The Importance of Planning Plans and the Beginning Teacher Long-Term Objectives Short-Term Objectives Outline of a Week's Work
The Daily Lesson Plan
The Three Parts of the Class Hour Formulating Instructional Objectives Examples of Specific Instructional Objectives Preview View Review
Applying Instructional Objectives to Classroom Activities Preview View Review
Chart of Sequence in Lesson Planning Organizing and Checking the Plan
The Assignment
Lesson Planning 435
Having considered the internal-external dichotomy in learning and classroom organization, the student and student needs, ways and means of diversifying instruction, the four language skills and culture, the importance of sequencing learning activities in the development of each of the four language skills, and the general guidelines for second-language teaching, the teacher should now be ready to undertake the preparation of lesson plans. The time has arrived to ''put into practice" what he has been learning. The background that he has acquired is applied toward the formulation of objectives and the selection of classroom activities to accomplish the desired goals. The purpose of this chapter is to focus on the planning of instruction.
Planning enables the teacher to organize classroom learning situations toward chosen goals. Only by delineating selected instructional objectives can she begin to arrange an appropriate sequence of classroom activities that progress in increasing levels of difficulty. Careful planning is crucial to successful teaching, and it is doubtful that anyone can be a good teacher unless she is aware of her objectives and plans the classroom activities accordingly. Certainly such preplanning is necessary to insure maximum effectiveness. Successful teaching activities do not suddenly burst into flame by a process of spontaneous combustion sparked by the inextinguishable enthusiasm of the teacher and her "charges." They result from much hard work and premeditation.
During this premeditation period the teacher hypothesizes "what will work" in order to accomplish the objectives. Planning the work is what Huebener (1965, p. 118) calls "anticipatory teaching, for the learning situation is lived through, mentally, in advance."
The importance of careful preparation for each class period cannot be overstressed. Accidental accomplishment of unknown goals is extremely rare in any field, and teaching is no exception. Lesson plans involve two major portions of the actual teaching process—objectives and classroom activities.
Without these essential components, teaching degenerates into a disjunctive array of nonrelated activities that lead nowhere in particular. Teaching is too complex for the teacher to make the right choices subconsciously and automatically in front of the class.
Plans do not insure a good lesson, of course. Often the teacher's hypotheses are incorrect and objectives or the resultant classroom procedures must be reevaluated. This constant reexamination of techniques and procedures constitutes one of the most exciting facets of teaching. Teaching should
436 Part Two: Practice
not be a static state but should progress toward the realization of the teacher's total capability. The teacher who ceases to learn from teaching has ceased to teach.
It is possible to have a vibrant class hour without a written lesson plan. There are times when unanticipated student reaction may cause the teacher to abandon the lesson plan in order to respond to the students. This type of interaction can be exciting and rewarding to both the teacher and the students. Teaching without teacher-student interaction is impossible, but the teacher should be in control of the overall direction this interaction takes. Lesson plans should be aids to productive teaching, not restrictive limits placed upon what can happen. The teacher should be flexible in following the anticipated guidelines. At the same time she needs always to keep in mind that she, not the class, should set the pace. The students may be quite content with a crawl, but the teacher's responsibility is to see to it that they cover as much ground as possible. In the long run, most students respond more agreeably to a feeling of satisfaction from a job well done than they ever do from wasting time in a state of semi-inertia.
As was stated in the preceding paragraph, lesson plans do not have to be written. An experienced teacher may be able to proceed quite well on any given day without writing a lesson plan. This does not mean that there is no plan, however. The experienced teacher has a sufficient background to be able to specify objectives and plan appropriate activities without writing them. The important thing is that she must be able to state them if the class is to have any continuity and direction. The ever-present danger is that she may simply follow the book without having any definite objectives. In such a case the teacher is undoubtedly placing severe limitations upon her teaching potential and effectiveness. The tragedy of such a situation is that it is entirely possible that she may not be aware of what her true capabilities are. She may succumb to the self-deluding egotism to which any teacher is susceptible, i.e., "I am conducting the class with relatively few problems; therefore, I am doing a good job." Such a situation is quite possible without any consideration of goals or objectives. However, good teaching is goal-oriented, requiring both goals and plans for their attainment.
The beginning teacher should prepare complete lesson plans. He is in the same situation as a student in mathematics who is learning a new problemsolving technique. At first, he must follow all the steps carefully in order to understand fully the entire process. Later, certain shortcuts may be taken that eliminate unnecessary minor details and make the work more efficient. The
Lesson Planning 437
same concept is true in the preparation of lesson plans. The beginning teacher needs considerable practice in formulating specific objectives and correlating them with appropriate classroom activities. Establishing the connection between objectives and activities is not so easy as it might seem at first, and the beginning teacher must concentrate on working from objectives through classroom learning situations to testing procedures. Once he has acquired a certain expertise in lesson planning, the beginning teacher can justifiably shorten the written portions of the lesson plans. However, just as in a math problem, he should still be performing all the necessary steps in his mind, and he should always know what his objectives and planned activities are before the class begins.
