M5 - School Experience - English Lessons

As I said, the level of English of Danish young pupils is pretty good. On of the reasons is that they have a lot of TV programs and films in original, with subtitles (films are really rarely dubbed). I found that very interesting and valuable - all the people have contact with native Enlish really often. The media - both TV and the internet - play very important role in people´s lives. And if the TV programs are in English, it is pretty good. And children can also see usefulness of the foreign language. In Czech schools English is something you learn, but you can´t see the immediate utility. It is just something a bit "artificial" for the pupils...

The second thing is that English teaching is much more focused on SPEAKING - rather then grammar, rules and learning vocabulary by heart, as it is in the CR. People in the CR are quite confident in writing;however, when they should speak, they are often very shy. Just not confident enough, because they are too much focused on grammar and "correct language", they are afraid of making mistakes. But it is a part of learning, isn´t it? We need to use the language, to communicate in order to improve throught this process...

I spend quite a lot of time with my teaching and activities in English. The first week we did crosword about London in 6.a and 6.b, connected with my presentation and narrative about London, where I spent 2 months in summer. For the second week I prepared a presentation about the Czech Republic with a true-false statements activity. I really enjoyed the communication with pupils, the questions they had - as I mentioned before (General Notices and Reflections).
The third week I got very good chance from Tanja - she told me that she was having a day-off on Tuesday - and she gave me a choice - to get a substitute teacher/ or to TEACH ALONE ON MY OWN the whole lesson . And I considered that as a big challenge, so I told - OK, I will take it and try :-). Why not?
Finally, Jette Laursen came to the lesson to observe, therefore I was not really alone. ;-) However, it was a good chance and I liked it very much. I prepared various communication games for pupils and I think we all enjoyed it a lot. For me it was a good chance to try games, which I knew only from theoretical lessons, methodology, but I had never had a chance to try them in "real life".:-)
It gave me a lot of reflections, how it was working, what to improve, what else to use...
THANK YOU FOR THAT CHANCE.

25th Feb - School visit II

My second school visit was at Haderslev Kristne Skole - a private Christian school. The day begins there with common singing in the hall every morning and then the headmaster (?) reads a Christian based story to the pupils.
I was there with Míša and Anja and we visited 4 lessons - Enlish in 5th and 6th grade, Music in 4th grade and Enlish in 7th grade with a different teacher.
I didn´t enjoy the first two lessons of English too much. They spoke quite a lot in Danish, read an English text and had some groupwork, but they didn´t check the correct version together at the end. My impression was that the teacher doesn´t enjoy the teaching of young people too much and she is not prepared so well for the lessons. As wherever on the world, teaching depends on teacher and his/her personality very much.

But what was nice in the lesson was that when pupils got a pair work in the second lesson, they started to work and the teacher didn´t sit and wait. The pupils could rise their hands and ask teacher for small helps. They had to work on their own, but still it was a kind of cooperation. And when some pupils had finished, some of them went to help the others.


It was surprising for me that in some lessons (languages, math...) there is also another teacher in the class, not only the "main teacher". She or he helps some "weaker" pupils if they need that during the lessons. Special needs, disabled, dyslectic, hyperactive etc. children usually go to normal schools in Denmark. However, they don´t have their own assistant - they only get some help in some lessons from another teacher.
We could see the same teacher in the morning as a "main teacher" of English and than as a kind of "assistant" in the last lesson.

The school is quite small - one class for one grade. And I felt in the teachers common room very friendly and team atmosphere. What was interesting for me was that the school has also a substitute teacher - the teacher, who teaches all kinds of lessons instead of ill teachers. In CR teachers has to substitute one another, if some of them is ill. If nobody is ill, he/she goes to a class with some "problematic" or special-needs children to help them.

In Music lesson I was impressed by the equipment of the Music-classroom. We could see three keyboards, quitars and drums, jumbos, two pianos, movable chairs and tables, great sound-system...wow! But the lesson itself was based mostly on listening. The pupils could lay themself comfortable and listen (some of them were more climbing and crawling on the floor than listening). However, for my taste the listening was too long without any specific tasks. They listened to 4 parts of Four seasons by Vivaldi, but it took more than 10 minutes together. Than they discussed their impressions and what it could be about and listened it again - they tried to guess which season was what. And then the lesson was OVER. The Czech system is more, I would say, systematic, active with more specific tasks and much shorter listening (I thing children are not able to concentrate 10 or 15 minutes to a piece of classical music) - even listening shoud be somehow "active". Nevertheless, the lesson still depends on a teacher´s approach within the system a lot.




I liked the last lesson of English quite a lot, because the teacher was young and had a good approach to the pupils. The English learning in Denmark is much more focused on speaking and abbility to communicate than in CR. We are more focused on grammar, following the rules and sometimes pupils are very shy to USE the language. Therefore I found the Danish approach to English much better. And the pupils know many things from media too - most of foreign film are not dubbed, they have only subtitles. Therefore pupils know many things instinctively and they also can learn grammar different way - first they hear it and then they think about the rules. Most improtant and primary is the language usage and experience - not giving the rules and speaking according to them afterwards.

27th Feb and 2nd March - English lessons

Me, Míša and Vašek had on Friday 27th an Enlish lesson with Danish students too.
I was surprised that

• around 2/3 of the students were adult people - already teaching. In Czech Republic we have a daily study for young students and distant learning for adults - but in Denmark they go to one class. One of the girls even have a small baby in the classroom during lessons!

A few more things which were really interesting for me:

• the atmosphere in the classroom was very friendly and cooperative, the students could be much more critical and express their oppinions (what is more - they were expected to do that :) ) The relationship between university teacher and students is more friendly and "equal" then in CR.
  
• The students are pretty good at English, much better than most of the Czech English-teacher- students. But you know, English is much closer to Danish. Nevertheless, if the pupils at schools have such a good-level English teachers with good pronunciation, that is also better for their beginnings.

• the whole study is much more focused on practice than on learning something by heard (there is no point in it, anyway). In CR we have to study English literature for 4 semesters, British history for 2 semesters, USA history, USA and colonial literature etc. ... And Danish students don´t have to know all these information by heart. Lucky them! They only read 1 English-written book per semester, for example they are reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher´s Stone for analysis at the moment! Good choice :)

The part of their final exam is for example an analysis of a pupil´s essay. They have to characterise the text as a whole; find, cathegorise and analyse the pupil´s mistakes and offer 3 most important things on which to work with the pupil and how to explain it to him/her. That is grammar (+methodology, stylistics and syntax etc.) IN PRACTICE! :)

We also did a group work - comparing English teaching books. Very practical (and much more useful than many parts of my university studies in CR).

On Monday 2nd we did another practical groupwork - focused on usage ICT in English lessons.

We were nicely welcomed by the Danish students in the lessons, thanks. ;)