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LSA1 SYSTEMS – GRAMMAR
HANNA LOCH
DATE: 04.06.2015
1 CLASS PROFILE:
This is a General English class at B1 (Intermediate) level. The course runs for six
weeks, with three-hour sessions twice a week, on Mondays and Thursday from 8:30-
11:30 am. It is a multi – lingual class studying in Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia. On this
course we are covering Modules 2, 8 and 12, New Cutting Edge, 2nd edition.
As courses are segregated in Saudi Arabia, all students are female. There are nine
students in the class, including four Saudi, one Chinese, one Venezuelan, two
Colombian and one Palestinian. Their ages range from late teens to late 40s. There
are university students and many housewives who used to work in their countries
before coming to Saudi Arabia.
Most students are studying English for professional and social reasons. All the
students want to be able to socialize online or face to face with other English
speakers. It is an animated and highly motivated class that is not afraid of risk taking.
Six out of nine students have been studying together for over three months and
consequently feel comfortable working with each other. There are no tensions
between the students although two or three are potentially dominant.
2 LEARNERS PROFILES
3 OVERALL AIM:
By the end of the lesson, learners will be better able to recognise and use the third
conditional in writing to speculate about past events. They will be writing a short
story (4- 5 sentences) about how the important decisions they made in the past
influenced their present life.
4 SUBSIDIARY AIM:
Learners will have practiced processing a listening text for meaning on the topic of
big life decisions.
5 ANALYSIS
Speculating about the consequences of something that did not happen in the
past
Is my life exciting? (Yes)
Why? (because I became an English teacher)
Am I happy that I am a teacher? (yes)
Would I like to change my job? (no)
What would have happened if you hadn’t made your most important
decisions?
Speculating about the consequences of something that did not happen in the
past
Main clause is a question about a past result which depends on the condition
in the if-clause
Invitation for students to speculate about their past and outcomes of most
important decisions
5.2 FORM
What would have happened if you hadn’t made your most important
decisions?
Type 3 conditional
Main clause: question word + would +have + past participle (no comma)
If-clause: if + subject + hadn’t +past participle + object
what – a question word
would – a modal verb
happened – past participle of happen
you – pronoun
hadn’t – past participle of have, negative form, contracted
made – past participle of make
your – possessive pronoun
most important – superlative of important, adjective
decisions – a plural noun
5.3 PRONUNCIATION
What would have happened if you hadn’t made your most important
/wʊdntəv/ /fjʊ/
decisions?
This is the fifth week of a 6-week course. We have been looking at different ways of
talking about the past (e.g. past simple, past continuous, used to and would to talk
about discontinued habits). We also looked at ways of criticising past decisions,
should/could have + past participle. I have noticed that learners mis-use the second
conditional for the third to speculate about their past, therefore I have decided to
have a lesson focusing on the third conditional. In the next lesson we will play a
board game to revise all 3 types of conditional sentences. I want to make sure that
the students are able to produce mostly error free sentences.
7 ASSUMPTIONS
7.1 MEANING
The students have enough vocabulary to understand the dictogloss without any
problems. If the ss need any assistance during the production stage, I’ll feed in
vocabulary while monitoring.
7.2 FORM
Lexical content in the dictogloss text is familiar not to detract the learners from the
focus of the lesson.
7.3 PRONUNCIATION
The students should be able to pronounce the contraction ‘d because they have
practised it many times in the past, e.g. while studying the Past Perfect or modal
verb would.
Although the dictogloss is procedurally complicated, the students are familiar with it
so they should be clear what is expected of them. As the students enjoyed the
procedure in the past, I believe they should be motivated and focused while
reconstructing the text. Hopefully, they will not be tempted to write every word down
like in a traditional dictation.
Problem: The students might not understand that the TL refers to the past because
they are used to hypothesising about the present/future using Type 2 conditional.
Solution: I wrote the dictogloss text about my important decisions taken in the past
and their consequences to set a meaningful and unambiguous context. If, however,
there still are some doubts that we are talking about the past, I’ll quickly make it clear
during feedback stage after reconstruction of the text is completed by asking concept
questions.
Solution 2: I am expecting a little bit of confusion with this example. I will use
concept questions to clarify the meaning, if necessary.
8.2 FORM
Problem 1: The If-clause as well as the main clause are very long.
Solution 1: I will focus the students’ attention on the fact that they have already
studied the Past Perfect so the If-clause should not be a problem. I will also explain
that they learn would have as a chunk and only add necessary past participle forms
to express desired meanings.
Solution 2: While giving feedback to the guided discovery worksheet, I will elicit that
it it’s an If clause ‘d stands for had and if it’s a main clause for would.
Problem 3: The students might take have + past participle in the main clause for
the present perfect.
Solution 3: I will explain that although it is similar to the present perfect, it is not.
There is no has in third singular because after would we always use bare infinitive.
