Melbourne Grammar’s Senior School

Our second school visit is placed at Melbourne Grammar’s Senior School. Students from Melbourne Grammar’s Senior School (MGSS) are ranging from Years 9 to 12, about 70% of them are Europeans and the rest of them are locals. MGSS is an elite school which provides quality and challenging educational programme to students. The motto of the school is to nurture youngsters to work and pray to achieve a sense of fulfillment, and it aims at cultivating students to be an all-rounded person with leadership skills that contribute to society in the future.

I went to two classes today, one Latin class and the other French. It is really nice of the school to provide students with a large variety of language electives that they can choose from! 15 students in the Latin class are in Year 9, and perhaps they are comparatively junior, they are not very familiar with the language. They are doing a pre-test today, and the lesson is mostly dominated by the teacher. It is the teacher who is speaking when they are doing the test or doing the checking afterwards. When the teacher is checking answers with the boys, he tells students or writes the answers on the board directly. Students get little chance to speak Latin, and they communicate in English. There is little interaction between teacher and students, and between students.

The second class I observed is a French class. The 13 students in this class are in Year 11, a more senior class. Students are showing higher mastery of the language than the previous class. The teacher would code-switch between English and French. She would give instructions twice, once in French and once in English. After the listening task, teacher checks the answers in French with the boys, and they can answer her in fluent French. There are more student-teacher and student-student interaction in this class, and teacher would try to guide the students to the correct answers by asking display questions, instead of giving out the answers directly.

In terms of style of teaching, both teachers are using traditional approach to teach. Students are learning a second or foreign language through drillings and tests. This is similar to Hong Kong, students would not have a chance to really speak the language. They would be spoon-fed the different information, and would not practice the newly acquired knowledge. Students get bored very easily and cannot concentrate on teachers’ teaching for long. A suggestion to that would be to learn in a more communicative approach. Students would be more engaged and involved in class once they understand their roles are not just passive listener in class. Activities and games would allow students to practice the target language and really absorb the knowledge.