Planning is one of those essential skills of the competent teacher.
Planning 1 - methodology article
This article looks at some general lesson planning questions:
What should go into an English language lesson?
What is a lesson plan?
Why is planning important?
Do you need to plan if you have a course book?
What are the principles of planning?
What should go into an English language lesson?
Every lesson and class is different. The content depends on what the teacher wants to achieve in the lesson. However it is possible to make some generalisations. Students who are interested in, involved in and enjoy what they are studying tend to make better progress and learn faster.
When thinking about an English lesson it is useful therefore to keep the following three elements in mind - Engage - Study - Activate
Engage
This means getting the students interested in the class. Engaging students is important for the learning process.
Study
Every lesson usually needs to have some kind of language focus. The study element of a lesson could be a focus on any aspect of the language, such as grammar or vocabulary and pronunciation. A study stage could also cover revision and extension of previously taught material.
Activate
Telling students about the language is not really enough to help them learn it. For students to develop their use of English they need to have a chance to produce it. In an activate stage the students are given tasks which require them to use not only the language they are studying that day, but also other language that they have learnt.
What is a lesson plan?
A lesson plan is a framework for a lesson. If you imagine a lesson is like a journey, then the lesson plan is the map. It shows you where you start, where you finish and the route to take to get there.
Essentially the lesson plan sets out what the teacher hopes to achieve over the course of the lesson and how he or she hopes to achieve it. Usually they are in written form but they don't have to be. New or inexperienced teachers may want to or be required to produce very detailed plans - showing clearly what is happening at any particular time in the lesson. However in a realistic teaching environment it is perhaps impractical to consider this detail in planning on a daily basis. As teachers gain experience and confidence planning is just as important but teachers develop the ability to plan more quickly and very experienced teachers may be able to go into class with just a short list of notes or even with the plan in their heads.
Whatever the level of experience, it is important that all teachers take time to think through their lessons before they enter the classroom.
Why is planning important?
One of the most important reasons to plan is that the teacher needs to identify his or her aims for the lesson. Teachers need to know what it is they want their students to be able to do at the end of the lesson that they couldn't do before. Here are some more reasons planning is important:-
gives the teacher the opportunity to predict possible problems and therefore consider solutions
makes sure that lesson is balanced and appropriate for class
gives teacher confidence
planning is generally good practice and a sign of professionalism
Do you need to plan if you have a course book?
Many teachers will find themselves having to use a course book. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a course book - but although they do provide a ready-made structure for teaching material, it is very unlikely the material was written for the teachers' particular students. Each class is different and teachers need to be able to adapt material from whatever source so that it is suitable for their students. A course book can certainly help planning, but it cannot replace the teacher's own ideas for what he or she wants to achieve in a class.
What are the principles of planning?
Aims - considering realistic goals for the lesson, not too easy but not too difficult. You may find the following checklist useful:
What do the students know already?
What do the students need to know?
What did you do with the students in the previous class?
How well do the class work together?
How motivated are the students?
Variety - an important way of getting and keeping the students engaged and interested.
Flexibility - expect the unexpected! Things don't always go to plan in most lessons. Experienced teachers have the ability to cope when things go wrong. It's useful when planning to build in some extra and alternative tasks and exercises. Also teachers need to be aware of what is happening in the classroom. Students may raise an interesting point and discussions could provide unexpected opportunities for language work and practice. In these cases it can be appropriate to branch away from the plan.
Effective lesson planning is the basis of effective teaching. A plan is a guide for the teacher as to where to go and how to get there. However - don't let the plan dominate - be flexible in your planning so that when the opportunities arise you can go with the flow.
What is Engage, Study, Motivate?
