Class begins with the professor greeting the students and then jumping into what they are going to do. It does feel weird for him to just jump into class like that and just seems impersonal in a way. I do like that he tells the students the agenda of the day. I feel like it’s good for students to be aware of what is happening in the class it helps quell the anxiety that students might have and allow them to mentally prepare. After he lets the class know the agenda, he then goes to comment on the class journals that they have been working on. His first comment is that he recommends that the students work on revising their journals before submitting them. He then congratulates everyone on making progress because he is noticed the students are making fewer errors. I like that he gives them encouragement I feel like it is always good to let students know they are improving because it gives them the motivation to try harder. After the comments, he then goes through an example of a student’s work, which he kept anonymous. In some ways, I like this tactic because the student keeps their identity a secret and might feel good about being chosen. The only thing I see that could go wrong is that as the teacher you would have to be careful about not being overly harsh on the work. The professor I think did a really good job of being critical but also complementing. It’s an interesting tactic that I think if done correctly like him then it could produce really good results and participation. As he goes through the paper he gets the students to read parts of them out loud. As they go through the paper he asks the class to name the parts of speech that they see. One thing I notice is that only one student is answering and participating. The professor doesn’t seem too bothered by it and I guess that someone answering is better than no one. The professor tends to point out stuff that is not wrong but not what they should be doing stylistic wise. I can understand why he would do this but I think especially for ESL students this could be confusing. I feel like this could allow too much of a margin of error for students when writing. He then goes into what time blocking is which is what the journal is about. While this is good because students might not know what time blocking is at the same time it is off-topic and talks about it for quite a while. While I do like that he is breaking up the class a bit with a different topic it was more distracting then anything. I could understand students possibly stop paying attention because of this. He finishes off the journal part of the class by showing them editor on Word and how to use it as well as other tools. I like this as teachers I think we should be showing students every tool available to them so I am glad that he showed them.
The class then moves on to how to make a vocab list. I think this is a neat idea to help expand students’ own vocabularies which would really help with their writing. He gives an example of what he expects and moves on to the next task. He moves onto grammar by helping them learn about comma splice and gets them to watch a video. I think videos can be fun for students and a little more attention-grabbing which is nice. One thing that he also does that I like is that he uploads all his material onto Moodle so students can have access after class to go back. Overall there are a lot of things I liked that the professor does. I think that writing can be a hard subject to teach especially online so it was interesting to watch and witness.