A Case Analysis Of Heterogeneous Classes Of Object Clause

The case analysis is concerned with heterogeneous classes of object clause,where three teachers’ classes were described and analyzed.The teaching material is a grammar part entitled Could you please tell me where the restrooms are.The teachers adopted different instructional designs to implement the same class.The theoretical bases of heterogeneous classes are scaffolding theory and cognitive learning theory.Its significance lies in three aspects:assisting teachers in finding more suitable teaching methods;improving their teaching by learning from each others’ strong points to offset their weakness;and promoting their professional development.The procedures of heterogeneous classes include watching the classes on the video repeatedly,transcribing them and analyzing them.The three teachers were labeled as TA,TB,and TC respectively for the convenience of analysis.In the first case,TA mainly adopted deduction which means from general to specific.Threeprocesses are involved:presentation,practice and production.Her presentation serves the purpose of giving the general rules of three key points of object clause:conjunctions,tense and order.After specific practice,students can easily produce specific object clause.In the second case,TB employed task-based teaching method.The first task was to acquaint students with the form of object clause by pair work;the second task was to make students practice object clause in different situations through role play;the third task was to summarize of the rules of tense through filing in the blanks;the fourth task was to apply object clause to description of their classmates through a guessing game.In the third case,TC mainly adopted induction which means from specific to general.In terms of the first induction,she presented a set of model sentences and asked students to summarize the notion of object clause;in terms of the second induction,she also showed some model sentences to help them summarize the rules of three key points of object clause:conjunctions,order and tense.After that,students were asked to practice object clause by blank filling,error correction,multiple choices and rewriting.The case analysis has yielded the following major findings:three teachers adopted different methods to teach object clause with different teaching styles.In terms of the strengths,three teachers had a good grasp of the teaching key points.To varying degrees,they fulfilled the teaching objectives:knowing how to communicate politely by object clause and mastering the rules of three key points of object clause.Specifically,TA presented an explicit grammar teaching instruction,so the class was both effective and efficient and students could practice the exercises easily.In addition,she paid attention to improving their writing ability by providing necessary guidance during writing process with an aim to make students speak out object clause confidently.TB was good at creating situations close to their actual life to stimulate their imagination like Thanksgiving Day,losing one’s way in the US and interviewing the director of "Where are we going,dad?".The tasks where she designed systematic activities helped cultivate their positive emotion,attitudes,and values so that we will be polite in further communication.TC divided the difficult object clause teaching into small objectives.She further understood the cognitive learning theory,respecting their subjectivity and guiding them to have a meaningful learning.She emphasized exercises:blank filling,error correction,multiple choices and rewriting,through which students had a sense of accomplishment.In terms of the weaknesses,TA was teacher-centered and the feedback was insufficient,so the atmosphere seemed a little dull.TB spent much time in finishing tasks,focusing on just tense of object clause.With inadequate preparations,many students became confused when finishing the exercises.TC focused merely on grammar and exercises.Lack of communicative activities is bad for improving students’ language ability,which violates the requirements of new curriculum reform.There are three limitations in this study.The first one is that the sample size is relatively small for only three teachers participated in this study.The second one is that the descriptions of the classroom teaching may not be 100%accurate and objective because of non-participant observation.The last is that all the teachers and students participating in this research had psychological preparations for the classes.So it may not reflect the real situations of everyday teaching.