TKT Core Module 2: Lesson planning and use of resources for language teaching

Unit 21: Planning an individual lesson or sequence of lessons

Individual Lesson:

Aims + Shape (Techniques/Method/Approach/Procedure)

Shape:

Grammar Lesson: PPP or TBL

Skills Lesson:

 Receptive Skills- Task/Activities before, while and after Reading/Listening

 Productive Skills- Introductory Stage ( to set context or scene), Input Stage, Activity Stage
(Speaking/writing), Feedback Stage

Procedures follows the aims of the lesson ( What and how to achieve it). Procedures or shape depend
on available materials, task and activities that help to achieve the aim.

Sequence of Lesson:

A number of lessons to develop language knowledge or skills

Sequence of a single topic or language area

 Planning an Individual Lesson

 Planning a Sequence of Lessons
Planning an Individual Lesson

Important Components of Individual Lessons: Materials, Stages, timing: how to begin and how to finish.

Lesson should be motivating, Coherent and at appropriate level.

Language Lesson VS Skills based Lesson : Focus on Features and tasks for Controlled practice of
structure; VS developing abilities in receptive or productive skills and subskills through subsidiary aims.
  Planning a Sequence of Lessons

Syllabus and Units of a course work.

Advantage and Disadvantage do Scheme of lessons

Learning Styles (for both Single or sequence of lessons)
Plan a Sequence of lesson now

Key concepts in this guide

By the end of this guide, you should be able to understand and use these key concepts:

 lesson types and structures

o PPP
o TTT
o TBL
 lesson purposes
o presenting
o extending
o revising
 staging lessons
o structures
o skills
o revision
 sequencing lessons
o targeting
 o learning
o integrating
o assessing

Look out for these words like this in the text.

There will be tests at the end of the guide for you to check that you understand the ideas.

Three alternative lesson structures

There are almost as many ways to plan a lesson as there are teachers to teach them.
Before we can begin to plan a lesson or a series of lessons, however, we need to be clear about
what sort of lesson we are designing.
Here we will consider three basic lesson structures and look at what they are appropriate for and
how we can plan them.
Here's a picture:

And here's the explanation:

1. PPP refers to Present → Practice → Produce.  This is a very common framework for
lessons of all kinds.  It is familiar, simple and often effective.  It usually works like this:
1. The topic and target are introduced at the outset.
2. The core of the lesson lies in progressively less controlled practice.
3. At the end, the learners can use the language in a personal way for real
communication.
2. TTT refers to Test → Teach → Test and is almost equally common and but is less
straightforward to plan because the teacher must respond and adapt to what emerges from
the first testing stage.
1. The lesson begins with tasks to test the learners' ability to do things with the
language.  This alerts both the learners and the teacher to what needs to be
improved or learned.
2. The actually teaching and practice come next with the focus on analysing and
practising.
 3. Finally, the tasks are repeated or new, parallel ones are set to allow everyone to
judge how well the lesson's targets have been achieved.
3. TBL refers to Task-Based Learning.  This is not common as a structure but has great
advantages in terms of requiring the learners to use their language skills to the full right
from the beginning.  It is also useful if you have a very mixed-level group of learners
because they can all achieve the task in some way.
There are differences in how people plan lessons of this kind with some preferring to
teach language first and some preferring to teach the language after the task is complete
so the sequence could be:
1. Possibility 1:
1. Presentation of the task
2. Do the task
3. Report back on the task outcomes
4. Analysis of the language produced with correction
5. Practice of the language the learners needed to command.
2. Possibility 2:
1. Practice of the language the learners will need
2. Presentation of the task
3. Do the task
4. Report back on the task outcomes
5. Revisit, revise and extend the language skills and systems

All three lesson types can be used to target skills, systems and integrated skills and systems.
All three structures can also be used for all kinds of lessons although some are better suited to
presentation of new language and skills and some to revision and extension of language and
skills already learned.

Three alternative lesson purposes

Lessons can have three main purposes, too, although many lessons have a combination of these.

1. To teach something completely new: presenting

2. To extend knowledge and skills from what is already known: extending
3. To revise and provide more practice: revising

Task 1: Think about these situations and decide what lesson structure(s) is/are best suited to the
targets of the lesson.
Click on the when you have thought what goes in the right-hand column.
... is a suitable lesson structure ...
Target
because ...
Teaching past-tense forms to a group of beginners

Revising and practising intensive listening skills

Focusing on questions forms and functions to do with

giving and getting opinions

Target ... is a suitable lesson structure ... because ...