During this initial stage of teaching, the beginning teacher hopefully learns several things about lesson plans. First, he should learn that careful preparation in advance helps him to feel more secure in front of a class. Second, he should realize that good teaching flows from objectives to teaching situations and that good planning is reflected in high student achievement and consequently in high student morale. Third, he should become aware that an efficiently run class period requires a systematic selection and arrangement of classroom activities. Fourth, he should comprehend the continuity necessary from one day's plan to the next as the class progresses toward the goals of the unit or chapter in the text. And fifth, he should understand that certain portions of the lesson plan require more complete preparation beforehand than others.
The drills and/or exercises, naturally, are in the book, although they may need to be supplemented. The major problem is selecting those activities that are consistent with the chosen objectives. In presenting new material or in contextualized practice, however, the teacher himself must assume most of the responsibility for clear, concise explanations, related examples, and stimulating "real" language activities related to the content of the course. No teacher, even one with many years of experience, can expect to "pull off the top of his head" everything needed in the entire class hour.
The beginning teacher should place portions of his lesson plans, such as "real" language practice of any kind and presentations of new material, on file cards that can be reused. These cards can be pulled very quickly, especially the "real" language cards, for review activities. Also, much of the same material can be incorporated into new lesson plans in subsequent years. The students and text may change, but many good ideas and questions continue to be applicable. In addition, teaching from cards is much easier than trying to locate needed references on a sheet of paper. Even slight hesitations while groping for the next question may break the pace of the class.
The beginning teacher should reconcile himself to the fact that plans are always necessary. New material must be presented in a comprehensible
438 Part Two: Practice
fashion accompanied by several examples in the second language to check for student comprehension. Providing satisfactory presentations requires much forethought and searching of other texts. Presentations of new material should never be taken directly from the text itself. Another explanation with additional examples can make the difference between understanding and incomprehension for some students.
Application activities must be structured toward specific objectives, and they must be numerous enough to attain those objectives. Providing adequate opportunities to communicate in the second language requires forethought and creative thinking. A good system for any teacher to follow is to have on his desk at the end of each day a sufficiently outlined and prepared lesson plan, so that in case a substitute teacher should need to conduct the class the next day, he would have a prepared plan to follow.
The first decision the teacher or the department must make is to choose the overall objectives of the course. If she plans to teach the whole person, she should keep both cognitive and affective-social variables in mind in choosing the course goals. If she plans to teach a general introductory course, the typical objectives in second-language teaching at the present time are normally stated as "the ability to use the four language skills plus an acquaintanceship with the culture." More specifically, at the end of the course the students should (1) be able to understand native speech; (2) be able to express themselves orally, although not at a native performance level; (3) be able to read for comprehension; (4) be able to communicate in simple written form, again not at a native level of proficiency; (5) have an initial insight into the people and the way they live within the limits of the material covered in the course; (6) have a positive attitude toward second-language learning in general and toward the class in particular; and (7) have a working relationship with the teacher and the other members of the class.
The choice of objectives, of course, depends upon many factors—the students, the teacher, the community, and/or the times. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the objective dealt primarily with memorizing grammatical rules. During the thirties, the reading objective was accepted, if not liked, by many second-language teachers. Since World War II, the stress has been placed on the oral skills. Currently, the ideal seems to be to develop courses in response to student interests and goals; the practice seems to be to work with all four skills and culture in the beginning courses. Given the context of her particular situation, the teacher may choose any, or all, of these objectives depending upon the students, the community in which she teaches,
Lesson Planning 439
the facilities and materials available, and her own capabilities and energy. Ideally, teacher objectives will coincide with student objectives. In any given set of circumstances, the closer teacher objectives correlate with student objectives the more satisfactory the course will be to the students.
The teacher's next step is to select a text. Given her objectives and philosophy of learning and of language, she attempts to adopt textual materials that are consistent with both. If she feels that learning is primarily a matter of conditioning and that language is conditioned behavior, she chooses an audio-lingual book. If she thinks of learning as mental understanding and acquisition of concepts and language as rule-governed, creative behavior, she chooses a cognitive book. If she accepts portions of both viewpoints, she chooses a middle-of-the-road book or selects either an audio-lingual or a cognitive text with the idea of supplementing it with related materials from the other approach.
Two misconceptions related to textbook selection are common in the field. The first is that the text controls the relative emphasis that can be placed on each of the four language skills. Such is not necessarily the case. For example, the teacher can and should practice the reading and writing skills in an audio-lingual text. The only limitations are her own ingenuity and time. Conversely, the teacher can and should practice the oral skills with cognitive materials. The premise that students can learn oral skills only by means of mimicry-memorization practice and pattern drills is demonstrably false. Again, the only limitations are the teacher's ingenuity and time. Admittedly, audio- lingual texts have stressed the oral skills, and cognitive texts the written skills, but there is no theoretical basis for such a distinction. Nor is there any justification for the teacher blindly following the author's lead. Cognitive materials can be used to emphasize the oral skills just as stimulus-response materials have been prepared to teach reading and writing. 1
Another misconception is that really using the second language must be put off for a long time. The students cannot speak the second language in second year; they must wait until third year. The teacher cannot use the second language in class the first year; she must wait until the following year. The implication seems to be that some magic moment exists beyond which the students suddenly become liberated and their tongues loosened. No such point exists. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing should be brought to the skill level by the end of each section of the book. Only in this way can the overall goal of being able to use each skill, within the limits of the vocabulary and structure covered in the course, be achieved. Waiting only thwarts acquisition.
