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The Case for Decision‐Forcing Cases: Preparing Teachers for EFL Settings
Author(s) -
Jackson Jane
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
tesol journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.468
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1949-3533
pISSN - 1056-7941
DOI - 10.1002/j.1949-3533.2000.tb00260.x
Subject(s) - feeling , conversation , wonder , psychology , class (philosophy) , mathematics education , stairs , pedagogy , history , social psychology , communication , computer science , archaeology , artificial intelligence
As Mary climbed the three flights of stairs to the 4B (Grade 10) classroom, she wondered how well her conversation class would go. She was usually pretty upbeat, but today she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. When she finally reached the classroom, the math teacher was still not finished. It would be another short session—probably just 25 or 30 minutes. Seeing the students only once every 6 days didn't help either. The year was almost over and she still didn't know most of their names. No wonder! She was seeing over 700 students each week! Mary Martin, a NET (native‐English‐speaking teacher) from Australia with almost 20 years of teaching experience, had only been at the Chan Chu Secondary School for 8 months and was still feeling her way around. This was her first EFL experience, and Hong Kong was a bit of a shock. She was really enjoying it, but there were so many things to adjust to. A few weeks ago, she decided to try using cooperative learning techniques in her classroom to provide more opportunity for her students to practice their English in small groups. They were much more at home with “chalk and talk,” but Mary was determined to experiment, even though they were generally resistant to anything new. Crammed into a small, stuffy room were 43 science students, 37 boys and 6 girls. Most were at the Band 4–5 level (low achievers on exams) and were not motivated to learn English. Many seemed completely apathetic and dispirited. Some even acted scared of her, although that was changing. In the corridor, several students were now saying hello to her instead of shifting their eyes and rushing away. She was pleased about that. After the math teacher exited the class, Mary took a deep breath and entered. The students pushed back their chairs, stood up, and recited, “Gd afternn, M Mrtin.” Mary smiled and greeted the class before asking them to take their seats. She wasn't sure if she'd ever get used to the formality. Mary clapped her hands and called out: “Today, we are doing group work, which means we are ‘fighting against the clock.‘ What do I mean by ‘fighting against the clock?’ I mean that we are going to have to quickly move our tables and chairs today. We are going to have to sit in groups of four, okay?” (excerpted from Jackson, 2000)