Practicality of practicum [Archives:2008/1130/Education]
Muhsin Ahmad Bin Shamlan
[email protected]
Ass. Prof. Department of English (UST)
Drawing on the few but insightful remarks made by Dr. R. Sahu, my younger colleague, about Practicum (Yemen Times, Issue 1098, Ed 21), I would like to throw some light on some aspects of this course, Practicum (1) as one component of fourth level students program (Education Major) at the University of Science and Technology (UST).
Needless to say that micro teaching or peer-teaching is a practical training program specified in almost all of the Faculties of Education in the Yemeni universities, public as well as private. The objective is mainly to train the student-teachers to grasp the focal or essential elements and concepts of teaching a foreign language. English Language Teaching (ELT) has got the lion's share, of course, of this course. Hence, I'm talking about the ELT micro-teaching in particular. Practicum (1), as the number indicates, is the threshold of practicum (2) which we usually call macro-teaching. In the practicum (2) the student-teachers get directly to authentic classrooms to conduct teaching with a supervisor to watch and evaluate the whole process.
Experiencing this kind of supervision at different Faculties of Education (Al-Hudaidah, Aden, Hadhramawt, Science and Technology universities), I have gained some useful insights in dealing with the micro – macro-teaching. As this article is solely concerned with peer-teaching I will discuss only the following subsumed points:
1. Classroom observation
2. The roles of a teacher in classroom
Classroom observation
Benefiting from their previous course of methodology, students usually have the readiness to implement the theoretical information about methods and techniques in real situations. But as peer-teaching has this paradoxical nature of teaching non-authentic students in non-realistic class situation, student-teachers are advised first to observe real-class situations to have a fresh orientation, practical insight and get familiarized to the knitty-gritty of the teaching-learning process.
Usually student-teachers are taken to different schools, both public and private to observe the following:
1. The natural atmosphere of class (population, size of room, ventilation, etc.).
2. The roles of the teacher while practicing teaching.
3. The three-dimensional interaction taking place between teacher – students, students – teacher, and students – students.
4. The activities in the class.
5. The nature of evaluation to weigh the success or failure or otherwise of each lesson.
6. The class management.
After accumulating considerable amount of information, student-teachers are required to write a brief report about their findings. This report is not more important than the experience itself of being within a real-class situation observing unique learning procedures exhibited in front of them. This experience, no doubt, motivates the trainees to take over and start the trail of teaching. Micro-teaching then takes place as natural as in any other classroom except for two important factors: the audience where student-teachers teach their peers (classmates), and the duration of class with only 15 or 20 minutes allocated for each lesson (see the lesson plan attached).
Roles of the teacher
Jeremy Harmer (2001) in his excellent book, The Practice of English Language Teaching, has distinguished more than ten various roles of the teacher inside the classroom. Some of which are:
1. The teacher as an organizer (organizing students, activities, etc.)
2. The teacher as an assessor (evaluating students' work and tests)
3. The teacher as a prompter (helping students in certain activities such as Role-Play or grasp words or phrases and continue the act)
4. The teacher as a tutor (guiding the students and helping them in their projects and tasks)
5. The teacher as a language model (reading aloud or saying dialogues before students repeat same actions).
This multi-faceted-personality of a teacher entails upon him/her certain qualities to maintain an extraordinary degree of flexibility and understanding.
Out of my own experience, I find that most of the student-observers focus mainly on the role of a teacher as a teacher, a conveyor or sender of information while the other party, the student, is mainly a receiver or repeater.
Finally, I feel that we are in need of a special conference to be dedicated to discussing such issues relevant to practicum and practicality of teaching foreign languages. May I here put forward this suggestion to the people in charge of the British Council in Sana'a to think it over?
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[archive-e:1130-v:15-y:2008-d:2008-02-18-p:education]
