I. Overview of the lesson
As my lesson plan for applying four skills such listening, speaking, reading and writing, I am going to teach how to read pizza menu in a restaurant. The reason I chose the topic is children usually like pizza the most. My students are 16-17 year old high school first graders and intermediate mid level. During the warm-up, I am supposed to ask students some questions about pizza to activate their schema, for example, “Do you like pizza?” or “Would you tell us one of the pizza makers? In addition, I use some real picture of pizzas and ask the question, “Can you see what kinds of pizza they are?” to activate their schema as well. In the presentation stage, by asking some high level questions and trying to personalize, I can give my students a chance to think about their experiences related to the topic. During step 9, I have my students do the role play of preparing a pizza party using a menu of pizzas. This role play is designed as a gap activity because students are more motivated and learn more voluntarily. This means that they can focus on the meaning for a real communication.
II. Theoretical justification of the activities
A. Input Hypothesis
In relation to Input Hypothesis, the text material should be concerned to be meaningful for students. The reading material is the Domino’s Pizza Menu from its internet site which shows the choices of pizzas such as size, crust, or toppings. They can learn new languages while they focus on the contents of the pizza menu. The languages cover all from easy, familiar ones to more difficult, unfamiliar ones, so I can say they are roughly tuned. For example, as it comes to the toppings, most of my students know “pineapple, beef, or ham” ,but most of them don’t know “mushrooms, pepperoni, or green peppers”. In addition to presenting comprehensible text material, I can do something to make my students’ input comprehensible for Step 7 in my lesson plan. During the warm-up, I ask them some questions about pizza to activate their content schema. I think activating schemata is very important to make input comprehensible. Once students are activated what they learned before, it is very helpful and effective for them to understand the new material better.
B. Intrinsic Motivation
As far as Intrinsic Motivation concerned, students learn better and want to do something voluntarily if they are interested in what they are learning. I try to relate the menu of Domino ‘s Pizza to their real lives, for instance, during the warm-up stage, I ask them, “What is your favorite pizza?” and make them think and talk about what they like the most in pairs. Through personalizing, students have a chance to think about their personal experiences related to the topic. During Step 9, as another way for Intrinsic Motivation, I make my students do the role play of preparing a pizza party using a menu of pizzas. One is a wife and another is her husband. They want to invite 10 friends to their pizza party but they have special friends in that some of friends are vegetarians and some of them don’t eat mushrooms. During the role play, students have to solve the problem which is a choice of right pizzas for their party, and they get to use language more voluntarily to communicate with each other.
C. Right Hemisphere Participation – Visualization
Language learning is closely connected with visualization which makes language meaningful and memorable. That is, when we learn language with some visuals, it helps learn more easily since we use language to the right hemisphere. I use visuals such as pictures and realia, and gestures to make to teach students new language. For example, when I teach “curst” and “toppings”, I show them a picture and point what “crust” is, and then using gesture of putting on something on top of the crust, I explain “toppings”. Through these visuals, students can learn language more meaningful and comprehensible.
III. Conclusion
Until now, I’ve looked at my lesson plan in terms of Input Hypothesis, Intrinsic Motivation and Right Hemisphere Participation. First, I think I try to give my students comprehensible input which are roughly tuned or i+1 and I emphasized on the importance of comprehensible input in teaching and learning language. Next, if the input is more authentic or related to their lives by personalizing and doing gap activities, students can be more motivated from their inside and participate in class more voluntarily. Lastly, it is more meaningful and memorable to use visualization to learn new language. When language is connected to visuals, it has a deep structure meaning with them.
Submitted by Sook Ja
Posted by James Trotta at December 11, 2006 5:53 PMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.