Harmer (pages 375-377) identifies six issues that we should keep in mind when planning a sequence of lessons. Which issue is most important for you? Explain your choice.
I think the most important one among six issues is short and long term goals. When we start something, we have certain goals that we want to achive. It depends on how stable and firm objectives we have, whether we can reach the goal or not. Because clear goal is deeply involved in leaner's intrinsic motivation. The more we have motivation the less we are likely to give up when facing the difficulties in the process. That is why I think short and long term goals is the most valuable issue. So When techers plan lessons teachers should pay much attention to build up the stages effectively of short and long goals for students.
I think it will be changed according to the learners and their motivation towards learning L2. "Short and long term goals" can be important for the adolescents and adult learners, because they have a clear reasons of learning and want to achieve their own desires. It might be the good results from the tests or communicating with native speakers fluently. We should encourage the students concentrate on accomplishing their own goals with our lessons on which put emphasis. Otherwise, I will focus on the "activity balance" for younger children. They can easily forget what they've learned and lose interests. Through different kinds of activities, they can engage the class and their language skills will be reinforced. Therefore, as a teacher, we should find out what the learners' needs and can provide the most proper sequence of lessons for students.
I don't have much experience on teaching English. Therefore, it takes much time to plan a lesson. When I outline my lesson, I usually focus on the activity balance because teacher must not cling to a position. These days, course book is innovative and suggests various activities but it's not enough. I must decide on which one I will choose and abandon. Frankly speaking, I usually bring in new activities, which the text book doesn't comment. Whenever I enter the class, students ask me what kind of game we will do. I must be burdened but the more the students engage in the activity, the closer they can reach the success of learning. Since I took the TESOL, I have been using harmer's book to get the idea. Student's needs are changing. I told student to have penpal from a foreign country. Then, they are doing real-time chatting on the web. To satisfy students, teacher should invent varied activities.
The most important thing for me is activity balance. I think the effect of activities is very powerful .especially for young children. we have to choose the activities that should be helpful to our students. When the students do the suitable activity , they can get new things faster. So I think we have to spend much time to study various activities for our students. Most of my students are elementary students. When I give them for lecture-type teaching, they can pay attention to me for a short time and feel bored, at that time I notice it and have interesting activities to help the lesson. So to me, activity balance is most important.
In my experience during my practicum, when we planned a lesson we give more focus on the skills. The balance of it. We should see to it that in every lesson that we are going to tackle, the three skills of the learners will be developed. These skills I am talking about are; the cognitive (the most essential tools for learning, focusing on knowledge acquisition and intellectual skills and abilities), the psychomotor (relating to skills that require varying levels of well-coordinated physical activity and precise manipulative procedures) and the affective skills (dealing with feelings, emotions, mindsets and values, including the nurturing of desirable attitudes for personal and professional development skills). And it should be treated well before hand. These are written in the first part of the lesson plan which is the OBJECTIVES. For example your lesson is in THE SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE of the verb. Your objectives might appear like these; 1. To allow students to be aware of using the correct tenses of the verb. (COGNITIVE SKILLS the knowing domain). 2. To let students practice when and how to use the present tense of the verb by following the rules that: VERB ends with sh,ss,ch, and x you have to add "es". VERB ends with "Y" change it to "i" and add "es". Verb ends with consonants just add 's".(PSYCHOMOTOR SKILLS,the doing domain). 3. To have the students think and feel the importance /value of using the correct tenses of the verb. (AFFECTIVE SKILLS, the feeling domain). Something like that and you must see to it that your OBJECTIVES will be carried out in the lesson proper. Attainment of the objectives is very important in every lesson. And it should be simple, attainable, and time-bound. That was my experiences in lesson planning.
Short-and long-goals : This is my choice. Korean students know that English is a very important tool for their successful life. Koran society and companies want people to have good English skills. Even if they don't need him or her to have good English skills, they choose people because they do other tasks well. Middle and high school students know this fact. They continue learning English because that gives them big benefits through their life. But, elementary school boys and girls don't recognize the fact that English sometimes decide their fate. This is the reason why they are not interested in English and bored with English, they sometimes abandon learning English. At that time, teachers tell the youngster students how fun English is and what a great tool it is. And if students have good performance, teachers give them rewards. Teachers also give them proper goals and consider that they need experience to achieve small steps for English. That's why teachers need Short-term goals for English.