8.3 PRONUNCIATION
Problem 1: Students will have problems with pronunciation of /faɪd/ (If I’d), they
might stress If, which would influence the sentence stress.
Solution 1: Model and drill as necessary during the guided discovery feedback, until
Ss produce as effectively as possible.
Solution: To ensure that weaker students will stay on task while reconstructing the
text, I have very carefully grouped students for this activity, keeping in mind their
individual strengths and weaknesses relevant to the task. To ensure balanced
variety, each group is going to consist of at least one Arabic speaker and one
Spanish speaker.
Lujain and Bashayer are both in their early twenties and normally work well together.
Sandra and Reem are more mature than the rest of the class and that’s why they like
working together. Eve is very easy going and works well with everybody.
Sara who is a bit shy likes working with Aseel because they have many interests in
common, they both study medicine.
9 MATERIALS/RESOURCES
10 COMMENTARY
Having retained the gist of the text after I read it, the students will have to ‘grammar
the text up’ (Thornbury, 2001,p72) using their available resources to reconstruct it. At
first they will probably use Type 2 conditional but with the help of stronger students in
each group the target language might emerge which will engage learners in working
out its meaning. Furthermore, negotiating meaning will lead to noticing the gap and
students will become conscious of their mistakes. For my RA Stage 2, I am currently
researching different ways of giving feedback. What I find really interesting about the
dictogloss procedure is the fact that learners can access their own feedback through
a text comparison activity and consequently take more responsibility for their own
learning process. It also makes the lesson less teacher-fronted and more student –
centred.
Saudi and Chinese students are used to deductive learning, i.e. studying rules and
then applying them to examples, which does not engage them not only intellectually
but also affectively (i.e. emotionally). I have decided to investigate whether including
a guided discovery task into my lesson plan will help my students develop capacity
Hanna Loch – LSA1 15 | P a g e
for autonomous learning and make them actively involved in the learning process.
Furthermore, I believe that promoting independence by encouraging the students to
work out grammar rules for themselves will facilitate internalisation and retention of
the target language.
This class is very motivated and keen on experimenting with new language. Most
students are group oriented and feel comfortable working with each other.
Additionally, due to the very friendly atmosphere the students are not afraid of asking
me questions about my personal life. For this reason, I have decided to contextualise
the target language with a short story about my big life decisions. I hope this task will
help learners process the text for meaning and later on focus on form in a
meaningful context. I am convinced that working out rules together will appeal to the
interpersonal preferences of this class.
The last task when the students write a short story (4 - 5 sentences) about their life
decisions and their consequences is designed to tap into learners’ feelings and
experiences. I am a firm believer in humanistic teaching, i.e. interdependency of
language, learning and personal identity (Thornbury, 2006). Personalisation creates
better classroom dynamics as well as makes the TL more memorable by involving
students mentally and emotionally. If some learners find this task too intrusive, they
will have the right to ‘pass’ and write a story about someone else’s experiences.
During the last feedback stage, I’ll respond to the content as well as to form to
increase language affordances, i.e. a learning environment that prioritizes
meaningful activity. This task is a good preparation for the kinds of situations of
genuine language use that learners might encounter outside the classroom,
speculating about the past, thinking what would have happened if …?
Last but not least, I have tried to create materials, i.e. dictogloss, guided discovery
worksheet and controlled practice task, which are challenging but achievable, a little
bit above students’ current language competency. For the controlled practice task, I
have selected sentences about topics which are relevant to students’ lives, e.g.
failing exams, getting married and going to parties.
(Word 2013)
Are you going to write every single word or just key words? Key words
To encourage
cognitive processing Am I going to stop or repeat sentences? No
of the text and to
How many times am I going to tell the story? 2
hypothesize about
grammatical Do you work individually or in pairs? Individually
structures
1. I tell the story (Appendix 2). Ss individually write down key words and
phrases on a lined worksheet, one line per sentence (Appendix 1). After the
first listening I give them time to quickly compare notes (but they don’t start
the reconstruction yet).
2. I tell the story again at natural speed.
3. I put ss in groups of 3, I define the roles and responsibilities within the
group by appointing the strongest student as a secretary. The secretary will
coordinate reconstruction of the text in each group
Instructions:
In your groups of 3, write out the whole text you heard and try to fill in the
gaps between the key words.
Ss compare the words they have written down, adding and ordering the ones
they have. I monitor closely to check that ss are on-task and to make sure no
group is struggling with the reconstruction. If that happens, I will regroup the
students.
Reconstruction on the board: Students dictate their sentences and I write the
text on the whiteboard to make it faster. I try to give everyone a turn to
contribute to make sure no one feels left out and demotivated. I nominate
students, if necessary.
Which part of the sentence is about a past condition? If Joe had worked
harder
Which part of the sentence is about a past result? he would have passed
What form of the verb comes in the main clause? would + have +past
participle
If she hadn’t wanted to leave home, she wouldn’t have got married.
You would have met lots of people if you had gone to the party
yesterday night. (no comma)