Reflection On Teaching Practicum

The paper reflects on my experience during the teaching practicum. Initially, it analyses the strategies my Mentor Teacher (MT) adopted in her teaching and interaction with the students. Additionally, it analyses the techniques I employed to motivate, monitor, and manage students during my teaching practice. Finally, it discusses how I will improve my teaching in terms of instructional strategies, classroom interaction, objectives-activities-assessments alignment, and classroom management.

Reflection on classroom observation
Instructional strategies
My MT succeeded in applying various instructional strategies. She fused the Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) method, Audiolingual Teaching (ALT) method, and Grammar Translation (GT) method in her teaching. Take a listening-speaking class as an example, when illustrating how to tell time using the classic way (e.g., a quarter to nine), my MT connected it with students’ prior knowledge – telling time using the digital way (e.g., eight forty-five). Then, to ensure the illustrations were explicitly delivered, she used Chinese to explain the differences between the use of “past” and “to” in telling time. Furthermore, blackboard drawings were displayed to show the contrasts. Hence, the abstract concept was visualized and it was relatively easy for students to perceive

As a rule, students needed to be nominated before answering. Occasionally, my MT would give verbal compliments (e.g., “Good”), but generally she would rephrase the elicited forms and hurry forward to the next topic. Yet, such “ritualized responses” functioned to judge students’ production of the form regardless of the content (Thornbury, 1996), which might not promote teacher-student interaction. Beyond that, students were constantly concerned about whether their answers would be affirmed or rejected, resulting in constrained