I. Overview of My Lesson
The profile of my students is as the followings. The students are university freshmen, and their proficiency level is different in four skills: intermediate-mid for both speaking and listening skills, intermediate-high for the reading skill, and novice-high for the writing skill. The type of class is English for academic purposes, and the students take this course because it is the requirement.
Regarding to the lesson, its title is package tour. The main task is listening to the conversation between a customer and a travel agent. As for the activities, the students do two things. One is to create their package tour advertisements. Before letting the students do this activity, I show a poster of a package tour advertisement and teach some vocabulary words showing visuals. After finishing their advertisements, the students choose the best one in an each group. In addition to this activity, the students do another activity, which is the discussion. During the second activity, students compare two package tours that I show and select one in an each group. After the end of this lesson, the students should be able to use comparatives while comparing two package tours given five expressions without the teacher’s assistance..
II. Theoretical Justification of the Activities
Right Hemisphere Participation
As the Neurological framework states, the right hemisphere of the brain is very meaningful for L2 acquisition. Nevertheless, adults tend to overuse the left hemisphere in the L2 acquisition process. Using the left hemisphere, adults analyze L2 as they study math or science. However, language cannot be easily acquired through analysis or reasoning. Thus two activities of my lesson are designed for the right hemisphere participation.
The first activity – creating a package tour advertisement – activates two functions of the right hemisphere: visualization and creativity. As for the visualization, I ask the students to imagine that they are travel agents and that they want to put their package tour advertisements in the Korea Herald. In addition, I make a poster and show it as for an example of a package tour advertisement. This activity also makes the students use their right hemisphere by creating their own advertisements. An individual student should design his/her own package tour and make an advertisement for it. This activity enables the students to use the right hemisphere of the brain, which in result makes acquiring L2 more memorable and meaningful. Hence, my students can learn L2 more easily.
Furthermore, the second activity – discussion – helps the students to utilize sociability, which is also one of the right hemisphere functions. In a group the students discuss which one is better for each group by comparing two provided package tour advertisements. This activity is significant because interaction with people is an original purpose of language acquisition. Thus my students can use the right side brain function and then acquire L2 comfortably.
The Affective Filter, Anxiety, and Motivation
The Affective Filter
According to Krashen and Terrel, the affective filter operates in the learner’s mind and is one of key factors to influence the learners’ success in the L2 acquisition. There are two filters: the high affective filter and the low affective filter. The high affective filter such as anxiety, low confidence, low self-esteem and negative attitude hinders the learners to acquire L2 successfully as it blocks input. On the other hand, the low affective filter such as positive attitude, encouragement is very helpful. This is because the low affective filter makes input smoothly penetrate into the learner’s mind and become competence.
In order to get my students’ affective filter low, I keep giving positive feedback to the students during the activities and encourage them to use L2. For instance, when the students answer my questions right, I say “excellent,” “good job,” and “wonderful” to the students. Even though some of my students make mistakes, I smile and give them the second chance to correct their mistakes. I think my method allows the students to have positive attitudes to themselves and L2 acquisition. I also believe this helps the students have less difficulty in acquiring L2.
Anxiety
There are two types of anxiety in the L2 process: debilitative anxiety and facilitative anxiety. Debilitative anxiety is too much anxiety so that it makes the students learn L2 with great difficulties. However, facilitative anxiety is very helpful for the learners because it makes the learners nervous enough to accomplish their goals in the L2 acquisition process. With facilitative anxiety, the students can be more alert, pay more attention to the lesson, and accept more input.
In order to promote my students’ facilitative anxiety, I do T-S-S-T and give error-corrections when I give instructions and check the students’ comprehension during the activity session. In addition, I call on the students individually and ask them their group’s choice for the above two activities. Moreover, the students should create their own advertisement, which is their goal to be accomplished for the first activity. I think this activity makes the students not ease their minds to use L2 and makes them try harder to have further knowledge of L2. Thus, I think my activity and teaching method help the students have facilitative anxiety so that they achieve L2 acqusition.
Motivation
There are two motivations in SLA: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is from the inside of a person. It is the learner’s internal stimulation to acquire L2. This motivation allows the learner to feel good and confident when they accomplish L2 acquisition. In contrast, extrinsic motivation is getting rewards from people when they are good at learning L2.
Since these two motivations are significant for the L2 learners, I stimulate both through the activities. Extrinsic motivation works out in the first activity because the students want their advertisement to be selected as the best one for their group. Getting good grades for this lesson also stimulates the students’ extrinsic motivation. As for intrinsic motivation, I let the students discuss provided two package tours. During the discussion, the students should use given five comparatives that they have learned in the lesson. Through doing this, the students can feel confident and good about that they are able to use comparatives. Thus these two activities are important and useful for the students’ motivation.
C. Input and Output
Input
According to Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, the students can build up competence by understanding input. Then he mentions “I+1.” "I" represents input at the current level of competence, and “+1” means input slightly beyond the learner’s current level. Care-giver speech is mixed with "I+1”. Thus the teacher should provide care-giver speech and do not need to worry about “+1.” In addition, the teacher should provide rough-tuning input, not fine-tuning input. This is because the students acquire L2 in the natural order.
For this matter, I do three things during the activity session. First, I make input comprehensible when I give instructions for the two activities. In order to make sure that I make input comprehensible, I check the students’ comprehension by asking questions to the students. Secondly, I give my students care-giver speech. When I doing it, I care about whether my speech has meaningful messages and it is the right level of my students. Thirdly, I do not worry about “+1” because I think my students can jump into the “+1” step if they are ready for it.
Output
In contrast to Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, Swain’s Output Hypothesis maintains that the learners focus on grammar rules and meaning only when speaking and writing. Swain also argues that speaking and writing skills involve communicative use and then build up competence. Adopting this theory, I help my students produce L2 through writing and speaking in the two activities. As mentioned in the above, the first activity is to create the travel advertisement so that the students should do writing and be careful not only at the meaning but also at the form. Besides, the second activity is the discussion, during which the students speak and use comparatives. Therefore, these two activities help the students to produce L2.
III. Conclusion
As seen in the analysis of my lesson by SLA theories, my lesson – especially two activities - is designed to develop the students’ competence. It involves right hemisphere participation using its three functions: visualization, creativity, and sociability. In addition, I process my lesson so as to get the students’ affective filter low and stimulate students’ facilitative anxiety. I also motivate students intrinsically through making them feel confident and also motivate them extrinsically through letting them choose one of their writings as the best. Furthermore, I consider both input and output. I make input comprehensible by providing care-giver speech, and make two activities that allow the students to produce language. Therefore, the lesson is very useful for the students to learn L2 easily and to develop competence.
Submitted by Jae Youn
Posted by James Trotta at December 12, 2006 6:15 PMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.