Class Observation with Dr. Rios 1/13/2026

 On Tuesday, January 13, 2025, I had the opportunity to observe Dr. Rios teaching low-intermediate students in speaking. He reviewed yesterday's lesson in Timed Speaking, discussing the structure of speaking.

The structure illustrated was as follows: 

1. Name

2. Topic

3. Opinion: Question => Answer; Statement = Ag./Dis

4. 2 reasons, 2 examples

5. Conclusion

He then gave them a worksheet to help plan a response to the question: In your opinion, should the government get rid of fast food restaurants? Why or why not?

The worksheet had 7 boxes, as follows:

State Opinion

Argument (reason) #1

Examples for argument #1

Transition

Argument (reason) #2

Example for argument #2

(IF TIME) Restate Opinion

They were given around 10 minutes to plan their response. 

Dr. Rios, during the students' planning time, explained to me how timed speaking helps with connections and improves their speaking to build automatism, assessing both planned and unprepared speech. He usually structures 3 of these timed speaking sessions in a single class, as it helps teachers assess their unprepared speech at a proper difficulty level. 

Dr. Rios then had students taking turns in speaking; the first student is Ricardo, who started off with his time estimate of 45 seconds. As he spoke, Dr. Rios wrote the structure he'd illustrated before, noting down Ricardo's answers (He had timed himself and finished in 42 seconds; no timing was required this session in their response) as written below:

Name:

Topic:

No

1. Free country

   - Elections

2. Economy

   - Expensive

conc. 

After each student spoke, he gave cultural terms that may fit better in their speech, as well as cultural explanations, grammar, and vocab corrections. He also praised what they did well, such as one student combining opinions with facts in their speech. 

After this, he gave them another worksheet for another timed speaking activity. The prompt was: Do you prefer indoor or outdoor activities? After 10 minutes of prep, he repeated what he did for the last session, with vocab and structure recommendations after their speaking. For one student, his recommendation was to work on her pace, as her information was good but her pace was too slow for timed exercises, telling her to focus on being concise and condensing her information. 2 of the 4 students struggled with this, and he clarified what pace meant with them. 

He also reminded them to not to repeat information outside of the conclusions.