Teaching a language lesson, even for experienced teachers, involves a degree of forethought, and this is typically realized in the form of a lesson plan, even if it is nothing more than a few notes on the back of an envelope.

• 11 Why plan?

• 12 Planning v spontaneity

• 13 Design thinking

• 14 Lesson shapes

• 15 The lesson plan format

• 16 The context (1): The learners

• 17 The context (2): Beyond the classroom

• 18 Aims, objectives, goals and outcomes

• 19 Formulating lesson aims

• 20 Backward design

• 21 Researching and analyzing language

• 22 Anticipating problems

• 23 Routines and rituals

• 24 Activity types

• 25 Staging and sequencing

• 26 Using coursebooks

• 27 Using authentic materials

• 28 Integrating technology

• 29 Using online resources

• 30 Using artificial intelligence (AI)

• 31 Collaborative planning

Why plan?

Why plan lessons? The question may seem redundant. We plan for the same reasons that we plan so many other social events such as meals, vacations, parties, or business meetings: however many times we might have experienced them, we can never be sure they won't spin out of control. Lessons are like that. According to Doyle (1986), classroom teaching takes place in conditions of multidimensionality (i.e., there are a number of events and processes going on); simultaneity (i.e., they are happening at the same time); immediacy (i.e., they happen quickly); and unpredictability (i.e., we can never be sure what is going to happen next). Given this complexity, it makes sense to have strategies to deal with it, one of which is planning ahead. Planning doesn't necessarily preempt the need to think on our feet, but it provides a degree of structure with which to mitigate potential chaos. Like a route map to a hiker or a compass to a sailor, it helps orient our journey.

And every lesson is different: we can't keep repeating the same lesson day after day, week after week. Even if the format is essentially the same, the content must vary – whether it is derived from a syllabus, a coursebook, or the expressed needs of the learners (or a combination of all three).

The way that the teacher's planning decisions are realized in-flight will require the capacity to adapt the plan in line with the actual classroom circumstances, as these evolve in time and space: no lesson plan, however carefully elaborated, can fully anticipate how the learners will respond to it. The teacher, therefore, needs the skills whereby the lesson can be managed so as to maximize learning opportunities, even in the face of the unpredictable.

• 48 Adaptive expertise

• 49 The physical space

• 50 The online space

• 51 Classroom management and instructions

• 52 Classroom interaction: the teacher

• 53 Classroom interaction: pair and group work

• 54 Challenge/push/pace/flow

• 55 Openings, closings and transitions

• 56 Using presentation software

• 57 Providing feedback

• 58 Dealing with emergent language

Adaptive expertise

We have seen already that even the most meticulously planned lessons don't always go to plan (see 11). Here is an example, taken from an actual classroom in Mexico (from Cadorath and Harris, 1998, p. 188):

Here, despite the unexpected contribution of one student, and the interest it aroused on the part of the other students, the teacher made the decision to stick to her plan. She may have had very good reasons to do this. Nevertheless, you can't help feeling that there was an opportunity lost here, and that the teacher's decision to go with the plan was in fact a lack of decision. She could, for example, have decided to get the other students to ask Jorge, in English, about his wedding, with a view to their writing it up as a news story.

The big picture

A language lesson is the product of a complex synthesis of factors that extend way beyond the immediate lesson itself. These include the curriculum, its materials and methodology, the learners’ needs and their learning goals, and the teacher's own preferred practices that are themselves an effect of their personal beliefs and values. Lesson design requires that these big picture factors be taken into account.

• 1 Curriculum, syllabus and lesson

• 2 Teacher thinking

• 3 Methods

• 4 Cultures of learning

• 5 Needs analysis

• 6 Syllabus design

• 7 Types of syllabus

• 8 Competencies and the CEFR

• 9 Coursebooks

• 10 Learner autonomy and out-of-class learning

Curriculum, syllabus and lesson

A teacher, Ana, is scheduled to teach an elementary EFL class at 11 am next Tuesday. In planning the lesson, this is not the sum total of the knowledge she brings to bear. The lesson presumably is part of a sequence of lessons (or scheme of work, see 59) that is one way of realizing the requirements of a syllabus. The syllabus may be tagged to, or even the product of, a specific coursebook. The syllabus and coursebook will, in turn, realize the overall goals of the curriculum.

The terms curriculum and syllabus are often used interchangeably, but it is important to differentiate them. Here are some definitions:

• 1. A curriculum contains a broad description of general goals by indicating an overall educational-cultural philosophy which applies across subjects together with a theoretical orientation to language and language learning with respect to the subject matter at hand. A curriculum is often reflective of national and political trends as well.

• 2. A syllabus is a more detailed and operational statement of teaching and learning elements which translates the philosophy of the curriculum into a series of planned steps leading towards more narrowly defined objectives (Dubin and Olshtain, 1986, pp. 34–35).

