For
my first observed class, I joined Victoria Davis’ Group 2C-Listening. The class population consisted of
two females, one Taiwanese and one Vietnamese, and five males, three Saudis,
one Kuwati, one Japanese and one Venezualan.
Ms.
Davis apologized that the class would be catching up on quizzes for the entire
class. It was very interesting to
observe how the students took a series of listening quizzes. Quiz 1 was a listening quiz that
consisted of a written transcript of a Voice of America special English audio
report that required the students to listen for the answers to fill-in the
blank sentences. Quiz 2 was a
vocabulary quiz from a listening topic lesson taught during the week. And, quiz 3 was a comprehension quiz
from the VOA listening script used with the first quiz.
To
complete quiz 1, the teacher played the audio selection from the computer twice
while the students worked to fill-in the blanks as they listened. The teacher indicated that the class
normally does well with this type of quiz, but she questioned the fast pace of
the audio reader. After polling
the class, the consensus was that they also thought that it was too fast and
consisted of longer words than they had expected. I observed that most of the students in the area where I was
sitting seemed to be struggling with spelling the words to their own
satisfaction.
To
complete quiz 2, the students were given approximately 20 minutes to finish a
sixteen-word vocabulary quiz. The
teacher indicated to me that this quiz was from a prior listening session that
demonstrated how many terms from the sport of baseball have become integrated
into everyday American speech. She
said that some of the idioms in the quiz she had gone over with the students,
but others she had not. The
teacher shared that the class usually does well on their vocabulary tests, if
they had studied.
The
first section of this vocabulary quiz directed the students to match six words
or phrases with definitions of the idioms, including “way off base” and “to
strike out.” The second section
required the students to give a written definition or write a sentence from a
group of five phrases or words, including “on the ball” and “to touch base with
somebody.” The last section of the
quiz was a fill-in the blank usage demonstration that consisted of five
sentences with a vocabulary bank of five phrases of baseball idioms, including
“threw a curve ball” and “out in left field.” The defining sentences were common language situations that
would use these idioms. One
example was, “When my professor asked the class who would lead the discussion,
I decided I would ______.” The
answer to the blank would be “step up to the plate.”
I
noticed that half of the students finished quiz 2 before the allotted amount of
time was up.
To
complete quiz 3, the students were provided a half page that contained a
section of six true/false statements and a comprehension writing section. Both of these sections were related to
the listening audio selection from VOA for the first quiz. The students were given the opportunity
to listen to the audio selection for the third time and make notes. The teacher gave the students about two
minutes to think about what they had just heard and answer some of the
questions. Then, she played the
audio selection for the fourth time.
She allowed the students to finish the class time completing the last
section of the quiz that directed the students to describe the main idea of this
audio selection in five sentences.
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