I observed a video of a lesson in a high-intermediate/advanced class in the United States. The class consisted of approximately twenty adult students from a range of language backgrounds who appeared to be taking the class for academic or business purposes. The lesson was taught using the communicative approach with a focus on the function of persuasion and based on the topic of what type of place is best to live in.

The primary technique in this lesson was task-based learning, which I think is common with the communicative approach. In this case, the teacher invited the students – through role-play – to help him solve a family dilemma of deciding where his parents should live in relation to their three adult children who were located across the country. I think it was effective that the teacher provided a real-life and personal task to motivate the students, and introducing the task at the beginning of the lesson worked to establish interest and expectations before instruction and foundational activities. It was also helpful that the teacher had all of the lesson materials displayed at the front of the class for his reference as he moved through the lesson but also for the students’ reference at any point.

The first foundational activity had students brainstorm content on the topic, which was a good way to prepare them for communicative activity later. The teacher then demonstrated a persuasive speech and presented a structure and suggested phrases. He then had one student attempt the task before moving everyone into groups of four for the main activity. I found this problematic because all but one of the students had no practice with the teacher prior to being expected to produce the task independently. I also found that the teacher presented the main activity using too much teacher talk and in too many different ways – it seemed that he was trying to ensure comprehension, but would have been better off presenting clear and simple instructions once and asking for questions.

Once in the many activity, the students seemed to get a bit off-track. They were making arguments, but were not necessarily using the structure or phrases the teacher had introduced. This was likely a result of a lack of practice exercises. The teacher then had one member of each group – role-playing the parent – present a decision to the class of where to live and why. This provided a clear and fun closure to the task as “votes” for where to live were tallied.

The biggest challenges I identified in this lesson was the lack of practice, assessment, and error correction. Because individual students did not engage in the target skill with the attention of the teacher, it’s not clear that they had opportunities to learn and the teacher could not assess their learning. Students did engage in a fair bit of speaking, but this may have been based on their existing abilities. I also noticed that the teacher did no error correction, which also limited the learning opportunities. The only reliable individual assessment and possibility for error correction was in the assigned homework, but it was in a different skill than the class (writing versus speaking) despite being the same function. One final challenge I found was that the language of the suggested persuasive phrases was very formal. This is appropriate for academic writing, but, since the lesson activity was a spoken activity, it was somewhat awkward or inauthentic.

This lesson was useful for me to observe at this point because it reflected one of the shortcomings in my own teaching practicum – focusing solely on fluency and assuming students will improve simply by speaking more. Seeing this limitation from another teacher helped provide a new perspective. I can see how a good lesson, like this one, could be made much better by working with an engaging topic and task in more specific and appropriate ways.