I think the most important thing is "short-and long-term goals". When planning a sequence of lesson, We(teachers) should consider their goals. In order for students to stay motivated, they need goals and the potential for success in achieving them. For example, their long-term goal is to be a bilingual or to master English. How can we help them? In my opinion, we have to motivate them like showing interesting movies, funny books, cartoons, and so on. So let them recognize English is very good thing. On the other hand, students need short-term goals,too. such as success on mid term exam, final exam, on small staged lesson tests, or taking part in activities designed to recycle knowledge and demonstrate acquisition. Therefore, We need to build in goals for students.
I think "Activity balance" is the most important. When we have a lesson, we always should be careful to put the balance between activities and lectures. If the calss are filled with the activities, the sudents may lose their original goal of our lesson. If the case is opposite, they may lose thir interest. So we ought to set the balace properly in the class. Moreover, we should have the students experience a variety of activities such as pair work, presentation or role play. We should not lean to just one way of activities or just lecture.
Ju Won, Cho (WB) said.. When we make planning a sequence of lessons, we should consider everything such as reacting to what happens, short-and long-term goals, thematic content, language planning, activity balance, and skills according to object. But above all things I think thematic content is the most important of them. One way to approach a sequence of lessons is to focus on different thematic content in each individual lesson. This will certainly provide variety, but it may not give our sequence of lessons much cohesion or coherence. It might be better, instead, for themes to carry over for more than one lesson, or at least to reappear, so that students perceive some overt topic strands as the course progresses. With such thematic threads, we and our students can refer backwards and forwards, both in terms of language - especially the vocabulary that certain topics generate and also in terms of the topics we ask them to invest time in considering.
I think the most important thing is "short-and long-term goals" It needs a clear planning and object in all things. Like this, a case of English teaching also needs certainly a lesson plan. Without lesson plan, I have experienced shame and embarrassment in classroom. In addition, everybody seems to suffer unforeseen problems.
On the other hand, when I lesson plan in advance, I gives more focus on the skills. Using a lesson plan means having a constant dialogue between what we intended to do and what is actuallly happening. In other words, It is entirely right and proper to design learning outcomes which we hope our students will achieve.
Setting short- and long-term goals is the most important issue when planning a sequence of lessons. Students need goals and the potential to be successful in staying motivated. In that, it is very difficult for students to stay motivated as the lesson progresses, however motivated they may be at the beginning. While a long-term goal may be to master the English language, it can seem only a distant possibility. Therefore, students also need short-term goals such as completion of an assignment, rewards, quizzes, short-term exams, and other incentives to constantly keep themselves awake throughout the lessons.
In the text book, Harmer suggests six issues. Among them, I think activity balance is a most important issue. Depending on the class contents, the activity should be different. Sometime , students might work with in pairs or groups. Also If a teacher keeps insisting to use a particular activities, the lesson quality will become low , and students will lose a interesting. Actually, activities encourages students to engage in lesson. However, keeping using a particular activity will have a bad influence upon student’s morale. That’s why a teacher has to use various activities according to contents of the class.
Though there are a number of issues we need to bear in mind when planning a sequence of lessons and each of them is important, I think that thematic content and the balance of skills is most important in Korea. As you know most of Korean students can not speak English very well for all that they learned English for a long time. The reasons, I guess, are the education system focused on CSAT, the course of study which is not connected with real life, the method biased to reading and grammar etc. Though Harmer say it might be better for themes to carry over for more than one lesson I think the important thing is not the coverage of the content but the connection with real life of the content because it is helpful for students' real language skill. In addition, the balance of skill(for example, the use of simulation and role-play, prepared talk, questionnaires, etc) is very important because the skill biased to reading and grammar have many problems in English education(especially in speaking ability)
I think activity balance is the most issues to consider when we plan a sequence of lessons. Of course, activity will be difference depending on short and long-term goal, so activities seems like secondary element.
Nevertheless, the reason why I choose activity balance is the most important, it require teacher’s quality, capability more than an aim which is able to get a compromise between teacher and students. Depending on what student’s purpose of learning English, teachers need to decide what activity we suggest and lead. Wherein, activity is heachers portion. Even under the same class’ goal, a same context, and a lesson, activities should be change sometimes. It helps reaching our goals a lot.
My point is that , as a teacher, we need to consider activity balance most, because it would be variously different depending on how much teacher maximize the effect of activity. Even though discussed aim has most strong influence overall, it is based on students goal of learning, and their level. Therefore, activity balance is the core of planning a sequence of lessons as a teacher.
