Eduardo Mondlane University 2011

1. Acknowledgements

This Teaching Practice Report and Portfolio is the result of an end of a long way: the end of
English language Course. It would not have been possible without the participation and
assistance of numerous brave and courageous people along the way. Thus I have to thank them
all.

First and foremost I would like to give a special gratitude to my parents especially to my mother
who brought me up and dared to speak out whenever I got in a wrong way.

I am indebted to my University teachers particularly to Teacher Candida my Tutor, Dr. Abub my

Teaching Practice coordinator, Dr. Macua my Literature teacher, my English Teacher Donald and
my host Teacher dr. Joseph Kapela for their vision, encouragement and enduring contagious
interest in the puzzle of teaching and learning.

I extend my gratitude to my classmates especially to my group study (Mario, Felismino, Ismael

and Obadias) with whom I shared my dark days and together we sort out academic and social
problems.

I also have to thank my family (my wife and daughter Jucelma) who gave me their help and
comprehension when I needed.

Special thanks must be given to all students from Josina Machel Secondary School, for their
feedback and attention during the lesson with which I learnt good lesson about teaching.

To my uncle Paulo who nonstop advised me never to give up even when hard times come and I
had no option, he always said: keep on sailing, one day you will be at the shore.

To my roommates (Nelito,Vadinho and Zeferino) with whom I shared my happy and sad
moments.

Lust and most importantly I would like to thank all those who made this report possible and
become a reality with their kind assistance.

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2. Introduction

According to Lyons (1998;4), a teaching Portfolio is the dynamic process of teachers

documenting the evidence of their work and growth, gathered and authored by them through
careful reflecting shared with colleagues and students.

It may be considered from the perspective: as a credential, as a set of assumption about teaching
and learning and as making possible a powerful, personal reflective learning experience.

Thus, the main objective of this Teaching Portfolio and Report is to gather different activities and
experience that I gained along my training course and its relationship with the objectives
established on English Language Teaching Course.

It also accounts clearly my personal learning experience felt as a sense of accomplishment to

bridge the theory and practice. The Teaching Portfolio starts with a brief acknowledgement of
everyone, who contributed in my success along training course, followed with a C.V containing
my personal and academic background and work experience, teaching philosophy and evaluation
of my educational development in UEM.

The Teaching Report encompasses the School (location, type of school, number of students and
teachers, descriptions of classrooms, general atmosphere and discipline in school and the role the
school is playing in local community). It also includes observations of host teacher classes as
observed by me.

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3. Curriculum Vitae

Antunes Alexandre Tomás Jaime

Personal details:

Date of birth: 27th April 1984

Nationality: Mozambican

Marital Status: Single

Father’s name: Alexandre Tomas Jaime

Mather’s name: Julieta Fernando

Phone number (258) 825902901.E-mail tonsune@gmail.com

Education

2008/2011- Universidade Eduardo Mondlane-Maputo

 Degree on English Language Teaching (ELT)

2003/2005 Escola Secundária Pre-Universitária do Guruè-Zambézia

 Secondary School complete grade 12

1999/2 002- Escola Secundaria Geral de Nauela-Alto Molócuè-Zambézia

 Secondary School Complete grade 10

1991/1998- Escola Primária Completa-Sede Alto Molócuè-Zambézia

 Primary School complete grade 7

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Work Experience

2011- Instituto de Tecnologias Proactivas de Gestão, Maputo

 English Teacher
2010/2011- Escola Comunitária Mary Jane Wilson-Maputo
 English teacher
2009- Escola Comunitária Nossa Senhora das Victorias-Maputo
 Moral and civic teacher
2008-Zambia Embassy
 Personal Translator ( Portuguese-English/English/Portuguese) of the Secretary
2005/2007- World Vision -Maputo
 Worked as a Volunteer on Child Fund Programme

Technical Skills

2008-Free course on Technical English run by PUMAP (Programa de Universitarios em Maputo)

Executive Training 2008-UEM and Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL).

2005-Computer literate, Windows: Excel, Power Point, Word Norton Anti-Virus and Internet at
Centro de Formação dos Irmãos Maristas-Matola.

Languages

Portuguese: Spoken read and written fluently;

English: Spoken and written fluently

Mother tongues: Emacua and Elomwe spoken read and written fluently

4. Teaching Philosophy

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Before I entered at University, I have been to a Religious Institution (Centro de Formação dos
Irmãos Maristas da Matola). The aim of this Institution is to form Brothers and send them into
Communities, where they work as teachers for those children who have no conditions and access
to education. That’s when I became interested in teaching, and decided to sit for entrance
examinations for English Language Teaching at U.E.M.

