Observation

OBSERVATION by EULISES CASTAÑEDA MARIN. All rights reserved. The following observation took place in group 1B, at the University of Quindio, Diplomado Nocturno.

Observer´s name: Eulises Castañeda Marin Room area: 40 square meters. Number of students: 22. Time: from 6 to 7 pm.

Description:

At the beginning only 9 students are in the classroom. The teacher greets everybody. Then, somestudents enter the classroom and this fact generates too much noise because they do not lift the chairs. Students greet one another and they do it in Spanish. The teacher is speaking and some of the students are not paying attention. So he decides to raise his voice and says “hello, hello”. After that, he asks for some students.

On the right of the classroom there is a student who is speaking inSpanish, so his teacher asks him to switch the language and some students smile. After this, the teacher introduces the topic. The topic for this class is “bombing in Arauca”. He asks the students if they have some information about and he asks “what happened in Arauca?” students do not answer, so he repeats the question twice. Finally, one student decides to speak. She says “Las FARC mataron variaspersonas” the teacher asks her to say what she said but in English. So she answers in English: “the farcs kill many people” the teacher follows her intervention by humming. Then, the teacher asks “what did the FARCS do?” she says “a bomb, they put a bomb” the teacher asks the students “is it true?” students say yes. He asks again “how many bombs? There a many different answers. He continuesasking “how many people died?” Ramiro answers 7 people. The teacher repeats the same.

Now the teacher says to them he has brought a material about that situation and starts delivering it. There are 30 seconds of silence. Then, the students start speaking in Spanish and the teacher says to them “no, no, no, Spanish” Everybody laughs. The teacher reads the title of the passage. “MASACRE IN ARAUCA.”Then, the teacher asks them to read and work in pairs and be prepared for a discussion, to answer some questions. Several minutes pass by and the teacher asks the students if they understand. Only some students answer yes, the teacher says “yes or no” everybody answers “yes” in chorus. The teacher repeats once again and offers help to students.

After this, the teacher asks students to read aloud.One student starts reading and makes some mistakes in pronunciation. Then, the teacher asks another student to read and she does it with fear. The teacher says “O.K” then, he continues asking students to read but some of them feel ashamed and read badly. For this

exercise 6 people are asked to participate. The majority of them do not know how to read very well and hurry up to finish.

Nowthe teacher asks the students to synthesize what this reading is about. Ramiro answers “it is about terrorism in Arauca, the guerrilla blow up some people” the teacher says “they blew up some people O.K”. Now he asks “How is Arauca now and why?” students do not understand so the teacher repeats the question. “How do Araucans feel now? Then, the teacher points out a student and asks her to answerthe same question. She does not understand. There is a little bit of confusion, so the teacher decides to change the question “how do people in Arauca feel now? The student does not know how to answer and get blushed. The teacher says “according to the text”, then, the students a question “how is the question?”

After several tryings, the teacher decides to read the answer which is literal in thetext. Then, someone asks “Que es mourning” the teacher says “it is a human feeling. When someone dies, you feel mourning.” Then, he asks the second question” how many people died?” Several students answer at the same time “7 people”. The teacher repeats “7 people, good”.

Suddenly a student interrupts by saying “in the news said que eran 8” the teacher asks her to answer in English. She says...