Development of an Observation Sheet for Communicative Language Classrooms

Abstract

Classroom observation is one of the most effective ways to train (student) teachers. An observation sheet which contains several criteria for evaluating an observed classroom is helpful for observers or (student) teachers to objectively analyze what actually happens in the classroom to become aware of the advantages and disadvantages of their instruction, and to come up with some clues to improve their own ways of teaching. In this study an observation sheet aimed at evaluating a communicative language classroom was originally developed based on sheets produced earlier by Flanders (1960), Moskowitz (1971), Fanselow (1977, 1987), Nunan (1989) and so forth. The sheet focuses on five aspects in the language classroom: (1) classroom management, (2) material, task and resource, (3) interaction and feedback, (4) individual teacher and (5) lesson preparation. The sheet was subsequently applied to an actual English lesson for tenth graders using the jigsaw listening approach, which is a very effective information gap exercise. It requires learners to communicate and facilitates their involvement in negotiated interaction in the language classroom. The experimental application was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the observation sheet on classroom analysis. The results revealed that the observation sheet developed in this study was of use in evaluating a language classroom focusing on interaction and clarifying the characteristics of the jigsaw listening approach.