LESSON PLANNING

3.1 WHY IS LESSON PLANNING NECESSARY?

Proper lesson planning is essential for both novice and experienced

teachers. Although preparation does not guarantee successful lessons, walking
into a classroom unprepared is more often than not the beginning of a disastrous
lesson. Besides, students immediately notice if their teacher is prepared or not.
Unprepared teachers receive much less trust and cooperation from the students.

Lesson planning means making decisions in advance about what

techniques, activities and materials will be used in the class. It is obvious that
lesson planning is necessary, but why?

There is a common misconception that experienced teachers do not need

to do lesson planning. It is said they are so familiar with what they are going to
teach and how they are going to teach that they can just walk into the classroom
when the bell rings. However, as we have said, this is a misconception.
Ironically, people who have this misconception are not the experienced teachers
themselves. Experienced teachers also need to plan their lessons. Although the
main teaching contents may be the same, the students are different, the time is
different, and the mood is different.

Language teachers benefit from lesson planning in a number of ways.

Firstly, a clear lesson plan makes the teacher aware of the aims and language
contents of the lesson. It also helps the teacher to distinguish the various stages
of a lesson and to see the relationship between them so that the lesson can move
smoothly from one stage to another. The teacher can also think about how the
students can be fully engaged in the lesson. When planning the lesson, the
teacher also becomes aware of the teaching aids that are needed.

Teachers benefit from proper lesson plans in a number of other ways. For
example, lesson planning helps teachers to think about the relative value of
different activities and how much time should be spent on them. By comparing
the estimated time with the actual time taken for different types of activity, the
teacher soon learns to judge lesson stages and phases with greater accuracy.
Plans are also an aid to continuing improvement. After the lesson the teacher can
add an evaluation to the plan, identifying those parts which went well and those
which were less successful. This plan, with the teacher's comments and
corrections, provides a useful, time-saving reference when the teacher next plans
the same lesson.

3.2 PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD LESSON PLANNING

There are four major principles behind good lesson planning. They
are variety,flexibility, learnability, and linkage.

Variety

Variety means planning a number of different types of activities and

where possible introducing students to a wide selection of materials so that
learning is always interesting, motivating and never monotonous for the
students.

Flexibility

Flexibility means planning to use a number of different methods and

techniques rather than being a slave to one methodology. This will make
teaching and learning more effective and more efficient.

Learnability

Learnability means the contents and tasks planned for the lesson should be
within the learning capability of the students. Of course, things should not be too
easy either. Doing things that are beyond or below the students' coping ability
will diminish their motivation (Schumann, 1999).

Linkage

Linkage means the stages and the steps within each stage are planned in
such a way that they are somehow linked with one another. Language learning
needs recycling and reinforcement.

3.3 MACRO PLANNING VS. MICRO PLANNING

Ideally, lesson planning should be done at two levels: macro planning and
micro planning. The former is planning over time, for instance, the planning for
a month, a term, or the whole course. The latter is planning for a specific lesson,
which usually lasts 40 or 50 minutes. Of course, there is no clear cut difference
between these two types of planning. Micro planning should be based on macro
planning, and macro planning is apt to be modified as lessons go on.
 In a sense, macro planning is not writing lesson plans for specific lessons
but rather familiarizing oneself with the context in which language teaching is
taking place. Macro planning involves the following:

1) Knowing about the course: The teacher should get to know which

language areas and language skills should be taught or practised in the
course, what materials and teaching aids are available, and what
methods and techniques can be used.
2) Knowing about the institution: The teacher should get to know the
institution's arrangements regarding time, length, frequency of lessons,
physical conditions of classrooms, and exam requirements.
3) Knowing about the learners: The teacher should acquire information
about the students' age range, sex ratio, social background, motivation,
attitudes, interests, learning needs and other individual factors.
4) Knowing about the syllabus: The teacher should be clear about the
purposes, requirements and targets specified in the syllabus.

Much of macro planning is done prior to the commencement of a course.

However, macro planning is a job that never really ends until the end of the
course.

Macro planning provides general guidance for language teachers.

However, most teachers have more confidence if they have a kind of written
plan for each lesson they teach. All teachers have different personalities and
different teaching strategies, so it is very likely their lesson plans would differ
from each other. However, there are certain guidelines that we can follow and
certain elements that we can incorporate in our plans to help us create
purposeful, interesting and motivating lessons for our learners.

TASK

Thinking and sharing activity

Read through the following items and decide which belong to macro planning
and which belong to micro planning. Some could belong to both. When you
have finished, compare your decisions with your partner.
1. Write down lesson notes to guide teaching.
2. Decide on the overall aims of a course or programme.
3. Design activities and procedures for a lesson.
4. Decide which language points to cover in a lesson.
5. Study the textbooks and syllabus chosen by the institute.
6. Decide which skills are to be practised.
7. Prepare teaching aids.
8. Allocate time for activities.
9. Prepare games or songs for a lesson.
10. Prepare supplementary materials.
SOLUTION TO THE TASK

    Macro / Micro

1. Write down lesson notes to guide

Micro
teaching.

2. Decide on the overall aims of a course or

Macro
programme

3. Design activities and procedures for a

Micro
lesson.

4. Decide which language points to cover in

Micro
a lesson.

5. Study the textbooks and syllabus chosen

Macro
by the institute.

