Classroom Observation Report

Introduction

The school that we have chosen for our classroom observation is SMK Mutiara Rini which is situated at Jalan Persiaran Utama, Taman Mutiara Rini, Skudai Johor Bahru. This school consists of 2250 students from various level of proficiency. We have decided to observe Miss Niwashini Nambiar d/o Aravindan whom are one of our group mates for this classroom observation assignment.

Miss Niwashini Nambiar has been teaching English language for both lower and upper secondary for three years. We observed the lower secondary group students whom are in form 2 UKM. There are 32 students in 2 UKM and their English language proficiency level is intermediate.

Teaching Methodology

Before we went to observe Miss Niwashini, we already prepared an observation checklist to make sure that by the end of the observation, we will be able to discuss on the methodology used by the teacher during teaching and learning session. Throughout the lesson, we observed that the teacher minimized the use of mother tongue. She only used it when it was the last resort to make the students understand a particular term or word used during the lesson.

The teaching techniques were organized for learners to learn communicative function. During the set induction for example, the teacher came out with something that triggered students’ prior knowledge, thus we can see that the students were mostly eager to speak and participate in the conversation. This is parallel with the principle underpinning Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) where according to Brown (2001), CLT involves the use of language productively and receptively where the teacher facilitates and guides the learners to practice language skills in the classroom.

For the activities chosen by the teacher during the lesson, we observed that it involved real life communication and also rich mix of classroom activities were implemented, where group work, pair work were all integrated during the lesson. For the group work activity, it allows the students to interact with one another, even some of them still communicate using their mother tongue but, we observed that some of them did tried to use English as much as they can.

The lesson was not focused mainly on the form of language but its function as well, where the teacher tried to make the students able to use the target language using the activities done during the lesson. We found that the set induction as well as the activities conducted by the teacher bounded to what has been suggested by Larsen-Freeman (2000) that true communicative activities have three main features: information gap, choice and feedback, using authentic material in a small group activities.

By taking the first activity conducted for example, where the students get into a group of five, it applied task-based learning which the students need to complete the task at the same time used the target language and the language acquisition will eventually happen. Another thing that we observed during the class lesson was that the teacher’s goal of teaching was to develop students’ communicative competence. The opportunities for the students to develop fluency and accuracy were provided by the teacher especially when the students were given a chance to present their work to the class and they got to receive feedback from peers as well as from the teacher.

Parrish (2004) advocates that in CLT class, teacher’s role is mainly as facilitator to guide the students in the interaction that takes place during teaching and learning session. This can be seen throughout the lesson, where Miss Niwashini did not dominated the lesson and the students’ speaking time is maximized by being the main communicator in classroom. From what we have observed, we can conclude Miss Niwashini had integrated Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in her teaching and learning session where she had emphasized on the communication in real-life situation to deliver the lesson. In this report, we also included her lesson plan for that particular lesson to give a clearer view on her teaching and learning session that day.

As what is believed by Mustapha ; Yahaya (2013) that the successful implementation of CLT in English language teaching depends largely on the teacher’s understanding. We can say that Miss Niwashini’s lesson truly has almost all the beliefs under CLT which it was reflected through the way she conducted her lesson in the classroom. This can be seen from her methods and techniques applied during the lesson, the way she designed the activities for her students and the materials used for the activities.

Learning standard

• Connect sentences into two coherent paragraphs or more using basic coordinating conjunctions and pronouns
• Use with some support familiar print and digital resources to check meaning.

Learning objectives

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to

• Create a balanced meal.
• Identify healthy and unhealthy foods in each of the food groups.
• Create a balanced meal and explain about the meal with accurate pronunciation based on the given reading text.

References

1. Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy (2nd Ed.). New York: Longman.
2. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (2nd Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Parrish, B. (2004). Teaching Adult ESL: A Practical Introduction. 3L Journal of Language Teaching 3(103-109). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. Mustapha, S. T. ; Yahaya, R. A. (2013). Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in Malaysian Context: It’s Implementation in Selected Community Colleges. Social and Behavioral Sciences 90 (788-794). Malaysia: Universiti Teknologi MARA.