ESAL 0570 – Academic Reading Skills  

Course Description 

This course is designed to prepare students for reading university level material effectively and efficiently. Specific approaches to reading are taught for factual and fictional writing. Emphasis is on the short story. 

It was beneficial to see observe this class because this is the 5th level of the class that I’m teaching in my practicum. It is good to see where skills will progress to from 0170 to 0570. I noticed that many students in this class have English names that they prefer to be called by.   

This class felt comfortable to come into and there was a lot of causal discussion and welcoming as students signed in. Asking how students are doing and saying hi, created a teacher-student relationship. This level of relationship with the students was nice to see and students were then more likely to participate in tasks or when posed a question to answer. The teacher made a point to say everyone’s name as they arrived, which I like because it makes everyone feel seen, if they aren’t really “seen”. 

A video is played at the beginning of the lesson which students were supposed to pre-watch. Since many had not, the video is then played. In the video the importance of setting is explained through song. The song is a kind of rap song, I think this connects with the young, trendy learners of today. Flocabulary: YouTube. It is interesting to note that not all students from China can watch the YouTube video unless they change their VPN settings. I found this really interesting and something to consider in future lessons as I may be teaching students in China. 

The importance of the video is setting and the teacher asks students to think about their take away from the video. The students are encouraged to share answers in chat about their thoughts on setting and the video. The students must have been talking about this topic in previous classes because they were able to review setting rather than learn it for the first time.  

The students headed into breakout rooms with the tasks related to how setting is important to understanding the story. This is a short story class, so this task is appropriate for these students. The students use their knowledge of previous class readings to complete the breakout room tasks. This shows that there was prior information learned before I observed this class. This was a really good example of scaffolding learning and moving from point a to point b. At the end of the breakout rooms students are expected to bring back examples to write in shared notes. While I popped into one breakout room, I reminded students of this. I noticed they were only talking and not writing notes. I told them they were going to be expected to share answers after so it’s important to write things down. 

After the breakout room, the different types of settings were analyzed further. This discussion was guided by students answers from the breakout room task. Students are asked to share and speak out loud to continue the discussion on setting. The students gave great answers and insight into different types of settings. When talking about cultural setting, the students really seemed to connect to this dimension. They became more outspoken and active in chat during this topic because it was one that interests them. 

At this level of English, the students free flowing conversation is quite fluent and natural. It helps when they are motivated to talk because of the topic. There is encouragement to answer even If you are unsure or don’t know.  

I really liked the content in this class and would be interested in teaching it myself. I learned a useful teaching reading strategy at the end of this lesson that I will certainly implement in the future. This was the part about learning information about the author before doing the reading. Knowing that information about the author gives the story context and shows how it influences their writing. Ex: How old when she died, how old when her father died.? The authors reality informs her writing.