English Language Classroom Observation

I conducted a classroom observation of college level English language learners at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. The instructor that led the course was Chris Hanson a faculty member at UCCS. The makeup of the students in the classroom was a mix of Arabic, Vietnamese, and Spanish primary language speakers. From speaking with Instructor Hanson, majority of his students are here on scholarships pending completion of this English language program, in which they will continue on as degree seeking students. The class period that I was observing was review period for the course final exam that was going to be taken later in the week. From my observations, the students had a good feel of classroom procedure and the expectations of instructor. The classroom it self was small and limited in space. The instructor and the students, all seven of them sat at the same table. The instructor had word and sentence examples on the white board prior to the students entering the classroom. The atmosphere was relaxed and for the most part the class was ran in an open informal dialogue due to the teacher student ratio. The observations that I saw and how class …show more content…
All the students were interested in the review and very adamant about understanding and correcting any mistakes. Several times students asked if Instructor Hanson could repeat a reading passage or if another example could be given to better explain. From my observations these students in this class had a sense of ownership to learn English and to pass their proficiency exam, which I can understand in order to keep their scholarships and continue on with their education. I think due to the student’s engagement and classroom atmosphere there was a lot of student collaborative learning, either in teams competing against each other or working together in partners to complete a problem. I was very exciting to see them work and