TESOL Certificate Programs

Observation Notebook

Observation Report Form

Name of Observer__Jiayun Zheng___ Observation # __5____

Date Observation Class Skill/Content Level Teacher

Environment*
03/05/2019 Face to Integrate Listening 400 Lisa Zufferey
face skills and Speaking

*Include the URL if the class was online

WRITE THE OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO THE OBSERVATION GUIDELINES:

STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO MATCH THE VOCABULARY WITH MEANING ACCORDING TO
CONTEXT, WITH NO MISTAKE.
STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THEIR OWN IDEAS ABOUT THE TOPIC NEW
WORDS, WITH 80% ACCURACY.
STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO FILL OUT THE BLANKS AFTER LISTENING, WITH 100%
ACCURACY.

Notes while observing:

9:00-9:04
T greets students and gives students the quiz paper of last week.
A student speaks L1 in the class. T stops him and reminds his that it is time for English.

9:04-9:11
T introduces today’s topic is New Words.
T: “Did you know human make new words all the time? Not only in English. Did you
know where these new words come from? Any guess?”
S: “Our life.”
T: “Absolutely. That’s a very good answer.”
S: “Imagination.”
T: “Ok. That can be true, too. Any other ideas?”
T: “There are so many things in our life, such as social media, technology which is so
important in our life right now.”

T writes new words on the board and asks students to guess the meaning of these words.
For example,
T: “What does ‘ghost someone’ mean? What does ‘ghost’ mean? Do you have some
ideas about ‘ghost someone’? ”

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Observation Notebook
T: “Normally ghost is a noun, but here it is a verb.”
S: “Is this something to do with ghost?”
T: “Well. It has something to do with the idea of ghost, but it is an action.”
S: “Friends? It is kind of like a relationship.”
T: “You get the point but I want to help you more. You send your friend a text message
on Instagram, Facebook or Wechat but that person has no answer for you. You contract
that person in many ways but no response no answer.”
S: “You had care about them.”
T: “So that person ghosts you and they don’t answer your social media and questions.
What does ghost do? Disappear, right? So your friend or the person you are
communicating with has disappeared from social media. Do you think it is a nice thing to
do that?”
S: “No.”
T uses her daughter’s example to help students understand the word.

9:11-9:19
T leads students to get a general idea of the speaker of TED talk in their textbook and
asks students’ ideas about language change.
For example,
T: “We want to know as the question in our textbook, ‘so when does a word like defriend
become real?’. Real means everybody knows it and everybody uses it. Look the name of
our TED talk speaker. What is her job?”
S: “Language historian.”
T: “What is a historian?”
S: “The past.”
T: “Studying about…”
S: “About the history.”
T: “So she is studying the history of language.”

T introduces their goals of this unit.

T asks students to give an example of new word in their L1.

T: “Language is changing all the time. Does your language create new words?”
S: “Yes.”
T: “Can you think about a new word came out in Chinese recently?”
S: “Long time no see.”
T: “Where is that from? English.”
S: “Yeah.”

T switches topic-new words in students’ L1 to English.

T: “English has a long history of borrowing words from other languages. Did you know
that half of the words of English come from French, especially the academic words?”
S: “Because America is a multi-cultural country.”
T: “True. But this is long time ago before there is America. French people came to
England about a thousand years ago and for two hundred years English people spoke

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Observation Notebook
French. So the words like graduation, institution these word end with –tion come from
English.”

9:19-9:24
T plays the first part of video of TED talks.
T asks students that whether you got the idea of defriend or not. T uses an example of
friend in the Facebook to help students catch the meaning of defriend. T posts the idea
that before Facebook we didn’t use friend as a noun but now we use friend as a verb
because it is useful. Several students share their idea about how new words come from.

9:24-9:26
T asks students to turn to next page. There is a picture that people hold card to make an
emoji.
T: “Do you know what emoji means?”
S: “Yes.”
T: “Guess where emoji are from?”
S: “Japan.”
T also let students share their experience of using emoji.

9:26-9:30
T introduces next activity about vocabulary. T gives direction of matching words in bold
with meaning before the activity and read the paragraph. T models the activity after
reading.
Students have two minutes to finish it. T checks answers as a whole class after students
finish matching.

9:30-9:38
T divides students in pairs and students work with partners who speak different language
from them.
Students are going to discuss the questions about formal and informal use of languages
on the textbook. T explains words in the questions to ensure student understand the
meaning of question. T uses an example to help students understand the meaning of word.
T makes comprehension check before the discussion.
T walks around, monitors students’ discussion and helps students to finish the discussion.

T raises a question, “do you think in the future there is only a language in the world?”
Students share their ideas.

9:38-9:49
T plays another video and students need to complete the blanks in the textbook. T doesn’t
play the whole video but plays the video as several parts.

Students need to judge true or false of sentences when they are watching the rest of video.
T pauses several times and checks students understand the ideas in the video. When
students don’t get what speaker is saying, T uses the form of questions to help students
catch main points of the video.

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Observation Notebook
What did you learn about teaching or learning from this lesson as it relates to the
theory you have studied in your TESOL classes? Include at least one reference (with
an in-text citation) to support your response. (250-500 words)

In this observation, I focused on the teaching. This was an integrated skills class but

focused on speaking and listening. The class was for students who were in level 400.

Most of students were from China, Japan and middle-east countries. I wanted to see how

the teacher helped students produce their own ideas about topic and how to deal with the

listening process.

Lisa spent a lot of time on introducing the topic-new words to students. The teacher

asked questions like where new words come from and do you have ideas about the

meaning of ghost someone which pushed students to brainstorm and share their ideas.

Pushed output extends speakers and in doing so heightens their awareness of the

importance of particular grammatical features in productive use of language.( Nation,

I.S.P, 2009) There were a great number of questions raised by the teacher and students

needed to answer these based on their knowledge and life experience.

What’s more, the teacher didn’t play the whole video but divided the video into

several parts when students did the activities-fill out blanks and judge true or false, which

to some extend promoted students’ understanding of the talk and improve students’

confidence. The teacher helped students catch the main idea of talk by changing video

length, asking comprehension question and giving explanations because the speaking

speed of the speaker in the video was a little bit fast to students.

Also, it is worth mentioning that the teacher listed several new words like ghost

someone and let students guess the meaning of these new words which intrigued students’

interests about the topic. Techer dividing students into pair according to their L1 ensured

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Observation Notebook
that English was the only language in the classroom. Moreover, pair work provided

opportunities for interaction and increased students talking time. (Richard and Farrell,

2011) When I observed, I noticed students were really curious about the topic and

engaged in the discussion.

Overall, the teacher gave students a lot of chances to talk about their opinions about

the topic which can improve students speaking skills. By changing the way of listening,

teacher decreased the difficulty of listening which gave students confidence while they

were doing the activities. I learned a lot from Lisa’s class about how to deliver a listening

and speaking class.

Reference

Richards, J. and Farrell, T. (2011). Practice teaching: A reflective approach.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I.S.P. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. NY: Routledge,

Taylor & Francis.

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