Today I
attended the first English lessons is the role of an observer. The place was
Savonia University of Applied Science in Kuopio, the department of social and
health care. The class was a 2-hour session on Professional English for the
1-st year Occupational Therapists. I friend of mine studies on this course, and
she asked the teacher if I could attend. This served also my professional
interests as I use medical terminology in my work as an interpreter. I have
contacted two other teachers, a Russian teacher and another English teacher, and
I will observe the rest of the classes on their lessons.
There were
27 students in the class, and few more were missing, so this was quite a large
group on my opinion. The occupation therapy education begins only every second
year, so maybe this explains the big group. There were students of all ages,
most in their early twenties, but there were a couple of 30-, 40,- and even
50-year-olds. I would call this a homogenous mix. Most students were females, but there was one
older man and another young guy. I have also heard from my friend that many
students already have children, so the students are not just typical teens.
The aim of
the lesson was to have group discussions on occupational therapy rehabilitation
exercises for stroke patients (or those with CVA, a new term that I learned,
meaning cerebro-vascular accident). In the groups of 4, we first read through
two sheets and then shared our content with other group members, using either
Finnish or English. It was a surprise that communication in Finnish was
allowed. One hour was allocated to sharing the papers and discussing. The pace
in the class was relaxed, and the students chatted quite a lot in the beginning
of the lesson. We then watched a 6:25 video on treatment of schizophrenic
patients. Normally the students would write down a few questions of the video
and then discuss, but today the rest of the time was used to prepare one of the
assessed tasks, role discussion in pairs.
Another
surprise was that the level of English command among the students varied a lot.
Few older students could hardly speak and understand, and they were given a bit
easier tasks and less reading. Even the young students, who have studied
English at school, did not comprehend all of the content of the reading
material. Also their pronunciation was quite poor and it was not corrected. I
learned that the English curriculum is divided into two parts, making up a 3
ect joint grade. The first half, 1 ½ credits consist of general vocabulary with
an essay to write, and the second part is professional language with a
listening comprehension, discussion exam, and the final exam.
The teacher
assumed quite a passive role, only instructing the students on doing the tasks.
He circulated among the students, but did not really comment on discussions.
However, the material was directly related to occupational therapy and it was
very practical. To me it seemed that the material is quite demanding,
vocabulary-wise, and the students were struggling with it, but it looked like
the teacher did not notice this. I learned that the majority of the material
used is American and Canadian, because they are the leading countries in
occupational therapy field. The teacher told me that he also teaches students
of other majors, and that finding suitable materials for the occupational
therapy is difficult to find. However, I saw a book that the students use that
was called Occupational therapists.
On the
final note, I wonder if learning did occur, or was the class purposefully
lighter for the students, because it was the last one. As a teacher, I would
want to make sure that each lesson has an objective and a learning outcome. It
could be that the learning outcome was to develop courage to speak English with
others, but I would visit the small groups and help the students by pointing
out incorrect pronunciation. To the teacher’s credit I want to say that his own
English pronunciation was very good with a British accent, but maybe he could
do a bit more to impart that skill to the students, as well.