I don't agree with the opinion that although Korean teachers’ pronunciation is not like native speakers. Pronunciation can be better when we practice more and more. Korean English teachers have practiced a lot how to pronounce unfamiliar English pronunciation, and have tried to improve their pronunciation by exercising. They can pronounce like a native speaker. So Korean teachers can help the students to practice pronunciation. Even though a teacher can not pronounce exactly, they can explain how to pronounce well. When students learn the pronunciation from native speaker, they only repeat their sounds without explaining. And Korean teachers can explain how to pronounce English words easily by comparing the differences between these two languages. I can teach and explain how to pronounce precisely. That's why I think Korean English teacher can be more helpful than native speaker.
All six issues are related to one another, and each issue is influenced by each one. But I want to focus on language planning. Within a limited period, teacher has to propose lots of things such as grammar, vocabulary and functions. If we react to all the situations too sensitively, we can’t accomplish the whole process. Sometimes things go too easy and too fast, at that time we need to add some activities, on the contrary, when we feel more detailed teaching, we need to skip other activities. This flexibility of language planning as a teacher will make students feel that their teacher is always prepared and competent for lessons. Again, I want to emphasize that Language planning is dominant position over other issues.
The best important thing is absolutely Activity Balance. Like when we living in our life we don’t eat same food everyday, we have to focus to various teaching provides. When the student receive these things, reading, writing, speaking, listening, in the class they easily bored if the teacher keep one thing. Surely, I know that if the class have so many things In just one lesson, it disturb the concentrate of class. But keeping the balance can give more efficient to the student and teacher.
The best important thing is absolutely Activity Balance. 1. Like when we living in our life we don’t eat same food everyday, we have to focus to various teaching provides. When the student receive these things, reading, writing, speaking, listening, in the class they easily bored if the teacher keep one thing. Surely, I know that if the class have so many things In just one lesson, it disturb the concentrate of class. But keeping the balance can give more efficient to the student and teacher. 2. There are many useful activities for the class, I recognize the possible that if I use my best thing constantly, it can be my strong point, unlikely it also has the possible that, it make narrow to my area in the class
I think short and long-term goals is the most important to consider when we plan a seuence of lessons. As teachers, we should establish short-tem and long-term goals for student learning and establish activities related to learning goals. Short-term goals are ones that students will achieve in the near future. Long-term goals are ones that studenst will achieve over a longer period of time. Long-term goals are our most meaningful and important goals. One problem, however, is that the achievement of these goals is usually far in the future. As a result, students often have trouble staying focused and maintaining a positive attitude toward reaching goals. This is why teacher's function is helpful to set up the planning a sequence of lessons. Therefore, teachers should develop short-term and long-term plans that build on and extend students' understanding of subject matter and they make decisions about organizing curriculum to allow enough time for student learning, review and assessment.
In making lesson plans, I think “Activity Balance” is the most important issue. Even if we want to teach our students lots of things, if our students fail to acquire them, they are virtually useless lessons. So it is very essential that we make them engaged in a lesson. In order to do this, we should prepare various and suitable activities related to the lesson which can make students maintain their interest in learning. However, focusing too much on certain activities may not lead to efficient learning. Therefore, teachers need to provide the balance of activities in planning lessons so that students can have presentation, discussion, pair or group work and also lecture-type class if necessary to fulfill the purpose of the lesson.
I think the most important thing is short-and long-term goals when we planning a sequence of lessons. I think this is very like our destination that we want to go or a blueprint of house that we want to build. That is, this is a kind of something that we should keep in mind whatever we do. Then this helps us prepare for what we are going to achieve. Most of all, this helps us to stay motivated when we do something. Likewise, when we are planning a lesson, we should provide them with clear short-and long-term goals, which can give students and teachers short -and long term benefits when they learn and teach English in the class. For students, for example, it encourages students to focus on contents of each lesson to achieve their goals, whichever activities they do. For teacher, setting clear goals of a lesson means preparing a lesson coherently depending on language four skills, learning contents, and student levels, etc. This finally can lead to achieving a long term goals, I think.
Of the six issues, I think there is a nothing more important than activity balance when planning a sequence of lessons. various activities should be applied for student`s interest in the class. Teachers can make students concentrate on the class with some interesting activities and let them pay attention. If teachers use only one activity, students can be bored in the class. even though some students dislike a particular activity according to their preference, they can catch up the lesson with another activity they like. Teachers have to teach students many parts. such as speaking, reading, writing and listening. It is hard to teach them those things with only one activity. Teachers should choose suitable activity for teaching efficiency. Therefore, various activities should be utilized efficiently. in which students can enhance their concentration on study.
