Eighth Observation - La Trobe Univerity - International College

The school that we visited on that day was the LTU International College. The class that I went to was 3B - an average English class with 15 students. In addition, the students first language are not English and they are together in the class to learn English so that they could go to the main campus - La Trobe University within a short period of time. To me, the students' level of language are average with some usage of code mixing among fellow countrymen. There are also a vast variety of culture experiences. Despite all of those things, the teacher was very patient when teaching a lesson.

The lesson began with grammar revision in the first hour. The students were learning active and passive voice. The teacher went over the answers with the students as they should have finished their activity at home at the previous day. It went well with not a lot of questions. The teacher also went through a series of drills on the grammar to make sure that students are familiarize with the grammar as well. The teacher used repetition exercises as this would not make students bored with learning grammar. The teacher also let students play a game on active and passive. It is also a good way for students to understand the two clauses in a fun way.

In the second hour, the teacher asked students to form themselves into groups of four and they were to discuss about the newspaper cutting. It started brightly for the students but somehow, what a lot of time remaining, the students that I had in my group ended up out of ideas. I therefore guided them to think of things outside the newspaper cutting. The teacher asked the students to take note of what they haven learnt and attempt any new words that could be useful to them so that the students could use the phrases given in the future. It maybe useful in a way. At the present moment, however, it did not work as students in the class also need to learn how to use stress and intonation in order to make the phrase of the sentence speak more smoothly and fluently.

To conclude, I think this school is completely different to other schools as the target audience are mostly adults studying at the International College.The students want to learn more English and then get into university and I could say that the teacher is fulfilling their needs as I think the intonation, stress and speaking ability are lacking. Finally, it was a great pleasure to observe this class as the students and we as teachers-to-be are more or less the same age.