Unit 4 Lesson Planning

TASK FOR SUBMISSION TO YOUR TUTOR

TASK 1

"Well prepared teachers have a large repertoire of activities for their classes.
They can organise preparation and controlled output practice; they can direct
students in the acquiring of receptive skills and organise genuinely
communicative activities. This repertoire of activities enables them to have
varied plans and achieve an activities balance."

"The Practice of English Language Teaching" Harmer

Which of the techniques outlined in this module, and elsewhere in the

modules on skills and materials, would you use in order to achieve genuine
communication in the classroom?

This task should refer to other areas of the course. You should aim to write
about 750 words.

To achieve genuine communication in the classroom it is important to plan

lessons carefully and take as much details as possible into consideration
before the teacher sets out to teach a particular topic, there must be a clear
start in the form of background information towards the aim of that lesson, the
background information required is intended to motivate the students.
Motivation must be kept in mind as the lesson is being planned, motivation
plays a vital role, since the lesson plan is the major directive to have full
control of what is to happen and take place in the classroom over a certain
period of time in case students are not provided extrinsic motivation, the
teacher’s aim as per what has been planned, may be affected severely.
As soon as the students get motivated and focused clear instructions must be
given so that they can approach and work out the activities for that particular
lesson, it also means activities must be leveled to encourage as much
students as possible to part in it.

Unit 4 1 Module 1
Yes, planning is indeed important, but as important is being flexible and
knowing when to adjust your plan to encourage communication.

Instructions to the activities must be put forth as clear as possible.

As instructions to the activities are put forth, the best way to get activities
going is by presenting them clearly to help fulfill the required input needed for
the students to work out what they are supposed to. The length to which the
activities should span must be laid out precisely.
During the production stage the students may encounter various difficulties as
the activity is underway the teacher may adopt quite a few roles to help the
students to continue to do what they are supposed to, the teacher can play
roles such as:
Controller, organizer, assessor, prompter, participant,resource,tutor,observer
in order to basically intervene, support or respond whenever needed.
In the classroom it is advisable for the teachers to take the register to control
attendance as attendance may help improve learning. Likewise, getting to
know students by their names is one of the ways that help to build student-
teacher rapport.
Managing the classroom is another technique to consider when it comes to
genuine communication.

Good.

One of the techniques that can be used to help and improve communication
in the classroom is for the teacher to move around the class as much as
possible and seat students in a way to facilitate learning.
The teacher must make sure that every now and then he moves around the
classroom and gaze from left to right and from back to front in order to control
students who might have their attention diverted somewhere else or give help
in the form of explanation for those students in doubt. When moving around
the class the teacher may stop by on a certain desk and get that student’s
exercise book to get to know if he can be understood.

Yes, this is an effective technique.

As the students are not all the same we may need to plan a variety of
activities for a particular lesson so that all the students keep committed fully
that is some students may need extra support some need extension in other
words differentiation should take hold at this point to get all the students fully
involved.

Unit 4 2 Module 1
Yes, and in particular we need to be able to take into consideration the
various levels and learning styles in the classroom.

Seating students properly help improve communication one of the best

arrangement is circle, as all the students can be much more involved, as a
result of that they become a community easily.
The extent to which talking can be extended is confined to a certain point as
the following terminology suggests Limit Teacher Talking Time. The teachers
should be aware that their talking time is limited which means that the
teachers must deliver the essential input to get things going and intervene
shortly only when there is real necessity furthermore, a great deal of time
should be reserved for students to practice and produce in class with the
control and guidance of a teacher.
Encouragement is another factor to take into account, in the course of the
activities there will come a time when students will have to hand in their work
for assessment so there are instances whereby they going to get their work
wrong if so the teacher must seek out ways to keep students encouraged by
correcting them gently and whenever possible provide the feedback for future
reference.
Discipline is a very relevant issue in the classroom this is why norms must be
lay down clearly and there also must be ample debate to this regard before
norms come in effect as to establish the final frontier in which no student is
allowed to cross the line.

All good points!

Though the last one is not directly related to keeping students involved...

Another idea is portfolio assessment.

This is an excellent submission showing some careful thought and an

analysis of both your experience and the course materials.

Your grade is A1.

Kind regards,

Alex

Unit 4 3 Module 1
 TASK FOR SUBMISSION TO YOUR TUTOR

TASK 2

You are working in an ESOL school with class sizes of 14-18.

Unit 4 4 Module 1
Your boss does not like your school’s current way of testing spoken English.
At the moment it is tested in a one-on-one, 2 minute speaking test at the end
of course with a mark from 0-10.
It does not seem to be working well and takes up a whole lesson from the
course. He has asked for suggestions as to how to change the system.

With reference to what you have studied in this and other modules, and to
your own experience and reading, make some suggestions to your boss as to
how the school could assess the spoken English of the students in a more
accurate and less pressurized way.

You should write about 400 - 500 words to send as an email setting out your
ideas.

Dear Sir

Proposal for assessment

First of all it is important to keep in mind that assessment can be wide in
scope, when we are assessing we need to know exactly what we are aiming
at. As our aim is to test oral skills, as far as spoken testing is concerned there
are better ways to assess students in which the outcome of the testing will
reflect a better picture regarding the students overall learning rather than
resorting to the technique above (one-on-one, 2 minute speaking test at the
end of course with a mark from 0-10).
It is not advisable simply and only to assess students at the end of the
course, as this kind of assessment may be overwhelmed by the washback
effect in a sense that the scorers takes two minutes to assess the students
quickly in order to show results to his best interest.
A one-on-one, 2 minute speaking test at the end of course does not reflect
the overall picture required for oral assessment in terms of characteristic of a
good test especially when it comes to validity and reliability nor will two
minutes express the practicality required for spoken testing. This short period
of time won’t give the scorers more than enough insight to assess fluency and
then accuracy which is a good way to analyze oral attributes such as
pronunciation, general knowledge, use of lexis and grammar.

Yes, you have pointed out the drawbacks of the present assessment very
well.

Instead, as lessons progresses there must be a way to bring in formative

assessment in order to get to know what the students can understand and
what difficulties the students face. At the end of each unit the students can be
tested one more time the rationale behind this assessment is intended to

Unit 4 5 Module 1
report the teacher where the students stand for that particular unit, this kind of
assessment is termed as progressive or achievement test and therefore this
assessment technique will guide us throughout the course to the day the final
exam will be held.

What you seem to talk about is continuous assessment, which can be both
summative and formative.

Continuous assessment is common practice these days and it allows

avoiding the stress of being tested once at the end of the course. It's well
known that stress may be an inhibiting factor which may prevent students
from demonstrating their personal best.

Neither one-on-one nor taking up a whole lesson from the course is practical
to spoken English testing instead, pair work or group work can be set up and
the students can act out dialogues, information-gap, simulation and role-play,
as for the length of time needed to allow the students and the scorer to
interact should span a little longer so that the scorer can be given a better
language- sample to look into.

Good ideas.

In using the speaking activities above, students might feel good and
comfortable working with a fellow student and so we are building the right
scenario for the scorer to interact with the students and ask them relevant
questions related to the activity the students are working on and then
sometime afterwards the scorers can strike a conversation and finally test the
students. To summarize, all of those speaking activities mentioned above if
well planned can give us a broad picture in terms of integrative testing which
in turn give us a better picture to assess the students.

Best regards,
Miguel

Well done, you have suggested three feasible ways of improving the testing.

Unit 4 6 Module 1
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Unit 4 7 Module 1