Observacion data analisis

OBSERVATION DATA ANALYSIS

1. Description of the classroom.

During the five observations, the French Literature class took place in the classroom Nº 109 located in the 5th block of the Universidad de Antioquia Seccional Oriente. This block is used –mainly- by the students of foreign languages degree (the three levels) and some other programs such as psychology, children’spedagogy and public accountancy, and so on. The classroom Nº 109 is wide and spacious; it has from 25 to 30 desks. The classroom walls are painted in white, the floor is red and the ceiling is wooden. There are four lamps but one of them does not work; but once no one of them worked because there was no electrical service during the first two hours of class. The door is located on the right side ofthe classroom, in front of the windows. On the left side there are two windows; some trees, three classrooms and people can be seen through them. Every window has a blind which is opened by the students for them to have a better illumination. The white board is located in front of the desks, on the left side of the classroom, next to one of the windows. In the classroom there is no anydecoration, the walls are completely white. Although the whiteness could give a cold sensation when you enter the classroom, it is totally the opposite because the classroom temperature is almost always warm.

• Organization of the students

When the students arrived the classroom they always sat down in their own desks and during individual activities such as quizzes andpresentations; but, most of times they were organized in pairs (80% of the times, they choose their couples and 20% of the times the teacher proposed to gather in couples with people his students have not worked so far) around the classroom because of the class activities proposed by the teacher. Once, they were organized in a semi-circle to carry out an activity, which in Spanish is known as “el teléfonoroto” (this activity is going to be mention later).

2. Class activities

• Description of the activities.

The class activities in French Literature were varied because the topics were varied as well. For instance, in the three first observations, the students –in pairs- had to prepare a presentation about a known French author, the students had to act as if theywere the authors, and they had to talk about the authors’ personal and professional lives in first person. The teacher prepared a presentation as well. Other class activities started with the teacher’s explanations about certain topics and at the same time the students participated to ask for more examples, to give examples or ideas about the topic explained for some students to solve their doubts.During such explanations, the teacher tried to ask some key questions for his student to come up with the answer or even an explanation by themselves, in other words, the teacher encouraged his students for them to know they know something about and X or Y topic. Other activities were related to the analysis of a fragment of a book or article through certain questions. Most of times, thestudents had to read between the lines and infer the meaning of certain fragments to come up with some ideas similar to the original ones of the different authors. Then, the students could answer the questions asked by the teacher. Likewise, most of the class activities were related to writing. For instance, the students had to write something that in French Literature is known as “4ème decouverture” (the back part of a book which contains information about: the author [author’s biography], a summary of the book, comments made by magazines, journals, and so on); this was an evaluative activity which was one of the class projects (10% of the subject). In summary, most of the class activities were written activities such as summaries, analysis and solving questions. Another of the...