Student’s profile: 42 students, adolescents, between 16 and 17 years old, basic level, high school group, in a public school.
Lesson topic: presentation of a Beetle’s song “Help”
Lesson objective: to review simple past tense.
The class started, and the teacher passed the list and the students answered it in Spanish, something very important that I have learned is that “communication in the classroom must be in English” probably the students did not know how to answer; I think that this error is a result from an incomplete knowledge.
The teacher continued with a question, about if the students knew Beetles’ songs, most of the students said at least one song; they pronounced the titles of the songs correctly,( yesterday, imagine, love me do, let it be, etc.) this showed that the students have contact with music in English and in this way they improved their pronunciation.
The students listened to the song “Help” and they had to guess parts of the song, the teacher gave them a copy with blanks and some words in Spanish in order to guide them to the answers, one student answered “how many “instead of saying “so many” I think that this interpretive error was provoked for the lack of listening practice.
Another error was when a student said “yet “and he wanted to say ”get” this is a phonological error, I think, since the sound of the letter g is similar in English to y in the first language; it is language interference.
Teacher gave instructions for a reading exercise they had to recognize the simple past tense in the song, and the students understood that they have to underline cognates; so they made it incorrectly; because the teacher did not monitor the class.
Then the teacher asked the student if they liked the song, and one of them said “is nice” that means that, the student understood, the question and he could answer it, he has language acquisition.
The teacher checked last class presentation that was simple past tense and he asked the students to tell him the structure of simple past tense and the teacher wrote the structure on the board as the time the students said it, they did it correctly, “ subject + verb in past tense + complement” the group has accuracy.
The teacher asked the students to tell them some complements for the past tense and two students answered ” last week “ and “ last year” they used the appropriate language.
One student wanted to go to the toilette, and asked the teacher in Spanish to go and the teacher did not correct her, another student corrected his classmate in English, he told her you have to say” May I go to the toilet?” I want to mention that this student, the one who corrected the other one, he is not at the same level, his level is higher than the rest of the group; this problem often occurs in public school because there are no levels there are grades.
At the end of the class the teacher told to the students to have a nice weekend and one students asked the meaning of weekend and the teacher tried to explain him, but another one interrupted him saying “ por que hoy es free day” instead of saying Friday this lexical error is very commonly produced by students learning English.
It was difficult to make this task because the teacher talking time in class was too much and the students did not talk in English most of the time, the communication in class is in Spanish.
I think that the group needs to focus on learning how to communicate in the classroom. To have the opportunity for production the English language, motivate them to express their needs, and to have the opportunity of interact between them; because practice is very important for learning other language.
… what people learn when they learn language is not separate parts (words, sounds, sentences) but a supersystem of social practices whose conventions and systematicity both constrain and liberate.
C. Edelsky, 1993
