Monitoring pair work activities in English language teachingvideo sequences: What do student teachers pay attention to?

Classroom teaching places great demands on teachers as in each moment there are a number of stimuli competing for the teacher’s attention. As pair work is prevalent in English language teaching and its monitoring is essential for its success but also demanding on the teacher, we set out to investigate how teachers of English as a foreign language at the beginning of their career deal with such complex situations. We showed 15 students teachers of English as a foreign language two classroom videos (approx. 1 minute long) and asked them to observe and comment on the pupils’ activity. We collected two types of data – teachers’ visual attention was monitored using SMI RED250MOBILE (250Hz); their verbal comments were recorded and transcribed. The presentation showed preliminary results.