Teaching English in Korea - ESL blog

4 skills lesson with intrinsic motivation and risk-taking

Overview the lesson

This lesson was designed to teach 5th and 6th grade of elementary school students in private institute. Their proficiency level was intermediate low. The students had learned English for at least 4 or 5 years. The goal of this class was to improve students' proficiency with 4 skills, which are listening, reading, speaking and writing. Most of my students were planning to study abroad in English speaking countries later. That was why the teacher should encourage students to use language in authentic context. Target grammar that I was supposed to teach was Wh-questions such as ‘what do you do?’ ‘what does he do? ‘where do you work?’ ‘where does he work?’ and new vocabulary words were ‘chef, security guard, police officer, lawyer, flight attendant, receptionist’. The objective of this lesson was by the end of the lesson, students should be able to describe people's jobs approximately 10 and talk about what they want to be in the future following the teacher's model and activities without the teacher's assistance. The text, pictures of jobs, handouts, strips where sentences are written, magnifying glass, grid and CD player was needed.

ΙΙ. Theoretical justification of the activities

A. Intrinsic Motivation

I think the material of my lesson was not motivating enough because it did not contain opinions, controversy or strong advice. In step 8, presentation, after we figured out various jobs, and I asked them questions for checking comprehension only. For example, they were ‘what are they talking about?’ ‘what are their names?’ ‘what are their brother’s jobs?’ and so on. If the materials are motivating, students can agree or disagree, they probably reflect what they are going to learn on their own, but this lesson is designed to give information. To increase students motivation, I should have add some questions into the lesson such as ‘ Do you think the doctor is a good job? why or why not?’ ‘If you were about to change your job, what would you consider for your future job?’ However, when I explained the new vocabulary words, I used pictures instead of just giving information and it made students more interested in the lesson.

The topic of this lesson was personalized. In step 7, warm-up, I asked my students what they wanted to be in the future and they could share their ideas with classmate and also the topic made students motivated because they are all interested about their future jobs. In addition, in step 8, I asked students questions such as ‘have you seen this woman or man before?’, ‘where did you see them in reality?’ and I think these questions made the lesson more relevant to their reality and I tried to elicit the answers from their personal experience.

In step 9 and 10, activities were not motivating because there were not many gaps that students had to fill in and I only tried to make my class fun through activities not much caring about conveying meaningful messages. I only tried to help them memorize the new words and sentences. The controlled activity was that one student chose one strip of the new sentence; he or she read the sentence without any sound to their group member. They were supposed to show their mouth with a magnifying glass so that their group members could guess the sentence better and it made the classroom fun but I think there was lack of communication language. I think I should have focused on how much students can use real communication language meaningfully when I designed activities to make the lesson motivating.

B. Risk-taking

I tried to encourage my students to take a risk in the class. First of all I called on individual students’ name in step 7, 8, 9 and 10 and tried to have only one student answer the questions instead of repeating chorally. When they have a problem making the sentence correctly, I cued instead of modeling language. In step 7, warm-up, I used T-S-S-T for a question ‘when you grow up what do you want to be’ and students’ level was intermediate low, so they had difficulty making this sentence because it has a conjunction. In addition, when students answered the question with just one word, I almost always encouraged them to say that in a full sentence and when they had a problem with grammar, I modeled language so that they could try one more time. Lastly, I gave my students positive feedback to provide a friendly atmosphere where errors and common and errors so that they can feel free to say anything without hesitation.

In step 12, closure, the homework also encouraged students to take a risk. The homework was they had to write about what they want to be in the future and why they want to have that job. We were supposed to make a school paper and writings were supposed to be published in the paper. Everybody in the school can see the paper, so they would take a risk writing homework without any grammar mistakes. Thus, overall this lesson was designed to encourage students to take a risk.

ΙΙΙ. Conclusion

I have 5 years’ teaching experience and I learned English from junior high in Korea, so I knew that there was problem in English education in Korea. Thus, I always tried to help my students improve their proficiency, but I also found myself accustomed to Koreans’ deductive style of education while analyzing my lesson. I think that is why my lesson plan had a lot of problem. I actually did not give students that much freedom to talk and expected them to speak correctly in the activities and they did not have many opportunities to try out new forms. Moreover, questions were not so meaningful. They seemed to be designed to check students’ comprehension only. After analyzing my lesson plan, I feel like I got to know how I should teach students in Korea and the teacher’s job is really important. The teacher should always encourage students to take a risk and try to motivate them depending on their level. In addition, the teacher should make sure whether the material is authentic and students get enough input and the teacher asks communicative questions to students. Finally, it is really important that students have enough time to try out new forms of language. If I consider those matters, I am sure that I can go to the next level as an English teacher.

Posted by James Trotta at December 11, 2006 4:21 PM