’Most programmed materials are based on the same conditioning theories underlying audio- lingual materials, and several of these are designed to teach reading and/or writing.
440 Part Two: Practice
The preceding two paragraphs state that almost any basic, introductory series can be adapted to the overall objectives of being able to understand, speak, read, and write the second language. Obviously, her personal preferences determine which text receives the highest rating in the teacher's own estimation. (See appendix 4 for a discussion of textbook selection.) More important than the objectives in determining which text to use is the approach to learning and language that the authors take.
Once the textbook has been selected, the teacher begins to divide the academic year into units. Taking into consideration his goals, the amount of supplementary material that needs to be included in order to implement these goals, and the students in the class, the teacher makes a decision as to how much of the text he wants to try to cover during the course of the year. However, the teacher obviously cannot predict exactly at the beginning of the semester just how the class will progress through the materials, and he should be prepared to vary his schedule according to student response. Depending upon the caliber of students in his class and his ability to work with the group, he may need to speed up or slow down his schedule.
In general, although trying to finish the book for the sake of finishing is frowned upon by some practitioners in the field, such a practice is adopted in many cases. (Usually, the teacher is frustrated in the attempt!) Authors of early audio-lingual texts divided the material into twelve to fifteen units. Such a division meant that approximately three weeks were to be spent on each unit. Prior to this format, the majority of the texts contained thirty to thirty-six chapters, which meant that there was approximately one chapter for each week in the school year. Some authors have adopted a format of a lesson for every two class periods.
The beginning teacher should not interpret the preceding examples to mean that each section of the book will be covered in identical periods of time. Preparing each section of the text to be exactly equal in difficulty is impossible. The assimilation of the material in some chapters may take longer than in others. Too, as the year continues, the content usually becomes more complex, and the speed with which the chapters are covered diminishes. Therefore, the teacher may want to speed up in the beginning weeks in anticipation of this slowdown. An opposite view is that the class should proceed at an especially slow speed during the first few weeks in order to adjust fully to the process of learning a language, or to review past material.
Nor should the beginning teacher interpret the preceding discussion to mean that each division of the text is a separate entity. Each segment should merge with the previous one, if at all possible, and the teacher should attempt to interrelate the material from different units. However, the teacher may unconsciously contribute toward creating sharp dividing lines by the manner in which the class progresses from one unit to the next.
Each division of most texts has three sections: (1) a dialog or a reading, (2) a series of exercises or pattern drills designed to teach the structure, and (3) some elementary application activities. Just as the teacher has a tendency to separate each unit or chapter from preceding ones, he may even tend to separate the sections from each other by doing section 1, then section 2, and finally section 3. This is a tendency to be avoided. All sections of a unit should be welded into a whole. For example, important structures from the first few lines of a dialog or reading should be studied and practiced without delay. As soon as these same structures can be manipulated, they should be applied in communicative situations. No good excuse can be given for waiting to do the related activities until all lines of the dialog have been learned, and the same is true in relation to waiting to apply practiced concepts. The unit should be totally interrelated. The students can swallow material fed to them in a steady stream, but they may choke trying to gulp chunks.
The divisions themselves should also be interrelated. As the students are finishing the application activities of one unit of the text, they can be introduced to the dialog or reading of the next unit. The test can be given over the preceding unit as soon as all the "real" language practice for that unit has been completed. Either of the two procedures suggested in the preceding paragraph frees the teacher from having to spend (and the students from being asked to endure) entire class periods doing nothing but repeating dialog lines or reading or repeating pattern drills or doing exercises. 2 It also fosters a smooth progression through the book. Some grammar and some other content should, if possible, be included in each lesson plan.
The short-term objectives center around the content of the individual divisions of the book. Naturally, they should be related to and consistent with the long-range objectives of the language sequence and the course. Therefore, as the objectives were stated at the beginning of this chapter, the objectives of each section are to understand, speak, read, and write using the sounds, vocabulary, and structures of the particular segment of the book.
Having decided upon the amount of time to spend on each unit, chapter, or lesson and having consciously considered the long-range objectives in terms of specific content, the teacher is ready to begin to divide these segments of the book into manageable units of work. Normally, a week's work is considered to be the basic unit.
The teacher looks at the material in terms of the amount the class can cover in a week's time. This content is then divided into daily work. Such a plan, in rough form, provides her with general guidelines to follow during the course of the week. This plan, of course, is quite tenuous, but without it the necessary continuity from one day to the next is a haphazard process at best. Each daily lesson plan must fit into some larger context for a smooth flowing progression toward objectives to be achieved. In addition, the teacher soon learns that preparing a rough draft of the week's work is less time-consuming than the preparation of individual daily plans without the benefit of a larger plan.
As the teacher outlines the material to be covered during the week, she should be conscious of the necessity of providing continuity of sequence and variety of activities. The students should know fairly well what to expect before they come into the classroom. The teacher's task is to provide enough variety of activities within the daily plan to guard against boredom. She needs to select and arrange the content in such a way that the students proceed over a period of days from the introduction of a new structure to the ability to use that structure in a communicative context. The implication here is that each day the activity selected should be on a higher level of difficulty than that of the day before. Also of concern is the need to provide practice in all four language skills and to manage to incorporate all these elements into as many varied activities as possible.
