English in Practice

The students’ and lecturer’s English proficiency was good. No grammatical error was detected as feedback was given. All students participated well during the lesson. Students’ sentences were clear and lengthy answers were given when they justified their answers. The answers were not that appropriate because students continued making mistakes when it came to comparative and superlative adjectives. Students spoke with enthusiasm, their accent and pronunciation were not affected by their mother tongues. Their grammar was satisfactory in that most of the answers given were correct although it seemed they did not know the rules of converting the adjectives into comparatives and superlatives. At the end of the lesson, students were given homework to read notes on adverbs for the next lesson.

These findings such as converting adjectives into comparatives and superlatives seem to support the interview data that students doing this course need more time to learn English because of the simple mistakes they are making.

In the third class, 27 out of 30 students turned up for the class. It was a lesson on summarising a text. According to the lecturer, students in English in Practice were taught two types of summary: a main point summary where students had to identify main ideas in every paragraph in a text and another type called a directed summary. Students were directed to look for specific information in the text and write a directed summary of 100 words from nine paragraphs of the text (The qualities of a good father). Students were asked to summarise the qualities of a good father. The qualities were clearly stated, which means they were all to be found at the beginning of each paragraph as the topic sentence. What students needed to do was to identify them, write them (qualities) in their own words and come up with a paragraph of 100 words. This researcher collected two summaries which were later analysed in “students’ written work data”. Not much was done in the class. The lecturer simply told students to go to a certain page in the study guide, read the instructions and follow them. This researcher asked the lecturer how she was going to mark the work (summary). She said that she would mark the papers using the content and grammar marking grid, bring it to class, give it to the students and go through the rubrics with them. Most of the items on the class observation check list were not applicable to this lesson.

The fourth class had 26 students, of whom 24 turned up for the lesson. The lesson was on the third conditional. The lecturer introduced the lesson by revising the second conditional. Students seemed to be confused between the first and the second conditionals. In the second conditional the “if clause” should consist of the simple past tense and the result clause should consist of “would + infinitive”, for example: If I washed the dishes he

would dry them. In the first conditional, the sentence should be: If I wash the dishes he will dry them.

Students were confused because the “if clause” in the first conditional takes the simple present tense and the result clause “will + infinitive” and the result clause in the second conditional. The lecturer explained that the first conditional describes real or probable situations while the second conditional describes fantasy or unlikely situations.

The lecturer then moved to the third conditional which describes possibilities in the past that did not happen. In addition to this, the lecturer made it clear that the third conditional

expresses an imaginary connection between one event that never happened (if + past perfect) and another event that also never happened (would have + past participle).

The following example was given: If I had known her phone number I would have

phoned her. The lecturer wrote some sentences on the chalkboard and asked individual

students to write them in the third conditional. The result was disastrous. It seemed that the students did not know how to use the past perfect tense.

When students were asked to report back, not many of them could come up with correct sentences. The problem was the perfect tenses themselves. The students became confused because in the third conditional, the resulting clause uses “would + have + the present perfect tense” while the “If clause” uses the past perfect tense.

Students were then given three sentences to practice and came up with correct answers. The last activity entailed the students commenting on the sentences by using the third conditional. Students could not really refer to the explanation given earlier despite the lecturer’s emphasis on the possibilities which were there. Students practiced oral skills by reporting back and commenting on sentences given to them.

The lecturer did not correct the students when they came up with wrong tenses. The lesson seemed to follow the “communicative approach” where students just needed to give the right answer. The lecturer did not bother about correct grammar. The home work was to interview one person in class by completing sentences using the first, second and third conditional sentences.

The lecturer used the study guide as a teaching aid and most students participated well in the lesson although some students did not participate. The students who tried to explain or comment on something were the ones that shouted out answers to the class. Students’ language proficiency was satisfactory, but one cannot say all students were proficient in English because some did not participate. Those who participate had problems with subject and verb agreement and would say “he have” instead of “he has.” No derivational morphemes were heard. Words were pronounced well by both lecturer and students who spoke. Students also spoke with enthusiasm and their accents were not affected by their mother tongue.