Claire CO #3

March 21^st, 9:00-9:50am
Grammar 3 with Victoria Davis

The atmosphere of Victoria’s Grammar 3 class felt relaxed but a little less high-energy than the other two (lower-level) classes that I have observed before. She was continuing a unit from the previous day on the use of gerunds and infinitives and had the students do a succession of activities from their textbook. This material was significantly more nuanced and challenging than what was taught in the other classes I observed. Victoria occasionally struggled to come up with examples on the spot for the different sentence structures that were being modeled. I struggled similarly when working with my tutee recently, (who happens to be in this grammar class) so it made me feel better that even the professionals sometimes need to take a minute to think up examples! Victoria’s error correction was often implicit, recasting the student’s sentence with the correct verb form. She also gave some explicit feedback by saying things like, “No, that doesn’t work.” Regarding the choice of using an infinitive versus a gerund in certain contexts, she frequently said things like “That doesn’t sound right, does it?” I had thought we were supposed to steer clear of these kinds of questions because they appeal to a sense of intuition of natural-sounding English which English learners can’t be expected to have. However, I guess when students reach a certain level of proficiency and have enough familiarity with certain forms, we can ask them to evaluate in these terms, which is comforting to me. The class involved a lot of moderately controlled activities that weren’t inherently communicative, but as Victoria directed the students to work in pairs and then share answers together in class discussions, students came up with answers that were personal and funny. Victoria picked up on this and made the class more engaging and communicative by responding to the content (as well as the grammar) of their sentences with relevant comments or follow-up questions.