Following is an example of how a chapter designed to be covered in a week can be divided into a rough, overall daily lesson plan.
Friday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Introduce new chapter in the latter portion of the hour. Do first part of reading and structural exercises plus "real" language review from previous chapter.
Do second part of reading and structural exercises plus applying content of Monday's iesson.
Do third part of reading and structural exercises plus applying content of Tuesday's lesson.
Do fourth part of reading and structural exercises plus applying content of Wednesday's lesson.
Friday: Apply content of Thursday's lesson the first quarter of the
period. Give the test over the chapter the next half of the period. Preview the reading and grammar of the coming chapter to be assigned for Monday the last quarter of the hour.
Of course, the teacher lists the specific exercises and page numbers. With texts divided into longer segments, the principle is the same even though an entire unit cannot be covered in one week. In fact, with a program in which the units are longer and lengthy dialogs are given, there is even more need to overlap the end of one unit with the beginning of the next. A good idea to follow with those texts is to learn at least half the lines of the new dialog while finishing the latter part of the previous chapter. Too, in the case of longer units it is possible to wait until the end of the unit to give a comprehensive test. Such a test normally takes the entire class period. (The teacher who uses a text with shorter chapters may wait two or possibly three chapters and give a longer test of this type, but the general tendency is to give a test at the end of each unit or chapter in the book.)
Following is an example of a weekly plan in which one unit in an audio-lingual text is being finished while beginning a new one.
Friday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
Introduce first four lines of dialog in new unit.
Do planned drills and application activities of previous unit and first four lines of dialog in new unit.
Do planned drills and application activities of previous unit and second four lines of dialog in new unit.
Do planned drills and application activities of previous unit and third four lines of dialog in new unit.
Finish planned drills and application activities of previous unit and fourth part of dialog in new unit.
Give a test over previous unit, and preview the assignment for Monday.
THE DAILY LESSON PLAN
The Three Parts of the Class Hour
In the daily lesson, the teacher attempts to put his knowledge of theory, language, the student, and general guidelines for second-language teaching into practice. He knows that the students do not suddenly acquire skills, so he
should plan to spend at least part of each period in review, in doing the assignment, and in introducing new material to be assigned for the next class period. Sequenced in this manner, the students are exposed to all assigned material in at least three consecutive classes. In attempting to build always from the old to the new, from the known to the unknown, he can organize his class period in the following sequence: review, view, and preview. Generally speaking, approximately one fourth of the class period should be spent in review, one half in viewing the assignment, and one fourth in previewing new material and making the assignment.
Objectives are often mystifying and frustrating to the teacher, but they should not be. Objectives are ends, not means. Objectives are goals that the teacher expects his students to achieve, not activities for achieving them. In the weekly outline, the teacher is not overly concerned with specific objectives. His attention is focused on content matter. As he begins to write a daily lesson plan, he analyzes the task before him, first being attentive to specific objectives he wants to attain—what he wants his students to know and to be able to do at the end of the week. He next analyzes the task, beginning with what he thinks the students already know and proceeds to develop a series of steps that the students must take to reach this objective. These steps are, in effect, minor objectives that lead toward the end goal of being able to use the content of the chapter in a communicative context in any or all of the four language skills.
The following kind of statement is not an objective: "Go over exercise D on page 56." Nor is the following: "Explain the agreement of adjectives." Neither is such a statement as: "Have the students review for the test tomorrow." While all the above statements include activities or suggestions that might very well be a part of the class hour, they are not goals to be achieved.
Of course, exactly what an objective is depends upon one's definition of learning. If one adheres to an external, mechanistic definition of learning, objectives will be descriptions of abilities that the students will be able to demonstrate, i.e., behaviors that can be observed. Thus, the connection between behavioral theories of learning and behavioral objectives is clearly evident. On the other hand, internal, mentalistic theories of learning must be stated in terms of internal mental processes, i.e., competence, as well as what the students can do, i.e., production and manipulation of forms and performance skills. Thus, objectives prepared in line with internal theories will include understanding and knowledge as well as manifestations of that understanding and knowledge. The reader should also realize that in pure
behavioristic theory, understanding is not a factor to be considered, since the goal of teaching is to condition desired responses to selected stimuli.
Although the more common terms found in the professional literature are either behavioral or performance objectives, the term being used in this chapter on lesson plans is instructional objectives. This term has been chosen because it has a broader, more inclusive connotation. It can be employed to cover all the classroom objectives: (1) the underlying knowledge and mental operations supporting performance skills as well as the performance skills themselves, (2) the values that cause people to act in certain ways as well as the actions themselves, and (3) the internal bases for external behaviors as well as the behaviors themselves.
There are at least three levels of instructional objectives. The first, understanding, involves cognitive objectives. The second, production and manipulation of forms, is both cognitive and behavioral. The ability to produce and manipulate the forms is predicated on a prior internal comprehension of the forms. The third, communication, combines cognition with performance skills to express knowledge and feelings. To cover the three stages of language acquisition, instructional objectives of different levels of difficulty encompassing internal and external factors and cognitive and affective- social variables must be included in the teacher's statement of instructional objectives.
