I confirm that this
assignment is my own work and that I have acknowledge all sources
1. Group profile
This is a-17-student
class. The students are between 8 and 10 years old, they are in elementary (3rd
grade), although this is a mixed ability class, most of the students of this
group are in a basic level and they have been in touch with L2 for 3 years.
Linguistic needs
Most of the students in this group need more speaking
practice since they still don’t feel confident with the language, and this
makes them lose fluency and accuracy when expressing their opinions orally, and
this makes them use their L1 when they feel that the message they are trying to
give is not clear. What I think is that the students need to feel more
confidence when communicating without being worried about making mistakes since
at this level making them is part of their learning process. There is also another
problem when communicating in writing, since the students do not use correct
punctuation and grammar. Although most of the students are quite good at
listening when the teacher is giving instructions. And finally the students are
good at reading when they have to scan or skim information in texts. But anyway
this reading skill needs to be improved, as well as dealing with unknown words
in texts.
“ the course book or syllabus may dictate what is to
be taught, but what is to be learnt can only be planned by a
teacher who knows the pupils, and can make the book or syllabus work for them" (Cameron L. 2001)
Affective needs
There are different levels
and personalities to deal within this group, most of them like working in pairs,
but they still have difficulties working like that, these students receive a
one hour and a half minute class, so the teacher has to give them a great
variety of activities that include movements and skills to maintain their
motivation.
2. Evaluation of materials
For this assignment I
chose unit 15 from interchange book, intro which is used in English
institutes with students of English as a second language. The title of the task
I chose is “Ricky Martin” (see appendix 3), although it presents a pretty good balance of skills and activities,
sometimes it fails to provide specific needs of this particular group of
students. For instance, no vocabulary is
pre-taught in the activity on page 105, as well as there is a follow up task which
does not fill the needs of the students since some of the students need extra
visual aids in order to understand words or they need more time to finish their
task as well as further explanation before doing the activities, there is no
lead-in to get the students in the mood for their lesson and it does not offer
a motivating gist task to introduce the text to them, and the way the activity
is introduced is too controlled and it may be boring for them since the only
thing they have to do here is to ask the questions the book provides and answer
to them orally.
“if the lesson is rather boring, too
controlled, or it gives no chance for students to use what they are learning in
a personal kind of way, the teacher may want to add activities and exercises
which extend the student’s engagement with the language or topic." (Jeremy Harmer, 2007)
There are activities
that work well with this group, for example they like pair, group work,
competitions where they can interact orally with their partners. That is why
some activities were added and adapted to the lesson not only to keep the
students motivated but also to let them use their own language knowledge. These students get benefit from visual
contribution, since they can get the information from the texts easily. These
kinds of activities help the students develop their language skills in an effective
way.
3. Rationale for choice of supplementary materials
“when selecting commercial materials it is important to match the
materials with the goals and objectives of the programme, and to ensure that
they are consistent with one’s believes about the nature of language and
learning, as well as with one’s learners’ attitudes, believes and preferences,
evaluating and selecting commercial materials is not an easy task.” (As Low 1989)
There are 4 different
activities in this lesson, every activity is connected one to the other one so
that students can see a coherent task, the activities that are provided here
are going to help the students to get engaged and motivated with the lesson.
(We can see appendices one to four).
The picture activity will
help the students to get in the mood with the class and
it was chosen to introduce the topic of the lesson and to have students use their
L2 Knowledge and without pressure. (See appendix one).
It
was necessary to modify the pre-teach vocabulary activity, now that the way the
book suggested to introduce it was very passive for the students. (See appendix
two). First, it would offer the opportunity to learn the meaning of the words
in a fun way. Second, it would allow the students to get in groups and help each
other as a team in a cooperative work and as competition, this would provide the students to be cognitively
and physically engaged in the activity which would benefit the kinesthetic ones
and finally it would increase their motivation since they are impatient to beat
their opponent, which would add variety to the task.
It was necessary to change the gist task and the
follow-up, since what the book offers was not demanding to the students and it
would not be appropriate to the students since I wanted them to emphasize on
reading and writing and not just speaking like the book suggested as a follow
up activity, I thought it could be proper to help the students approach the
task more assertively considering that they have difficulties to understand reading
texts as well as writing compositions.
4. Evaluation of effectiveness of the materials.
Strengths:
- The students were very curious while the teacher was pasting the posters
on the board.
- The students became more motivated when I split the group into two teams
and I explain the rules of the first activity.
- The students tried to produce questions in different and incomplete ways.
- The students were encouraged to correct among themselves and it helped
the teacher to see what their level of English was and also to give them more
motivation when participating.
- The lead-in activity helped a lot since it not
only provided the students with a good prompt to review the vocabulary for adjectives
but it also help some other students to participate following their friends
examples being accurate when speaking.
- When the teacher showed them the autobiography
they were to read they felt more confidence and they guessed what the reading
was going to be about (Gist task).
- When reading the whole text, the teacher wrote
the studied vocabulary on the board, and while they were reading it the teacher
asked them questions about it, so that everybody were able to review this
vocabulary and could understand the text easily.
- The first three activities helped the students
get in the mood before the detailed reading.
- The students seemed motivated when they could
tell and see the way in which they were creating their autobiography in their
follow-up activity, at the beginning of that activity the students were nervous
when they received the paper to start writing about their own famous person
autobiography, but after listening to the instructions they felt very
enthusiastic about what they were to do, they did not want to stop and wanted
more time to write more and decorate their tasks.
Weaknesses:
- I had some trouble with some of the groups since
they did not have enough experience using this kind of material and
- There were other two groups that finished very
fast and completed the activity without so much support from their teacher.
- The time that was allocated on the lesson plan
was not enough, so more time was needed because the students worked at a slower
pace than planned.
- The first activities were simple and short
according to what it was planned I had to give students more time not only in
the lead-in but also in the vocabulary activity and the gist task,
Things
I would do differently:
This activity took place pretty much according to
the plan. However, if I were to do it again, I would probably give some more minutes
before the activity for the students to study the vocabulary, which would
facilitate during the text. This
material could be exploited if the words used in the pre-teach vocabulary were
accompanied with some examples, it could gain more time.
If I use this material again, I would assign more
time to respond to the students’ needs properly, too.
Everything began when I was 17 years old,
still at school, when my family decided to travel to the US; I was into my
sports, something I never thought I was going to leave aside, but my future
turn into a different story! My English world, a subject I always hated at
school, because of it difficulty by that time, any ways I needed to learn it
since my family wanted me there! "Wanted me there forever” but something
was on my side and I could stay here in Colombia being an English student at
Colombo Americano in Ibagué city, it lasted 2 years to finish what i needed to
learn to actually begin learning this language.
