Summary of lesson plan
The title of the lesson is “Have I found Ms. Right?”. This is for adult at the proficiency level of intermediate-mid. In the warm-up, the teacher tells a story about Christmas Eve with background music to activate students’ schema. The teacher asks them such as “What is his/her personality like?”. The teacher show PPT of a variety of pictures of faces and says words which describe personalities and appearances like ‘compatible, generous and considerable, etc.’ The teacher wants the students to do TPS by giving them a question “What’s your ideal type?”. While communicating in a whole class, the teacher model and ask students to repeat.
In the presentation, the teacher provides students with an article ‘Dear Agnes column’. The students skim the text for main idea and do TPS for filling in the graphic organizer. The students scan it for specific information and do ‘true or false’ with their partner.
In Step 9, the teacher has students do an information gap activity. Students are given handouts with different blanks. They should ask their partner questions such as “When will the engagement party be held?”. After information gap activity, the students share their answers with partner and one of them read his/her invitation information.
In step 10, the teacher has students write a reply accepting or declining the invitation. Before writing, they do TPS for FATP of the writing. While sharing ideas in a class, the teacher can ask such as “What’s the purpose of your writing?”. After writing a reply, the students exchange their letters with their group members. The teacher asks someone to summarize his/her group member’s decision and reason.
Analysis of how well the lesson integrates into SLA theories
This lesson was influenced by Input Hypothesis. The teacher asks several questions to individual students to activate students’ schema in the warm-up. The teacher asks students “What’s your ideal type?”. According to Krashen, this question is meaningful message for them. It’s called roughly-tuned input. Furthermore the teacher uses the effective music and pictures to make his/her talk comprehensible. The students can draw on their interest to answer to the question like “What’s your ideal type?”. The teacher constantly involves students, ask many questions, and encourage students to express their ideas and thoughts in the new language through TPS. In the presentation, the teacher provides students with an article ‘Dear Agnes column’ for skimming and scanning. The primary method of getting comprehensible input is through reading according to Krashen. In step 9, the students interact meaningfully through information gap activitiy. They ask and answer each other to fill in the blanks. Peers can provide each other with comprehensible input. Input from group mates may be more comprehensible and communicative. Furthermore, peer input may be of a particularly high interest level.
This lesson involved Intrinsic motivation. This reading material is interesting, appropriate for intermediate-low adults. After the students read this ‘Dear Agnes column’, they can give strong advice, opinion or suggestion to the writer. Good authentic material can motivate the students to read or speak. When the teacher shows the students why it’s personally relevant to them, in other words, when the students personalize the topic, the students are very motivated. The teacher asks students “Can you tell us about your ideal type?”, and they think of that in step 7. In step 9, the students do an information gap activity. Good communicative activities have gaps. The students have to find the gaps in communicative activities. The students talk each other to get missing information. This is an intrinsic motivation for communication. In step 10, they write a reply accepting or declining. This is an opinion gap. If you want to know the partner’s opinion, they want to talk to each other.
This lesson shows that it’s designed using risk-taking. Calling on student individually and asking him/her question like “ , can you tell about your imagined ideal type?” in warm-up is risk-taking. The teacher asks someone to summarize his/her group member’s decision and reason in step 10. Summarizing is high risk-taking job. The speaker has to consider time limit, right grammar and pronunciation. The student has a lot of chance of failure.
In terms of Output Hypothesis, this lesson shows noticing the gap and hypothesis testing. In the step 8, when the teacher asks students “What is the first rule to choose a perfect marriage partner?”, the students have to answer like “Marry someone who has qualities you admire.” , “Marry someone who is polite and kind to others.”. However the students can make errors like “Marry someone has qualities you admire.” , “Marry someone who polite and kind to others.” The students may discover problem and try to solve that problem through the teacher’s modeling, chunking, or correcting errors directly.
Conclusion-Talk about how successful the lesson was, would you revise it based on the theories?
This was my team’s methodology microteaching lesson plan. It was interesting and successful. The students were motivated and could practice four language skills in the lesson. However there are a few things to revise based on the theories. In the presentation, the activity is not interesting. The students just scan and skim the text, summarize and ‘true or false’ activity. They may use the language memorized from the text. It would be better that the teacher asks students some personal questions individually to increase students’ motivation. For example, “Among these rules, which one do you think is the most important to you in choosing a perfect marriage partner?”. In step 9, the students do information gap activity. They have different information and blanks, so they have to exchange the missing information. This is for just study. If the students read movie star’s real invitation, it would be fun. And they can write their own wedding invitation. This is likely to be more authentic and creative writing. After this writing, the students can get their partner’s wedding information through questions and answers. While doing this, they have to use the new language. This activity involves risk-taking. In step 10, the invitation is not authentic. The students are not willing to write a letter to unfamiliar people. They are not quite interested in their engagement party. It would be better that the hosts are celebrity. If Tom Cruise invites you to his engagement party, you are very excited about replying to him. It is related to intrinsic motivation.
Submitted by Emily
Posted by James Trotta at December 14, 2006 9:30 AMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.