H) To revise expressions of intention using want to and going to

I) To introduce web research for language study

J) To encourage boy/girl pairwork in role plays

COMMENT 4:2 2

A and H are language aims

B and g are skills aims

C and I are study skills aims

E and G are about classroom dynamics

D and F are about development.

They are all valid lesson aims.

Self-check 4:2 3

Here are three teachers talking about what they are going to do in their lessons today.

For each one, decide why they are doing this. What are the teacher’s aims?

TEACHER 1

I’ve been talking and talking, explaining grammar too much in lessons recently. Today we are starting a new unit on Health and Fitness, so I have asked them to bring in information about what they ate for dinner last night. I’ve got some food flashcards ready and we’re going to look at the reading in the book about healthy eating and work in groups for a large part of the lesson. I’ll also introduce information at the end about a poster project I want them to do.

TEACHER 2

I’m tired today so I’m going to get them to draw some pictures of animals and copy some information about them from this website I found. That should take them an hour but if they finish early I’ll get them to learn any vocabulary they have forgotten.

TEACHER 3

I’ve got up to page 47 and we finished the past tense last lesson so I’m going to teach the present perfect tense today by doing exercises 3, 4 and 5. Then we can copy the timeline in our books and do the pairwork on page 48. For writing practice they can do exercise 6.

COMMENT 4:2 3

TEACHER 1

This teacher has been thinking about class dynamics and development and wants a change. She aims to encourage interaction/discussion before and during the reading and is planning a longer project so that they can work together on some writing. It is all very practical and personal too and she has prepared a range of vocabulary cards. This teacher has planned well.

TEACHER 2

Let’s hope there are not too many lessons like this! This is a time filling lesson and does not have a clear aim or teach anything. The writing is only copying and the drawing is not related to English. The teacher has not planned to focus on study skills for the vocabulary learning, so probably the students will just sit and try to learn the words off by heart, which could be difficult. There is no introduction or ending planned or mention of a sequence of lessons.

TEACHER 3

This teacher is practical and organised but relies on the book too much. There is a clear language aim relating to grammar, and some different skills work but the teacher is not thinking about much else. This lesson is all related to doing things but not WHY we are doing them. There is no link with the past lesson. The teacher said three sentences and after each of them we could ask her ‘WHY?’ because she has not said why.

PARTS AND STAGES OF A LESSON

Teaching language successfully to ESOL students is a complex process

requiring careful planning. The main purpose of your lesson is to teach

'something' to your learners in such a way that by the end of the lesson they will have demonstrated a skill or knowledge they did not have at the beginning of the lesson. It is important to use a range of methods, materials and activities to ensure the learning outcomes are fully achieved.

To help organise our time and the process of teaching, we need to think about including separate stages of the lesson.

1] Introduction/Warm up/Revision

2] Presentation

3] Practice and Production

4] Plenary or whole class review

1] INTRODUCTION/WARM UP/REVISION

To understand language use, language must be introduced in context, or

in real-life situations. At the start of a lesson, it is useful to 'set the scene'

by encouraging the class to think about a particular topic, or function; or by

brainstorming ideas onto the whiteboard, or by revising material from a previous lesson which will be useful for the lesson now. Some techniques we have looked at include:

Open questions, pre-reading and pre-listening questions, the use of picture stimulus, spidergrams, including input from the students to find out what they know, the use of key words on the board and so on. This gets students thinking along the right lines, focussing their attention ready for new material to be presented, controlled by the teacher to set them on the right track.

Remember, you do not always have to start a lesson cold. A good teacher (like teacher 1 above) has got the students ready even BEFORE they come to a lesson on a new topic by giving them a pre-study homework task. The benefits of this are many, but the advantage is most clearly seen when there is a big gap between lessons - for example if students come only once a week. Tasks and preparation mean they keep thinking about English from one week to the next.

2] PRESENTATION

At some point in the lesson you need to make sure that you clearly present language that you want the students to focus on. This will be new language that they need to have explained to them with your help and guidance. Though we teach ‘communicatively’ that does not mean that we leave the students in confusion.

New material can be presented straight away with clear explanations and examples showing what the language means and how it is used. The target language is presented via a controlled model, such as a short written text, a dialogue or a grammatical structure, so that students can see or hear the new language as well as understanding its meaning and use. This provides a model for learners to copy and then use to produce their own language.

