Concluding Comments on a Teaching Practice

Joanna Gruchala

Joanna Gruchala is in her final year at the Univeristy of Gdansk, Poland. She will soon major and will receive a combined degree in early eduaction and teaching English to YL (Wczesna Edukacja i NJA). E-mail: azja_g@o2.pl

During my teaching observation and practice I noticed how important flexibility is for a teacher, especially in work with young learners. The learners' limited concentration span is one of the greatest factors for the lesson plan - there must be a variety of tasks and activities to keep learners concentrated and active, as well as allow them to relax so that they can concentrate again. Sometimes, the teacher needs to change some activities slightly to make them more suitable for a particular group, their mood, etc. I think that my strength is that I can try and give a lesson quite a good pace. I like to keep learners' focused, so that they are engaged into the lesson. I still need to work on timing, though my feeling for how many activities I can plan, and how much time the learners would need to complete a task improved greatly during my practice. Young learners also do not think in an abstract way and that is why the teacher needs to turn to teaching aids - especially the visual aids - in order to make it possible for the learners to acquire new language concepts.

Their learning style is learning by doing, what means that they need to have concrete objects or pictures to manipulate on them, to look and play with them. What I learnt from lessons observed was, among others.: how to use flash cards in a planned and wise way. It is not difficult just to attach flash cards in random places on the blackboard, but it takes careful planning to place them in such a way that they could be effectively used for some next activity. Another very important issue is that the lesson is attractive enough so that the students do not get bored and demotivated. Young learners lose concentration very easily and need a lot of stimuli to be able to acquire knowledge at different stages of a lesson. What is also beneficial is that the teaching aids like posters, pictures, cue cards, flash cards, very often make it possible to stimulate students into using English in an active, productive way.

Another thing I was observing during the classes was how the teacher controlled the class; kept children disciplined. It is very difficult, I think, to be friendly and have the students respect you at the same time. The teacher who is friendly with students and has no leadership qualities can easily end up having none of their respect and, therefore no interest during his/her classes. It is also difficult, in such situation, to maintain the control over the lesson, for example to organize an activity the way it was supposed to be conducted to give certain result. From the lessons conducted I learnt how much depends on a group of learners. Some classes were more disciplined and involved in the lesson, while the other ones were extremely difficult to work with, even though they were taking part in a lesson conducted according to the same lesson plan. I think that in case of young learners English teacher's task is especially difficult, because s/he needs to depend on a class teacher, whose teaching style is the greatest factor shaping the group- how disciplined, integrated and independent the learners are, not only as individuals but as a group.

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