This Questionnaire is about the module “PLANNING Unit 1” as a makeup test for

those participants who could not make it on time due to several circumstances.

Juigalpa 0085-08-2022

By Sergio Beer, written on October 19th, 2022, this document will be handed in

on the 21st of October.

MADE BY: KEVIN JOSE TORREZ LOPEZ FROM JUIGALPA, CHONTALES

1. WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING FOR YOU?

Aims

One of the main principles of planning is establishing a clear aim for your lesson. It is

important that aims are realistic. If the subject is too difficult for the students, then

they can become frustrated and lose motivation. However, if the subject is too easy,

the students may become bored. Bored and frustrated students can often cause

discipline problems. So, it is important when planning to think about your particular

class. You may find it useful to bear these points in mind:

What do the students know already? If you are planning to introduce completely

new language items allow more time than if you are revising or extending a topic

the class are already familiar with.

What do the students need to know? If the students are studying for an exam,

for example, then you may need to focus on different skills and language than for

a General English class. Do your aims suit that need?

What did you do with the students in their previous class?

Do you need to plan if you have a course book?

Most schools provide their teachers with a syllabus and materials for teaching that

syllabus. This is often in the form of a course book. Course books provide a variety of

material in a structured way and can be a great benefit for the teacher and the

student. Howe ver, having a course book does not reduce the need for planning.

Here are some advantages and disadvantages of using a course book:

Advantages

A course book gives the students a sense of security. As the class moves through it,

the students can see the progress they are making and what they have achieved.

Course books are good resources for teachers, providing material and ideas which saves

time when planning.

A good course book can give a structure for a series of lessons, providing continuity

and consistency for the class. There is usually a logical progression of language items

including built-in revision as well as a good balance of skills work, with listening, reading

and writing practice as well as activities for speaking.

Most course books are written by experienced teachers of English. That knowledge

and experience is invaluable, particularly for inexperienced teachers.

How well do the class work together?

How motivated are the students?

All these factors are important when deciding realistic aims for your class.

Variety

As we have seen, it is important to try and keep the students engaged and interested.

Providing variety in a lesson and a series of lessons is a way of achieving this. Repeating

the same kinds of exercises can become monotonous and demotivating for students.
Where possible it’s a good idea to try and vary the kinds of activities, materials and

interactions.

When the teacher sits down to plan what they’re going to be doing, one of the things

they need to have in their heads is, how can I vary the pace of the class? How can I

vary the kind of thing that’s going to happen so that sometimes maybe the students

will be silent, sometimes they’ll be loud, sometimes they’ll be talking to me, sometimes

they’ll be talking to others, sometimes I’ll do a bit of writing, sometimes they’ll do a bit

of reading. If you vary the patterns of student to student interaction, if you vary the

kind of activity the students are involved in, if you vary the kind of material they’ re

looking at … there’s a good chance that most of the students will remain engaged and

involved. If you don’t build variety into your plan the danger is that they’ll switch off

at some stage.

Flexibility

However well you plan you never actually know exactly what’s going to happen in a class

until it happens! Exercises may take longer or shorter than anticipated, the students

may be more or less interested in a topic than you imagined, something unexpected may

happen during the lesson. In these cases, if the teacher sticks rigidly to their plan the

careful preparation may actually have a negative effect. Imagine our journey again. If

the road ahead becomes bloc ked, it’s no good trying to carry on, you have to find a

different route.

Careful planning is very important but teachers need to be able to adapt their plan

during the lesson to suit the circumstances. This is something that becomes easier with

experience, but in the planning stage it is often a good idea to consider extra optional

or alternative exercises. Then, if your material runs short or you think the class might

not respond well to a particular activity, you have something to fall back on.
 Similarly, teachers need to be aware of what is happening in and around the class.

Students may raise interesting points and discussions could provide unexpected

opportunities for language work and practice. The teacher needs to be flexible enough

to be able to leave the plan if such opportunities arise.

2. WRITE THE SIX ELEMENTS OF PLANNING? EXPLAIN (VIDEO)

The six elements of planning are:

OBJECTIVES: we have to keep in mind what students will learn in a lesson, think about

the specific knowledges, skill, awareness and language, also it needs to describes

something that can be measure, behavior that can be observe and what students can

do.

TIMING: Here we have to be flexible and we have to keep in mind how long each part

of the lesson will take, this will help to organize all the activities.

SEQUENCING: It describes what will happen during the lesson, the order in which it

happens, and how we will transition between activities and to the next lesson.

Many lessons follow this structure: WARM-UP, INTRODUCTION, PRESENTATION,

ACTIVITIES, EVALUATION AND APPLICATION.

DIFFERENTIATION: we have to include details about students’ interaction such as;

pair work, individual work and group work.

ASSESSMENT: we can use comprehension questions, short presentation, drills, short

quiz, written assignment or group activities for evaluate students, this can help to know

if students get the objective for the lesson plan.

MATERIALS: to get a good lesson plan we need to know what material will be necessary

this can include books, pens, handout and so on.

