Students: Yes (all the students responded in chorus).
Teacher: Uh, cowardliness is the antonym of ‘bravery’ ... (pause). Our friend
Huyen correctly identified the antonyms of almost all the words. She only
made a minor mistake with this final word. She did a good job. Applause
for our friends, Huyen and Thien, please! (All students clapped their hands.)If none of the class members were able to correct a student’s mistake, the
teacher provided the correct response (F1 in Figure 4). It is noteworthy that
she often gave her feedback on the students’ ideas with some praise (F2 in
Figure 4).
The teacher also got students involved in a competition between the groups
(GR in Figure 4). The students were very excited about engaging in this group
assignment.
While the observation of the class found that the teacher was engaging in many
positive pedagogical practices, the researcher noted some shortcomings.
First, the teacher oriented the students to the expected answers, rather than
asking the students to explain why their answers were different.
Below is a transcript of the interaction between the teacher and some
students (between 12.17 and 12.29 minutes of the lesson).
Teacher: An ‘antonym’ is a word that has the opposite meaning of another
word. So you have the same answer as your friend Tung, don’t you? (brief
pause) Thanks Tuan! (brief pause) Thien, do you have any additional idea?
Thien: Dear teacher, a word may have an opposite word that belongs to
different types of antonyms.
Teacher: Uh, thank you, Thien.Another shortcoming was that the interaction between the teacher and
students predominated in the classroom (92.3 per cent of the duration of
the class), while student-student interaction was very limited (A3 and GR in
Figure 4), making up only 7.7 per cent of the class time. Thus, the style was
largely teacher-centred.
Although the teacher predominantly elicited thoughts and ideas from the
students, it was observed that she spent a lot of time giving information,
eliciting students’ answers and guiding her students to read and write on
the blackboard. As shown in Figure 5, the teacher’s pedagogical actions