If you use a ‘real’ text to introduce language then the presentation is slightly different. This is the idea of ‘focussing’. If you do this you present a text to your students for comprehension and discussion and then ask them to focus on certain aspects of the language - ‘relationship between the past tense and the past perfect’ or ‘how to express comparison’. It is slightly different as the language presentation may come further on in the lesson, but it is still there and should still be a teacher-led section of the lesson.

You can use group and pair work ‘discovery’ techniques - where you give students the information and they work out the rules. After they have tried you can ‘clarify’ the rules for them and this will be your presentation stage.

Harmer has good examples of the different ways this stage can be managed.

3] PRACTICE AND PRODUCTION

Practice consolidates the knowledge learners have hopefully gained from the presentation stage of the lesson, providing them with the opportunity to use the language meaningfully and successfully. The teacher's role here is to manage a range of activities which allow learners to try out the new language through pairwork and groupwork. This can take the form of guided dialogues, role plays, information gap activities and problem solving. The practice can be for oral, reading or writing skills, with texts and other stimuli introduced which include the target language which can then be practised in a range of activity types - true/false comprehension questions, completion exercises, summarising, noting pros and cons for discussion and written work etc. Short written pieces using a certain style can be done and monitored carefully by the teacher - students can begin to experiment in oral practice trying out the language they have focussed on. Teachers should use a range of practice activities. This will help prevent lessons becoming predictable and it also builds in the element of repetition but in an interesting way. The teacher initiates, manages and encourages at this stage, intervening whenever necessary and checking for errors. These can be focussed on later in the lesson.

As the lesson moves away from teacher guidance to semi-free or free language production by the student, we think of it in terms of language production. This production activity may take the form of a group solution to a problem [oral] or a written task, or the use of a particular grammatical item [ie story in past tense or descriptions of a person using adjectives/adverbs]. The final output by the student should meet the aims of the lesson with the teacher monitoring for errors but much more an observer than anything else at this stage. Here, the students should be producing the target language with minimal, if any, teacher interference.

Always remember that you will not instantly have perfect production of language by your students. A new item, especially an important one such as ‘past tense forms’ or ‘personal pronouns’ needs a bit of thinking about and several weeks of ‘revisiting’ by the students before they are secure. What’s more they will progess at different rates. Perfect production does not magically occur in every student at the same time! Your job is to make sure that they have a chance to experiment and learn through making mistakes. If you only ever do controlled practice, students do not have the chance to use what they know alongside what they are learning to use.

Practice and production should be seen as leading from one to the other. It is no use springing a production task on students that you have not prepared them for through practice. For example, talking about what kind of movies you like does not lead immediately to students writing reviews of films. That is a different skill. ‘Directing someone around your school’ in controlled practice does not lead straight to ‘writing directions to your house’ as the vocabulary is completely different. You cannot give students a biography of a famous dead person to study and then expect them to write their own biography as the tenses are different for people still living.

This is a common mistake among novice teachers and one you should watch out for as you begin teaching.

4] PLENARY OR WHOLE CLASS REVIEW

It is extemely important that you end your class cleanly and with a refocussing on what the class have been doing.

Some teachers do this very formally by talking with the class about ‘what we have been learning today’ or referring back to lesson aims written on the white board. The students can see how the lesson has progressed and how the activities are all linked.

Some teachers have a short question and answer session in which the students give their opinion on what they think they have learnt.

In other lessons the whole class review may be longer. For example, if your students have been writing letters in pairs or doing a discussion task in groups then you may wish them to present what they have done to the class.

You also need this stage in the lesson to give your students a homework task while they are clearly focussed on you!

SELF-CHECK 4:2 4

1. How does the role of the teacher change through an ESOL lesson as

described above?

2. Match the parts of the lesson described to the four stages below.

"I asked the class about the weather today, and we wrote some

vocabulary on the board. Next, I gave out worksheets with pictures

of the weather and days of the week, and as I played a listening of

this week's weather forecast, students listened and matched the

picture to the correct day. This was followed by pairwork, with an

information gap activity in which students completed a weather map of

Britain. The final activity was a written description of the weather in

each season in their own country. Some of them read out what they had

written to the class. For homework I gave them a research task on the

climate in a range of different cities around the world so that we can prepare

a class display next lesson.”

