Research Paper on Observed Classroom

Introduction

The observed lesson was level 1 Arabic as a foreign language class. The class meets four times a week, and each meeting lasts for fifty minutes. The class had a capacity of nineteen students; seven males and twelve females. As I learned from their teacher, most of the students are taking the class towards meeting the University requirement of the foreign language. The class practiced three language skills; listening, speaking, and reading with more focus on grammar and vocabulary.

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Classroom Activities And Interactions

The teacher started the lesson by reviewing the previous class session and asked the students what they could remember. The teacher then put on the audio of a story of two friends, Reem and Maha, for the students to listen. The audio was in Arabic. The students applied their listening skills. After the audio, the teacher asked the students to say what they understood. Most of the students had a general idea but missed out some details. After that, the students engaged in the reading activity. The teacher asked the students to read the same audio story in a script. Each student read a sentence loudly while the teacher corrected the obvious pronunciation mistakes but ignored the little ones. The teacher translated and explained the bold words in the script. The teacher engaged the student in learning by asking them comprehension questions about the story. However, students only gave short answers. The teacher once more asked questions from the story and required full statement reply. She corrected some grammatical errors by giving them explanation. For example, the teacher explained that some Arabic nouns have different words from singular to plural. She also emphasized on the board that the Arabic language only have present tense but no continuous present. The teacher then asked the students to fill in a blank exercise using the bolded words in the story.

The student later watched a video of two females talking over the phone. The teacher wrote five phrases on the board in Arabic as the students continued watching. The teacher instructed the students to watch the video again as she stopped it after each sentence so that the students would translate it to English with her help. The teacher explained the phrases illustrating to the students when and how to use these phrases. Finally, the teacher explained in English grammatical rules on how to construct Arabic sentences. She explained when should some Arabic sentences start with a noun or a verb. She then wrote on the board some examples from the story in Arabic. The students also gave out more examples in Arabic.

Teacher's Interview Response

After the class, I interviewed the teacher for approximately ten minutes asking about the rationale of her lesson. She explained to me that she had to do the translations and explanations so that the students would understand the grammatical rules. She further explained that she has to come back and review the rules in multiple lessons because the students are of elementary level. She also stated that the students need to get the vocabulary in multiple times in different context to familiarize and make use of the words.

Reflection and Discussion

This chapter will entail explanation of Focus-on-form: input flood, input enhancement and corrective feedback. It will also focus on acquisition of grammar; explicit instruction, present, practice, and produce. Additionally it will discuss the acquisition of vocabulary: frequency of exposure, intentional learning, contrastive analysis and translation. The topics are important in this discussion to understand how the class reflected on them to ensure successful learning (Loewen, 2015). The teaching techniques are important in teaching of acquisition of second language to learners to capture their attention and make them understand the linguistic structure. It is imperative to incorporate focus on form into acquisition of second language as it enables learners to develop fluency and accuracy in acquisition of second language.

Focus on Form

The concept of input flood and input enhancement interface with the observed class. Input flood is a form-focused instruction where the teacher provides a teaching material which contain multiple of examples of use of a certain word or phrase (Hernandez, 2018). Input enhancement is a deliberate manipulation to make specific grammatical characters of L2 more salient. With this focus on form instruction students are expected to notice form through input flood and textual improvement (Loewen, 2015). In the lesson, for instance, students are given some different examples of the use of a singular and plural nouns such as a woman and women. These words were repeated in both the first story and the video verbally and written. The more times a learner encounters a word, and the deeper they engage with it, the more they are likely to retain and use it appropriately. The teacher gave an assurance of repeating the target words in different context to ensure the students understand them well. Also, students were giving an opportunity to read and listen to the same story, with the target vocabulary of different nouns in singular and plural, in bold. The teacher draws the students' attention to these bolded words by explaining to them that these words are irregular, and in Arabic languages, some words just have different forms in singular and plural. From my observation, input enhancement significantly affects students learning when combined with explicit attention to the target form. Also, input enhancement combined with written input and other types of enhancement facilitates learners' noticing of real forms and improves the overall understanding. That is significant because the use of multiple types of enhancement enhances learners' cognitive function.

The teacher in the observed class corrected the students by providing the right form without openly indicating that the student's statement was improper. She asked the students to read the sentences loud while correcting the obvious pronunciation mistakes. The teacher also corrected the grammatical mistakes and explained the grammar rules behind it. The teaching strategy the teacher employed appears to interface with the focus on form concept of corrective feedback. Corrective feedback is essential in learning linguistics. Focus on form chapter indicates that' explicit, recast and prompt feedbacks are all valid for L2 learners. However, explicit feedback is more effective.

Acquisition of Grammar

From my observation, it is clear that the teacher waits for the students' grammar mistakes to provide grammatical explanation. I think the teacher wanted the students to notice the grammatical feature in their output before giving them the right form. Then, she explained the rules explicitly to draw learners' attention to the target forms to enable the students to understand the language features and structure. Explicit instruction is a teaching strategy which involves using highly structured and sequenced steps to capture learners' attention to linguistic features (Leowen, 2015). The concept of explicit instruction interfaces with the observed class. Explicit teaching provides the learners with knowledge of specific grammatical structures which make it easier for the students to identify the grammar rules in the given input. The instruction form also makes learners feel comfortable to give correct examples following these rules. It is obvious that instruction helps learners understand grammar in a better way. For example, by the end of the class, students were able to give out more examples in Arabic of sentences that start with nouns and others that start with verbs. Present, practice, and produce is a learning method where a teacher teaches students grammatical concept, demonstrates the language used in the context and finally require the learners to create the concept by themselves. The concept reflects on the observation. The instruction involves explaining the grammar point followed by the controlled production of the grammar structure. The final step involves engaging in practice use of the structure.

Acquisition of Vocabulary

The teaching practice in the L2 setting on the acquisition of vocabulary interfaces with the lesson. The teacher explains to me that learners get to familiarize a word after frequent exposure to the word. From my observation, the teacher explained the new vocabulary to the students and remind them that they will see these words again.

Also, she requested her students to translate the conversation on the video through her help. Contrastive analysis is the study of two different languages with the objective of identifying the general difference in them or in particular points such as grammatical structure. Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of text and producing similar meaning in a another language. Contrastive analysis provides the students with ability to translate words. (Minutella, 2016) The concept of contrastive analysis and translation in the acquisition of vocabulary chapter interfaced with the observed lesson. According to the teacher, this translation activity is essential in vocabulary learning because it shows that the students understand the given input.

References

Loewen, S. (2015). Introduction to instructed second language acquisition. New York, NY: Routledge

Minutella, V. (2016). Linking words: contrastive analysis and translation (with a digital workbook (l) by Richard DG Braithwaite), by Sara Laviosa, Naples, Liguori, 2014, 256 pp.,EUR 21.99, ISBN 978-88-207-3877-8 (pbk)..

Hernandez, T. A. (2018). Input Flooding. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1-7.