Welcom to my participant observation

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE the choice of approaches and methodologies in foreign language teaching through participant observation.

This blog seeks to describe my practice of participant observation carried out at the Colegio San Jerónimo el Rosal educational institution in Cundinamarca - Colombia. This practice is carried out within the course: Methodology in Foreign Language Teaching, which is part of the training route courses of the pedagogical practice At UNAD University.

The San Jerónimo el Rosal School is located in the Municipality of Rosal Cundinamarca in the Rural zone. The school has an infrastructure in good condition. It also has large green areas where students meet to share break time and other outdoor activities. The school provides preschool, basic primary and secondary school services respectively. Being located in a rural area, access to it is through an unpaved road. However, the conditions to access are not really complex, it is easy to access.

The immediate institutional environment is comprised of typical agricultural use areas of the municipality. The presence of areas for residential use as well as areas for commercial or industrial use is not found in their immediate surroundings. However, for the population residing in the urban area of ​​the municipality, access to the institution is very close and the population can benefit from the services it provides.

In this period, the practice of participant observation in secondary education is carried out in the ninth and eleventh grades respectively. The eleventh-grade group is between 15 and 16 years old and corresponds to a total of 16 students made of men and women. The ninth-grade group is between 13 and 15 years old and corresponds to a total of 19 students made of men and women as well. This process has meant a beautiful learning process for me. The possibility of observing a teaching professional in action has made me reflect on what it means to be a teacher and the great responsibility in their work. I was able to realize that being a teacher involves many more areas than just pedagogy, it also involves areas such as psychology, philosophy, knowledge of the laws and regulations that govern our educational system, and even the performing arts.

Link to my official Drive folder

According to my observations both in ninth grade and eleventh grade, it can be concluded that the environmental conditions for conducting English classes as a foreign language have a weakness; which consists mainly of the lack of technological resources within the educational classroom. There is no video or audio system to play interactive content that allows classes to have teaching resources that make them more attractive. Especially for this population group that demands an education according to their age and that results in the better acquisition of the English language by the students.

Link to my Plan de trabajo

Due to the above, it can be said that students at this time are developing more reading and writing skills than speaking and listening skills. Therefore, they are not adequately developing the integral acquisition of the second language. Thus, taking into account the current resources of the educational institution, for example, the Audio-lingual Method (ALM) and the Total Physical Response Method (TPR) could be implemented. The first one is because it emphasizes the development of listening and speaking skills through a lot of Auditory-Oral drills made up of dialogues, identification of patterns in grammatical structures, pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, and stress. The second method seems to me that can complement the first since it allows to involve in the classes some ludic activities that allow the students to understand some topics of the English language through the movement of their body.

👉 Watch the following resources on the ALM and TPR Methods.

                                                                          

Infographic ALM 

Conclusions

The participant observation within the context of the educational institution allows to have a real panorama of the future work as a teacher. Likewise, it enables reflection on the know how to do and the duty to be from the student and future teacher.

Through this course, I was able to corroborate that in selecting a methodological approach for teaching English as a foreign language it is necessary to take into account the target population to which said method is going to be applied as well as its socio-cultural environment.

In conclusion, I think that according to what has been observed, the teacher must have the ability to involve various methods for teaching English that serve their students in the process of acquiring the foreign language.