I think that reacting to what happens is the most important thing. Especially in the first semester. Because we can’t understand each student’s character. Some of them are very shy or are reluctant to study. I sometimes give them cadies for praising, punishments to make them concentrate on the class. Of course, we can set a plan for the whole class and it helps us how to control the class. However, sometimes we run into the unexpected moments. For example, students might not want to participate in the class and they can’t understand what I’m saying completely even if I think it is very easy for them. In this case, we should review the previous class. It looks like wasting time but is necessary. To solve these problems, we should monitor them uncontinually. There is a moment to slow down and hurry for students. If we neglect that to meet the first plan, the students might have impression that we don’t respect them.
All six issue is important to planning lessons, but I would like to put emphasis on activity balance. We must consider different ability of students, aim of lesson, age of students etc in order to activity balance. Various and proper of activity will be help to effective studying language. Activities are variety of things, for example, role-play, discuss, song, game etc. We will choose one of them depends on variety circumstance. First of all we must consider that activity draw all of students into the lesson and it is realistic thing when we execute activity.
The six issues that Harmer suggested for us to bear in mind when we plan a sequence of lessons are all invaluable. They are A:Reacting to what happens, B:Short-and long-term goals, C:Thematic content, D:Language planning, E:Activity balance and F:Skills. Every single aspect is important but one thing that makes me alert and keeps my eyes open on in class is A:Reacting to what happens. Students learning process is strongly influenced by what kind of goals they have and how strong the goals are, by how various thematic contents the curriculum has and by how sensibly the teacher weave the thread of the language elements(gramar, lexis, and functions) for the students to use them in productive skill work. Moreover, the learning is accomplished well by varied activities-well balanced activities and by good distribution to the four skills. But all these five factors could be and should be rearranged if the teacher finds out the class is not going properly with something(something about languabe or something not related to language learning). For example, in one of my classes, I have four boys and ten girls. I noticed one day since one day of the recent days, the boys' behaviors in class have been really strange. They don't seem to concentrate on the lectures as much as they did. What happened was one boy has been bullied by the other three boys. This is not something related to the language study but if the teacher is not sensitive enough to notice and solve the problem, then the learning process wouldn't go well as well. So the teacher should be alert what is going on in class, and be ready to react properly to what happens in class.
I think those six issues are very important though, For me LANGUAGE PLANNING is more important. In my opinion is language does not exist in a vacuum. The teachers propose a sensible progression of syllabus elements such a grammar, lexis and functions for using language in productive skill work. And we should keep a constant eye on how things are going and with the knowledge of 'before and after', modify the progarmme. It is necessary to weave garmmar and vocabulary through the lesson. Especially L2 learner's. That`s why it is very important thing that who gives them to input.
Six issues are very important when planning a sequence of lessons. But, I think the most important issue among six issues is skills because five issues are influenced by teachers’ skill. I’d like to show the reasons as below.
First of all, the skills of teacher influence on students’ participation directly rather than content, planning, goals, activity balance, and reacting to what happen. It means that skill make other issues breath as making an alive class. Even if the content is not interested, teacher’s skill could change their situation to make a fun. For example, If a teacher have a good skill to sing English song well, He will teach the song to students more well rather than some teacher doesn’t have the skill.
Secondly, the skills are a window between teacher and students. It means the skills are sensor what they want. After finding their level, and need, teacher could make better activity, schedule and goal. It will be optimizing the class.
Therefore, the most important issue for me is skills to improve English skill of students.
There are a number of issues we need to bear in mind when we plan a sequence of lessons but I think "Reacting to what happens" are most important thing to consider. I don't have rich teaching experience but I have experienced lots of mistakes and unexpected things since I started teaching. Even though I chose course books, materials and activities carefully and and made the plan in advance, unforeseen things happened. I need to continually modify many things according to students' level and response. Especially I changed and re-draw my lesson plan due to lack of understanding of mixed ability class-each student-and grouping. When students didn't like the new coursebook which I chose and didn't look interesting at all, I had to prepare completely different materials instead of what I prepared. There were many other factors, usally related to students' condition and situation, to make me modify the plan. I think that planning a sequence of lessons need to be flexible to be modified whenever it nenes. And all plans and activities should be based on student reaction. I will pay careful attention to understand students' goal and interest before I make lesson plan and also modify them according to students' response flexibly.
