Reflection
I was told I didn’t need to observe this class, as it was the students presenting their midterm projects to the class. I asked if I would be allowed to come and watch and was welcomed.
This was both a group project and an individual project. It was group research, but individual presentations of a recipe at the front of the class using a PowerPoint (PPT) presentation. I believe that the PPT files were sometimes a group effort as well. They were all quite well done. The students had to use IPA transcription for some of their ingredients.
Where it was possible to see the group effort was when the PPT was excellent, the English and IPA was perfect, but the presenter was a very beginner English user, and even when they looked back at the screen, they could not sound-out the word or read it. Some of the students’ presentations suffered from their high level of anxiety. It was clear from their shaking hands, their compulsively looking down to read in the middle of a sentence, and their pale, clammy skin. I tried to encourage the students with a smile and nod each time they made eye contact with me.
I had a few surprises during the midterms. The first was that the teacher did not speak to the students at all except to tell them whether to present their pastry PPT or their biscuit PPT. Normally the teacher was smiling, and kept the students going, but for the midterm she was very serious and quiet.
The second was that for one student who was having anxiety, she allowed them to have their best friend run the PPT instead of the same person who did everyone else’s. The teacher also allowed this one person to have their friend discuss with them how to say things and give them help with the script of the presentation, which no one else was allowed to have. In this case, the best friend had the best presentation in the class in my estimation. With the number of times they stopped to talk and how long they chatted, the presentation was very long, but the teacher did not say anything
The third surprise was when the teacher got frustrated with one of the students, snapped at them and told them to go sit down not quite 2/3 through their PPT. The teacher commented that it was taking too long. This student was also quite nervous, and a beginner speaker who did not seem to understand her presentation. The teacher’s frustration lasted to the next student, who was also cut short just before the break. Time had run out. The teacher had to cut the last presentation short in order to give the students their break on time.
Watching the presentations and having been asked to grade them, as a matter of interest only. I found it an awkward situation. I had no idea what the criteria were for the rubric, what lesson (s) the midterm was based on, what the cultural norm is around work being completed as a group, or what the expectation is for the class around pronunciation and reading ability. I graded based on what I could see of the class as A1-A2 students, in a high-pressure situation. I didn’t dock for what seemed to be help making the PPT, because I had no idea. Just because a student is having difficulty and anxiety with production of speech in this situation doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t capable of it, or that they aren’t capable of the written production or creating the PPT. I erred on the side of higher grades for the effort I could see and how much production it led to.