In introducing new material, the teacher should ask himself how he can develop a meaningful learning situation for the students. His goal is to help the students to understand the structure and to be able to relate it to what they already know. This understanding need not necessarily consist of a formalized rule. The students may comprehend functional usage without being able to state a rule to support their knowledge. In this sense, the major objective of the preview section of the class hour is cognition, not behavior.
After the students understand the concepts involved, the teacher should seek to help them acquire the ability to produce and to manipulate these forms, to use the correct form in context. In audio-lingual classes, the procedure for accomplishing this goal is pattern drilling, and the objectives are behavioral. In cognitive classes, the objectives are cognitive and behavioral. What has been proposed in this text is to ask the students to learn to produce and manipulate forms in cognitive writing exercises that can be done as homework. This is due to the pressing necessity of putting the limited time available to the second-language teacher to its most efficient use. For those students who cannot learn to produce and manipulate forms by this means, habit-formation drills should be provided.
Once the students have acquired the ability to manipulate the structural forms correctly, they are ready to use these structures to express meaning. They are prepared at this stage to begin to attach meaning to form as they
express their ideas. The goals at this level in the sequence obviously involve cognition, affective-social factors, and performance skills.
As was stated previously, the first phase of language skill development is understanding. The understanding phase corresponds to the preview part of the class hour because it is during this time that the teacher explains new material to be studied. During the preview, the teacher actually has two goals. She wants the students to understand the concepts involved and hopes to motivate them to do the assignment to be given at the end of the preview. (Giving the assignment is discussed later in this chapter.) Before undertaking the preview, the teacher should carefully analyze the task she is about to ask the students to tackle. She should begin by delineating what they already know and what they need to learn. The objectives of the preview reflect this analysis.
The purpose of the subsequent discussion is to provide examples of the types of objectives suited to the preview, view, and review portions of the teacher's lesson plans. The teacher should be aware of the hierarchy of instructional objectives as the students progress from initial introduction of material to its functional usage and be able to distinguish among the types of objectives appropriate to each phase of second-language acquisition.
Preview The following objectives are designed to teach the verb to be to Spanish-speaking students. The lesson is for beginning students who know little English. The following objectives are representative of those appropriate for use in the preview portion of the class period.
A. Cognitive objectives
1. Concepts and relationships
a. Use of subject pronouns in English
b. Use of a or an before a singular noun
c. No plural adjectives in English
d. Only one you-iorm in English
e. Same person and number concepts with verbs in both languages
2. Forms of the verb to be and the meaning of each in a sentence
B. Cognitive and behavioral objectives
1. Ability to pronounce all the forms of to be with their corresponding pronouns
C. Affective-social objectives
1. Wants to learn a second language
2. Confidence in ability to learn the material and to complete the exercises
3. Feeling that learning the material will help acquisition of second- language skills
The danger of such a preview as the one outlined above is the very fact that much of the mental activity involves reflection as opposed to recitation. Students may participate in overt response but take advantage of the emphasis here on covert response to slip away into some pleasant dream world of their own. Therefore, the teacher should be mindful of the students as she becomes involved in the complexities of her presentation. She should plan as simple a description as possible, avoiding all unnecessary grammatical terms. She should never completely turn her back to the class. By conscious attention to the fact that she is on stage, so to speak, the teacher can cultivate the art of writing on the chalkboard while talking to the students, not to the chalkboard. Also, she should involve them in the preview as much as possible. This can be done by asking them to recall what they already know, either from their first language or from previous lessons. Later in the presentation she may ask them to do a few examples to test their comprehension. Asking them to demonstrate comprehension is infinitely superior to asking if there are any questions.
View During the homework assignment and in the following class period, the students take an additional step or steps toward being able to use the verb to be as they cover the assignment in class. This group of instructional objectives is designed to include (1) the confirmation of comprehension, (2) the production and manipulation of forms, and (3) the use of these forms to communicate with simple affective language activities or to discuss material in the text. The following are representative view objectives.
A. Cognitive objectives
1. Confirmation of comprehension of concepts, i.e., competence
2. Feedback as to appropriate language usage during contextual practice with the text
B. Cognitive-behavioral objectives
1. Ability to associate subjects and verbs correctly
2. Demonstrate when to use a and an , and when not to.
3. Demonstrate use of singular adjectives in English to describe both singular and plural subjects.
4. Ability to answer questions of the following type:
a. __ _ you? — I __
b. _I? — You_
c. __you? — We . .
d. _we? — You_
e. *_he? — He_
f. _they? — They_
5. Ability to write forms of the verb to be
6. Ability to pronounce and read aloud a short paragraph with forms of the verb to be
C. Affective-social objectives
1. Prepared for class
2. Attentive in class
3. Participating in class
D. Affective-social, cognitive, behavioral objectives
1. Can use learned forms to communicate about content of the text or affective language activities
2. Willing to try to communicate in the second language
These objectives are different from those of the previous class period. The grammatical content is the same, but the types of activities are different. In this phase, the teacher is trying to functionalize knowledge, to activate the concepts and relationships learned the previous day. One secret to success in teaching is repetition of concepts. The teacher realizes this and attempts to provide such practice. His mistake often lies in the fact that he repeats the material at exactly the same level of difficulty each day and expects the students to know the material. The important concept he needs to remember is to prepare objectives that enable him to repeat the same structures but in different contexts and at higher levels of difficulty. Nothing is worse than repeating the explanation given on the first day ad nauseum and then complaining because the students do not seem to listen attentively. There is no good reason for the students to listen if they know that the same thing is coming again tomorrow, and day after tomorrow, etc. Explanation is for the understanding phase. Another explanation has no place during production and manipulation. The students should be taken continually forward toward the end objective, not stalled in a daily rehash of past presentations.