Introduction

Presentation

Practice

Production

Plenary

Can you write ‘aims’ for this lesson?

TIME MANAGEMENT

This involves something we can call ‘flexible planning’. That means you plan what is going to happen in a lesson but you are ready to change your mind if something does not go quite as you had planned. If we plan very rigidly then the students do not have a chance to go over something if they do not understand or move on quickly if they understand very fast. On the other hand if we are always distracted by trivia then the students will get frustrated as the aims of the lesson may not be fulfilled.

Here are some common mistakes that teachers make.

Teachers plan for 50 minutes of work in a 50 minute lesson.

A 50 minute lesson is not 50 minutes long as the students have to get in and get organised then pack up and get out of the room. More like 45 minutes, sometimes only 40.

Teachers plan a 1 minute brainstorm activity.

Never write things into your plan that take one minute. They always take longer! Have you thought about the time taken to draw the spidergram or write down student suggestions?

Group work goes on a lot longer than planned.

Teachers don’t plan the time it takes to move the furniture and give instructions. You often see ‘work in groups for 10 minutes’ on teachers’ plans, but 5 minutes of that may be getting organised!

Students are not handing in their homework - they say they didn’t write it down.

This is often the fault of the teacher who makes a lesson plan that does not allow 5 minutes for discussing homework. It does not have to be at the end of the lesson, but could be half way through or even at the beginning. It is also a sign that there is probably not a clear plenary stage at the end of the lesson.

You should have an ‘if time’ activity to do if you finish too quickly.

You should have a cut off point in the last activity in the lesson that is clear and organised - not just ‘finish that off for homework then’.

You should have a plenary before the end. If you have not finished the work, then stop at the cut off point and review. Give the homework in good time. Tell the students clearly that you will continue with the work next lesson.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 5 a

You will see a lesson plan for a 50 minute lesson. It is not detailed as we are just concentrating on timing.

Can you spot 8 errors in this plan?

Warm up (whole class) Ask who has a pet.	Our pets. Write up pets on board	5 minutes
Review q forms : Pairs	Ask and answer about the pets you have at home	5 minutes
Individual	Questions about pets on board ‘Where /when /what’. Copy questions into your book and answer them for your own pet.	10 minutes
Parts of animals’ bodies, vocabulary input with diagram on the board.	Students repeat body parts: tail, ears, paws, as choral work.	5 minutes
Individual	Draw a picture of pet and label it, similar to the diagram on page 45/ diagram on the board..	10 minutes
Listening	My pet - describing an animal. Text book page 46. Do exercises	10 minutes
Peer checking	Students exchange books and check each other’s work. Give homework - finish off	5 minutes

COMMENT 4:2 5 a

1. It is a very ‘busy’ lesson plan. Students move from writing to speaking to drawing to listening. By the end of the lesson their desks will have books and colour pencils and an exercise book on them, very messy.

2. The lesson is too long! The teacher has presumed that he/she has 50 minutes teaching time.

3. The plan presumes everyone will do things at the same speed. This is rarely true of a class. There will be people finishing early and others getting behind.

4. There is no homework writing down or discussion time.

5. There is no review, the lesson just stops and the teacher does not check work.

6. It is not flexible. What if a child has more than one pet or no pets at all?

7. Some timings are ambitious, eg ‘ individual work’ - only 10 mins?

8. There are no ‘if time’ activities or ‘cut off points’.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 5 b

Now look at the plan again. How has the plan changed and why?

Warm up (whole class/pairs) Ask who has a pet and then ask answer questions in pairs	Ask and answer about the pets you have at home. If you have no pets, talk about your favourite animal.	10 minutes
Feedback	Report back to class on what you have found out Teacher tells class about own pet and shows a picture.	5 minutes
Parts of animals’ bodies. Vocabulary input with diagram on the board.	Teacher draws the most common pet in the class, eg cat. Students repeat body parts: tail, ears, paws, as choral work.	5- 10 minutes
Listening	My pet describing an animal. Text book page 46 Do exercises and check answers in pairs/with teacher	15 minutes
Give homework	Looking at the diagram on page 45, draw a picture of your pet and label it. If you don’t have a pet, favourite animal. Write three facts about your animal under the picture and bring to next lesson.	5 minutes
Plenary	10 review questions: oral Who has a pet tarantula? What do we call this part of the body?	5 minutes and pack up

COMMENT 4:2 5 b

1. Copying down questions from the board has been removed.

2. The free drawing activity has been left to the end of the lesson - homework. If the teacher gets through the lesson more quickly, she can begin this in class time - ‘if time’ activity.

