Reflection On My Three English Classes

I went to observe three EAP classes. As I observed three classes, I learned several techniques for teaching English. In this paper, I focus on teaching styles and strategies individual teachers were using in the classes.

The first class I observed was speaking/ listening class under professor Budding. In this class, two student groups made presentations each, and the others discussed the topics came up in the presentations in the whole class. Since this is a speaking class, he was using affective strategies to encourage students to speak.

One of his affective strategies to let them speak was giving concrete and specific feedback. In order to do this, he wrote down who said what in detail during the discussions. He gave positive feedback to the students who expressed their opinions and mentioned which points were worthy to be mentioned. For example, he praised an attitude of a student who took notes for preparing to say her opinion. He also gave specific feedback with reasons to almost every student who actively took part in the discussion. The students who got those feedback looked satisfied and expressed their opinions more actively in the second discussion.

He never pointed out oral grammatical mistakes as he gave the feedback. Even though they made a lot of mistakes, he only focused on the meanings of what they

In order to create comfortable atmosphere and positive attitudes, he put some music while they were exchanging ideas in groups or pairs. According to him, they actively involve in group/ pair work activities with music. Conversely, they tend to hesitate to speak without music. He effectively changed the way of using music depending on what activities they were on. For example, while they were on individual work, he stopped the music so that they can focus on their own work. I think music helped encourage them to interact in pairs/ groups because they seemed to enjoy