Course

4.4 Your Learning and Teaching Activities

Next we’ll think about how the ideas we present in this course (could) relate to your own teaching activities.

 

activity  Activity

For this activity, choose a lesson that you taught very recently. Did you take any of the roles in the list in Figure 4.4? Did your students? Your textbook? Can you roughly describe what percentage of the lesson involved you, your students or your textbook in these roles? (Some of the roles may overlap, so while you’re thinking about your own lesson, also consider how this list of roles could be improved.)

  • Figure 4.4: Classroom roles

Instead of remembering a lesson you taught recently, you could ask someone to observe one of your classes and make a note of the number of minutes you spend in each role. Or you could (with your students’ permission) audio or video record one of your lessons, then listen to or watch the recording and make a note of the actual number of minutes you spend in each of these roles. Or you could ask your students to make a note of the actual number of minutes you spend in each role during one of your classes. Is the amount of time you spent in each role what you expected? What do the roles you take imply about your understanding of what ‘English’ is and how it is learned?

 
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 Reflection 4.2

Reflect on some of the teaching materials and activities you currently use or are familiar with. In what ways do they implicitly encourage or explicitly promote monolithic and plurilithic thinking on the part of students? Share your reflections here.