La Trobe University International College

Our eighth school observation was at La Trobe University International College, where we are studying now. La Trobe University International College (LTUIC) was founded in 1974, it provides English language programs and academic courses to students who are going to enter universities. It offers English langiage courses, teacher training courses, foundation studies and diploma programmes. The majority of students are from Saudi Arabia, and the rest are mainly from Korea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia. Students here are streamed according to their English levels, and they are categorized into 6 levels, with level 1 being the elementary and 6 being the advanced.

The class I observed is a 1B class and students are mainly from Saudi Arabia. The backgrounds of students are quite different, some of them are married and even have children. The theme of the lesson is weekdays and weekends, and the focuses of the two-hour lesson are simple present tense and present continuous tense. The teacher introduced the topic by asking students questions with the help of pictures. After that, students moved on to various listening tasks and speaking tasks with based on the task sheets copied from a textbook provided by the teacher. In terms of pronunciation, the teacher pronounced the words for a few times, and asked students to follow her. She corrected students’ pronunciation by pronouncing the right one. In terms of correction of students, the teacher did not give the correct answer right away, but to asked some guiding questions or gave some hints to students, to guide them to the correct answer. The students in class were quite motivated, and they were answering the questions actively. There are quite a lot of interactions between students and the teacher, and among students. In addition, students are communicating in English, instead of their mother tongues for most of the time.

However, one point to note is that there were two grammar spots in one lesson. Students seemed to be unable to cope with two different grammar focuses at a time. It would be better if the teacher covers just one grammar spot at one time, and allow students to digest and practise it before moving on to another grammar focus.