Description Report 1 on Lesson 60, J2B, Class B

(October 4, 2011)

The observer: Student teacher:陈慧婷, Group 2-4 in Class 09 (3)

The topic: The teacher’s view of language

It seems that Class B teacher holds the “functional view of language” according to what she did in the sample lesson.

In the functional view, language is not only a system of structural items but also a tool for the learners to express functional meaning of language, i.e., to be able to do things in the language such as offering, suggesting, advising, apologizing and so on.

In this view, EFL teachers have two main tasks. One is to help the students to master the structural elements (knowing how to combine the vocabulary and grammar of the language). And another task is to teach the students how to express notions that perform the functions.

Firstly, by observing the main teaching events in Class B, we can find that the teacher teaches the students some basic knowledge related to the structural items such as the lexical items, sentence structure and grammar. Here are some proofs:

① In the first teaching event, the teacher asks the students to fill a form of

popular food in different countries and this is a way for students to

review the words of food and some adjectives of describing food.

② In the second event, the teacher helps to correct the students’ errors in the

sentence “Fish and chips is popular because I think delicious” into “Fish

and chips are popular because I think them delicious”. In this step, the

teacher focuses on the grammar. The first grammar item is the differences

between the singular form in third personal and plural form. Another

grammar item is the sentence structure “Subject + Verb + Object +

Complement”.

③ In the fourth event, students are asked to do the True and False questions

after listening to the dialogue. By doing this, the teacher is actually

checking the students’ understanding of the underlined words and phrases