Visit VI: Glen Eira College English Language School

The sixth school visit.

The Glen Eira College English Language School is a bit similar in nature to the Blackburn English Language School. Glen Eira helps new arrivals, international students, and students requiring short-term English language instruction make their transition to mainstream colleges.

I was able to observe a little bit of three different classes - an elective class (gardening), an ESL class, and a studies of society and environment (SOSE) class.



The gardening elective was quite interesting because in Hong Kong, it would be quite difficult to find a school which offers courses on gardening, since it is not popular. Electives such as gardening provide great opportunities to students interact with each other and practice the target language in a context they are interested in. It would be even better if the teacher could help and encourage the students to speak in the target language; during the observation, the teacher did not seem to care much even though several Chinese students constantly chatted with one another using their mother tongue.

In the ESL class, the students were in Year 10, and in the lesson I observed they were working individually on their posters. The posters all had a piece of food packaging (flattened cardboard box) in the middle, and the students were asked to identify and analyze the persuasive language used on the packaging. The students seemed to be quite interested in the activity because their posters were quite colorful and creative. Allowing students space to be creative can sometimes motivate them more when doing a task, helping them achieve the aim of the particular task more easily. Aside from the creativeness, it seemed that the students were able to identify and explain a lot of instances of persuasive language as well. Using material which students could relate to (e.g. Oreo box) also helps to raise their interest. The students were also asked to give an oral presentation of their posters. There was only enough time for one presentation though. During that presentation, the teacher would sometimes joke casually with the student when he touched on certain points (e.g. how cookies can fatten you). This loosens up the atmosphere and the student would become more relaxed and as a result present more naturally and confidently with less inhibition. Such a practice is new to me because in Hong Kong, during presentations the teacher usually keeps quiet until the end of the presentation.



In the SOSE class, the age of the students ranges from 11 to 17. They are in the group 2 SOSE class, meaning their level of English isn't that high as they are only preceded by the group 1 class. In the lesson I observed, the students were working on difficult vocabulary found in an article on climate change. The students were asked to copy down a list of difficult words provided by the teacher and look their definitions up in the dictionary in their native tongue. The teacher then got the students to try their best to explain the terms in English. The teacher then practiced reading the words together with the class. This lesson was quite similar to typical Hong Kong classes as there was mostly silent work and drilling. On the other hand, it would be quite difficult to carry out a communicative lesson since the students don't have the vocabulary to communicate with each other using the target language.