3. There is flexibility for people who do not have pets.

4. The homework can be discussed

5. There is a clear plenary.

Flexible timing is written into the plan - the last 10 minutes could be 5 if there is a problem.

PLANNING FOR GROUP WORK

When planning a lesson you should look at what the students and the teacher will be doing at different stages of the lesson. This is important so that you prepare a variety of FOCUS. That means the students are not facing the teacher, listening to the teacher all the time. We have discussed this in many different sections of the course and it is fundamental to good lesson preparation and planning.

PAIRWORK

By using pairwork, students are encouraged with little, if any, teacher intervention to collaborate with other learners for the completion of a given task. It is important that learners can cope with the practice tasks set [which must be linked to the language focus and presentation for the lesson]. The materials must be of a suitable level and the content must be motivating. Don’t take ages setting up pairwork for the students to say: ‘Is it a tomato? No it isn’t, it is a pear.’ and so on. Give them something interesting to do. It is also important to think about who to pair up. Work ‘mixed ability’ into your pairwork with ‘if time’ activities and ‘cut off points’ as discussed above. Pairwork can be done easily and quickly without moving the furniture about if you have set your classroom up in a communicative way - remember you can even do it if the furniture is immovable!

GROUP WORK

Group work lends itself to a range of activities. Learners have the opportunity to communicate with others, in the target language, and group work can encourage strong and weak learners to participate in discussions, debates and problem-solving activities. Flexible groupings can be extremely motivating for students. They start off in a set group, then split and re-form. For example, 3 groups of A, B and C are each given a part of a story to prepare orally [A - introduction, B - the plot, C - the ending] They then make 3 new groups, with A, B, and C students to put together a completed narrative. This encourages every student to participate, to learn from others in the group, to listen and to encourage, leading to confidence, improved fluency and support for reading and writing tasks. Group projects are motivating, especially if there is a presentation plenary at the end or if work is to be displayed on the wall.

Group work needs a clear task that will not be over in two minutes when you have spent five minutes setting up and moving the furniture! And remember, as we discussed in Unit 4 Module 1, not all groups have to do the same thing.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 6

Here are some disadvantages in using pair work or group work activities in the ESOL classroom. Fill in the column with suggestions of how to cope. Try to use these key words in your answers.

KEY WORDS: group roles, clear tasks, circulate, feedback, extension

Disadvantage	How to cope.
The noise level may be quite high.	Make sure students are seated close enough together so that they do not have to shout.
Students may start using their mother tongue in a monolingual class.
The teacher cannot listen to all of the students at the same time.
Some students may do no work at all.
Some students may finish more quickly than others.
The focus is not on the teacher.
Pairs may not like each other.
The furniture is not set out in the right way.
There is no control over what is going on in the group.

PLANNING REVIEW

Good planning means:

1. Being aware of the time you, the teacher, have to deliver your lesson

and to achieve your aims.

2. Specifying your aims and learning outcomes for the lesson, how you intend to

put over your teaching point(s) in a coherent manner, and how you will

facilitate the learners achieving the declared learning outcomes.

3. Dividing your lesson up into stages.

4. Being aware of what the students will be doing at each stage (reading,

taking part in group/pair work, listening to a tape etc.)

5. Choosing suitable situations and activities to exploit the teaching point(s).

6. Being aware of which lexical items are likely to be used by the students

in these situations. (prediction)

Teachers may present the same teaching point in different ways. One teacher may make more use of a textbook than another who might only include textbook material as a last resort. Planning inevitably involves rejection of ideas whatever the source may be as well as acceptance of them. See Unit 3 Module 4.

Lesson planning is not easy. Take it seriously right from the beginning and you will gradually understand its importance and it will become easier. Start off as a lazy planner and you are cheating your students out of the chance to feel secure and succeed.

Look at the following lesson plans as reference for producing your own.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN ONE - GROUP/CLASS TEACHING

Study the lesson plans which follow, then completeTASK 1.

Level Intermediate Adults

Lesson 1 1/4 hours

Duration

Aims To practise the language used in recipes, following

instructions, sequencing and talking about favourite

dishes.

