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4. Communication Skills
Communication skills are considered as one of the important things in teaching Rubio, 2010. A good teacher should be able to communicate the materials to their students well.
Rubio 2010 adds that bad communication skills can make the students do not understand the explanations and the instruction from the teacher. In teaching evaluation rubric,
communication skills include voice, eye contact, gesture, and body movement. From mentor teacher’s written feedback, it can be seen that there were some student-teachers of the
English Department who were still weak in their communication skills especially in the volume of voice.
To be a good teacher, student-teachers were supposed to have a good volume and control of their voice for all the students in the classroom. From the mentor teacher’s written
feedback, it can be seen that student-teachers of English Department should speak louder when teaching. She wrote, “Pre teaching is OK. The problem is you don’t speak loud enough
for the noisy students. ” Student-teacher B
The similar feedback was also given to student-teacher G and H. It was contrary to what was expected. In teaching evaluation rubric, student-teachers were expected to speak in
good volume when teaching. It enables their students in the back row to hear what the teacher say clearly. The same condition also happened when I observed one of the student-teachers. I
sat at the back row and I could not hear her voice clearly.
5. The Use Of Teaching Aids
The student-teachers of the English Department were supposed to be excellent in using teaching aids. In teaching evaluation rubric, the student-teachers were supposed to use
teaching aids that can support the teaching and learning process and help their students to
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understand the lesson. The teaching aids should be able to be seen or heard clearly by all the students in the class. The benefit of using aids in teaching was stated by Gibbs and Habesaw
1992. They said that teaching aids would help the teacher to have a good interaction with the students. It also takes pressures off both the teacher and the students. As addition,
teaching aids also help the teacher in explaining about abstract thing so that the students can understand more about the materials explained. The same argument was also stated by Lin,
Chen and Dwyer 2006 who said that the material would be easier to be remembered when it is delivered both verbally and visually. From the mentor teacher’s written feedback, it can be
seen that some student-teachers have used the teaching aids well but there were still some student-teachers who used the teaching aids less well especially in using Power Point PPT
slides. She wrote, “Make clear PPT slides with bigger fonts and contrast background.”
Student-teacher I The similar feedback was also given to student-teacher B, F and H. the feedback
indicates that some student-teachers could not use the teaching aids optimally. The PPT was unclear because the font was small and the background was not in contrast. This was contrary
to what was expected in the teaching evaluation rubric that student-teacher should use clear teaching aids so that all the students can see it.
6. Mastery Of Materials
Mastering the teaching materials is the important requirement that a good teacher should fulfill Rubio, 2010. In teaching evaluation rubric, the student-teachers were expected
to have excellent knowledge of the topic which being taught. With a good knowledge of the materials, the teacher can give the students additional and meaningful information. Most of
the student-teachers of English Department were good in mastering the materials but there were still some student-teachers who were not mastering the material well. She wrote,
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