Use of teaching aids and materials

During the lesson taking place in the classroom, the main teaching aid that I used was the whiteboard. Theoretically, I could rely on the descriptions present in the coursebook, but the whiteboard provided me with more opportunities of showing how

the structure of the sentences changes, e.g. when making interrogative and negative sentences out of declarative sentences or passive voice out of active voice. It also enabled me to underline the crucial or changing elements of the sentence by using various colours of markers or to provide the learners with the examples of the sentences that they can use to find the governing rule on their own. When it comes to other teaching aids, I only had a set of playing cards used to memorize the irregular English verbs. However, I did not use them in any way while providing explanations, but only during exercises.

Only two groups were taught in the classroom context, group #1 and group #4, and I was using the blackboard quite differently on the lessons witch each of those groups. Due to the fact that group #1 was comprised of young learners, I tried to use more visual stimuli to keep their attention and interest, that is, more colours, more arrows signalizing the change of word order and more underlining of crucial elements.

However, during the earlier observed lesson with that group I noticed that when I finished working with the whiteboard, all the information that I presented on it was so cramped that it looked chaotic and confusing. This problem was caused by the fact that I wanted to keep all the information visible for the learners for the whole duration of the explanation, so that they could understand all the differences and changes that I was presenting. After reflecting on this, I decided to present the information in smaller chunks.

The above idea was implemented during on of the subsequent lessons with group

#1. For example, on the lesson introducing Present Continuous, I started with revising the conjugation of the verb “to be” in Present Simple tense. When I was assured that the learners remember it, I cleared the whiteboard and provided them with the examples of sentences in Present Continuous, using different colours for the subject, auxillary verb and the “-ing” ending. I tried to ask them to find some regularity in the provided examples, but like I noted before, this group was rather reluctant towards participation in the discovery of rules, therefore I had to provide it myself and then I explained how it contributed to the formation of the example sentences. Then I made a drill exercise for the formation of declarative sentences and only then cleared the whiteboard again and moved on to explain the interrogative and negative sentences, each type followed by a appropriate drill exercise as well.

In group #4 I used the whiteboard in a slightly more limited extent. First of all, the learners in this group were thinking more analytically and they had enough

metalinguistic knowledge for me to use the names of parts of speech and sentence. That is why I abstained from using colourful markers, limiting myself to underlining and drawing arrows that signalized changes in the word order. Additionally, their coursebook had a well-developed grammar reference section and their knowledge of L2 at that point was developed enough to understand the information provided there on their own. Thus I could use it instead of writing everything on the whiteboard.

During private lessons the availability of teaching aids was even scarcer, since I had no whiteboard at disposal. However, I found a way to counter this shortcoming by using A4-sized sheets of white paper and markers. The sheets were in front of the learner(s) and I used them in the way similar to whiteboard, with the only difference being that I could not wipe what I had written. On the other hand, learners could be given those sheets in order to analyze them later on their own if they felt a need to do so. Initially, I did not leave the sheets for them, but when the learners from group #6 asked me for that, I thought that they certainly would have more use of them than I would and thus I employed this attitude with all the other private teaching groups.

The situation with teaching materials was slightly better, although my limited experience and relatively low amount of resources gathered during teaching practice was definitely an impediment. However, I used the Internet, some grammar books and other coursebooks to provide more explicit explanations of the use of particular structures as well as the exercises to practice it, since I was sometimes unsatisfied with the amount of those elements in both coursebook and workbook. Another option was to create the written explanations and exercises on my own. However, I was cautious about making an exercise in which I might, for example, create an ambiguous context that would allow multiple possibilities of answering where there should be only one, or an explanation where I might miss an important point. What is more, creating of such materials would consume a significant amount of my time, especially if I wanted to make sure than they do not allow any ambiguity and do not miss anything important.

Therefore I preferred to rely on the materials present in the grammar books or other coursebooks, which are prepared by professionals. Yet, this raised another problem, since sometimes it was hard to find exercises for a given structure where the vocabulary would be on the appropriate level and I had to devote more of my time to finding them.