ABSTRACT
I am in Indonesia conducting English language teacher education programs for the U.S. Department of State. My assignment for the week is to conduct halfday workshops for teachers at one of the largest English language teaching programs in Jakarta. The workshops for teachers go from 9:00 AM to 12:00 noon each day for fi ve days. Then, I enjoy an informal lunch with the level supervisors and the two directors. In the afternoon I consult with the curriculum team, the level supervisors, and the two directors on an overall revision of the curriculum; however, yesterday, it seemed as if they didn’t really know what to do with me in the afternoon, so today I suggested that I visit classes because knowing more about the classes, teachers, and students will help me be a better consultant for them as I develop an understanding of their curriculum in practice. The fi rst class I visit is a Level 2 class (Level 8 is the highest) with adolescent learners. There are about 20 students in the class. When I enter the class, the students are copying vocabulary words from the board into their notebooks. I see that the words are all related to clothing and weather. Once the teacher can see that most of the students have completed the copying activity, she moves on to a dictation of the words and then to a partner dictation. Finally, students complete a cloze exercise with the vocabulary words in their workbooks. The second class that I observe is for young learners. The students are between the ages of six and eight, and there are about 15 students in the class. The teacher asks the students to join her by sitting around her on the fl oor while she reads a story. She then takes large colored cards from a box and asks the students, “Who can show me where the blackboard is? The teacher’s chair? The bookcase? The garbage can? The door? The pencil sharpener?” Students are chosen to respond and given a colored card with the appropriate word. They take the card and tape it to the classroom item. When students fi nish with this activity, the items in the entire class are labeled. The teacher told me after class that she leaves cards up for a week and then takes them down using the same process only to put them up again. Although the students may not actually be reading the words, they are becoming familiar with them and learning to recogn ize them in conjunction with the items in the room. [Christison, research notes]
Task: Refl ect
1. What do the two different lessons in the vignette have in common instructionally?
