Teaching Practicum Report
November 2018
English Language Teaching (ELT)
University of Humanities, Ulaanbaatar
Name of Trainee
Bushra Eskil
EF15D050
Internship Institute
Empathy School of Ulaanbaatar
24th September 2018 to 02th November 2018
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Preface
Teaching practicum is an excellent and practical way to gain work experiences and
teaching-related skills in a wide variety of professional settings. It also provides an opportunity
to explore career familiarity and advancement the lifelong teaching profession.
Teaching practicum prepares students physically, mentally and emotionally for the
rigors of work as a teacher in school; develops student teacher’s individual maturity, selfawareness, self-confidence as a teacher through constructions of portfolio, self-reflection and
evaluation; enables student teachers to put into practice their academic knowledge and skills
acquired and being able to identify and solve teaching and learning complications in school;
masters the different strategies, planning and implementation of curricular and co-curricular
activities.
The overall purpose of this report paper is putting theories I have learned into practice,
discovering how students learn English as a foreign language, evaluating the work I have done,
seeking experience in writing such a work paper as this one, and strengthening my skills.
Specifically, I was intended to put training, understanding, and technique into practice; to
become accustomed to teaching in a classroom setting, and to develop and expand my expertise
and confidence.
Introduction
Since I was expected to do my internship, I have decided to undergo training at Empathy
School of Ulaanbaatar where being able to work with its’ staff is a privilege to attend such
Internship Program that is much rewarding so far as the experience and success of the school
is concerned.
My teaching practicum lasted 6 weeks, starting from 24 September to 2 November 2018
at Empathy School for 5 weeks and at University of Humanities for a week in which I have
carried out teaching responsibilities consecutively based on schedules designed by the
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University of Humanities in English Department. During the practicum, I have dealt with 2
different classes (8B – 9D) that both of them made me gain new experiences and gave me an
opportunity to be familiar with the different type of students. I have taught 28 hours and have
worked with 30 students in total. I have been responsible for teaching the Main Course of
English to 8th-grade students and Cambridge English to 9th-grade students.
My cooperating teacher was Ms. Batzaya Battulga who supported me and helped me
during my practicum. She supervised me as I was teaching, provided feedback and gave
valuable advice when I was struggling with not knowing what to do. I greatly appreciate her
assistance.
I have completed last week of my teaching practicum at the University of Humanities
and have taught 2 classes which I have dealt with the different level of students. It was more
demanding than teaching at Empathy School for me as there are huge differences between
dealing with 9th-grade students and sophomore students of the university. I have found pretty
difficult to involve them in the lesson and make them participate but overall, it was an
interesting experience for me and has taught me a lot.
Through my internship, I believe that I have learnt so many things and I have gotten a
chance to apply my knowledge all those years that has been taught to me in real situations. I
found out a reason to believe in myself as I have found out some of my hidden abilities and
have realized what I could be capable of when it comes to teaching.
Empathy School of Ulaanbaatar
With the status of science high-school, Empathy Schools established to provide
education in 1994 in Ulaanbaatar.
During this time, Empathy School has shown a great excellence and achieved many
goals, and became one of the top schools in Mongolia due to the superior performance of its
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teachers, and its students’ ambitious study ethic and also with the support from its parentteacher association.
The lessons are taught in English and Mongolian. Mathematics, chemistry, physics and
computer lessons are taught in English; social sciences and Mongolian lessons are taught in
Mongolian. It also provides selective language courses such as German, Korean, Russian,
Japanese, Turkish and Chinese.
Its’ students learn and work, combining theory and practice, under the leadership of
experienced teachers and educators in large, bright, clean and tidy classrooms, each complete
with its own screen and overhead projector, as well as in computer rooms and biology,
chemistry, and physics labs with full equipment.
Until now, it has 4500 graduates who studied or currently studying not only in Mongolia
but also in many foreign countries such as USA, UK, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea etc.
Practicum Experience
My teaching practicum has taught me more than I could have imagined and expanded
the foundation of my ambitious. Also, it has made me realize how much I love teaching. It was
intimidating in the first place because I was going in under the impression that student teaching
was going to be hard but I ended up enjoying and learning so many things in terms of teaching
and improving my skills.
Learning different kinds of teaching strategies and put them into practice, studying on
various activities which can catch students’ interest and learning effective classroom
management methods were some of my personal goals that I had set up for myself to achieve
during this practicum. And fortunately, I was able to accomplish most of them even though I
could not focus on these certain topics as I planned.
I also developed lesson plans, attended classes by experienced teachers to gain
experience, attended other trainees’ classes for analysis, taught classes, developed teaching
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materials, worked with weak students by teaching them additionally, assessed students’
paperwork, took part in educational activities, conducted research on learners and provided
references and conducted research on teaching and learning skills etc. during my teaching
practicum.
In order to justify all the different experiences that I gained and met with difficulties
through this practicum, let me summarize them in point wise:

I have learnt the importance of flexibility. I consider myself as a planner, so I
like to have everything laid out beforehand so that I know exactly what will
happen and what I will be faced with during the day. But I have realized that
plans do not always turn out the way I planned which used to make me nervous.
I have found out that this does not have to be a bad thing as it may lead students
to have more productive time and sometimes enrich them in learning more than
as I planned.

I have learnt a lot about being planned and organized as well. I have not been
always been the most organized student at the college, but as a soon-to-beteacher, I have learnt the importance of planning ahead and being organized. I
also realized that planning and being organized is an overlooked skill that every
teacher must practice and gets ahold of. The preparation itself comes along with
the organization. Planning is also something that I have had a lot of practice
with so far during student teaching, and nothing feels better than feeling like
you are in control of your class.

This practicum has opened my eyes to the importance of mindsets and how
much fixed or negative mindsets can be a barrier for students in terms of
learning. I have dealt with students who already gave up on themselves and
believe that they are not going to be able to learn English ever. I also have dealt
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with some students who are complacent with themselves, not seeing the point
in improving themselves and taking the extra step in learning more. Realizing
this important issue has broadened my perspectives beyond the typical
curriculum and has made me understand that students are needed to do more
than just learning given tasks that curriculum includes.

I have learnt about how to manage poor behavior while still keeping the rest of
the class on track. It is definitely hard to deal certain situations while keeping
the students focused on the lesson. However, after having been in the classroom
for six weeks, I believe that I have been able to better understand behavior
management. And I thought behavior management would be easier than other
placements which turned out the most difficult one. I thought like that because
students were so excited to learn and had high expectations to meet, so these
made me think like being eager to learn may block the misbehaviors which
might occur but I was wrong. Even they were desperate to learn, it could not
make them have manners. Right from the start, I have noticed that focus and
talking were two big behavior issues in the classroom. Students were quick to
find something else better to do instead of paying attention to the lesson or to
their tasks. Also, the students that I have dealt with were also very talkative. I
was aware of the fact that they often had a lot of great things to say but as I have
observed their strong ability was leading the conversation off topic or leading it
to a debate. I found pretty difficult to practice behavior management as I did not
know how to handle students at first. Then, I have used the management systems
that I learnt from my past classes and my teacher has put into practice such as
keeping a point system and giving them short breaks etc.
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
November 2018
I could say that I have learnt the importance of connections between me and my
students throughout student teaching. I have realized that being their friend is
just important as being their teacher in their eyes. I have had teachers who were
like a friend of mine and also had who have not been willing to get to know me
even a bit. And the truth is, those teachers who made a big impression on me
were the ones who showed me that they cared about me. I have observed the
same thing with my students. As you know your students better, you may be
able to make them smile and develop new approaches to teach more effectively
based on your students’ interests. It also helps you to create a positive learning
environment. Therefore, I believe that teachers should know their students well
in order to build strong connections between themselves and their students.

I have learnt the importance of failing. As I have found myself so nervous about
not being perfect most of the time, it took some time for me to realize that I do
not have to be perfect and there is still so much to learn. My student teaching
practicum has taught me how to learn from my mistakes and has made me
realize that how I can be honest with my mistakes and imperfections.

Another thing that I have learnt is the value of being yourself. Based on my
experiences, I could say that no one, especially teachers, should not pretend
someone like they are not. Behaving like you know something that you actually
do not know, may cause your students to lose their respect for you when they
realize you are pretending. I learned the value of just being myself despite the
pressure of a-teacher-must-know-everything sense.

I have learned the importance of being open-minded. It is easy to have and
follow your own way and your own approaches to teaching but I have realized
that opening up to different approaches and styles could help the students more
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and be more beneficial than your own way. It is so important to continue having
an open mind so that you can handle various situations and deal with different
kind of students more easily.

I have had a chance to put theories that I learnt in classes into practice in terms
of lesson planning, classroom management, time management and dealing with
misbehaviors as well.
As I have learnt so much through this practicum, it has made me realize the weaknesses
of mine that I need to focus on to strengthen them in order to be a better teacher in the future
such as:

My English level: I need to improve my level of English to make my lessons
more effective and satisfy myself and my students with my knowledge.

Teaching Skills: I need to work on different teaching strategies and approaches
as I am supposed to deal with various students who come from different
backgrounds and who have different interests.

Time Management: I need to work on managing my time to make my lessons
go smoothly and effectively.

Classroom Management: Since classroom management is closely connected
with learning and teaching success, I should work on this to manage a wellorganized classroom and to keep the class successfully.

Lesson Planning: As lesson planning plays a significant role in teaching, I need
to work on planning my lessons in order to teach more efficiently and be sure
everything goes according to the plan.

Tone of my voice and my posture: As the position that teacher stands and tone
of teacher’s voice could possibly affect students’ learning process, I should
work on these aspects as well.
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Conclusion
When reflecting on this semester of student teaching, there have been so many
challenges and so much that I have learnt. I have had opportunities to integrate the theory of
my knowledge of the lessons that I had learnt into a real teaching environment. I have learnt to
observe, inspect, check, examine and analyze the activities of teaching practice. I have been
pushed beyond my comfort zone, and I have grown as a teacher immensely. I am happy to see
how far I have come as a teacher and the development of my relationships with the students. I
have been working hard to get everything done just the way I wanted. Even though I have not
completed my practicum as I wanted, I have really enjoyed it despite all of its challenges. My
practicum has made me realize my gaps that I need to restock to be an effective teacher in the
future. It also has helped me in building my confidence up and making me able to walk into
any classroom without any hesitation. With all being said, I am very happy to be done with it.
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