An ESL Lesson from China: Reflections

 An ESL Lesson from China: Reflections

Lesson from China: Reflections 

This was an English lesson conducted in China with the topic of “what time is it?”. The class contained about 15 students with the approximate age of 10 years old. 

What I liked about the lesson:  

- Good routine before the lesson 

- The use of technology in the classroom (more interactive and modern) 

- A lot of oral choral repetition (pronunciation) change of voice/ tone + ask individual students

- Phonetic practice! Chorally repeating after the teacher, the class practiced the /i/ sound

- Not just learning single words but also language chunks 

- Before introducing new conceptions, the teacher review past lexical items 

- Frequent change of activities – students at that age usually have a short attention span 

- Students did not write anything down in their notebooks, no use of a language textbook

What I personally didn’t like about the lesson: 

- Translation of words/phrases into students’ native language (on the slides) 

- Competition – students competing against each other, instead they should learn how to work together

- It was mostly teacher-centered – students could have been given more chances to interact with each other and naturally practice the language 

- The slides were in the center of learning – lack of realia (plus it would have taken a lot of time to create the presentation) 

- The majority of the time, students were sitting in their seats – I wish there was more movement although it probably wasn’t possible as there was little space in the classroom

Those were a few of my reflections on the lessons, please leave your’ s down below! 

Sara