Lesson Planning - Part 9 - Correction
When our answers are not correct then, obviously, they need to be corrected but it is quite important that we go through a process of correction that will help students. Quite often they've made a mistake simply because of something like reading the incorrect answer out or misrepresenting what they've actually written down. So, always give the opportunity when a mistake has been made for the student to self-correct first. We can often do this in a nonverbal way to show them that they're not actually correct. We might repeat back what they've said to us in a questioning manner or we may just make a gesture to make sure that they understand that they're not correct. So, we allow for a process of self-correction. It may be that the student has actually got the answer wrong and so we move on from there. Is there somebody in the class who can give us the correct answer? So moving on to peer correction. Again, it may be possible but that we're not able to get the correct answer from anybody in the class and then we can step in a teacher. So, the teacher will correct. So, we actually go through a process of allowing them to correct themselves if possible. If they can't, can one of their peers correct them and if they can't, the teacher corrects. It is important that we go through this process and that we don't just immediately go into teacher correction. "John, no, that"s wrong. The answer is X Y or Z." Try to allow this process to take place. In conclusion to this particular presentation, we thought about how we can go about planning an individual ESA lesson plan. Obviously, when we're teaching, we're going to be needing to plan for every day or every other couple of days with any particular class. So, we have to create a sequence of lessons. Just a couple of things to consider when you're doing your lesson planning for a sequence. Firstly, what are the goals or the aims of this particular course that you're teaching? Does it lead to an examination? Is there a particular syllabus that you have to cover and is there a particular route through that syllabus? So, when you're planning a sequence of lessons, have a look at what the students are supposed to be able to do by the end of your course in terms of the syllabus and any examination that's taking place. Whilst we may be working towards some particular end, it is important that when planning a sequence of lessons that we remain flexible. In other words, can we adjust that sequence to their needs? We may say that I'm planning two particular lessons on the present continuous but the students are finding difficulty with it. Is it possible within your sequencing to allow for three or maybe even four lessons and will that still fit into the overall scheme of things? Finally, it's important to add some variety into the teaching and quite often within all of these requirements, there will be the actual skills that the students have to pick up and those will be the productive skills and receptive skills. So, make sure that all the elements of speaking, writing, reading and listening are covered in your overall sequence of lessons. So what we've covered here are the reasons why we plan, how to go about planning, what should actually be inside it and we've also covered an actual lesson plan to show you how it's filled out. Hopefully, by planning your lessons, you will give yourself a clearer focus as to where your classes are going and it will present much more straightforward classes to your students.
Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next.
While various styles of teaching focus on grammar translation, vocabulary and lexicon, pronunciation drills and habit forming, and fluency building exercises; the ESA approach is unique in that it is divided up into three distinct parts and incorporates aspects of the various available approache.
The ESA method draws on task based learning as well as community language learning and teaching in order to build language proficienc.
The approach additionally incorporates elements from PPP (Presentation, Practice, and Production) and Grammar-Translatio.
The three components of the ESA method are Engage, Study, and Activate; with the only rules of the approach really being that every lesson should start with and Engage section and end with an Activate sectio.
The lesson can otherwise proceed with however many engagement, study, and activation sessions the teacher desires and in any orde.
In the engagement phase, the teacher's aim is the get the class thinking about the language in question as a warm up for the rest of the upcoming lesso.
Engagement exercises could be as simple as naming a category and asking the students for words that fall under that categor.
Ideally, the engagement activity should flow into the rest of the lesson; however, this does not necessarily be the cas.
In the Study section of the class, the aim of the teacher is to build accuracy in terms of grammatical use of the lesson's vocabulary and in terms of proper pronunciatio.
This section permits the entry of activities such as worksheets and other tasks designed to build accurac.
The teacher also will have the most leeway in this section of the class to correct students and provide them with feedback on their wor.
The third and final section of the ESA approach, involves fluency building activitie.
Here, the teacher has less leeway for correcting student mistakes as the point of this section of the class is for the students to apply the day's material and to become comfortable with using it in as close to a real life setting as is practica.
This section of the class may be characterized by role-playing games wherein the students work their way through scenarios modeled after real lif.
The main thing that I took away from this lesson was the information concerning the various methodologies for teaching languages and in particular the information about the ESA approac.
I did find puzzling one particular aspect of this lesson's material and that was the point that the teacher should refrain from using the student's native languag.
This is understandable in that the students are there to learn the language that the teacher is responsible for teacher as opposed to the teacher learning the native language of the students in the same clas.
Additionally, the students require as much exposure to the target language as is possible for them to being to grow comfortable with using it and build fluenc.
With that said, I can imagine instances where it could be beneficial for the teacher to use the native language of the student.
These sorts of instances involve the teacher presenting a new concept or a set of new vocabulary to the clas.
In these sorts of instance, I can see it being helpful for the teacher to explain the new vocabulary to the class in their native language so that the class has an idea about the meanings attached to the new words prior to them attempting to use those word.
Putting aside my curiosity concerning this particular point, this lesson has given me a solid introductory understanding of how my lessons should be build and carried ou.
