For each course we complete we put together a report for our bosses and other interested people to read. This is the report I wrote regarding the first English course.

Beginners English Course Report
Nic Garner          Centro de Aprendizagem          5 April 2004

Attendance
The two classes of the second English course were run at different times. The first was run from 12 January 2004 to 19 March 2004, and the second began two weeks later, finishing on 3 April. There were a total of fourteen students, spilt into two groups of eight and four.

One student failed to attend for the second half of the course and when asked was unable to explain his absence. A second student only attended the first two weeks, I later found out that she had a medical problem that meant she was unable to attend for a long time, and did not return after this.

Attendance from the majority of students was not problematic, with only a small number of students causing concern. Similarly to the last course, it seemed their performance wasn’t affected to a large extent. I did try during this course to be firmer with attendance and punctuality.

One student in the 16:00 class was also attending night school, and had a major problem with attendance as he had to leave half way through the lesson. For this reason I moved him into the first class when this began two weeks later, so that he was able to attend the full length of the lesson. This meant that he sat through the same lessons again but I believe this was actually beneficial to him as he was struggling.

Results
The results of the final test were as follows:

Although Alberto Mussa, Bruno Araujo and João Braga all performed well, I was not able to award anyone with a Distinction grade this time, as no one obtained 17 out of 20 (85%). Dionisio Lápis did well to pass, he noticeably struggled in most areas of the course and I was unsure as to whether he would be able to pass. His commitment, I am pleased to say, was commendable, which was not something I could say about all the students on the course.

Not all students performed as well. Assif Ahmad and Lionel Vanelson both failed the final test. For these two commitment was a problem and it could be said that they often did the minimum work necessary, or less. They were both sat another paper a week after the course had finished and Ahmad managed to pass.

Gilberto Pelé and Ussene Amisse should both have performed much better. Although they safely passed, they were both capable of more, and clearly under performed. All other students more or less performed according to their ability.

Course evaluation
After looking at the completed papers I have again identified problematic areas. These are still similar to the areas in the last course, although I was pleased to report an improvement in the standard of answers to comprehension questions, an area I had devoted more time to in this course. My biggest problem still lies with making negative sentences, however I believe some of the problem may lie with the way this is tested, as it seems to present some confusion.

During this course I set much more homework, which seemed to help reinforce ideas more and meant students weren’t arriving to lessons having forgotten everything from the previous lesson. I also set more work in the way of short essays, which give the students more freedom and flexibility to say things that class work doesn’t give them the opportunity to try.

I had hoped to introduce more tests during the course, in order to assess learning more effectively. To an extent I achieved this, however not to the extent I would have liked. The tests I did set however worked well, as they allowed me to identify problem areas as well as ensuring that students were learning. During the next course I plan to introduce testing on a particular day every week. This will provide both the students as well as myself with more of a structure, and if they are expecting tests they will be more likely to revise, thus leading to better digestion of the lessons.

During this course at numerous intervals I had students asking for more orally orientated activities. For this reason in the next course I will be attempting to structure lessons better, including activities that involve students talking and interacting with each other more. I have encountered problems with this before, as attention seems to wander, but the increased confidence I have gained from teaching leads me to believe I can overcome this.

In the next course I am planning to introduce a small project theme that will run throughout the course. The project will be about themselves, and as the course progresses I will encourage the students to add pages to a portfolio about themselves, including work on their family, friends, home and work in the past and future tense. I hope that this will help to reinforce learning and also provide something that the students will keep and hopefully make use of in any future language learning.

Recommendations
In my last report I suggested that desks in the classroom would improve learning conditions. Nothing arose as a result of this suggestion, however I now believe that desks are not necessary, and would in fact be detrimental to students learning. The more open classroom means that furniture can be more easily arranged to suit the lesson, and students can interact with each other more easily.

I believe that the English resources we have are now more then adequate for our needs. However, there is still a lot of interest in an advanced course and running one would attract a good deal of students to the Centre.