What is the focus of unit 4?

This is the part of the course that probably fills candidates with the most dread. Even if you’re like me and you love observations, the idea of being observed and assessed on your teaching at this level is daunting to say the least. There’s a fair bit more to it than just that, however, and candidates would do well to understand this before day one of the assessment. 

The official title for Unit 4 is Teaching Practice: Learner Analysis, Preparation, Delivery, and Self-Evaluation. Trinity recognizes that a lesson is often about more than just what happens in the classroom: there’s the teacher’s knowledge of the learners and their strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and motivations. There’s the inevitable reading and researching that goes on when you’re teaching a new language point. There’s the lexis that needs to be taught, as well as the emergent language which (at least to some extent) can be predicted and prepared for. There are skills which learners want (or need) to develop, and phonology that often needs to be integrated with a language point (though is often neglected. And what happens after the class? How does the teacher reflect on the successes and failures of the class and build these into their future lessons?

Yep, there’s a lot. All of that is formalized into the Unit 4 assessment. 

Can you give a more detailed breakdown of Unit 4?

Candidates will teach four lessons which are assessed internally by their tutors. Each assessment lasts for one hour, although the lesson itself may be longer. Each lesson requires a complete lesson plan which includes learner profiles, aims and objectives for both the learners and the teacher, language analyses, lesson procedure, and material. The teacher will have a pre-lesson interview with their tutor, teach the lesson, and engage in a 20-minute post-lesson reflection. The internally assessed lessons are worth 40% of the unit 4 mark. 

Candidates also write a teaching journal – a structured reflection on each of the internal lessons with a focus on evaluating the success of the lesson from both their perspective and that of the learner. This is worth 20% of the unit 4 mark. 

Candidates also teach a single lesson which is externally marked by a Trinity assessor. This follows the exact same procedure as the internally assessed lessons, although the presence of the Trinity bigwig (who will almost certainly be very lovely) adds an unexpected level of pressure and nervousness. The 40% weighting of this part also adds to that. 

How did you prepare for Unit 4?

A large part of the extensive course included preparation for the unit 4 assessment, including two detailed modules exploring lesson planning. Oxford TEFL also allowed teachers a week of unassessed lessons to get to know our learners, including feedback from the tutor for those of us who had not taught an assessed lesson previously. This assessed lesson practice now seems to be part of the extensive course, and giving candidates a sense of what they can expect for this part can only be a good thing. 

What was your experience when doing the assessed teaching?

Make no mistake, unit 4 was a huge learning curve. I opted to complete the assessment online rather than face to face due to travel and accommodation costs. Although I had tried to recruit my own learners to do the assessment with, the prospect of early morning classes in August was not something many of them wanted (you need a minimum of eight learners in the class to do this). This meant teaching online for the first time since Lockdown, with learners I didn’t know lots of languages I wasn’t familiar with, whilst preparing lesson plans that often amounted to around 10,000 words often less than three days in advance of the lesson. 

Sounds stressful, right? 

It was. And I loved it. The learning curve was immense but required me to put into practice so many of the things I had learnt on the extensive course and had since been developing through a year in the classroom. It also gave me an opportunity to try out my unit 3 activity at least once and put into practice the listening activities that I’d developed on my first, half-finished and then reworked attempt at section 2 of the unit 2. 

The working environment was also part rewarding and part challenging. OxfordTEFL split their candidates into various groups depending on candidates’ mode (face to face or online) and the schedule (morning or afternoon). Two of us in our afternoon group had the same idea of setting up a study group and ended up closely working with 2 of the 3 other candidates in our mini cohort. We were also encouraged to observe each other’s lessons as much as possible, both to benefit collaborative efforts and to gain more insights to help build our learner profiles. These we collaborated on in the first week, and then used to write our own specific ones for each lesson plan. 

The whole experience went surprisingly quickly, that was at least once my first two assessed lessons were out of the way. In the first, nerves about what constituted a ‘Dip lesson’ overwhelmed me and meant that I ran out of time in the lesson which I had almost certainly over planned. Rather than adjusting it on the fly as I would in real life, I stuck to the plan. That left the lesson unfinished and, crucially, the learners with no opportunity to use the language I was teaching them. Instant fail! That added more pressure to pass the second one (which obviously I did) to avoid crashing out of the whole assessment.

Is that common?

Not all that common, but it does happen, and it did happen to the fifth member of our group. It’s quite understandable, too. My one criticism of the intensive approach to Unit 4 is how unnecessarily stressful it all seems. I can easily get behind the rationale of creating such detailed and thorough lesson plans and reflections but having to compile what amounted to almost 60,000 words in less than three weeks was exhausting. There are other course providers that offer an extensive approach to Unit 4, with the five lessons taking place over an extended period of months. Of course, this would come with the added risk of losing focus – OxfordTEFL recommend you clear your schedule for the month of Unit 4, and it’s easy to see how pressures of work and life could easily eat into lesson planning preparations. I probably spent between 20 and 30 hours preparing each lesson, and how feasible that would be in my day-to-day teaching schedule is questionable. 

What advice would you give candidates sitting Unit 4?

1. Mentally prepare yourself. If you’re going the intensive route, it’s very intense and very stressful. But also, be open to everything that comes along with it. From my unit 4, I’ve become very good friends with one of my course mates, and undoubtedly transformed my teaching. 
2. Steer clear of the moaners and complainers. There are some in all walks of life, but especially so in this. And they can be exhausting and demotivating.
3. Listen to your tutors – they’re not just there to assess, but also to help. There were regular tutorials; some time was always given to the people teaching next on the schedule, but they always had time for everyone and could offer some great ideas and tips for making your next class better than the rest. 
4. Take the time to read and reflect on your lesson feedback. It’s insightful and will not only help your next lesson be better but can also really inform your general practice when you step back into your own classroom. 
5. Complete your teaching journal as soon as you possibly can. I always taught in the evening, and the first thing I’d do the following day (after a shower and a coffee) was jump into the journal. It works best when you’re doing it fresh, and you’ll have a bit of time after the fourth internal lesson to revise it and add in references and reading. Some people on the course left it all until the last minute, and they suffered for it.
6. My good friend and twice tutor Daniel Barber recommended you do unit 4 with your own learners – you know them better. You know their strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and language. Whilst that may certainly be true, don’t baulk at the idea of doing it with your course provider’s learners either. It was a real privilege to work with such an eclectic group of learners and fired up a new interest in online teaching. 
7. Enjoy it! You won’t want to do it again, but if you have an open mind it can be a fabulous experience.