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ESL Class Observations and Reflection

INTO CSU provides academic Pathway and English language programs that will
prepare international students for entry to an undergraduate or graduate degree program at
Colorado State University (INTO CSU, 2014). In this class observations and reflection report, I
am going to discuss the four INTO CSU Academic English Program classes that I visited during
this semester. These four classes include two intermediate-level academic English
listening/speaking classes and two advanced-level academic English listening/speaking classes.
However, due to my academic and vocational schedule, I was not able to schedule a visit to the
basic-level academic English listening/speaking class at INTO CSU. Hence, after having a
discussion with Dr. Delahunty, I got the permission to use two of the basic-level ESL classes that
I taught during this semester to write a report instead. I hereby would like to show my gratitude
to Dr. Delahunty for his help.

Basic listening/speaking classes

The Workplace English Training program provided by Colorado State University for its
ESL staff focuses on English listening, reading, and writing skills including workplace, safety,
and emergency vocabulary as well as to gain communication skills and gain confidence with
English speaking. (Colorado Sate University, 2014). This 10-week program meets every
Tuesday and Thursday from 3:15-4:15pm. The class I taught during this semester had 5 Hispanic
students whose native language was Spanish and one Uzbekistan student. Most of the students
work at the CSU Housing and Dinning Services. Five out of six students were taking this
program for their second or the third time.
I started one of the listening/speaking classes by greeting the students and collecting the
homework assigned in previous lesson. I used sentence dictation as warm-up activity. I asked
students to take out a piece of paper and announced that we were going to dictate 6 sentences
that contain the vocabulary taught in the previous lesson. For example, I learned how to make
sweet tea through online videos, learned was the vocabulary taught in the previous lesson. I
slowly read each sentence for three times by breaking them into short meaning groups. Certain

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students asked questions like spelling during the dictation process but I did not answer the
question and told them that we would check the answers together afterwards. I then asked each
student to write one of the six sentences on the whiteboard and let the rest of the class correct the
errors.
In order to make students to be able to differentiate the pronunciation of //, /s/, /t/ and /f/,
I demonstrated the differences by pronouncing the phonemes with pointing at the place of
articulation on a handout of sagittal section diagram. I asked students repeat the pronunciation of
the phonemes and to give examples of the words that have the // sound. After writing down
students examples like thing, thick, etc., I divided the class into four groups (two groups of two
and two groups of one) and each group had one phoneme. I covered my mouth and read several
minimal pairs to them and the group has the phoneme of the word I pronounced needed to raise
their hands. For example, I pronounced /n/ and the // group raised their hands. I read /sn/,
/tn/ and /fn/ and the groups raised their hands accordingly. After this activity, I explained the
concept of minimal pairs and asked students to pronounce the words after me. Then I gave out
the minimal pair bingo handouts to the students and explained the game rules. Students chose 9
words from the minimal pairs I gave and wrote them in a 3 by 3 square. I called out the words
and they crossed the words off as they came up and shouted out Bingo! when I said all the
words.
The other listening/speaking class I taught focused on the pronunciation of the marker of
the regular past tense verb {-ed}. The class started with students presenting food preparation
conversations that they created in the previous lesson. I asked students to put their fingers
around their vocal cords to experience the difference between a voiceless /t/ with no vibration of
the vocal cords and a voiced /d/ with a vibrating vocal cord. The consonants were listed except
the sibilants and asked students to repeat after my pronunciation as well as to indicate whether it
is a voiced or voiceless consonant. After practicing the pronunciation, I wrote down the rules of
the pronunciation of {-ed} at the end of a regular past tense verb that ends in a voiceless
consonant is /t/ or a voiced consonant is /d/. I also pointed out the different pronunciation /d/
after /s/, /z/, //, //, /t/ and /d/ after explaining the concept of sibilants. After that, I asked
students to give examples of the regular past tense verbs and pronounce the words. Certain
students had the spelling-pronunciation problem such as pronouncing looked as /lukd/ but were

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corrected immediately by the other classmates and did not make the same mistake again. To
assess what their retained from this lesson, I used an activity called Stand up If. Students need to
stand up if the leader of the game pronounced the words incorrectly and each student needed to
be a game leader for once. For example, I pronounced walked as /wlkt/, none of the students
stand up. But when I pronounced fade as /feydd/, all the students stood up and corrected my
pronunciation.