I think to decide "short- and long- term goals" is the most important among those Harmer mentioned.
First, education is an activity based on a specific world view. That is, education could not be neutral. Even though a teacher does not intend to teach according to a his or her viewpoint, it happens unconsciously. Education is not like running machines. Therefore, teachers have to aware their sense of values and careful where they indicate.
Second, education is very purpose - built activity. If there is not any goals, we could not define the activities as education. It is just an exciting play if a teacher have a good skill or it is just wasting time. There is a reason why we have a class and what we want to give students. Teachers have to keep in mind their short and long term goals to not spoil students' precious time.
Third, we cannot assess lessons if there is no goals because assessment is to evaluate the goals. How can we distinguish good or bad lessons without goals? Goals are like a mariner's compass keeping lessons go on correctly. We can recognize that we lost and we can back on track because of goals.
Finally, it is easier to motivate students if there is clear goals like Harmer mentioned in the book. Goals give the direction and the reason that students concentrate.
In short, to build in goals is essential and everything.
All six are very considerable issues Harmer identifies in book for planning a sequence of lessons but in my opinion, the most important point is activity balance. Especially in the case students are formed with young people, activity balance is essential matter. The rational behind this is that students can get better result of learning language through various actual activities than just lecture teacher leads most time of class. What is more, for young students,activity balance will play an integral role in concentrating their focus on the class. With unswerving conviction, I strongly believe that activity balance is the most significant issue for Language planning.
Teachers always think over how they can make students learn well. In such a way, I think the most thing over a sequence of lessons. is the balance of activities. Above all, I think appropriate activities during lessons could provoke students' interest and motivation, even stimulate their learning desire and make them learn better. Especially, to young students, interesting and various activities are likely to make the atmosphere of their lessons more vivid and lead to successful learning. Therefore, I think suitable activities is an essential element in planning lessons. But, if teachers adhere to the same activity, they make students feel bored and drop their interest. Teachers have to use varied and suitable activities depending on the level of students' language ability and age, the kinds of lessons. Also it is important to keep the balance of activities.
I think the most important one among six issues is short and long term goals. When we start something, we have certain goals that we want to achive. It depends on how stable and firm objectives we have, whether we can reach the goal or not. Because clear goal is deeply involved in leaner's intrinsic motivation. The more we have motivation the less we are likely to give up when facing the difficulties in the process. That is why I think short and long term goals is the most valuable issue. So When techers plan lessons teachers should pay much attention to build up the stages effectively of short and long goals for students.
ReplyDeleteI think it will be changed according to the learners and their motivation towards learning L2. "Short and long term goals" can be important for the adolescents and adult learners, because they have a clear reasons of learning and want to achieve their own desires. It might be the good results from the tests or communicating with native speakers fluently. We should encourage the students concentrate on accomplishing their own goals with our lessons on which put emphasis. Otherwise, I will focus on the "activity balance" for younger children. They can easily forget what they've learned and lose interests. Through different kinds of activities, they can engage the class and their language skills will be reinforced. Therefore, as a teacher, we should find out what the learners' needs and can provide the most proper sequence of lessons for students.
ReplyDeleteI don't have much experience on teaching English. Therefore, it takes much time to plan a lesson. When I outline my lesson, I usually focus on the activity balance because teacher must not cling to a position.
ReplyDeleteThese days, course book is innovative and suggests various activities but it's not enough. I must decide on which one I will choose and abandon. Frankly speaking, I usually bring in new activities, which the text book doesn't comment. Whenever I enter the class, students ask me what kind of game we will do. I must be burdened but the more the students engage in the activity, the closer they can reach the success of learning. Since I took the TESOL, I have been using harmer's book to get the idea.
Student's needs are changing. I told student to have penpal from a foreign country. Then, they are doing real-time chatting on the web. To satisfy students, teacher should invent varied activities.
The most important thing for me is activity balance. I think the effect of activities is very powerful .especially for young children. we have to choose the activities that should be helpful to our students. When the students do the suitable activity , they can get new things faster. So I think we have to spend much time to study various activities for our students. Most of my students are elementary students. When I give them for lecture-type teaching, they can pay attention to me for a short time and feel bored, at that time I notice it and have interesting activities to help the lesson. So to me, activity balance is most important.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience during my practicum, when we planned a lesson we give more focus on the skills. The balance of it. We should see to it that in every lesson that we are going to tackle, the three skills of the learners will be developed. These skills I am talking about are; the cognitive (the most essential tools for learning, focusing on knowledge acquisition and intellectual skills and abilities), the psychomotor (relating to skills that require varying levels of well-coordinated physical activity and precise manipulative procedures) and the affective skills (dealing with feelings, emotions, mindsets and values, including the nurturing of desirable attitudes for personal and professional development skills). And it should be treated well before hand.
