EFL Class Observation’s Reflection 1

EFL Class Observation’s Reflection At Colegio La Libertad

Scarleth Bula Páez

First Semester MA in TESOL

Universidad del Norte

EFL Class Observation’s Reflection 2

EFL Class Observation Reflection

This first EFL classroom observation took place on February 16th, 2018 at a public
school named Colegio la Libertad located at Carrera 26ª number 74B- 139 in Barranquilla,
Colombia. The students to be observed come from poor to lower middle class
neighborhoods around the school area. They were eleven to thirteen-year-old kids (around
55% girls, and 45% boys, who made a total of 36 students) who are currently in 6th grade C.
The sixth graders’ classroom was big enough for them, and had 4 open windows; two of
them were toward the school’s sports field allowing outside noise to interfere with the
classes. On the other hand, these pupils were basically starting classes after their holiday
week, due to Barranquilla’s Carnivals festivities. Consequently, that day was their very first
English class and with a new English teacher who was transferred from another public
school (she has worked directly for the government in public schools for more than 15
years). Not only the descriptions already mentioned above were the only aspects analyzed
and reflected on this chosen subject studied, but also some negative and/or positive aspects
regarding to the learning and teaching process in this particular EFL class.

Learning theories are the foundations of every classroom interaction, but this one in
particular has to be highlighted by its focus on behaviorist approach. The teacher showed
behaviorist tendencies throughout the whole class. For example: it was clearly seen that this
was a teacher-centered instruction. As it was the very first one, and students presented poor
background EFL knowledge, the teacher’s talking time surpassed that of the students’ one,
as they were only there to receive information and learn as many basic vocabulary and
expressions as they could (in less than an hour) to be able to produce basic conversations in
the target language, thus demonstrating an initial behavioral feature as Weegar & Pacis
(2012) indicated:

Instructor is the focus of the presentation and interaction. Teachers work with the
individual students when they need extra help. The student’s role is to absorb
instructional presentations and material, and use them to create performances which
indicate attainment of correct mental models. (p.13)
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Moreover, she constantly made use of first language (L1) to explain everything,
mainly to translate what she was trying to teach in English. But she also wrote on the board
the objectives of the class and the topics to be covered on that day (which were
Introductions, Greetings and Farewells), and made her students write them on their
notebooks and repeat them several times showing traces of another behavioristic pattern as
Jarvis, Holford, & Griffin (2003) stated that in behaviorist courses when instructors are
working on their lesson planning (required in their workplaces) the objectives of the class
need to be detailed and written according to what students are going to achieve.

Nevertheless, when the teacher finally introduces the topic by comparing the L1
cultural features with international ones related to the topic of the class, as in the example:
do we give a handshake or bow down? The students interact in their First language (the
ones who were paying attention), but then, the teacher took some huge flashcards out to
introduce students the vocabulary that they were going to focus on, for memorization
purposes and to work on their pronunciation by making them repeat the words and
expressions several times.

At this point of the lesson, the teacher is showing three key features of behaviorist
and cognitivist theories: First related to the former, the teacher provides a target stimulus
which will be used to create output through the creation of situations in which they have to
make appropriate use of it and encourage its enhancement through reinforcement. (Ertmer
& Newby, 2013) clearly depicted when she used the flashcards as a tool to present the
topic, by the use of drilling, later by reading a conversation in which the vocabulary and
expressions are used, and finally by asking them to create a dialogue using what it had
already been taught. Furthermore, the teacher encouraged positive reinforcement defined by
Zhou & Brown (2015) as the “presentation of a stimulus that increases the probability of a
response” (p.7) by saying good job and smiling back at a student who dared to repeat the
vocabulary by her own. Now, a form of cognitivist element is the fact that despite the lack
of materials (books, among others.), the instructor brought flashcards and a worksheet with
the vocabulary and expressions classified into greetings, introductions and farewells in 3
different charts which played an important role for catching the students attention and help
EFL Class Observation’s Reflection 4

them obtain new knowledge; aids characteristic of the cognitivist approach. (Zhou &
Brown, 2015)

Lastly, the final activity which was pairing up the students so they can repeat the
dialogues from the given worksheet with the expressions of the topic under study and then
before leaving their classes they were required to prepare a role play using similar
dialogues from the ones practice and creating a new one with the expressions learnt in the
class considering these activities as sign of constructivism approach as Carbonell 2014
(cited in Weegar & Pacis , 2012) indicated “Students would then work in cooperative
groups to explore possible answers, develop a product and present findings to a selected
audience” (p.11) making the students more active participants of their learning process.

In summary, the teacher’s role outweighed the role of the students. Students barely
participated actively except for the moment when the flashcards were shown to them. The
instructor should take advantage of the space and the number of students to encourage more
group work and hands-on activities to keep students active in the class. Too much time was
wasted when students were writing the goals of the class. Audiovisual resources should be
implemented (if the school has access to it) to show more about the cultural aspects of the
target language so that, later these ones can be compared to the ones from their own culture.
The teacher should use inferring, deduction, synonyms, antonyms, examples in context,
drawings or illustrations and lastly translation to help students understand the meaning of
taught words and expressions. Teacher must encourage critical thinking and/or problem
solving situations even from lower levels, to build these difficult skills in their students.
Vocabulary and pronunciation are essentials at students’ initial stage of learning a foreign
language, however all the abilities should be integrated or incorporated to every single class
to slowly develop all the skills simultaneously.
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References:

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism:

Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance

improvement quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.

Jarvis, P., Holford, J., & Griffin, C. (2003). The Theory and Practice of Learning.

London: Routledge.

Weegar, M. A., & Pacis, D. (2012). A Comparison of two theories of learning-

behaviorism and constructivism as applied to face-to-face and online learning. Retrieved

from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cb0/b3019f04cfbf790d0ed8fa39f603bcfa4f7e.pdf
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Appendix