This video clip is from a class conducted in China. The students are at High School. Their level of English is intermediate. This is a small class and all the learners are all female and all speak Chinese. The teacher asked on learners each lesson to take the role of the teacher for part of the lesson.
The teacher says that she does not like her learners to use their mobile phones or other electronic devices in her class. She asks the learners to put their electronic devices on the teacher’s desk.
She then uses a series of sheets of papers in which she has written items of vocabulary and also questions and possible answers to help the learners produce a series of answers to questions such as ‘How often do you use your mobile phone?’.
Activity
The teacher collected the learners’ phone at the start of the clip. She could have given out sheets of papers with answers such as two years, or three months and used these to cue the answers but she wanted the learners to respond to her questions with statements that were true. Why do you think she did this? How might this relate to the model of speech production on (Badger, 2018: 235-236)?
The activity on the clip is a relatively straightforward one and the learners are able to carry it out easily. Why do you think the teacher carried out this activity? How might this relate to the teacher’s ideas about how learning happens (Badger, 2018: 239-241)?
The activity on the clip has elements of communication but it is relatively controlled. What kind of communicative task would make an appropriate activity to follow on from what you saw on the clip?
What kinds of language knowledge and skills might be developed by getting learners to act as teachers? Would the outcome be different for the learners who acted as a teacher be different from the outcomes from the other learners? Would you be able to get some of your learners to act as teachers in your lessons?
List of references
Badger, R. 2018. Teaching and learning the English language: A Problem Solving Approach. London: Bloomsbury.