One of the general guidelines to be followed is that not everything can be taught in a single day. In the example of objectives given above for the view, a slow class may not be able to progress so quickly, or a period may be too short to include all this work on structure and allow time for reading and other language skills. If so, the production-manipulation phase should be broken down into smaller sections and spread over more class days. For example, A, 1 and 2 and B, 1,2, and 3 (listed in the preceding outline) can be handled easily
in a short period of time, leaving B, 4 and 5, which are more difficult, for another day. The teacher may even decide to do A, 1 and 2, and B, 1,2, and 3 on one day, B, 4 on the following, with the introduction of writing and reading delayed until some later day. However, some work with part D should be included. The most important considerations that the teacher should keep in mind are: (1) the fact that he must maintain a progression of activities, within the range of the students' capabilities, which become more and more similar to true language usage; and (2) that he must sustain student interest and participation.
Review After learning to manipulate the structures, the students should be asked to apply these forms to meaningful situations, first over the text and then beyond the text. The last stage in language-skill development is contextual practice in a communicative situation over content related to the text but applied directly to the students. The review part of the class hour corresponds to the third phase, or "real" language stage, of language acquisition as the content is applied to student interests and activities. The following objectives are appropriate for the review portion of the class hour.
A. Cognitive objectives
1. Revision of interim language system
B. Cognitive-behavioral objectives
There are no new cognitive-behavioral objectives.
C. Affective-social objectives
1. Maintain confidence and interest as progress toward communicative competence
2. Participate in communicative activities with other members of the class
D. Affective-social, cognitive, behavioral objectives
1. Ability to understand an oral or written presentation with the verb to be on content related to themselves
2. Ability to answer questions with all forms of the verb to be in order to communicate ideas regarding their own experiences
3. Ability to talk briefly or write a short paragraph about themselves using the verb to be
4. Ability to participate in a conversation using the verb to be in situations similar to those in the text and in objectives D, 1, 2, and 3
Review does not mean a restatement of the rules for the "umpteenth time." Review literally means to "view again." Discussion of rules and first-language equivalents should be relegated to their appropriate place, i.e.,
the understanding phase. The teacher who continually refers to rules and first-language equivalents traps the students in a problem-solving learning habit. By the review stage, the students should have understood the concepts and learned to manipulate the necessary forms. The purpose of the review part of the class hour is the internalization of concepts and relationships into the communicative processes. Here the teacher gives the students an opportunity to apply what they have been learning, to arrive at the goals rather than stagnate on the means of achieving those goals (i.e., grammatical explanations and drills). Too often the students never have a chance to express themselves in the language they are studying. The review part of the class should provide abundant "real" language practice. The students should be able to expect to practice using the language to talk about themselves and their lives at least one quarter of the class hour. Since the students learn to do what they do, the language teacher is not meeting his stated purposes and accepted responsibility if he provides less
With his objectives carefully delineated on the basis of a complete analysis of the students' task, the teacher begins to select appropriate activities to accomplish these objectives and to arrange them in a sequential order. Selecting the procedures to be followed is, in a sense, easier than deciding upon the objectives, since many of the objectives imply certain types of activities. Of course, some activities may accomplish more than one objective, but each activity should have at least one cognitive or cognitive-behavioral objective. In most cases, there is a separate activity for each objective. Affective-social objectives are not the result of any specific activity per se, but of all the activities and the class atmosphere in general. However, affective- social factors influence all student activities, especially the real language practice.
Also, since the objectives are different for each phase of language acquisition and for each part of the class hour, the activities for each objective will be different. It is especially important that the teacher keep these differences in mind, since the progression from one phase to another and the necessity to practice all four language skills provide her with a built-in variety of activities in her classes.
A word about variety is appropriate here. Variety should be considered from the students' point of view. Changing from a substitution drill to a
transformation drill is still the same activity for them. Changing from an exercise involving one verb to one involving a different verb does not really provide much variety, either. The teacher should pay constant attention to selecting activities for the daily plan that are indeed varied. Normally,. ten minutes is long enough for any one type of activity. Those students in upper-level courses probably have longer attention spans than the beginning students, and drill activities need to be changed more often than application exercises. The teacher should always be aware of the students' reaction as any activity progresses and be ready to proceed to a new activity before the "glassy-eyed" stage is reached. Blank stares usually indicate blank minds. In the following pages, representative lesson plans, based on the objectives previously outlined, are given for the preview, view, and review portions of the class period.
Preview The selection and preparation of teaching-learning activities for this portion of the class hour require considerable preplanning. The teacher at times may not fully understand the concepts himself. Even if he does, understanding in and of itself does not guarantee an ability to explain any given structure to the class. (Student teachers are often amazed at how little they really know once the students begin to ask questions.) Just as important as the explanation are the examples chosen. They need to be geared specifically to the structure being presented and use vocabulary that the students can understand. These "just right" sentences sometimes are beyond the grasp of the teacher, and he needs to search through other textbooks until he finds what he needs. The preview is a basis for the sequence that is to follow, and it must not be slighted. Preparing a meaningful presentation is a crucial component in each learning sequence. Competence must precede "creative construction" of language, and the teacher should never rely solely on the text to provide meaningful presentations or to establish comprehension.