If they really are nearly beginners and have never met the forms then a PPP
Teaching past- approach is probably well suited.
tense forms to a A TTT approach would not be helpful because the answers to any test
group of beginners would be random.
A TBL approach at this level for this target would be difficult to design and
manage.
A TTT approach would be useful because it would focus the learners on
using the skill to perform a task at the beginning.  The teaching could then
focus on listening strategies and the class could practise applying the
Revising and
strategies at the end.
practising intensive
A PPP approach would be in danger of being dull because the learners
listening skills
already know about intensive listening.  They need practice not
information.
A TBL approach is usually unsuited to focus on a single skill as it
intentionally provides integrated language and skills practice.
A PPP approach could work well if the class are at a level where they need
a focus on question forms before using them to perform the function of
Focusing on asking about opinion but this approach would also need to focus on giving
questions forms opinions and that might be too much for a presentation.
and functions to do A TTT approach could work if the task at the beginning alerts the learners
with giving and to the fact that they need more language and more options to perform the
getting opinions functions successfully.
A TBL approach centred on a task to survey the opinions of other students
(or the general public or staff at the institution) could work very well
because the topic is suited to some kind of report presentation.

Decision time

Before you can get down to planning a lesson, you need to decide:

1. What is the purpose of my lesson?

2. What lesson structure(s) would be suited to this purpose?
Staging lesson procedures
A PPP presentation lesson

These will need three stages at least.  Here they are:

1. presenting the new language or skill

2. carefully practising the language or skill in a situation which avoids too much error.  In other
words, this stage must be quite tightly controlled
3. using the new language or skill more freely and in a way which is personal and clearly relevant
to the learners

Task 2: Read through the plan to identify:

1. When the language is presented

2. When controlled practice happens
3. When the learners use the language more freely

1. Stage 1 (15 minutes) is the presentation phase.

Here the learners look at the pictures and try to identify the name of the activity.  If they
can't, the teacher has to provide it (or the learners could use their dictionaries / ask each
other etc.).
Note that the teacher's job here is to supply and model language.  That's what
presentation is all about.
2. Stage 2 (15 minutes) is very tightly controlled practice.
All the learners have to do is change positive sentences to negative ones and vice versa. 
They change, e.g., I like fishing to I don't like fishing or I like shopping to I hate shopping
/ I don't like shopping.
The aim here is to get the learners to use the language accurately so the task is simple. 
The teacher's role is to monitor and spot problems, helping people to get it right.
3. Stage 3 (15 minutes) is freer practice and gets the students moving around (often A Very
Good Thing).
Notice that the language is, again, personalised for the students.  They have to ask and
answer questions in a way which is true for them.  Making language personal makes it
memorable.
4. Stage 4 (15 minutes) is revision and a bit of fun.  If the lesson has overrun (it is planned
for 60 minutes but could take longer and probably would with a large class) then this
stage can be left until later and form the basis of a revision lesson.

The lesson staging can be used for many different purposes.  For example, it could easily be
adapted to present and practise things you are allowed to do (I can ...) and things that are
forbidden (We can't ... / mustn't ...).  All that's needed is some different pictures and a change to
the worksheet.
revision lessons
Task 4: There's no example for this because, rather obviously, it depends on what you are
revising.  For the two lessons above, however, think for a moment about how you might revise
the targets.

1. The personal likes and dislikes language could be recycled in a number of ways,
including:
1. getting the learners to carry out a survey of another group's likes and dislikes
2. reading a text about someone's likes and dislikes and reporting back
3. writing a letter / email setting out one's likes and dislikes
2. The report-writing lesson target could be revised by also:
1. getting the learners to tell you / each other how a report is written
2. getting the learners to write a report on something different
3. getting the learners to present an oral report to the class with one topic for each
group

The important thing is that language and skills lessons need to be revised.

Sequences of lessons

Planning sequences of lessons is a matter of applying the same sort of thinking but on a bigger
scale.  Over a series of lessons, a range of purposes and appropriate lesson structures will be
useful.
This will add variety to the course and keep the lessons fresh and engaging but it will also mean
you can match the lesson style to the stage of the course.  A short course series could look
something like:

Some notes:

 At the beginning of the series, many of the lessons would be PPP- or TTT-style lessons
because this is where we want to introduce and make our learners aware of the course
targets.
 In the second stage, we present less and practise more so the lesson types could involve
TTT or TBL or a mixture.
 At stage three, it comes to integrating the language and skills learned and for this project
work and other TBL-style lessons are ideal.
 Finally, we need ways of assessing how well the whole series of lessons has worked and
that is the subject of the next guide.

 What do PPP, TTT and TBL stand for?

 Three lesson purposes were mentioned in this guide.  What are they?