ReplyDeleteThese are written in the first part of the lesson plan which is the OBJECTIVES. For example your lesson is in THE SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE of the verb. Your objectives might appear like these; 1. To allow students to be aware of using the correct tenses of the verb. (COGNITIVE SKILLS the knowing domain). 2. To let students practice when and how to use the present tense of the verb by following the rules that: VERB ends with sh,ss,ch, and x you have to add "es". VERB ends with "Y" change it to "i" and add "es". Verb ends with consonants just add 's".(PSYCHOMOTOR SKILLS,the doing domain). 3. To have the students think and feel the importance /value of using the correct tenses of the verb. (AFFECTIVE SKILLS, the feeling domain).
Something like that and you must see to it that your OBJECTIVES will be carried out in the lesson proper. Attainment of the objectives is very important in every lesson. And it should be simple, attainable, and time-bound. That was my experiences in lesson planning.
Short-and long-goals : This is my choice. Korean students know that English is a very important tool for their successful life. Koran society and companies want people to have good English skills. Even if they don't need him or her to have good English skills, they choose people because they do other tasks well. Middle and high school students know this fact. They continue learning English because that gives them big benefits through their life. But, elementary school boys and girls don't recognize the fact that English sometimes decide their fate. This is the reason why they are not interested in English and bored with English, they sometimes abandon learning English. At that time, teachers tell the youngster students how fun English is and what a great tool it is. And if students have good performance, teachers give them rewards. Teachers also give them proper goals and consider that they need experience to achieve small steps for English. That's why teachers need Short-term goals for English.
ReplyDeleteI think the most important thing is "short-and long-term goals". When planning a sequence of lesson, We(teachers) should consider their goals. In order for students to stay motivated, they need goals and the potential for success in achieving them. For example, their long-term goal is to be a bilingual or to master English. How can we help them? In my opinion, we have to motivate them like showing interesting movies, funny books, cartoons, and so on.
ReplyDeleteSo let them recognize English is very good thing. On the other hand, students need short-term goals,too. such as success on mid term exam, final exam, on small staged lesson tests, or taking part in activities designed to recycle knowledge and demonstrate acquisition.
Therefore, We need to build in goals for students.
I think "Activity balance" is the most important.
ReplyDeleteWhen we have a lesson, we always should be careful to put the balance between activities and lectures.
If the calss are filled with the activities, the sudents may lose their original goal of our lesson. If the case is opposite, they may lose thir interest.
So we ought to set the balace properly in the class. Moreover, we should have the students experience a variety of activities such as pair work, presentation or role play. We should not lean to just one way of activities or just lecture.
Ju Won, Cho (WB) said..
ReplyDeleteWhen we make planning a sequence of lessons, we should consider everything such as reacting to what happens, short-and long-term goals, thematic content, language planning, activity balance, and skills according to object. But above all things I think thematic content is the most important of them. One way to approach a sequence of lessons is to focus on different thematic content in each individual lesson. This will certainly provide variety, but it may not give our sequence of lessons much cohesion or coherence. It might be better, instead, for themes to carry over for more than one lesson, or at least to reappear, so that students perceive some overt topic strands as the course progresses. With such thematic threads, we and our students can refer backwards and forwards, both in terms of language - especially the vocabulary that certain topics generate and also in terms of the topics we ask them to invest time in considering.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think the most important thing is "short-and long-term goals"
ReplyDeleteIt needs a clear planning and object in all things. Like this, a case of English teaching also needs certainly a lesson plan.
Without lesson plan, I have experienced shame and embarrassment in classroom.
In addition, everybody seems to suffer unforeseen problems.
On the other hand, when I lesson plan in advance, I gives more focus on the skills.
Using a lesson plan means having a constant dialogue between what we intended to do and what is actuallly happening.
In other words, It is entirely right and proper to design learning outcomes which we hope our students will achieve.
Shin Sook Bahn said...
