Running head: NARRATIVE OBSERVATION 1 1

Narrative Observation 1

Ayaka Kisu

The University of Hawaii at Hilo

ENG 422: Teaching Practicum

Dr. Francis Dumanig

Abstract

This paper explains what a teacher and his students did in an ESL class. By analyzing the

teaching methods he used and how the students reacted to his questions and performance,

students who are taking TESOL courses to become an ESL teacher in the future will be able to

know an ideal way to teach English to non-native English learners. The class was divided into

four sections; warm-up, presentation, practice, and evaluation, so this paper also has four

sections to show what happened in the classroom in each section of the lesson. Also, there is a

conclusion in the last part of this paper to summarize some important points for ESL teachers

that the teacher emphasized in the video.

Narrative Observation 1

This class was conducted by one teacher, and there were about six students in the class.

The target vocabulary of the class was words that show a certain time in a day such as ‘morning’,

‘afternoon’, ‘evening’, and ‘night’, and some present tense verbs to describe what they do in a

day. After this class, the students will be able to ask someone what they do at a certain time of a

day and answer the question by saying a sentence like ‘I wake up in the morning’.

Warm-Up

At the beginning of the class, the teacher said “hello” to the students and he repeated it

three times until the students repeated back to his greeting. When he was talking to them, he

smiled and pronounced English words clearly, so they can understand what he is saying easily

and feel relaxed by the atmosphere that he makes in the classroom. In his self-introduction, at

first, he said “ my name is…” and pointed to the top right corner of the whiteboard that has his

name written on. He paused a few seconds until the students read his name, and then he said his

name. What he intended to do in this scene was to make sure that the students can read his name

by themselves without listening to someone who read it for them. By using this method, the

students will get used to guessing how to pronounce English words by themselves. Next, he said

“nice to meet you” twice with a few seconds of pause in between to demonstrate what native

English speakers often say to people when they meet someone. This time, the students did not

reply to him clearly, but he kept going to the next section of the class which is presentation.

Presentation

At first, he demonstrated his everyday routines and let the students guess what time in a

day he does the movements in English. He lay down on the floor and yawned with his arms
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stretched. After he finished his acting he stood up and looked at students so that they know that

the teacher wants an answer from them. Some students answered in a small voice but that was

not what he wanted them to say, so he put a paper on the right side on the whiteboard. The paper

has a picture of a clock that shows seven o’clock and the letter ‘7:00’. To help the students’

understanding, the paper also has a picture of the sun that is rising from the horizon with arrows

pointing up. Then he wrote ‘in the…’ and said “in the mo…” and waited until the students said

the rest of the phrase. After they answered ‘in the morning’, he wrote the rest of the phrase on

the board while saying “morning”. He turned his face toward the students and repeated the

phrase ‘in the morning’ three times with some movements like raising both hands up. Once he

knew that all students understood the meaning and the pronunciation, he started pointing students

one by one and have them pronounce the phrase by themselves. After each student said the

phrase once, he said it one more time to the whole class and have them repeat it.

Next, he put a paper with a drawing of a clock that shows two o’clock and the numbers

‘14:00’ on the side. The paper also had a picture of the sun without horizon which means it is in

the sky. Then he introduced the phrase ‘in the afternoon’ by using the same method as when he

did for the previous phrase. The next phrase he introduced was ‘in the evening’ and this time,

when students say the phrase by themselves, he made sure that they pronounce the ‘th-’ sound

correctly and have them repeat several times if the students’ pronunciation was not clear. After

that, he introduced the phrase ‘at night’ and moved on to the next section where the students are

supposed to use all the phrases in sentences.

As the first verb to learn in the class, he introduced ‘to wake up’ by demonstrating the

movement by himself, and then he had each student say the verb taking. After that, he made a
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sentence using the phrase that the students learned in the previous section and the verb that they

just learned now. The sentence was ‘In the morning, I wake up.’ and he had them repeat this

sentence several times so that the students can understand and pronounce it correctly. The second

verb to learn was ‘to eat’ and he used in the sentence ‘In the morning, I eat breakfast.’ Before he

said the target verb, he showed a handwritten picture to the students and let them think how to

say it in English. Using the same way, he introduced other verbs such as ‘to shower’, ‘to relax’,

‘to read’, and ‘to go to bed’.

Practice

In the next activity, the students were asked to make pairs, and he distributed a set of

worksheets and cards. The worksheet is a list of different times such as ‘in the morning’ and ‘in

the afternoon’ and the cards have verbs. Then the students were asked to place the cards in order

to show their everyday routines. After they finished placing the cards, they said what they do

every day as sentences.

As their second practice in the class, students were asked to fill in the blanks on a

worksheet. The worksheet has underlines for each letter and students were supposed to write the

correct spelling of the vocabulary, and also there are some spaces to write sentences about what

they do. While they were solving the problems, the teacher monitored them and gave some

advice.

In the next section, the teacher taught how to ask someone what they do at a certain time

in a day. He wrote a question mark on the whiteboard first to let the students know that they are

making a question sentence. Then he wrote ‘what do you do in the morning?’ on the board word

by word. He showed some examples of how to answer the question and then he had the students
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repeat the question several times. After that, he made groups of students practice the question

and answer. When they were practicing, he monitored them, and sometimes he asked them the

question and had them ask him the question. They did the same practice for the afternoon,

evening, and night.

Evaluation

As the evaluation for this class, he asked the students to practice full dialogue with other

students using the phrases and sentences they learned in the class. After they practiced it several

times, he had them practice conversation including greetings before and after the main questions.

Instead of showing an example by himself, he asked one student to demonstrate the conversation

with him. Once the students knew what they were going to do, they stood up and talked to other

students to practice the dialogue. When they finished practicing, the teacher reviewed the

vocabulary and sentences they learned in the class and fixed some mistakes that they made. After

that, the teacher said thank you to the students and the class was finished.

Conclusion

The class contains a lot of repetition of saying phrases, vocabulary, and sentences they

learned in class because the teacher wanted the students to practice many times so that they get

used to speaking in English and memorize the contents at the same time. Throughout the class,

the teacher demonstrated everything instead of using English words to explain the activities.

Also, he tried to make a good atmosphere in the classroom for the students to feel relaxed and

not be shy to talk in English or ask him a question.

Reference

Westergaard, C. (ESL teacher). ESL Lesson Demonstration Beginners.

https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/group/HIL.12213.202030/Video/ESL%20Begin

ner%20Lesson%20Demo%20_Chris%20Westergaard_.mp4