The preview should contain the following component parts: (1) explanation, (2) examples, (3) discrimination exercises or simple practice, and (4) assigning the homework. As was mentioned earlier in the text, the examples and explanation may be reversed depending upon the students and the concept being presented. This portion of the preview is followed by a comprehension check that the teacher structures into the preview to determine whether or not the students were able to understand the presentation. The assignment is given at the end of the hour when the students are involved in the presentation and interested in its content. Hopefully, the hour ends on a high point with the students looking forward to what is coming next. The lesson plan for Monday's preview would be similar to the following. (In this class the students are learning English as a second language. They have already
learned the interrogative and negative forms in English. Since this is a class of Spanish-speaking students, some of what the teacher says is in Spanish. 3 In this sample, teacher comments are in English but enclosed in parentheses to indicate a translation.)
SAMPLE LESSON PLAN FOR MONDAY
A. Review (15 minutes)
B. View (25 minutes)
C. Preview (15 minutes)
Objectives: (See pages 446-47. The objectives for activities 1 and 2 are A, 1 and 2, page 446.)
Activity 1 (IV 2 min.): This activity is conducted in the first language. It gets the students involved and indicates to them how the structures are used in context. As the students answer, the teacher writes their answers on the chalkboard, or asks another student to do so.
(Jim, are you tall?) (Susan, are you and Jim tall?)
(Ann, is your uncle tall?) (Arthur, are your parents tall?)
(Joe, am I tall?) (Margaret, are my wife and I tall?)
Activity 2 (3 min.): The teacher now tells the students that they are going to learn to say these same sentences in the second language (English). Next, he gives them the English equivalents for each answer, emphasizing the fact that the word tall is never plural in English. The English equivalents may be given orally or written next to the Spanish examples on the chalkboard. (This author prefers to write them, so the students can study them carefully and note the differences between the two sentences.) He also asks them in Spanish the difference in meaning between Yo soy alto, in which the subject pronoun is used and Soy alto , in which the subject pronoun is not used. He then explains that using the pronoun in English does not emphasize the person as it does in Spanish.
Activity 3 (IV 2 min.): This is activity 1 repeated with a noun rather than an adjective. Again the answers are written.
Arguments have been advanced for and against using the first language in the classroom. Obviously, the more the second language can be used with understanding, the more highly developed the students' listening comprehension is. The actual amount of first-language use depends a great deal on the concepts being taught and the teacher. Usually, if he keeps the language simple, the teacher can use the second language more than he may think. If he is careful to use only the second language during the production-manipulation and application phases of language learning, i.e., the view and review portions of the class, whether or not the first language is used in the preview probably makes little difference.
Lesson Planning 453
Teacher questions:
(Ed, are you a student?) (Pat, are you and Ed students?)
(Mary, is your brother a student?) (john, are your brothers students?)
(Frank, am I a student?) (jane, are Mr. Sanchez and I stu¬
dents?)
Activity 4 (3 min.): This is activity 2 repeated with nouns rather than adjectives. Again the English equivalents are given, and the differences between the two languages noted. These differences are focused upon without actually using grammatical terms such as adjective , noun, pronoun , etc. The students' functional knowledge of their native language should be sufficient to help them categorize the contrasts.
Activity 5 (3 min.): Repetition drill. (The objective here is B, page 446.) The teacher now leads the class in a repetition drill using both sentences.
Activity 6 (3 min.): The assignment grows logically out of the preview. At this time, specific exercises are assigned for the next day's class. The assignment normally should include some work from the reading or dialog as well as the exercises.
View This portion of the class hour may require less teacher preparation than the other two because the text normally provides a sufficient number of exercises. If, however, some exercises in the book do not seem appropriate, the teacher should not hesitate to omit them or to supplement them with more productive practice activities. View activities involve the establishment of competence and initial, elementary practice of performance skills as in the sample plan presented here.
SAMPLE LESSON PLAN FOR TUESDAY
A. Review (15 minutes)
B. View (25 minutes)
1. Structure
Objectives: (See pages 447-48.)
Activity 1 (5 min.): Giving answers to the cognitive writing exercises assigned for homework.
a. (B, 1 and 5) Choose the appropriate form of the verb to be to agree with the subject.
I_an American. He-old.
They_students. _you a teacher?
We_young. _she intelligent?
Part Two: Practice
b. (B, 2) Complete the following sentences with a or an according to the context. If no word is necessary, place an X in the blank.
He is_actor.
They are_teachers.
I am_student.
We are_Americans.
She is_Mexican.
Are you_students?
c. (B, 3) Write the appropriate form of the adjective given in parentheses.
I am (young)_
She is (old)_
They are (intelligent)
We are (tall)_
He is (short)_
You are (pretty)
d. (B, 4) Write the answers to the following questions with a yes or no answer depending upon the question.
Are you a teacher? Are you young?
Are you a student? Are you tall?
The answers to these questions are put on the chalkboard either by the teacher, by a student, or by one student for each exercise. The students check their papers, ask questions about any errors, and turn their papers in to the teacher. If there is time and the teacher wishes additional practice, the teacher can ask the students some of the questions orally.