The first thing I did before carry on my lessons, I tried to have a picture of my students. I had to
give them a diagnostic test. I had surprising results: some students could master wide range of
topics while others were too slow. So I had to use Cheriman and Man’s philosophy: ‘go the pace
of the slower members but keep the bright ones busy, and plan participation for all’.

According to Kruger and Schalkwyk (1977:18), Democratic management style to be effective

the teacher has to have a thorough knowledge of his or her subject and good knowledge of
pupils, so that he can encourage them to take part in teaching and learning activities in the
classroom in an active and meaningful way.

To encourage students to speak English in the classroom I always created an environment and
situations where they could communicate or discuss in pairs or even in small groups. These made
them feel at easy and also courageous to communicate and correct their classmates when they
committed mistakes. This made the lesson more interactive and enjoyable.

We have many teaching methods at our disposal but, the only two basic attitudes that we can
encourage our pupils, if we want them to be successful students, we should set them working
individually, against each other, uniting (listening to each others’ speech, helping each other bad
reading habits).

5. The role of Education in Mozambican context

According to Durkheim (1987:44-7), education is the intelligent and good action done by the
adults to the young in order for them to be relatively autonomous. Thus the role of education is
to develop some intellectual, physical and moral aspects that are required by the society and
culture that the young men live in.. And Ribeiro (1999:3-8) defines education as a set of

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principles, methods, actions, by which the community system process is developed among the
members belonging to the system.

Taking into account that the world we live in nowadays is concerned with business cultural
interchanges and the SADC full integration programme, I strongly believe what matters most is
communication. So in our teaching, we should encourage students to be able to communicate in
different social environments and situations. To do so we should design materials to create real
communication and promote learning, use the language in carrying out meaningful activities.

6. Expectations towards UEM.

I always enjoyed, when I watched movies and, heard actors speak fluently and accurately with an
English native accent. So to make my dream true (speak English as a native speaker and
accurately), I decided to take ELT course at UEM. The picture I had was that all subject lessons
were conducted in English.

In fact I was wrong, there could be some subject lessons conducted in English as well as in
Portuguese. So I started to wither as I could see that probably I wouldn’t achieve the goals I have
set before: to master English as a native.

As the lessons went on, I realized that the aim of ELT course wasn’t only to teach English
language but also to bridge some subject related course in an integrated manner and prepare
students to think critically for some cultural, moral and social aspects.

I also comprehended that fluency and accent are acquired and not learnt as I used to think. Even
if I had stayed for years in an English speaking Country I wouldn’t have spoken English as a
native does. They have English as their first language and me as a third one.

The lessons at primary and secondary schools are conducted in a different way from University. I
expected teachers to dictate or write on the board the notes as they do in Primary and Secondary
Schools. So this posed me a big challenge. On the following lesson, I had to pay more attention
during the lesson and take notes as the teacher spoke.

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7. How to improve the teaching of English in Mozambique

According to Cheriman and Man (2003), large class sizes can seriously inhibit the quality of
education provision. And in Mozambican Secondary School, this is one of the problems that
teachers face in their daily activities: overcrowd classrooms. There are classes with 78 or even 85
students in a stream.

In large classes sizes is extremely difficult to use approaches considered to be effective. For
instance if a teacher decides to use leaner-centered approach he may face problems involving all
students in the lesson. And he may use teacher-centered approach which is suggested to be
appropriate for large class sizes but not effective to improve stimulate students ability to
participate in the lesson.

So ongoing Teacher Training should be carried out in order to discuss and overcome situations
alike and improve the teaching of English in Mozambique.

If we want our pupils to master language skills for themselves so that they can go on learning
long after they leave school and teacher behind, we had better make our language activities
enjoyable, and far less exhausting Bright, (1982). Teachers should be creative and, flexible in
their teaching process.

8. The School

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My teaching practice took place at Josina Machel Secondary School. It is located at Polana
Cimento quarter, Municipality of Kampfumo between Tomas Nduda Avenue in the North,
Orlando Mungambwe in the South-east, 24 de Julho in the East and Patrice Lumumba Avenue in
the West. The School is in the form of Y, it has 3 Floors divided in blocks with 46 classrooms, 16
Toilets, 1Stationery shop, 1 Office for the Principal, One 1 st Aid room, two Amphitheatres one
for Biology and the other for Chemistry, one Biology Museum, three Laboratories for Biology,
Physics and Chemistry, one Hall, one Swimming Pool, one Computer room, two Gymnasiums
one for Girls and the other for Boys and one room for Music classes.

