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Pedagogical Tasks and Learner Participation in the English Classrooms of Undergraduate Engineers

Pedagogical Tasks and Learner Participation in the English Classrooms of Undergraduate Engineers. Khamseng Baruah Department of E nglish L anguage Teaching, Gauhati University. Background. Engineering has become one of the most preferred career choices

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Pedagogical Tasks and Learner Participation in the English Classrooms of Undergraduate Engineers

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  1. Pedagogical Tasks and Learner Participation in the English Classrooms of Undergraduate Engineers KhamsengBaruah Department of English Language Teaching, Gauhati University

  2. Background • Engineering has become one of the most preferred career choices • In the last 10 years as many as 8 new colleges have been established • However, the concept of ESP is at a very nascent stage • Syllabuses, barring a few, are largely literature based • In some colleges administrators have felt the need to include additional courses on language proficiency • Learners are largely unaware of their needs • A general negative attitude towards English exists

  3. In the classroom… • The communication situation in a language classroom mainly revolves around two sets of participants: the teacher and the learners. • The teacher intends to transmit a message, a pedagogic one, to the learners and expects a response from the learners.

  4. The teacher may use some pedagogical tasks to effectively convey the teaching point to the learners • Learning takes place only when learners actively participate in the teaching-learning process • Though the learning that takes place may not be immediately observable, the amount of interaction that takes place between the teacher and the learners can indicate the effectiveness of a particular activity

  5. The challenges in an English classroom of undergraduate engineers The learners: • May not consider it to be as important as other core subjects • May not be interested in doing the task • May not find the task relevant for them • May find it difficult to accept the methodology as they are used to a different method of teaching

  6. The study aims to investigate: • whether a clear explanation of the purpose of an activity encourages active learner participation • what kind of reaction can be observed in the class when the learners do not understand the teaching point • does a failure to correctly understand the purpose of a teaching point by the learners affect their motivation in the English class

  7. Classroom observation 1 • Target group: AEI, 4th semester • Number of students: 60 • Teaching point: Group Discussion • Objective: to make them aware of group discussion to enable them to participate in group discussions • Divides the class into 2 groups: Fruits and Colours • Further divides the 2 groups into smaller groups of 6 or 7 students All the groups in fruits will take part in a GD • All the groups in colours will become observers • Gives the topic to groups in Fruits • Asks them to think about it for 5 minutes individually • Gives a checklist to the groups in colours • Asks them to go through it • One group from Fruits participates in the GD and the other group from Colours observes them

  8. Observations • They do not participate in the GD very seriously • The observers too do not really observe • Some comments from the students: • We need to learn ABOUT GD, we don’t need to take part in a GD. • We are being observed by our friends, that’s silly. • We should be doing serious work, we are being made to discuss issues which are not academic.

  9. Classroom Observation 2 • Target group: ETE , 4th semester • Number of students: 64 • Teaching point: Group Discussion • Objectives: to make them aware of group discussion to enable them to participate in group discussions • Teacher announces the topic • Tells them to work in pairs and brainstorm on GD • Announces the objectives • Asks them to brainstorm on some personality traits that are looked for in a participant through a group discussion • Asks them about the importance of GD in their curriculum. She asks them when they need it.

  10. Observations • More learners participate • They are clear about the objective of the activity, so they do it more seriously

  11. Conclusions • Encouraging learners to participate in an activity needs a lot of effort • Explaining the objectives of an activity may promote learner participation • Learners may turn hostile and may not cooperate when they do not understand the relevance of an activity • Over a period of time learners do get used to a particular method of teaching, but it may be helpful to explicitly explain the objectives of an activity

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