Important words associated with curriculum to note in these definitions are: broad, general, philosophy, theoretical. For syllabus, however, these words stand out: detailed, operational, planned steps.

Useful sites to check readability:

Lexical Tutor: https://www.lextutor.ca/

Oxford Text Checker: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/textchecker/

Text Inspector: http://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists/text-inspector

VocabKitchen: https://www.vocabkitchen.com/profile

Pedagogical grammars – some recommended grammars for teachers and/or learners:

Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (2006) Cambridge Grammar of English:

A Comprehensive Guide. Cambridge University Press.

Murphy, R. (2019) English Grammar in Use (5th Edition). Cambridge University Press.

Parrott, M. (2010) Grammar for English Language Teachers (2nd Edition). Cambridge University Press.

Swan, M. (2016) Practical English Usage (4th Edition). Oxford University Press.

Thornbury, S. (2019) 101 Grammar Questions. Cambridge University Press.

Thornbury, S. (2017) About Language: Tasks for teachers of English (2nd Edition). Cambridge University Press.

Online corpus sites:

English corpora: https://www.english-corpora.org/ (includes the Corpus of Contemporary American English [COCA], as well as many other specialized corpora)

Sketch Engine for Language Learning (SKELL):

https://www.sketchengine.eu/skell/ – provides examples, collocations and a thesaurus for learners of English

Webcorp: https://www.webcorp.org.uk/live/ – a tool for using the Web as a corpus

Word Neighbours: http://wordneighbors.ust.hk/ - for displaying how words collocate

Effective lesson and course design is informed by an ongoing assessment of its impact, which is traditionally mediated by testing, both formal and informal, but also by cycles of planning and reflection. This is particularly the case on teacher training courses, where the teacher may be observed by an external assessor. Less formally, the capacity to evaluate the effect of one's teaching decisions – both pre-flight and in-flight – is an essential component of a teacher's continuous professional development.

• 64 Assessment

• 65 Teaching an observed lesson

• 66 Evaluating the lesson plan

Assessment

Language assessment is normally done at three stages: before the course, in the form of some kind of diagnostic or placement test; during the course, in the form of regular but informal progress tests (known as formative testing); and, more formally, at the end of the course – what is called summative testing. Most teachers don't have much control over placement or summative tests (even if they have to live with the consequences of them), but they do have a say in how students are regularly tested throughout a course. And, importantly, it is these tests that provide feedback to learners (see 57), helping to make their learning ‘visible’, and suggesting pathways to further learning – what is called testing for learning, as opposed to simply testing of learning (Jones and Saville, 2016). These tests are often factored into the overall course plan.

In an ends-means approach to lesson planning (see 18), where the lesson is the means by which prespecified ends – or objectives – are achieved, it makes sense to allow time at the end of the lesson (and maybe at the beginning of the next) to see if, in fact, the objectives have been achieved. In my experience, teachers seldom do this, for three possible reasons: first, if they are observant, they can usually tell the extent to which the lesson has been successful, without having to go to the bother of a formal test;

Lessons don't exist in isolation but instead form the elements in a connected chain of teaching and learning experiences that stretch both back and forward in time, and beyond the bounds of the immediate classroom. Hence, lesson design is also course design: it involves being able to plan beyond the immediate lesson, factoring in regular review and recycling, and integrating out-of-class learning experiences.

• 59 Planning a scheme of work

• 60 Review and recycling

• 61 Retrospective planning

• 62 Negotiated planning

• 63 Homework and self-study

Planning a scheme of work

Planning beyond the individual lesson will depend a great deal on the context, including whether the programme is intensive or part-time, whether there is a coursebook and/or syllabus, whether the class is shared with other teachers, and whether any kind of needs analysis (see 5) has been implemented. But, irrespective of the context, there are core considerations that apply to all schemes of work. These are:

• ▪ Coverage: are all the relevant syllabus items included?

• ▪ Purposeful: do the individual lessons build incrementally towards an objective?

• ▪ Variety: is there a sufficient variety of activity-types, interactions, skills focuses, etc.?

• ▪ Balance: is there an even spread of activities and content?

• ▪ Cohesion: do the lessons connect with one another? Do they share a common theme or goal?

The conventional wisdom has it that, when planning a scheme of work, teachers start with an empty grid and simply slot in lessons according to the above criteria. Indeed, certain contexts (such as teaching on a university programme) will require detailed unit plans in advance. And for less experienced teachers, planning units of work – especially collaboratively – is a useful discipline. If so, as with lesson plans, a specification of the unit objectives is a good starting point, along with a strategy for assessing these objectives (see 64). The individual components of the unit can then be sketched in, perhaps using the principle of backward design (see 20).