They are around 10,904 students for both shifts Day and Night. In the day shift there are two
periods’ morning and afternoon. The morning period is for grade 8-10 students and the afternoon
period for grade 11 and 12 students. In the Night shift we have the same grades from 8-12. They
are some rooms for disabled students (deaf students) only in the day shift.

The majority of streams are formed with an average of 55 students, from 12 to 20 years old in the
day shift and mixed age streams in the night shift. There are 175 teachers in both genders. We
had five lessons per week: double lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a single lesson on
Fridays. On Tuesday and Thursday the lessons were on 1 st and 2nd time and 1st time on Friday.
This happens to be a problem for some students who live far away they couldn’t arrive on time to
attend 1st time class due to “chapa’s” problems. I had a deep concern with these students we
made an arrangement with my host teacher in order to start the lesson after 15 minutes, and those
minutes were reserved for games related to the lesson to be taught and they used to enjoy.

9. Composition of the classroom

I did my teaching practice with grade 11 students, on 3 rd floor, room 22, stream 20. The class
room had windows around which allowed a good sight to Catembe Beach during the break times,
it is equipped with two black boards, one table and chair for the teacher, around 72 movable
desks organized in very small rows which did not allow me to move around easily.

I used different ways of desks arrangement, according to each learning activity, in order to
involve all students in learning process. For instance I could move desks together to create more

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space, use a horse hoe arrangement or even pushing the last two rows of the desks from each side
to the wall and I had enough space in the middle to separate those desks that were too close, in a
way that I could move easily to those students who needed my help.

10. The role of the school in the local community

According to Machado and Gonçalves (199:53), the educational purpose of each society takes as
reference the prevalent philosophical beginnings. It also takes into accounts the function of the
education of the individual's development and of the community, as well as the definition of the
values, the knowledge and the necessary competences to his/her development.

This principle is also shared with some parents that I happen to interview in that school. They
stated that, knowledge transmissions and values among generations are associated with the need
of national identity, to make them aware of their cultural heritage and history. Thus the school
has the role of preparing its individual to be transformational agents, able to judge and criticize
the social environment where they live.

On the other hand some parents stated that, the actual curriculum is highly encyclopedic and
academic. Its main concern is to prepare students for entrance examination at Universities, not
answering in this way the needs of market labor and its society.

11. My teaching experience

According to Palmer (1998), good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching
comes from identity and integrity of the teacher. The teacher has to take into account his own
qualities as a teacher, the characteristic of his students and the environment where he has to
work. Thus in my teaching practice, I took into account the students’ age, their English
background, personal factors as well as the motivation in planning and teaching process.

So, my principal to beginning teaching was ‘Never tell anybody anything he can find out for
himself’, because telling isn’t teaching. We as teachers we should provide a situation so designed

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that the pupils will learn for themselves. According to Bright (1982), we are not trying to teach,
primarily, not knowledge but skills. The skills can be acquired only through practice, which is
something we cannot do for our pupils, they have to read, write, and talk quite a lot under our
guidance.

My lessons were so designed, in a way that students should be active during the learning process.
There was more interaction among the students and the teacher, for instance sometimes I could
develop a lesson around pictures which illustrated an area of vocabulary and certain activities
related to the situation. Students described in English what they could see in the picture; in
response to questions that I posed they formed their own sentences on the model they have
heard.

I usually started my lessons with a game related to the lesson to be performed. And sometimes
when I pretended not to give a game they could ask for it. I found this interesting, because
students could volunteer themselves and participate in the game actively. In this way I motivated
the students and made English lessons more enjoyable than they used to be.

According to Kruger and Schakwyk (1977:28), the effectiveness of a teacher as a classroom

manager is determined by the ability to be flexible and adaptable. So in my classes I applied the
laissez-fair, autocratic and democratic management styles in an integrated manner, in accordance
with the demand of the situation.

12. My host teacher’s Lesson

My host teacher didn’t give me any opportunity to watch his classes. On the first day I arrived to
watch his classes the students were writing a test. He just invited me to help him control the test
and at the end of the lesson he introduced me to the students.