Foreign Language Acquisition
Move a child into a foreign language environment surrounded by adults and otherchildren using the same foreign language and that child will quickly 'pick up' the foreignlanguage. Comprehension will come first but production will soon follow, starting withone word responses and utterances. The child's comprehension will develop and herproduction will become more complex until, after just a few years, she will use theforeign language in much the same way as native-speaker children of her age group.If children (and, to a lesser degree, adults) can acquire a foreign language without the need for formalinstruction, why do we need to give lessons?The child described in the first paragraph will have massive exposure to the foreign language - ten hourseach day or more! The child also has a very strong 'survival motivation' to acquire the new language. Onlythrough that language can she eat, drink, make friends and play games.In our normal schools, we cannot reproduce those conditions (although some experiments have attemptedto do this!).If we can't reproduce the conditions of 'natural acquisition', we are forced to adopt a system of 'gradedexposure' to the foreign language, and a similar graded presentation and explanation of the systems of the new language. In fact, we have to develop a language learning syllabus.The language learning syllabus is made from a series of language learning events (lessons) which,traditionally, are equal in duration, take place at fixed times and locations and follow a regular weeklypattern.
How do we structure our teaching?
(a) Presentation, Practice, Production
Most teachers plan three phases in their lessons according to the PPP model of Presentation, Practice andProduction.During
Presentation
, new language is presented perhaps as a grammatical pattern or more frequentlywithin some familiar situation. During this presentation phase, the teacher is often very active anddominates the class doing more than 90% of the talking.During
Practice
, the new language item is identified, repeated and manipulated by the students. Unlessthe teacher is using pairwork or a language laboratory, the teacher also dominates this phase of thelesson occupying more than 50% of the talking in class.During
Production
, the students attempt to use the new language in different contexts provided by theteacher.
(b) Engage, study, activate
Since the PPP model has functioned more or less effectively for generations, you might ask why we shouldbe looking at different models. PPP works well provided that your syllabus is based only on giving students'thin slices' of language one slice at a time. The PPP model does not work nearly so well when teachingmore complex language patterns beyond the sentence level or communicative language skills. Another basic problem with PPP is that it is usually based on segments of the one-hour lesson. In thisway, lessons are designed with a single focus.
In
How to Teach English
[Longman 1998] Jeremy Harmer proposed a different three stage model, theESA model: Engage, Study, Activate.
The three stages of engage, study, activate
(a) Engage
During the
Engage
phase, the teacher tries to arouse the students' interest and engage their emotions.This might be through a game, the use of a picture, audio recording or video sequence, a dramatic story,an amusing anecdote, etc. The aim is to arouse the students' interest, curiosity and attention. The PPPmodel seems to suggest that students come to lessons ready motivated to listen and engage with theteacher's presentation.
(b) Study
The
Study
phase activities are those which focus on language (or information) and how it is constructed.The focus of study could vary from the pronunciation of one particular sound to the techniques an authoruses to create excitement in a longer reading text; from an examination of a verb tense to the study of atranscript of an informal conversation to study spoken style.There are many different styles of study, from group examination of a text to discover topic-relatedvocabulary to the teacher giving an explanation of a grammatical pattern.Harmer says, 'Successful language learning in a classroom depends on a judicious blend of subconsciouslanguage acquisition (through listening and reading, for example) and the kind of
Study
activities wehave looked at here.
(c) Activate
This element describes the exercises and activities which are designed to get students to use the languageas communicatively as they can. During
Activate
, students do not focus on language construction orpractise particular language patterns, but use their full language knowledge in the selected situation ortask.
Lesson Structure
(a) The ESA lesson
A complete lesson may be planned on the ESA model where the 50-60 minutes are divided into threedifferent segments. It is very unlikely that these segments will be equal in duration.
Activate
will probablybe the longest phase but
Study
will probably be longer than
Engage
.In this format ESA would appear to be little different from PPP.
