Observation

Over the past week, I spent 2 days in Haapsalu observing the classes my placement counterpart, Mari was teaching. I was initially supposed to observe 3 classes, but I had a conflict with the third class and so was unable to make it. Due to the timing of the classes, I arrived in Haapsalu at 3pm on Tuesday, October 10th to observe the class at 5:30 and stayed overnight at a hostel in order to attend the morning class at 9am on Wednesday, October 11th. I stayed at the Sportikeskus hostel in Haapsalu which was one of the nicer hostels I have stayed in (and is shown in the picture to the right).

Mari Kald is the English teacher for all of the English as a foreign language classes offered at Haapsalu Rahvaulikool. She has been teaching there since 2002 when she stumbled into the job (originally at the site in Tallinn, not Haapsalu) because a friend of hers was having a baby and needed someone to cover her classes and knew that Mari had done well in her English courses. Mari took up the job in 2002 with no formal training as an educator and thinking that it would initially just be a temporary job while she finished university and figured out what career field she was interested in. While she had (and still has) some insecurities about teaching English because she is never sure if what she is doing is absolutely correct, she found that she really enjoyed this work and a few years later, when a position at the school in Haapsalu (where Mari is originally from) was offered to her, she decided to take it and has been with the school ever since. Mari currently teaches 3 levels of English classes: Beginner, Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate although in past years she has also taught a conversational English course.

Interestingly, in the conversational English course, Mari attempted to organize the course by asking the learners what they would like to talk about and bringing current news stories and topics of interest to the class, but the learners told her they would prefer to use a text and have a more structured class as that was the best way for them to learn. I find this interesting because, in previous semesters of the IMAESC program, we have been taught that when working with adults, it is best to give them autonomy and let them direct the conversation and the learning. However, in this case, the adult learners preferred a structured approach as opposed to a more autonomous one. Perhaps this is because a more structured learning environment is the one they have always known and so were more comfortable with it. Another thought I had about this was that the learners all pay a tuition to the school for the language class they are taking and so they felt that it was important to get their money's worth by having strict lessons and a text to follow. I wonder if the learners had been slowly introduced to the idea of autonomy in the learning environment and had been guided into a different type of learning and interacting, eventually they would have become more comfortable not using a text and having more self-directed learning? Perhaps some of the techniques of using Freire in the Classroom would be a good way to start to approach a conversational English course if it to be taught again in the future.

Anyway, I observed two classes this past week. The first was a Beginner's English class and the second was an Intermediate English class. The similarities and differences between the two were very interesting. I have created an infographic to help demonstrate some of those similarities and differences:

I found the Beginner's English class to be very traditionally formatted and what I would expect a foreign language class to be like in any type of environment. It was very structured, built on the things learned from the previous class and included a lot of repetition. There was also nearly as much Estonian as English spoken throughout this class. Whereas, in the Intermediate class, I found them to be a closer group of learners who had more freedom to direct the conversation in a much more relaxed atmosphere. I also found them to have a much more energetic approach with each other and with Mari.

(Edit from several weeks later). I discovered that one of the reasons the Intermediate class was a closer group of learners is because they have been studying together for 5 years with nearly the exact same group of people and so have developed relationships. When asked what they enjoyed most about the class, they said that the teaching style of Mari and the friendships they formed is what keeps them returning.

Some final thoughts and reflections I had from this observation week were (which I don't have answers to, but I continue to think about):

Is there any other way to teach Beginner's English to allow it to be learner-centered and contain more elements of critical pedagogy, or do you have to build the technical language foundation first before you can incorporate alternative learning environments?

Is it necessary to continue to have a scaffolding approach in the Intermediate class or is there a point where this becomes unnecessary?

Is the traditional teaching approach (in Beginner's class) vs. the relaxed approach (in Intermediate class) because of the different levels of teaching or because of the relationship among the participants?

In 2 weeks I will work with the adult learners in the same Intermediate class and two different Pre-Intermediate classes to do cultural exchange conversations with them as I do not have the skills or knowledge to do technical English teaching that even comes close to Mari's capabilities and expertise.