Reconceptualizing language teaching: an in-service teacher education course in uzbekistan

Categories of Problems: How Can You Solve Them?
Directions: The following problems were identified by twenty language 
teachers who were doing classroom observations for their own profes-
sional development. Read the problems and sort them into categories.
1. I was sometimes uncomfortable drawing conclusions about what learning 
had (or had not) taken place.
2. I wonder how teachers can manage errors in a creative way, as well as turn 
on students’ monitors at an optimal level.
3. Sometimes it’s hard to choose a task beforehand. I wanted to look for one 
particular thing and the lesson turned out to feature some other point 
entirely.
4. I had problems writing and explaining in detail what was going on in class.
How can an observer improve his or her note taking?
5. Letting the data get cold and then trying to recreate them later was a 
problem.
6. It was difficult to pay attention to so many things going on all at once as 
well as trying to choose a limited focus.
7. It was difficult trying to capture exact quotes when working off of only 
written notes.
8. Sometimes as an observer I had trouble making sure that what I thought 
were inferences were not opinions.
9. I found it difficult to simultaneously write quotes and keep up with the 
lesson.
10. I need to work on generating good field notes and focusing on specific 
details of the lesson.

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RECONCEPTUALIZING LANGUAGE TEACHING
11. Some observations did not come out the way I, as the observer, had 
planned.
12. It was sometimes difficult to support my inferences with data.
13. I often felt like speaking up when the students made mistakes in class. It 
seemed like they were worried about the correctness of their answers and 
I felt like helping them out, but didn’t know if I should, as an observer.
14. I sometimes wanted to inject an opinion or provide an explanation during 
the class for things I was observing.
15. I found taking good notes and avoiding criticizing the teacher to be very 
challenging.
16. I had difficulty consolidating my ideas in writing.
17. I found it difficult to write up an observation report on a lesson that was 
rather boring.
18. For me it was hard to observe a class with people I know in it – as both 
students and teachers.
19. I found it difficult to be a participant observer. It was particularly hard to 
concentrate on the observation when I, as the observer, knew the target 
language.
Write up your observations in the following format: