Difficulties in Delegating Turns to Speak During Google Meet Session
Khor Sue Sue
Throughout the week, all the lessons for 3 Jupiter were conducted online. To ensure pupils were able to
understand the language content properly, I had conducted most of the presentation stage and practice
stage through Google Meet which allows me to provide appropriate guidance similar to a classroom
setting. During the session, I had found that most pupils tend to speak at the same time whenever I
asked questions that requires them to respond. This can be problematic especially in a speaking lessons
as I need to monitor and correct pupils’ pronunciations. Every time I asked one pupil to respond, there
would be more 4 pupils who would turn on their microphones to speak. This would make it difficult for
me to discern the accuracy of their pronunciation.
During the speaking lesson, there were some pupils who would turn on their microphone as soon I
instructed them to speak. The speaking session became chaotic as pupils were talking at the same time
which drowns out my own voice. Google Meet does not feature a function that allows the host to mute
certain participants in a meeting which had made controlling the environment to be much harder as
pupils might not here the teacher’s own voice. Because of this, I had to wait until all pupils had finished
saying out their answers before proceeding with assigning turns.
According to Fraser (2000), speaking competence in English requires a number of sub-skills in which
pronunciation is the most important aspect as it plays a key role in successful communication both
productively and receptively. In this regard, I should ensure that pupils are provided with suitable
environment to learn pronunciation skills effectively.
Based on my analysis on the issue, my suggestions to improve classroom management in a Google Meet
session include:
i) Presenting the selected pupil’s name on the screen
ii) Calling out their names before instructing them to answer
To ensure the digital classroom interaction can be managed, I need to be clear in assigning which pupils
are allowed to turn on their microphone to ensure that the pupils’ voice do not overlap with each other.
I will write down their name using “sticky notes” application and say the name aloud before instructing
them to speak so that all pupils know whose turn it is.
The method that I had applied in response to the identified issue appears to be effective in allowing me
to manage the classroom. During the lesson, all pupils were shown to be able to follow my instructions.
Each pupil was able to take their turns in answering the questions based on the name shown on the
screen as well my instructions. This allowed me to correct pupils’ mispronunciations in using the focused
sentence structures.
As a whole, conducting lesson in an online environment can be difficult as not all pupils are digitally
literate enough to operate and understand the functions within an online conferencing tool. Therefore,
as a teacher, it is important for me to guide pupils in using the tool as an effective learning medium so
that pupils are able to achieve the targeted learning objectives.