An even better 4th week!

The week started with some concerns over the upcoming lesson observation on Wednesday, Sept, 30, in which my Professors would analyse the research project from their perspective. I cannot deny it was particularly scary to feel under the spotlight on this occasion since every aspect of this course is my responsibility.

So, I designed my lesson plan, to match and complement what my students had done with the self-access reading and grammar activity and the cause-effect essay work. I was satisfied with the result, but when I checked against the rubric supplied by my tutors, I had second thoughts about not having made appropriate decisions about the beginning of the lesson and I began to feel a bit more nervous. However, I had already sent the lesson plan and, reflecting on it and on my students' profile and previous work, I realised it had been appropriate. The next day arrived, we met and delivered the lesson...

I felt really satisfied, especially at my students' commitment, involvement and the high quality and interest of their presentations. They were informative, clear, insightful and argumented, what else could I have asked for? Another good aspect was that, though small classes can be seen as fantastic opportunities to carry out these projects, having a third-party in the lesson could easily affect the learners' performance, but these students were simply fantastic! I do thank them for their commitment, interest and I do hope all this process actually helps them realise the progress I have perceived!

An interesting point
The outcomes of the self-access activities this week yielded an interesting point to consider: they need to do specific-item grammar work. For instance, the indirect speech exercises I assigned them showed weak use of the "backward" movement of the reported tense and the same happened with pronouns and time expressions. Next lesson, I will spend some time doing exercises related to this issue because, as I pointed out in the notes included in the corrections, this might seem a sign of being "too picky", but it might lead to confusion and misunderstanding. This is especially important if we consider that one of the main issues in the project is to increase effective written communication in academic settings.

What is next?
We are working according to the schedule set and the self-access activities for the two subsequent sessions have been designed. Right now I have started to group the information I have collected in the previous three weeks to start the analysis process. This is a demanding -but necessary!, process and I am optimistic about having enough time for everything there is ahead in these two upcoming months.

A final note
My research project seminar professors have suggested making some changes to the initial question an I will strive to make the best use of the six-hour-long lessons coming as from tomorrow to make all the changes to lead a better-thought and designed research process.

Thanks for reading,

Víctor Lugo

References
The Situationist. (2009). Happiness. [Online Image]. Retrieved on October 2, 2009 from http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/happiness.jpg.

Toastmaster International. (2008). Fear factor teaser. [Online Image]. Retrieved on October 2, 2009 from http://www.toastmasters.org/MainMenuCategories/FreeResources/NeedHelpGivingaSpeech/FearFactor.aspx.