Intermediate listening/speaking classes

The first intermediate listening/speaking class I visited consisted of 9 Arabic speakers, 5
Chinese speakers and two Japanese speakers aging from 17-43.
Before the class, the instructor wrote down an outline of the lesson on the whiteboard
and she then later crossed off each activity once they were done. The instructor started the class
by dictation. She read the sentences in reductions such as I wanna go to Brazil and asked
students to write the formal format like I want to go to Brazil on their answer sheets. After
dictating 5 sentences and questions, the instructor collected the answer sheets and asked students
what questions she had asked. Then she divided students into pairs and asked them to continue
the discussion from last lesson, which the topic was the countries that they wanted to visit and
would be presenting in the future lessons. Then the students were asked to sit in a big circle and
discussed their topics all together. The instructor started asking the student sat on her left about
questions like Which country are you going to present? Why? and asked the students to
question the same thing to the classmate sat next to them. She also would occasionally correct
students mistakes such as Italy cuisine/Italian cuisine. Some students had difficulty with their
expressions and asked the classmates from same native language background for help in their
native language, this behavior was timely stopped by the instructor by her saying Use English
please.
Later, the instructor asked students to take out their textbooks and asked them the concept
of stress. She then demonstrated a different stress pattern of person/person and asked students
which one was the correct pronunciation. The instructor also used the different stress of present
to explain the differences caused by stress patterns. She drew a gift box and wrote present next

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to the drawing then wrote present (verb) in the next line. She read through the examples in the
textbook and asked students to repeat after her. She again asked the students to have another
dictation of words like visit, without, etc. and signal the stress of each word. They checked the
answer together after the dictation and read the words out loud.
The instructor divided students into four groups and gave out handouts that contained
traveling vocabulary and questions. She first asked students to discuss the meanings of the
vocabulary and then played a soundtrack of a dialogue related to the questions. Students were
asked to fill in the blanks according to the content they heard to answer the questions. Then each
group were asked to exchange the information they had and complete the whole handouts.
The other intermediate listening/speaking class I visited had six Portuguese speakers, two
Chinese speakers, two Arabic speakers, two Japanese speakers and one Mongolian speaker.
At the beginning of the class, the instructor explained that she was sick that day so she
would give less lecturing and the students would have more speaking activities. She first wrote
down the numbers 50 and 15 on the whiteboard and asked students the pronunciation of them.
She then wrote 30/13, 40/14 and repeated the same question and pointed out the pronunciation
rules of the two digit numbers. While explaining the stress pattern, she drew a dark circle right
above the stressed syllable to help students retain a better understanding. She also pointed out
that the /t/ in words like thirty, fifty, etc. should be pronounced as a tapped /t/. Then the instructor
read through the examples in the textbook and asked students to repeat after her. Students were
also divided into pairs to finish the stress pattern exercise.
The second half of the class was quiz time. Students were asked to write down the
information that they heard from the monologue soundtrack played by the instructor as much as
possible on a piece of blank sheet. Then the instructor asked five questions to the students and
they wrote down the answers on the same sheet. The instructor collected the answer sheets and
assigned homework at the end of the class.

Advanced listening/speaking classes

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The advanced listening/speaking class I observed had eight Arabic speakers, two Chinese
speakers and one Spanish speakers.
The instructor started the class by asking a question What is your city like? and
students needed to correctly pronounce the cities names that they got from the previous lesson.
She then asked students birthdays and arranged them into pairs by same months or close
birthdays. Students moved around in class and discussed the cities they had in mind about the
population, sightseeing, climates, etc. The instructor walked around the classroom to offer help
for the students who had pronunciation difficulties or could not express sentences coherently.
Each student was asked to briefly present the outline of the cities they had.
The instructor gave out small whiteboards to the students and provided some geometry
vocabulary such as bisect, rectangle, hexahedron, etc. She demonstrated the game rules by
asking students to draw a rectangle then bisect it and write a P on the left section and a B on the
right section. She leaded the game for few minutes then passed it on to each student so that they
had a chance to practice their speaking skills.
The second time that I observed this advanced class focused on the preparation for their
presentation. The instructor started the class by collecting the homework, giving out the quiz
results and asking if students have any questions about the presentation. She divided students in
groups to discuss reading materials related to the presentations on a worksheet. The instructor
walk around the classroom to check students progress and made corrections on their worksheets.
After the discussion, the instructor gave out the whiteboards to the students and repeated the
listen and draw activity. Some students did not understand the meaning of horizontal/vertical
lines and the instructor drew a sunrise picture to help the students understand.

Reflection
These observations have benefited me a lot. I was able to see how the theories of
teaching methods and phonological knowledge were implemented in the actual ESL classroom
as well as to learn techniques to maintain the order in a classroom with respect to the students.
Meanwhile, during my own teaching experience, I realized that combining lecturing and
activities alternatively together in a class could activate students energy. Moreover, giving

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timely, positive feedback would also stimulate students motivation to learn the target language. I
also learned how to organize the language contents in a sequence that can better facilitate
students acquisition and to integrate and apply my knowledge of linguistics and pedagogy into
the teaching process.

Reference:
INTO CSU. (2014) Study in the US. Retrieved from http://www.intohigher.com/us/en-us/theuniverisities/into-colorado-state-university.aspx
Colorado State University. (2014) Workplace English Training (WET). Retrieved from
http://www.training.colostate.edu/pdfs/wet-english.pdf