together for students to learn can be a good strategy to facilitate their acquisition

of all the words. The teacher also directed students to point out words on the word wall

mentioned in the listening, and they reviewed definitions and part of speeches together. The
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majority of class was devoted to group discussion of final presentations. At the end of class,

the teacher emphasized the accurate pronunciation as a significant criterion for their

presentation, and pointed out there were two words, preference and research, got pronounced

with the wrong stress pattern by almost everyone in the selfie homework, and she highly

recommended students that if they are not sure, they can check in a dictionary. I think assigning

selfie homework to students to record themselves reading a passage is a good strategy to

encourage students practicing pronunciation with more time outside class and an alternative

way of formative assessment for teacher to monitor students progress. In addition, selfie

homework is another example of CALL. According to Larsen-Freeman & Anderson (2011),

as with any materials for teachers and learners, there is a range of quality and usefulness

among CALL programs. Selfie homework is an example of using the software to practice and

improve pronunciation outside the classroom. Its also possible for the teacher or the students

to compile a digital archive of student work documenting students learning progress in this

way.

Reference

Larsen-Freeman, D. & Anderson, M. (2011). Techniques and principles in language teaching

(3rd ed.). Oxford: OUP.