3. WHAT ARE THE TEACHING ENGLISH SKILLS OR COMPETENCES? IN AN

ORDERED MIND MAP

ENGLISH SKILLS

LISTENING WRITTING READING SPEAKING

ABILITY TO ENCODE ABILITY TO ENCODE

ABILITY TO DECODE ABILITY TO DECODE
THOUGHTS AND THOUGHTS AND
THE MEANING OF THE MEANING OF A
CONCEPTS INTO CONCEPTS INTO
AN AUDIO STRING WRITTING STRING
WRITTEN FORM ORAL FORM

4. BEFORE PLANNING YOUR LEARNING ACTIVITIES, WHAT ARE THE MAIN

ASPECTS TO CONSIDER? MIND MAP

STUDENTS
LINGUISTIC
LEVEL
ALLOCATED
TIME FOR
LEARNING
EACH
STYLE
LEARNING
ACTIVITY

Aspects
before
planning your
learning
STUDENTS activities
MATERIALS
AGE

LEARNING
SKILLS
CONTEXT
5. WHAT ARE THE 3 TEACHING METHODOLOGIES COMMONLY USED FOR

LEARNING A LANGUAGE? EXPLAIN

The receptive skills are listening and reading, because learners do not need to produce

language to do these, they receive and understand it. These skills are sometimes known

as passive skills. They can be contrasted with the productive or active skills of speaking

and writing.

The productive skills are speaking and writing, because learners doing these need to

produce language. They are also known as active skills. They can be compared with the

receptive skills of listening and reading.

The language skills of speaking, listening, writing and reading are often divided into

sub-skills (VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR), which are specific behaviours that

language users do in order to be effective in each of the skills.

6. HOW DO YOU APPLY THESE 3 TEACHING METHODOLOGIES BEFORE

MENTIONED WHEN TEACHING? USE YOUR COMMON SENSE AS A

KNOWLEDGE PROVIDER AND TRY TO WALK IN THE STUDENT´S SHOES.

ALL THESE ARE ACORDING TO THE LEVEL OF STUDENTS.

RECEPTIVE SKILLS

1) Pre-teach vocabulary

As with the ‘present’ stage of a vocabulary lesson, elicit, drill and concept check any

vocabulary that I can predict students will need to navigate the reading or listening

material they will work with.

2) Gist reading/listening

When students have demonstrated their understanding of the target vocabulary, set

a quick skimming task for students to get a first contact with the text or recording.

Gist tasks can be in the form of true-false questions, paragraph matching, ordering or

adding headings.
Remember: Make sure that you go through the task BEFORE you give them the reading

text. If they don’t understand the task information, they will not be able to read or

listen with purpose.

3) Detailed reading/listening

When students have got the gist of the text, they can move into some more detailed

comprehension or language work. Set questions which deal with the relationships

between points in the text, or which focus on use of specific language in the text or

recording. This encourages a closer analysis of the information being presented.

PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

SPEAKING

a. Rehearsal: To organize e.g. a role-play for students in a shop or an airport offers

them an opportunity to rehearse a real-life event and the students get the feeling of

what is the communication in a foreign language like.

b. Feedback: Having students to present what they know, that means, to use all the

language they have learnt provides feedback for the teacher as well as for the

students. I can see what the students are doing well and what is needed to be improved.

c. Engagement: All speaking activities are highly motivating and the students find

those interesting to work on and to participate fully.

WRITTING

a. Letters: Students can write to make complaints, thank, ask for and give information

or advice, prepare job applications.

b. Creative writing: I can use pictures or begin a story and ask students to finish it.

Or I can use a personal situation where the student was happy, sad, surprised, shocked,

etc.

c. Diary: Ask my students to keep a diary.

 d. Discursive essays: Students need to present an argument, state points „for‟ and

„against‟ in a logical way, and write a conclusive paragraph. (This is often required by

Exam Boards.)

e. Instructions: It might be a recipe, directions, changing a wheel, cooking a meal,

making a cup of tea, repairing something or applying for a visa.

f. Dictation: A dictation can have a calming effect on young learners. It is also useful

for teachers who have limited resources and need to dictate a text for a reading skills

lesson. Alternatively, students can be asked to dictate to each other and to focus also

on pronunciation and listening skills. Dictations are good for spelling as there is no

direct link in English between the way words are written and the way they sound.

FOR EXAMPLE

Beginners/Elementary they can write:

a. Descriptions (home, family members and friends, your job, a place etc.)

b. short biography of self, family member or famous person

c. emails to a friend etc

SUB-SKILLS

Vocabulary is taught by using words related to the place where students live, also I

use pictures to describe the meaning of words.

Grammar is taught by using complete sentences, paragraph or text according to the

level of students.

7. WRITE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES.

Why do some people almost achieve the native speakers’ levels of competence in a

foreign language while others never seem to progress much beyond a beginner’s level?

Some second language learners make rapid and apparently effortless progress while

others progress only very slowly and with great difficulty. The reason probably is that

people are not homogenous! They have different personalities and styles.
Humans differ from each other due to many biological or conditioned factors (affected

by nature) or unconscious forces (affected by past experiences). The many ways in

which one learns about these differences are usually similar, through introspection and

interaction with other people, or by reading books and watching television or cinema.

However, in order to conduct research in individual differences, it is necessary to have

rigorous instruments, and a scientific way of providing reliable and valid. The

differences that one can explore are:

A. Age

B. Sex

C. Aptitude

D. Motivation

E. Learning Styles

F. Learning Strategies

G. Personality