Reflections by Vanessa Kwan

Hello everyone,

I started my contract teaching stint in Victoria JC at the end of July 2009. Over the one-year period that I was there, I was deployed to teach JC 1 Economics and did not teach English. I had the opportunity however to observe a few JC 1 GP lessons during the first semester this year and here are my takeaways from those lesson observations.

I had the privilege of observing a senior GP teacher who had been teaching for more than ten years. He would come up with various classroom activities or discussion styles such that students never knew what to expect each lesson. This can be intimidating if left to a stern teacher, however, this teacher that I observed managed to instil curiosity and excitement in the students. They were eager to attend classes weekly and were enthusiastic and ready to speak up in class. What I found was that the classroom environment during GP lessons is very encouraging for students to participate and share their thoughts / opinions on the issue at hand, and for peer learning to take place. GP can be intimidating for students who aren’t strong in their current affairs or ability to speak up. The teacher managed to eliminate any trace of that in class by using humour and approachability in his manner of speaking.

One weekly activity conducted was the sharing of articles by the students to encourage them to read up more about current affairs. Students would find an article that appealed to them and had educational value and they would share it with the class for about 5 minutes at the start of lesson. I found this activity useful as it got students reading and also got the quieter students to speak up more as well. Sometimes if the topic of discussion was relevant or pertinent, the discussion can extend beyond 5 minutes and become a classroom sharing. What I liked very much about this was that the pace of learning was set by students. They had the autonomy to self-direct their learning as well as learn from one another.


Some of the areas I feel that I need to work on to be a good EL teacher is proficiency & mastery in the language. I would also like to acquire the necessary skills to be able to engage students in effective discussion and for learning to take place through these discussions. I hope to work on being more flexible in teaching English and to be able to sustain the interests of students in the subject matter through various teaching methods.

Thank you.