(b) The ESA, ESA, ESA lesson
Teachers of children and younger teenagers know that their students cannot concentrate for long periods.They can still use the ESA model but the model may be used repeatedly, producing a larger number of shorter phases.This repeated ESA model also works well with older teenagers and adults and gives lessons a richness andvariety which students appreciate.It would be wrong to give the impression that
Engage
,
Study
and
Activate
are each single activities.They are phases of the teaching/learning process which may contain one or more activities.Harmer, Jeremy:
How to Teach English
Longman 1998
ESA: A teaching methodology
For many years Teachers of English have used the PPP model of Presentation, Practice andProduction for the preferred model of teaching. It has worked well. The PPP model falls shorthowever, in that it does not work well when teaching more complex language problems beyondthe sentence level or when teaching communicative skills. Jeremy Harmer in How to Teach English(Longman Publishing 1998) proposed an alternative to PPP called ESA: Engage, Study, andActivate. In an article written in The Guardian Weekend, March 15 1997, Bridget Riley complainedabout the treatment she and her fellow students received at the Royal College of Art. We wereabandoned when what we needed and what we hoped for was help toward independence inteaching rather than having independence thrust down our throats. Jeremy Harmer responded to
Ms. Riley’
s complaint suggesting a consideration of his ESA teaching methodology. He stated thatESA stands for Engage, Study, and Activate. He used the example of a computer and suggestedthat in teaching trainees to teach that the ESA should be considered as the computer defaultmode.During the Engage phase, the teacher tries to arouse the students? interest and engage theiremotions. This might be through a game, the use of a picture, audio recording, video sequence, adramatic story, or an amusing anecdote. The aim is to arouse the students? interest, curiosity,and attention. Over the years the PPP model has always assumed that students come to lessonsalready motivated to listen or engage. The results of many years of PPP teaching do not supportthis assumption.The Study phase activities are those which focus on language or information and how it isconstructed. The focus of study could vary from the pronunciation of one particular sound to thetechniques an author uses to create excitement in a longer reading text. It could vary from anexamination of a verb tense to the study of a transcript of an informal conversation. There aremany different styles of study, from group examination of a text, to discovery related topicvocabulary, to the teacher giving an explanation of a grammatical pattern. Harmer says,?Successful language learning in a classroom depends on a judicious blend of subconsciouslanguage acquisition (through listening and reading) and the kind of study activities we havelooked at here.In the Activate stage the exercises and activities are designed to get students to use the languageas communicatively as they can. During the Activate, students do not focus on languageconstruction or practice particular language patterns, but use their full language knowledge in theselected situation or task.In Harmer?s response to Bridget Riley?s complaint about the short comings of her trainingprogram, he once again returns to the computer analogy. ?The ESA model is a macro defaultsetting, almost (to extend the metaphor) a teaching program. All three elements need to bepresent when it is in use. But what makes it useful as a macro default is that the order of theseelements is not fixed.Harmer describes the variations which can be used with the ESA model. He names his default levelE.S.A the Straight arrow approach. The first variation is the Boomerang approach: E.A.S.A. It is atask based approach. The Boomerang approach after the Engage (E) phase, gets students toperform a task (A) using all and/or any language they know and only then does the teacher goback to the language Study (S). The Study phase is then undertaken based on what the teacherwitnessed in the students? language performance. The teacher in short will fill in the gaps of thestudents? knowledge. To check that learning has taken place the students are then re-activated.Harmer goes on to say that most classes are neither Straight Arrow nor Boomerang?classes. Theytend to be more mixed up than this. The sequences in his Patchwork lessons include all theseelements, but can do so more than once and in various orders. A sequence such asE.A.A.S.S.E.S.A would be perfectly possible.Harmer in conclusion states, Trainers need clear models, just as computer users rely initially on adefault setting. I have suggested a macro default ESA as a general proposal, which provides threemicro default settings: Straight Arrow sequences, Boomerang sequence, and Patchworksequences. I believe that these will be of use to a teacher preparing for a life time as a teacher.Sooner or later the teacher will be able to break away from them, emerging as diagnosticallycreative as anyone might want.?
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