ReplyDeleteSetting short- and long-term goals is the most important issue when planning a sequence of lessons. Students need goals and the potential to be successful in staying motivated. In that, it is very difficult for students to stay motivated as the lesson progresses, however motivated they may be at the beginning. While a long-term goal may be to master the English language, it can seem only a distant possibility. Therefore, students also need short-term goals such as completion of an assignment, rewards, quizzes, short-term exams, and other incentives to constantly keep themselves awake throughout the lessons.
In the text book, Harmer suggests six issues. Among them, I think activity balance is a most important issue.
ReplyDeleteDepending on the class contents, the activity should be different. Sometime , students might work with in pairs or groups.
Also If a teacher keeps insisting to use a particular activities, the lesson quality will become low , and students will lose a interesting. Actually, activities encourages students to engage in lesson. However, keeping using a particular activity will have a bad influence upon student’s morale. That’s why a teacher has to use various activities according to contents of the class.
Though there are a number of issues we need to bear in mind when planning a sequence of lessons and each of them is important, I think that thematic content and the balance of skills is most important in Korea. As you know most of Korean students can not speak English very well for all that they learned English for a long time. The reasons, I guess, are the education system focused on CSAT, the course of study which is not connected with real life, the method biased to reading and grammar etc. Though Harmer say it might be better for themes to carry over for more than one lesson I think the important thing is not the coverage of the content but the connection with real life of the content because it is helpful for students' real language skill.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the balance of skill(for example, the use of simulation and role-play, prepared talk, questionnaires, etc) is very important because the skill biased to reading and grammar have many problems in English education(especially in speaking ability)
ReplyDeleteI think activity balance is the most issues to consider when we plan a sequence of lessons. Of course, activity will be difference depending on short and long-term goal, so activities seems like secondary element.
Nevertheless, the reason why I choose activity balance is the most important, it require teacher’s quality, capability more than an aim which is able to get a compromise between teacher and students. Depending on what student’s purpose of learning English, teachers need to decide what activity we suggest and lead. Wherein, activity is heachers portion. Even under the same class’ goal, a same context, and a lesson, activities should be change sometimes. It helps reaching our goals a lot.
My point is that , as a teacher, we need to consider activity balance most, because it would be variously different depending on how much teacher maximize the effect of activity. Even though discussed aim has most strong influence overall, it is based on students goal of learning, and their level. Therefore, activity balance is the core of planning a sequence of lessons as a teacher.
I don't agree with the opinion that although Korean teachers’ pronunciation is not like native speakers. Pronunciation can be better when we practice more and more. Korean English teachers have practiced a lot how to pronounce unfamiliar English pronunciation, and have tried to improve their pronunciation by exercising. They can pronounce like a native speaker. So Korean teachers can help the students to practice pronunciation. Even though a teacher can not pronounce exactly, they can explain how to pronounce well. When students learn the pronunciation from native speaker, they only repeat their sounds without explaining. And Korean teachers can explain how to pronounce English words easily by comparing the differences between these two languages. I can teach and explain how to pronounce precisely. That's why I think Korean English teacher can be more helpful than native speaker.
ReplyDeleteAll six issues are related to one another, and each issue is influenced by each one. But I want to focus on language planning. Within a limited period, teacher has to propose lots of things such as grammar, vocabulary and functions. If we react to all the situations too sensitively, we can’t accomplish the whole process. Sometimes things go too easy and too fast, at that time we need to add some activities, on the contrary, when we feel more detailed teaching, we need to skip other activities. This flexibility of language planning as a teacher will make students feel that their teacher is always prepared and competent for lessons. Again, I want to emphasize that Language planning is dominant position over other issues.
ReplyDeleteThe best important thing is absolutely Activity Balance.
ReplyDeleteLike when we living in our life we don’t eat same food everyday, we have to focus to various teaching provides. When the student receive these things, reading, writing, speaking, listening, in the class they easily bored if the teacher keep one thing. Surely, I know that if the class have so many things In just one lesson, it disturb the concentrate of class. But keeping the balance can give more efficient to the student and teacher.
The best important thing is absolutely Activity Balance.
ReplyDelete1. Like when we living in our life we don’t eat same food everyday, we have to focus to various teaching provides. When the student receive these things, reading, writing, speaking, listening, in the class they easily bored if the teacher keep one thing. Surely, I know that if the class have so many things In just one lesson, it disturb the concentrate of class. But keeping the balance can give more efficient to the student and teacher.
2. There are many useful activities for the class, I recognize the possible that if I use my best thing constantly, it can be my strong point, unlikely it also has the possible that, it make narrow to my area in the class
I think short and long-term goals is the most important to consider when we plan a seuence of lessons.
