Observing Jerry’s grammar class was interesting, but very different from the speaking class I’d been to the previous week. First, it was 9am, so most of the students didn’t seem quite awake or nearly as lively for class participation in grammar as they were excited for speaking activities. Jerry also had the agenda posted for students to see and they started with a word of the day, assigned to a certain student. Surprisingly I saw both my conversation partners in that class, and Gyusang got up to present the word of the day, ‘dowdy.’ He wrote the part of speech, definition, synonym and antonym, as well as an example and other forms of the words, such as adverb and noun.
Next they moved on to the day’s grammar topic, infinitives and gerunds, which Jerry said would continue tomorrow as well. This was said to be and then was apparently to students, a review, and the rationale from Jerry being that students often miss the opportunity to use gerunds versus infinitives in their essays. Students had a worksheet in which they had to circle gerunds (2 minutes) then Jerry read through each sentence out loud and asked, “is there a gerund here?” prompting class response answers. With any wrong response or question that came up, Jerry would write on the board or overhead the question and an example, and how to used it properly or interchangeably in meaning.
While Jerry is a great teacher and very knowledgeable of the material and how to explain it, the students enthusiasm and participation were noticeably less than other classes, which I think is mainly reflective of the time of day and subject- grammar is never going to be as exciting as conversing, but I do think a more student-centered structure during activities could perhaps help students’ motivation.
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