Prepared by:M.Derakhshan

    Abstract 

Lesson planning plays an important role in teaching any subject. Without a well-written lesson plan, a teacher, a beginning teacher in particular, may face a lot of unexpected problems during a teaching session. Language teachers, English language teachers in this case, are not exceptions. They need to have a well-written lesson plan in order to have an effective teaching. In this article I am going to introduce a three-stage lesson planning for English language teaching, i.e., preparation, presentation, and practice.

1-Preparation stage: refers to the introductory activities that a teacher should do in order to motivate the learners to learn.

2-Presentation stage: this is the core of any language lesson plan in which the new material will be taught.

3-Practice stage: the newly taught material should be practiced immediately after teaching. The practice can be of two types: oral and written.

Key words: background knowledge, context, preparation, presentation, practice

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Introduction

Understanding what a lesson plan is and what it does is very essential to any language teacher. I think that lesson planning is a kind of process which directs all the activities of the teacher in the classroom.

C Robertson (2006) says,

"A lesson plan is a framework for a lesson. If you imagine a lesson like a journey, then the lesson plan is a map. It shows you where you start, where you finish and the route to take to get there."

This definition from Robertson considers the lesson plan as a guide for an English teacher, the beginning and inexperienced teachers in particular.

"New or inexperienced teachers may want to or be required to produce very detailed plans_ showing clearly what is happening at any particular time in the lesson"(Robertson)

Some other people think about a lesson plan as a skill like other skills that should be acquired. Bob Kizlik (2006) says,

Lesson planning is a special skill that is learned in much the same way as other skills.

Like other skills, practicing lesson planning will make perfect. In other words, after years of planning lessons, you will have a mental map or framework for each lesson. As W M Rivers (1981) says the experienced teachers plan their lessons while walking down the corridor to their classes (p.483). Robertson's statement is in the line with Professor Rivers' claim,

"Very experienced teachers may be able to go into class with just a short list of notes or even with the plan in their heads."

If you want to be an effective teacher, you should be able to plan your lessons effectively. To have effective language lesson plans, a teacher should divide his/her lessons into parts. The parts have definite purposes. Adrian Doff says,

"There are four main things that a teacher needs to know before going to the class to teach a lesson.

1- The aim of the lesson.

2- What new language the lesson contains.

3- The main stages of the lesson.

4- What to do at each stage."(1990, p.93)

By the aim the author means what the purpose of language learning is" Are you teaching language for oral communication or for written purposes?" New language is related to "Are you trying to teach vocabulary? Do you intend to teach structure? Are you teaching pronunciation?" Identifying definite stages in a lesson plan helps the teacher to logically organize his/her materials. Logical order implies which parts or activities should come first and which the next.

For instance, preparation stage should always come first in a lesson plan since students need to be prepared and motivated for the task they are going to perform. Furthermore, the teacher needs to know what he should do at each stage. However, having a good lesson plan does

not guarantee success in teaching. Language teaching is a very complex process. Success in it depends on various methodological and pedagogical factors. Sometimes the lesson does not proceed according to the plan. Some new

and unpredicted problems rise during the lesson. A place should be left for flexibility. By flexibility I mean the teacher's ability to control the situation without getting embarrassed.

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Methodology

This paper is totally done through the descriptive, library method. The experimentation is the author's own experience in teaching.

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Discussion

The lesson plan which I have developed has three phases or stages, i.e. Preparation, Presentation, and Practice.

1-Preparation

In this stage, the teacher's task is to motivate the learners to learn the new linguistic material. This can be achieved in various ways; by putting the new material in a dialogue, using the new point in a reading passage, or showing a film in which the new linguistic item is used. In the classroom situation, a competent teacher may review the previous lesson by doing the exercises assigned the session before. However, doing the exercises is not enough to prepare the students for the new task. Activating students' background knowledge is needed in this stage. If our students have previous familiarity with the topic or the task we require them to learn, we will try to activate that previous knowledge.

Sometimes students totally lack the background knowledge about the topic. Here the teachers are required to provide the background knowledge needed for the presentation of the new item. Most students fail since they are not prepared for the task they are required to learn. (In the next article I will fully elaborate on the details and actual examples; here I am only discussing the theoretical principles).

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2-Presentation

This is the core of any language lesson planning. The teacher's task is demanding here. After preparation, the teacher tries to make the students understand the new material. Understanding different parts of a language lesson requires different strategies.

For instance, to make students understand the meaning of new vocabulary, the teacher may employ different methods, that is using or drawing pictures, showing slides and films, synonyms, antonyms, exemplification, and so forth. In the early stages of language instruction, the vocabulary is mainly of objective types, i.e. it can be shown or touched. So using visuals such as pictures, slides, other realia and demonstration is suitable at this stage.

In the later stages, when the students have acquired the basic vocabulary, the teacher can make use of this basic vocabulary to expand the students' vocabulary knowledge by giving synonyms, antonyms. In the higher levels, vocabulary can be taught through exemplification_ giving examples in the real context. Another strategy is to encourage the learners to guess the meaning of unknown words from the context. Still another one is getting students acquainted with the affixes in the language. The function of each can be described and taught. For example, prefixes change the meaning of the root and the function of suffixes is to change the parts of speech of the root. Using dictionary in a proper way is another strategy that teachers may employ to teach the meaning of new vocabulary. This technique helps learners to reach the independence stage in which the learners may start reading by themselves. Finally, translation, although condemned and disapproved in the modern methodology, can still be the last resort to teach the meaning of new vocabulary. Here I want to emphasize the last resort because some teachers in the real situation use it as the first way to teach new words. The other aspect of teaching new words is pronunciation. In the early stages pronunciation can best be taught by repetition on the part of the learners. In the later stages, after teaching the sounds of English, teachers may use phonetic transcriptions to teach pronunciation.

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3-Practice

Preparing the learners and presentation the new material in the best way is essential but not sufficient. If students do not practise the newly taught material, they will not be able to retrieve it when it is needed. It will soon fade from their memory. So practice is fundamental and necessary to any language lesson plan.

It can be done in two ways: oral and written.

A: Oral practice

Oral practice should be done in the classroom immediately after teaching. Oral practice is done to consolidate the newly taught material. In the textbooks, the section called "Speak Out" is designed for this purpose. If the exercises are not enough, the teachers themselves should supplement it.

B: Written practice

Oral practice consolidates the newly taught material, but it does not completely ensure that the students have internalized it. Therefore, some written exercises should be assigned as homework. This helps the students to be engaged in language learning even at home. The next session these exercises will be done in the classroom to review the previous materials. This review may be considered as part of preparation for the next lesson.

References

Doff, Adrian (1990) Teach English. Cambridge University Press.

Rivers, Wilga M (1981) Teaching Foreign-Language Skills. Chicago

University Press.

Kizlik, Bob (2006) Lesson Planning, Lesson Plan Formats and

Lesson Plan Ideas at http://www.adprima .com/lesson.htm

Robertson, Callum (2006) Planning 2 at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/planning1.shtml

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