Tatiana Vlasova is an energetic and passionate French professor at Montclair State University. She teaches an introductory course to French. Most of her students have no prior knowledge of the language and are considered second language learners. Class is held in French while English is used to translate or clarify Ms. Vlasova’s questions or tasks. The class began with a greeting exercise, students turn to their classmates and engage in dialogue pertaining to how they are doing and how their weekend went. During this exercise, Ms. Vlasova walks around and interacts with students while offering constructive criticism and positive feedback.
The next activity that the class did was a vocabulary identification exercise. This required students to read a vocabulary word off of a piece of paper and draw a picture of the word on the chalk board. While a handful of students were at the board, Ms. Vlasova had the rest of the class play “Simon says” (i.e she would tell the class for any one wearing the color blue to stand up).
After the 3rd and 4th exercise we recognized a trend in her teaching style. All of the various activities were geared towards “focus-on-forms”. Ms. Vlasova’s teaching style solely concentrates on grammatical instruction. She would review people’s responses and give correction and/or positive feedback. She demonstrated good use of visual aids as well as encouraged students to actively participate in the classroom. Repetition is a major part of her teaching style; having the students repeat exactly what she says in order to grasp the pronunciation. Ms. Vlasova gave her students tons of activities to practice their grammar and vocabulary within different contexts of conversation.
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