I asked him to watch his classes, unfortunately he didn’t show up. When I arrived in the class the
students told that, I was to carry on with the lessons as he wouldn’t come.

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This situation didn’t help me to figure out the general environment and discipline in the
classroom during his lessons and, how he used to perform his lessons. Although they were
writing a test I could realize that he used to frightening students to keep them quite, which I think
might not be a good methodology to have control over the class.

13. My host teacher’s Evaluation

My first lesson was a sort of trap; the teacher didn’t tell that I was supposed to carry on with the
lessons. when I arrived in the class he wasn’t there and, the students told me that I was suppose
to carry on the lessons as the teacher wouldn’t show up in that day. I was surprised with his
attitude and I had to improvise a lesson. So he didn’t watch my first lesson.

I take this opportunity to set rules, and I asked the students how their lessons used to be. I also
talked about the importance of learning English, some students honestly confessed that they used
to take for granted English classes, and from that day on they would do their best to attend
English classes.

My host teacher didn’t give in advance the lesson to be carried on, on the following lesson. So I
decided to prepare a lesson using a poem with the title ‘Children’ and I invited him to observe
me. He got surprised on the way I organized the classroom and prepared the lesson.

He could not believe the involvement of students on the lesson. They actively participated on all
activities I had set, they enjoyed reading the poem. I gave them homework to write a poem about
adolescents and on the following lesson all the students came up with their own poems and
enjoyed reading aloud to their mates.

At the end of the lesson my host teacher told me that the lesson was fantastic, he used to skip
lessons when related to poems, because he thought was impossible to address a lesson using
poem and get all students involved.

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14. My strengths and weaknesses as a new teacher

I had 72 students in my class, and I as a new English teacher I found this a very large class, and
on the first two lessons I faced problems to have a control over the class. And I thought my
approach wouldn’t be effective in such overcrowded classroom.

As I pointed out my approach was to make my lessons more interactive and make students
actives in their learning process. I used leaner-centered approach which is stated by Ibraimo
(1992), but there, could be some students who used to take some interaction activities just to joke
by the time I tried to control other students.

Interaction with some students after classes helped me to sot out this problem. I find out that, in
the class there was a group of students that used to sit together and they were the noisiest
students in the class. I split them up and put the spot on them. I always kept them busy working
during classes and hardly they could find a tiny opportunity to make noise. The class was
disciplined and even my host teacher got surprised how I overcome this problem.

There was a sort of competition when answering questions during group work. Students with
disruptive behavior tried their best to show that they were best than their mates in other groups.
And even shy students, got motivated and could participate in the lesson. Mainly when acting
role plays and mimicking.

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14. Conclusion

On this teaching Report and Portfolio I documented my work and growth during my Teaching
Practice. In this period, I tried in a way to test the effectiveness of theories I have been learning
along the course with the real situation.

I have stated my learning experience, the educational philosophy, the role of education in
Mozambican context. I took into account the diversity of the students and the school
environment to set my methods and strategies and the pedagogical model.

To avoid ‘passive learning’, I adopted leaner- centered approach, suggested by Ibraimo

(1992).And students got more insight and interest in English lessons, as they could participate
and negotiate their learning process. I delegated responsibilities to the students, which kept them
busy and attentive to the lesson.

To make English lessons more interesting, teachers should use different methods and strategies
in their teaching process. And avoid following the syllabus as if it was a bible, that’s what make
English lessons boring and tiring.

Large class sizes seriously inhibit the quality of educational provision in Mozambican Secondary
School. If we want to improve the quality of our education the number of students for stream
should be reduced.

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15. Bibliography

BRIGHT, J. A. (1982), Teaching English as a Second Language, Cambridge

PALMER, Parker J. (1998), The Courage to Teach, Chicago: The university of Chicago Press

KRUGER, A.G and Scholkwyk (1977), Classroom management, Cambridge

SUCHODOLSK, Bagdan (2000) A pedagogia e as Grandes Correntes Filosoficas,Lisboa

LYONS, Lona (1998) With Portfolio in Han: Validating the Nero Teacher Professionalism,
Columbia University.

CHERIAM, Mary and MAN, Rosalind (2003) Teaching Large Classes, Columbia.

RIBEIRO, A. (1999) Desenvolvimento Curricular. Texto Editora. Lisboa.

MORROW, K. (1981) <<Principles of Communicative Methodology>> in IBRAIMO, A. (1992)

An Alternative Approach to the Teaching of English in Mozambique, Maputo.

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