Learning Learners will have demonstrated their ability:

Outcomes (a) to write simple instructions

(b) to sequence their instructions appropriately

Assumptions Recognition of Imperative form for instructions

Food vocabulary

Language of sequencing [first, then, next ....]

Expected Use of 'you must' rather than imperative form

Problems Confusion of articles [Take a carrot , peel the carrot]

Warm Up Bring a carrot or potato into the lesson. Ask students to suggest

how you could eat it.

Then ask students about their favourite meat or vegetable.

Put details on the board in 3 columns.

Vegetables/meat How to prepare How to cook

ie potatoes peel fry

slice bake

Input Tell the class that your favourite meal is Shepherd's Pie or

another food that you know how to prepare.

Explain the process, putting the stages on the board

using cue cards to help explain vocabulary [ie chop] or

realia, and using sequences [first, next ...] Limit to

a maximum of 10 stages. Check that the group have

understood and can reproduce the instructions orally.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN ONE (continued)

Practice 1 Hand out worksheets with pictures of various actions used

Pair work when cooking [ie fry, mix, add]. Students match the verbs

given to the pictures. They then complete a short passage

below, putting the correct verb into the correct space to

complete the recipe. Teacher monitors.

ie "Take two large potatoes. First ......... the potatoes, then

........ them thinly and ........ gently in hot oil."

Practice 2 Listening

Individual Students listen to someone giving instructions on making

work a Victoria Sandwich. The steps are given on a worksheet

but in the wrong order. Students listen and put stages into

the correct order. Students check in pairs. Teacher

monitors.

Production Students in groups prepare the recipe for a simple dish,

Groupwork possibly from one of their own countries. They discuss,

then write down, the ingredients, and the steps involved,

but also make a copy with details in the wrong order.

These are then collected and handed out to different

groups, who must rearrange the instructions into the

correct order and produce their own version, finally

comparing it with the correct original.

Teacher sets up the groups and possibly appoints

group leaders. Teacher then monitors, noting errors

for future revision work and helping with unknown vocabulary.

Plenary Some ingredients/recipes read out to the class. Question and

answer on foods and ingredients. Revision of aims and key

terms plus mistakes/strong points from group work.

Homework Students write down the recipe for a typical or favourite

dish from their own country and bring it to the next lesson for wall

display or for small leaflet of recipes (with samples of course, if

possible!)

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TWO - ONE TO ONE TEACHING

This is the scenario. A student has decided that he/she would like to attend a British university. Their standard of English is quite good but in order to get it up to university entrance standard they have decided to supplement school/college lessons with a weekly one-to-one lesson. This is likely to be a fairly long term arrangement so you will get to know each other very well. As the selection of, and application to, a university can be a lengthy procedure, you have decided to concentrate on this in the early stages.

Level Upper Intermediate.

Lesson duration 2 hours

Aim To guide student through a typical university

prospectus.

Learning Providing a pattern for future research.

Outcome By the end of the session the learner will have skimmed

through three university prospectuses and summarised key features and noted the features in a table.

Object To enable the student to make an informed choice

when applying for university entrance.

Assumptions Student has chosen his/her subject and has a long list of suitable universities.

Expected Student is unfamiliar with collating information from

problems a range of prospectuses and handbooks.

Materials Two or three prospectuses.

Atlas/maps.

Tourist brochures.

Grid.

Warm-up General chat about everyday matters.

(10 mins) This helps to build social skills and the

vocabulary used when making small-talk. Since the

lessons are only once a week, the student needs

‘warming up’.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TWO (continued)

Introduction: Discuss with student what he/she might be looking

(20 mins) for in a British university (other than a suitable course). Make

a list together of key considerations.

Allow student to lead the discussion as far as

possible.

[Teacher should have a list of suitable

ideas to prompt student if necessary].

Look at geographical situation of the universities under

consideration. Look through tourist information.

Presentation: Produce two or three prospectuses. Show how they all

(15 mins) differ in layout. Begin to look at sections which address

the particular concerns expressed in the Introduction.

[Teacher's note: unlike a class situation where you

have prepared a lesson on a specific structure with

pre-prepared materials, in this instance to a large

extent you are letting the student dictate the material to

be covered. Therefore it is important that you have

familiarised yourself with all those aspects which you envisage the student will want to discuss. Naturally of particular concern will be information for international students].