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The activity chosen to listen to students' voices

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The activity chosen to listen to students' voices

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Description:

After I told students we were going to have a simulated shopping game, I presented the context on the slide: You are shopping at a local TJMAXX (which is my students' most familiar and favorite shopping site for its huge discount on almost every product). You want to buy a designer-brand perfume from the locked showcase, and have pressed the button for assistance. Here is the shopping assistant (me, the teacher). What will you say to her?

The class atmosphere froze because unfortunately, all of the students who came to my last class were absent today except Asmaa. In addition, the class was on Oct. 10th when children had fall breaks, which causes the absence of my adult students who came last class because most of them are mothers and grandmothers, having to take care of the kids at home. The student present at class on time was Li Liu who took her daughter with her. Luckily, after 10 minutes, the couple with the baby absent from last class came. Besides, Asmaa and a new face also attended class. So there were 5 students in total.

Considering all of them except Asmaa didn't know what I taught about last class, I did a brief teaching on making requests, inquiry and complaints and shopping-related vocabulary as a part of the review. However, they seem to need more time and more scaffolding before they can conduct fluency development confidently.

After a few seconds of silence, I decided to demonstrate first by saying "Excuse me, could you please open the showcase and let me have a look at YSL perfume?" The whole class laughed at once at the YSL perfume. With the morale elevated, I asked them what the other ways are to say to the shopping assistant.

Azza volunteered first with "Excuse me, could you please give me the Louis Vitton perfume in the locker?" I gave her corrective feedback by saying "Good job! Anyone else?" Soon the atmosphere became dynamic again. My adult students couldn't wait to share their way of expressions and the perfume they want to buy. After sharing, I always gave them corrective feedback, leading to the teaching of “I would like this one, please”/ “I will take it, thank you” after proposing the question that if they decided to buy it, what they should say.

After that, I continued the story—at the register, the cashier asks “Do you wanna=want to pay by card or cash”, how should you reply? Before having them share they expressions, I emphasized that "wanna" is an oral way of the more formal "want to". Azza first volunteered to reply "Card, please", which seems to be the answer of everyone, causing a few seconds of silence before Clifford said "Apple Pay", surprising me with an extra answer which didn't occur to me when designing this activity. I praised him by repeating "Yeah! Apple Pay, please."

Then I cast another question, asking them what if they want to ask the shopping assistant how they can pay, what they would say? Li catched up and used the sentence structure I provided to say "Excuse me, could I please pay cash?" I corrected her by using recast "Very good! Pay in cash, right?" She then bashfully repeated "Pay in cash, right!" After more students' sharing, I taught more authentic ways to express this: “Excuse me, can I pay by card?”/ “Excuse me, do you take cash?”

After that, my students and I performed impromptu simulation game with me playing the shopping assistant and them playing customers who wanted to return something. Before a student starts a conversation with me, I would assign a designer-brand thing for them to return. I would reply "Can I see your receipt?" "Oh no, you brought the wrong receipt?" "Oh no, now is over 30 days. We only accept returns within 30 days. However, you are a gold member, I will return it for you shortly" and so on. My students and I all enjoyed this impromptu acting with designer-brands products used and my reactions varied.

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There are a few things I should have done better. The first thing is I shouldn't focus too much on the content provided by the textbook, which caused my teaching not keeping pace with the time. For example, when I taught "pay in cash/pay by card", I should have thought of Apple Pay, which is the trend in modern life, thus making the course more connected with students' daily life and rendering the course more helpful and useful. Secondly, I should prepare myself for anything that happened in the classroom. For example, in this class, most students are absent from last class, impeding them getting fully involved into this class. I should have opened the PPT slides of last class to give them a lesson on making requests, inquiry and complaints or I should have rendered each class independent of others so that absence wouldn't be a problem considering absence is more often to adult learners. Thirdly, I should be more creative by utilizing more stuff in the classroom and initiated more student interactions so that the class will be more student-centered. For example, besides using students' clothes as a product to be returned, I could also use the boxes of gloves, bags and toys in the classroom to provide students with realia to engage them more. I should have let students acting as the shopping assistant and customers in turn so that they can each get more oppotunities to have meaning-making, meaningful input and output with my giving corrective feedback at the end, which are four components of successful SLA.

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1. Teachers should initiate more creative student-centered activities, leaving the stage for students so that they can have more chances to have meaning-making, meaningful input and output with teachers' corrective feedback at the end.

2. Teachers should make use of the surrounding environment more, such as boxes of toys, gloves and bags. Even a collectible sometimes can be the materials boosting your class.

3. Adult learners enjoy funny classroom atmosphere more. I often made some jokes to engage my students. For example, I would say "Sorry wallets!" when teaching shopping and this joke works every time.

4. Bonding with your students is always very crucial to create an inclusive atmosphere. By showing real empathy towards them by telling them it's OK to make mistakes and take your time because practice makes perfect or anything else which shows your understanding towards them, you can engage your students more and elevate their motivation.

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After reading my students' feedback on my teaching, I really feel extremely happy and a sense of achievement because Asmaa wrote that she became more and more willing to talk with others in English without any fear because she now doesn't fear making mistakes. Many of them wrote that my teaching connects to their daily life communication with other people, and my teaching style is funny and engaging. What's more, all of them like all of the activities in class, which is beyond my imagination and expectation. My eyes are almost wet when I read Clifford's handwriting, summarizing everything we learnt in class.

Thanks to Li, I can really improve my teaching because the advice she gave were really helping! Though the activities are practical and connected with daily life, the content was sometimes easy and sometimes too difficult for her. For example, the topic "doctor appointment" was easy, however, the grammar point Present Perfect Continuous was too hard. She suggested that I should distribute handouts with the vocabulary to be learnt that day and I should give them more opportunities to have daily life conversation practice, which is profounding.

I really should balance the teaching practice and learners practice without letting the class become teacher-fronted. I shouldn't blame it to the kind of education I received in China. No matter what education I received, it shouldn't affect my creative teaching. I would learn to master the appropriate teaching practice with more and more appropriate amount time devoted to students' exchanges. In addition, I would also design handouts which have the vocabulary and grammar points to be taught in class so that students will have a general picture of what we are learning today.