Observing the first English lessons

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.