6. Decide which skills are to be practised. Both

7. Prepare teaching aids. Both

8. Allocate time for activities. Micro

9. Prepare games or songs for a lesson. Micro

10. Prepare supplementary materials. Both

 3.4 COMPONENTS OF A LESSON PLAN

The advantage of a concrete teaching plan is that teachers can follow it in

the class and check what they have done. This plan will be the basis of a record
of what has been covered in class, and will make it easier to make achievement
tests later. The teaching plans will be good records for the entire course. So what
does a lesson plan include? A language teaching lesson plan usually has the
following components: teaching aims, language contents and skills, and teaching
stages and procedures.

Teaching aims
The first thing to do in lesson planning is to decide the aims of a lesson, which
include what language components to present, what communicative skills to
practise, what activities to conduct and what materials and teaching aids to be
used.

Usually the teacher's manual accompanying a textbook will state clearly what
the aims are for each unit or lesson. However, classroom teachers are under no
obligation to adopt the same aims. The writer(s) did not write the textbook
specifically for their teaching context. So teachers may wish to modify the aims
and the approach recommended by the teacher's manual.

Here is part of a first year lesson. Study the part briefly and answer the two
questions that follow.
 Lesson 15
Ask and answer questions from the following table.

1) What do you think are the aims of this part of the lesson?
2) Three different teachers are about to teach the lesson. Below are their
introductions to the lesson. Which teacher has the clearest idea of the aims of the
lesson?

A. B.

C.

Among the three teachers described in Task 3, Teacher A is not thinking of the
aims of the lesson at all. Teacher B has thought about what language is going to
be taught in the lesson, but he/she is not aware of the language skills to be
practised. Teacher C has the clearest idea of the aims of the lesson. He/she is not
only aware of the language which is going to be taught, but also aware of what
the students will learn to do with the language.

Language contents and skills

In language teaching, it is important for the teacher to know exactly

whatlanguage contents will be taught and what language skills will be practised
in the lesson. By language contents, we mean structures (grammar), vocabulary,
functions, topics and so on. By language skills, we mean communicative skills
involved in listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Among the language contents, new vocabulary and structures often

(unjustifiably) receive more attention from both the teachers and the students.
However, teachers should be careful when deciding what vocabulary items and
structures to focus on in the class. Not all new words in a lesson are equally
important. The teacher should decide which words need to be practised and
which only need to be briefly touched. Similarly, not all structures have the
same status in the lesson. New structures need to be presented carefully and
practised. The teacher should also be aware of any structures which are practised
in the lesson, but which have been introduced in the previous lessons.

Teaching stages and procedures

Teaching stages are the major steps that language teachers go through in the
classroom. Procedures are the detailed steps in each teaching stage. The most
popular language teaching stages are the three P's model, which include
presentation, practice and production.

At the presentation stage, the teacher introduces new vocabulary and

grammatical structures with reference to their contextualized use. At
thepractice stage, the lesson moves from controlled practice to guided practice
and further to the exploitation of the texts when necessary. At
the productionstage, the students are encouraged to use what they have learned
and practised to perform communicative tasks. At this last stage, the focus is on
meaning rather than formal accuracy.

Although popular, the three P's model is not always applicable in various
language classes, especially the skill-oriented lessons. For example, it is not
desirable to adopt the three P's model in a reading lesson in which, the focus is
not on the presentation and practice of language points embedded in the reading
text. Rather, the focus is on developing reading skills. In practice, however,
another 3-stage model is frequently advised and adopted in reading lessons, that
is, pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stages. This model is also often
applied in listening lessons, which have pre-listening, while-listening and post-
listening stages.

The pre-stage involves preparation work, such as setting the scene, warming up,
or providing key information (such as key words). Thewhile-stage involves
activities or tasks that the students must perform while they are reading or
listening. The post-stage provides a chance for students to obtain feedback on
their performance at the while-stage. This last stage may also involve some
follow-up activities, in which students relate what they have read or heard to
their own life and use the language spontaneously.
After deciding on the teaching stages, the next thing is to design procedures or
steps for each stage. Some teachers do not bother to write out the detailed
procedures. It is not always necessary to do so, but all teachers should be clear
about the steps they are going to go through in the class. Some teachers,
especially some novice teachers, take it for granted that the steps will take care
of themselves as long as they have set up the main stages. This assumption often
leads to chaos in class. When a teacher has planned to present a new structure
(presentation stage), he or she needs to consider the following:
1) when to focus on the structure and when to study it in context;

2) whether to present the structure orally or in written form;

3) when to give out information and when to elicit from students;

4) when and how to use visual aids to help with the presentation;

5) what to do if students fail to understand.

3.5 SAMPLE LESSON PLANS

Now let's look at two sample lesson plans. The first plan is for a listening lesson,
but we believe the format is also applicable to task-based reading lessons as
well. The second plan is for a traditional dialogue-based lesson. Both plans are
taken from A Practical Handbook of Language Teaching (Cross, 1995). It
should be noted that, unlike other verbatim lesson plans, these outline-type
lesson plans function only as a guide for the teacher. A lot of preparation is not
written in the plans. Very often, these simplistic lesson plans are accompanied
by supplementary notes or handouts.
Sample Lesson Plan 1
Sample Lesson Plan 2