Activity2(5 min.): (A, 2; D,1) Describe orally some students or other persons whom the students know and ask them to guess the identities of the persons from their descriptions. (Of course, the teacher needs to prepare these before class.)
Activity 3 (5 min.): (A, 2; D, 1) Two types of cards are prepared. On one the name of a profession is given. On the other a situation is described in simple terms or in English in which that person is seeking the aid of some professional person. For example, someone in your house is very sick. This person is looking for a doctor. The activity is for the students to get up and look for the needed person saying. "Pardon me, are you a doctor?" until he or she finds the person who can help.
There is no need to feel obligated to include both activities 2 and 3. If activity 2 is going well, save activity 3 until another day. Each may be varied to use other forms of the verb being practiced.
For those students who have at this point failed to learn the forms of the verb or who choose additional practice with habit-formation drills, the teacher
should see to it that they have an opportunity to practice with him, with each other, with the tape recorder, or in the lab with drills similar to the following:
a. Repetition drill (Preview Objective, B, 1, page 446)
b. Substitution drill (Preview Objective, B, 1, page 446)
Model a student old
an American short
Students I am a student.
I am old.
I am an American. I am short.
c Person-number substitution drill (View Objective, B, 1, page 447)
Model Students
I I am young,
We We are young.
He He is young.
They They are young.
d. Question-answer drill (View Objective, B, 4, page 447)
Model
Are you young?
Are you old?
Are you an American? Are you a Mexican?
Students
Yes, I am young.
Yes, I am old.
Yes, I am an American. Yes, I am a Mexican.
Activity 4 (10 min.): Other assigned work, preferably either reading or writing over material in the text to counterbalance the focus on structure in the previous activities.
C. Preview (15 minutes)
Objective: (See page 448, Objective B, 6.)
Activity: Reading aloud the following paragraph:
John is a student. He is young. His father is a lawyer. He is old. They are both tall and intelligent. They are Americans. His mother is strong. She is a doctor. (This paragraph is then made part of the assignment for the next day.)
Review This portion of the hour requires extensive preplanning, since most textual materials do not provide sufficient amounts of "real" language practice and probably cannot due to the nature of the content. Planning interesting situations that encourage the students to talk or write requires a great deal of time, effort, and ingenuity. Searching for listening and reading materials with
Part Two: Practice
which the students can practice the receptive skills is no less demanding. There should be no reason for using the first language in this part of the class. During this period of time, the students should be using the second language within the limits of their language background in contexts similar but not identical to those in the text to talk about things that interest them and to which they can relate. The review should include practice in all four language skills. It should also include a large amount of interaction among the members of the class. Review activities would be on a functional, communicative level as in the following examples.
SAMPLE LESSON PLAN FOR WEDNESDAY A. Review (15 minutes)
Objectives: (See page 449, Objectives D, 1 and 2.) Activity 1 (5 min.): Personalized questions
Are you a student?
Where are you a student?
Are you young?
Are you intelligent?
Is he (signaling a classmate) a student?
Where is he a student?
Is he young?
Is he intelligent?
Am I a student?
What am I?
Where am I a teacher?
Am I young?
Are you students?
Are you old?
Are you tall?
Are you Mexicans?
Are Mr. Sanchez and I Americans?
Are we tall?
Are we young?
Are we actors?
Activity 2 (5 min.): Have the students ask similar questions of each other. Encourage them to include any other vocabulary words they know.
Activity 3 (5 min.): One student chooses to portray a well-known personality. The other students try to guess who it is by asking questions that can be answered with a yes or a no. The teacher can supply needed vocabulary.
B. View (25 minutes)
Objective: (See page 448, Objectives D, 1 and 2.)
Activity 1 (5 min.): Reading comprehension
a. Clarify difficulties.
b. Give a true-false test over the content.
c. Ask the following questions over the reading:
Is John a student? Are John and his father intelli¬
gent?
What is John?
Who is a student?
Is he young?
Who is young?
Is his father a lawyer? What is his father? Who is a lawyer?
Are they strong?
Who is strong?
Is his mother a doctor?
What is his mother?
Who is a teacher?
Is the family Mexican?
What nationality is the family?
Remainder of assignment (20 minutes)
C. Preview (15 minutes)
For the next day the students are to write a description of themselves and their families using the forms previously practiced.
The preceding samples are not complete lesson plans, only the portions related to the sequencing of activities involving the ability to use the verb to be. The plans need activities based on the reading or dialog to be well proportioned. Too, the sequence from introduction of the verb to be to the functional level in all four language skills has not been finished. On Thursd-ay, the students should be prepared to write short descriptions of themselves, their friends, or their families. Friday would be spent either giving a sustained oral presentation about a similar topic or in conversation groups.
Using lesson plans of this type helps the teacher to keep track of the sequence of learning activities. Such a sequence also constantly reminds her of the importance of "real" language activity. In addition, the teacher should keep in mind that the students prepare for less than half of the class time. Approximately one fourth of the time (the preview) is the teacher's responsibility The other fourth depends upon both the teacher and the students. If their jobs are done well, the teacher and the students should be prepared to enjoy the application activities because it is during this time in class that they both reap the fruits of their labors.