In the name of God
Rahele
Title: observation in bilingual classroom
Abstract:
Bilingualism became a crucial matter and is a very essential subject for research these days. The purpose of this article is to report how much L1 is used by the teacher in classroom? In what cases they use it? and why? I will start my discussion by presenting an introduction, this will followed by the methodology in which I mentioned the characteristics of participant, materials, and class procedures after four successive observations. I will then end the article with conclusion.
Introduction:
Teaching a language in EFL context may lead non-native teachers to use L1 in L2 classes. It can help them to have more effective teaching in a short period of time. (Claiming the centrality).
Despite its benefits, some teachers are unwilling to speak L1 in L2 classes because they believe that in EFL context where is the only place to speak L2 teachers shouldn’t use L1. They also argue that in L2 class there should be as much comprehensible input as possible. (Establish a niche).
In this article I report my observation and analyze the class procedure to find out for what purposes teachers use L1 in L2 classes.
Methodology:
Participants and materials:
After gaining access from administer of the institute and teacher who is my colleague, I attended in the class in order to have observation for four sessions. The book that is taught in this class is passages. The level of proficiency of these students is upper intermediate. There are seven boys in this class aged 17-25. A teacher is a 27-year-old single woman who has got her BA in English literature and now she is studying TEFL for her AM. I had a really good relationships with this teacher and I had no problem in attending in her class because I had observe this class for about 8 to 10 session each semester( since they’ve being studied interchange3 I observed their class for many purposes.) Although they were boys, I hopefully succeeded to establish a good relationship with them and at the end they were really happy that they can help me in my project.
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Procedure:
First session:
In the first session I came to class and sat among the students and make them clear that the purpose of this observation is different from last ones. After a while their teacher came to class started to greet with them in English. then she started the class by reviewing. This part was held in English too. Her justification for using L2 in review part is those students know the material so I use L2 for fluency practice. After that the teacher talked a bout her personal story related to students writing in English as a warm up then she showed them the sample writing in the book and asked them to prepare writing like that one in their book. The assignment was assigned in Farsi (students’ L1).
The teacher was believed that when we say assignment in Farsi, students won’t have chance for making excuse for not doing homework and assignments. Next she asked students to do their activity book and checked it with their partners. At this time teacher explained the activity and had been walking to see whether they know how to do their activity or not? Here one student didn’t get the point so teacher tried to explain it in Farsi so the student understood what to do in a very short time. At the end of the class she wrote the assignment on top right side of the board in English but talk about how to do them in Farsi.
Analysis:
Positive point:
1. Using L1 for giving assignments: as the teacher mentioned by doing this students won’t have chance for making excuse for not doing assignment. And also in giving assignment the focus is not on the language learning but is on the procedures and ways during which we can learn it.
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Negative point:
2. For warm up part of the lesson, it’s better to use L1. As we all know the purpose of warm up is to activate students’ background knowledge and direct students mind and it doesn’t have teaching purposes so we should use a language with which students feel relax.
Procedure:
Second session:
In the second session Teacher came to class and started to greet. Surprisingly all the students had done all their assignment. In order to teach reading part, the teacher started to teach new words first. As these words were really confusing, the teacher tries to give students some clues to find the Farsi equivalent of those words. After teaching reading part, she asked them to do their workbook in pair. But unfortunately there was no control whether the students use L2 in doing it or not. So most of the students spoke in Farsi. As the last job she started to work on their speaking for about 20 minutes. But unfortunately teacher and students` tiredness lead them to speak Farsi in the last 10 minutes.
Analysis:
Positive point:
1. In order to save time when can use L1 when the task is difficult to understand and ambiguous for learners
Negative point:
1. Lack of teachers control leads students to speak in their L1 in pair work.
2. tiredness may lead to use L1
Procedure:
Third session:
In the third session immediately after greeting teacher wrote a grammar rule and two examples on the board (modals + have + pp) and asked students to say their own sentences then they opened their books and did some exercises. Although in this case the content was more important than language itself, teacher used L2 in teaching Grammar rather than L1. As a practice part, the teachers prepared a close test for this particular grammar and asked them to do it individually to learn new grammar better. Unfortunately most of the student couldn’t do it because they didn’t get the grammatical point properly. So teacher was forced to teach it again. This time because of the shortages of time she explained all the grammar parts in Farsi and even translated some sentences with new structures. Finally For the next session students were supposed to write a paragraph about everything they like to write. In this writing they should write 5 sentences with newly learnt structure. Another assignment was transcribing the listening. As she always did, all the assignments were said in Farsi.
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Analysis:
Negative point:
1. Translation of native language structure is the worst way of using L1 in classes because t leads to negative transfer or inferences.
2. Where the content of L2 is more emphasized it’s better to use L1 to make it more tangible.
Procedure:
Fourth session:
In this session after greeting and calling the role, teacher worked on the word power part of the book. She brought some dictionaries from the office and asked students to find the definition and pronunciation of the words. After that she asked them to make a sentence with each word. Then she collected students writing assignment. At this time she asked all students to speak a little about their writing by heart in English. A while she played the CD for the listening part twice. Then in the third time she asked students to repeat listening sentence by sentence after the CD then the do the listening exercise on the book. Now it was time for grammar. That teacher started to teach grammar twice in English but it seemed that she couldn’t make student understand so she shifted to Farsi. Thus, students got the point easily. After that they did some exercises on both their book and activity book. Then teacher gave them some collocations and exercises for practicing them. After that she write 5 of these collocations on the board and asked them to make a meaningful conversation altogether and put all those 5 chunks in it. So all the class members even me became a group, get each other’s idea and made a meaningful conversation. Finally the teacher wrote this conversation on the board. Finally she told a nice story in Farsi as fun and finished her class by saying assignment in Farsi.
Analysis:
Positive point:
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1. bringing some fun in class and telling story in students mother tongue in class help them to feel relax and comfortable in L2 learning context.
2. Making conversation with practiced collocations in a group and also have discussion in English to improve that conversation can help students to have fluency practice in a stress free situation.
Findings:
The data collected suggested that there are some factors that contribute to using L1 in L2 context inappropriately. Theses factors can be tiredness of teachers or students, shortages of time, physical and psychological condition of the teachers and difficulty of the task. Observation shows that teachers can facilitate their teaching by taking the advantages of L1 where it is appropriate including in a warm up part, in bringing fun to class and so on.
Conclusion:
My primary purpose in this article has been to find positive and negative points of using L1 in L2 classes (two extremes) during four-session-observation and in accord with collected data. I hope that one day all the teachers become aware of the importance of bilingualism and its positive use in the classroom, and also be trained how to implement it in class appropriately. So they can facilitate their teaching and speed up their class procedures. Finally by undertaking it we may have more efficient and productive language learning classes.