Lessons have different objectives and take place in a wide variety of contexts and formats, involving a range of learner needs and abilities. This section addresses some of the most common of these variables, and outlines the options that teachers need to consider in order to ensure that learning opportunities are optimized.

• 32 Planning a focus on listening

• 33 Planning a focus on speaking

• 34 Planning a focus on reading

• 35 Planning a focus on writing

• 36 Planning an integrated skills lesson

• 37 Planning to teach grammar

• 38 Planning to teach vocabulary

• 39 Planning to teach pronunciation

• 40 Planning for content-based instruction

• 41 Planning for task- and project-based instruction

• 42 Planning for learning opportunities

• 43 Blended and flipped learning

• 44 Learner-centred lessons

• 45 Special needs and individualization

• 46 Teaching one-to-one

• 47 Teaching large, multi-level classes

Planning a focus on listening

• It's unlikely that a whole lesson will be devoted to listening activities, but it's not uncommon to plan a lesson which has the skill of listening as its primary focus.

The aim of most classroom activities involving listening is to develop learners’ ability to understand the stream of speech – which is not simply a case of knowing all the words and grammatical structures of the language. In fact, even after many years of study, second language learners are often surprised – even shocked – by how little they understand when they first encounter fluent speakers of the language. Hence, the aim of a listening activity is not so much to teach new items of language but to help learners recognize language they are already familiar with, to process the stream of speech in real time, and to make plausible inferences when they come up against gaps in their knowledge.

So, while the overall aim is understanding, the specific aims of a listening focus might include developing the ability to:

• ▪ perceive and discriminate individual sounds;

• ▪ segment the stream of speech into recognizable words;

• ▪ identify key indicators of changes in discourse direction and stance, such as discourse markers;

• ▪ use prosodic clues (such as stress and intonation) to infer attitude, to distinguish given information from new information, to recognize turn openings and closings;

• ▪ guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from context;

• ▪ use contextual clues and background information to infer meaning and make predictions.

The listening activities in this section invite the learners to respond to something they hear in a variety of ways: by physical action (‘Change chairs’, ‘Obeying instructions’), by suggesting immediate responses or questions (‘Predictive listening’, ‘True or false’) or by brief writing or drawing (‘Ground-plans’, ‘Altering and marking’). Significantly, none of them are based on listening ‘blind’ to the long stretches of audio recordings which often furnish the basis for listening practice in coursebooks and online materials; they rather involve listening and responding to input from the teacher as it is produced or, in one case, sorting out bits of speeches from video clips (‘Jumbled statements’). Essentially, all the activities in this section invite learners to listen, understand and respond to spoken texts through engaging with tasks based on interesting and enjoyable challenges.

Altering and marking

From Teaching Listening Comprehension by Penny Ur

Procedure

1 Tell the students to colour bits of the picture according to instructions: for example:

There are flowers on the table. They’re red, and they’re standing in a black vase. Got that? The vase is black all over, and the flowers are red … .

2 Then tell them to take a pencil and add things. For example:

Can you see a little baby in the picture? Ok, I want you to draw a hat on the baby's head. OK? A hat on the baby.

The importance of learning and reviewing vocabulary can hardly be overestimated; and the activities in this section provide opportunities both for vocabulary expansion (‘Looking up words you know’ or ‘Input enhancement’) and for meaningful repetition and consolidation (‘Do you remember?’, ‘A long and growing list’). Sometimes the tasks require encountering or using the vocabulary in context (‘Search a page’, ‘Connect two’), sometimes they focus on single items (‘How many things can you think of that … ?’ and ‘Pass it round’). Often the tasks suggested involve thinking ‘outside the box’: the ‘Odd one out’ activity, for example, does not dictate in advance which is the ‘right’ answer, but challenges students to find different right answers and justify them. But all of the activities provide opportunities for intensive, as well as enjoyable, engagement with English vocabulary.

A long and growing list

From Games for Language Learning 3rd edition by Andrew Wright, David Betteridge and Michael Buckby

The activities in this section typically target a specific grammatical feature, and then give the learners opportunities to engage with it through an interesting task that involves conveying (written or spoken) meanings. Sometimes this means communicative interaction (‘Question stories’); sometimes just playful suggestions (‘Oh!’). In any case, they make a welcome break from the routine gapfills and transformation exercises normally provided in coursebooks and online grammar practice. You’ll find that most of the activities can be adapted to practise features other than the one focused on in the original; and others, for example ‘Sentence repetition’ or ‘Student-generated test’, you can use for any grammatical structure(s) you like!

Adjectives on the internet

From Grammar Practice Activities: A practical guide for teachers by Penny Ur

Procedure

• 1 Brainstorm as many adjectives as the class can think of (up to about 30), and write them on the board.

• 2 Each student selects one of them and writes down its comparative form.

• 3 They search online for this form and find five different contexts in which it is used. These must be a) clearly understood and b) interesting or funny.