ReplyDeleteAs teachers, we should establish short-tem and long-term goals for student learning and establish activities related to learning goals.
Short-term goals are ones that students will achieve in the near future. Long-term goals are ones that studenst will achieve over a longer period of time.
Long-term goals are our most meaningful and important goals. One problem, however, is that the achievement of these goals is usually far in the future.
As a result, students often have trouble staying focused and maintaining a positive attitude toward reaching goals. This is why teacher's function is helpful to set up the planning a sequence of lessons.
Therefore, teachers should develop short-term and long-term plans that build on and extend students' understanding of subject matter and they make decisions about organizing curriculum to allow enough time for student learning, review and assessment.
In making lesson plans, I think “Activity Balance” is the most important issue.
ReplyDeleteEven if we want to teach our students lots of things, if our students fail to acquire them, they are virtually useless lessons. So it is very essential that we make them engaged in a lesson. In order to do this, we should prepare various and suitable activities related to the lesson which can make students maintain their interest in learning.
However, focusing too much on certain activities may not lead to efficient learning. Therefore, teachers need to provide the balance of activities in planning lessons so that students can have presentation, discussion, pair or group work and also lecture-type class if necessary to fulfill the purpose of the lesson.
I think the most important thing is short-and long-term goals when we planning a sequence of lessons. I think this is very like our destination that we want to go or a blueprint of house that we want to build. That is, this is a kind of something that we should keep in mind whatever we do. Then this helps us prepare for what we are going to achieve. Most of all, this helps us to stay motivated when we do something. Likewise, when we are planning a lesson, we should provide them with clear short-and long-term goals, which can give students and teachers short -and long term benefits when they learn and teach English in the class. For students, for example, it encourages students to focus on contents of each lesson to achieve their goals, whichever activities they do. For teacher, setting clear goals of a lesson means preparing a lesson coherently depending on language four skills, learning contents, and student levels, etc. This finally can lead to achieving a long term goals, I think.
ReplyDeleteOf the six issues, I think there is a nothing more important than activity balance when planning a sequence of lessons. various activities should be applied for student`s interest in the class. Teachers can make students concentrate on the class with some interesting activities and let them pay attention. If teachers use only one activity, students can be bored in the class. even though some students dislike a particular activity according to their preference, they can catch up the lesson with another activity they like. Teachers have to teach students many parts. such as speaking, reading, writing and listening. It is hard to teach them those things with only one activity. Teachers should choose suitable activity for teaching efficiency. Therefore, various activities should be utilized efficiently. in which students can enhance their concentration on study.
ReplyDeleteI think that reacting to what happens is the most important thing. Especially in the first semester. Because we can’t understand each student’s character. Some of them are very shy or are reluctant to study. I sometimes give them cadies for praising, punishments to make them concentrate on the class.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we can set a plan for the whole class and it helps us how to control the class. However, sometimes we run into the unexpected moments. For example, students might not want to participate in the class and they can’t understand what I’m saying completely even if I think it is very easy for them. In this case, we should review the previous class. It looks like wasting time but is necessary. To solve these problems, we should monitor them uncontinually. There is a moment to slow down and hurry for students. If we neglect that to meet the first plan, the students might have impression that we don’t respect them.
All six issue is important to planning lessons, but I would like to put emphasis on activity balance. We must consider different ability of students, aim of lesson, age of students etc in order to activity balance. Various and proper of activity will be help to effective studying language. Activities are variety of things, for example, role-play, discuss, song, game etc. We will choose one of them depends on variety circumstance. First of all we must consider that activity draw all of students into the lesson and it is realistic thing when we execute activity.
ReplyDeleteThe six issues that Harmer suggested for us to bear in mind when we plan a sequence of lessons are all invaluable. They are A:Reacting to what happens, B:Short-and long-term goals, C:Thematic content, D:Language planning, E:Activity balance and F:Skills. Every single aspect is important but one thing that makes me alert and keeps my eyes open on in class is A:Reacting to what happens. Students learning process is strongly influenced by what kind of goals they have and how strong the goals are, by how various thematic contents the curriculum has and by how sensibly the teacher weave the thread of the language elements(gramar, lexis, and functions) for the students to use them in productive skill work. Moreover, the learning is accomplished well by varied activities-well balanced activities and by good distribution to the four skills. But all these five factors could be and should be rearranged if the teacher finds out the class is not going properly with something(something about languabe or something not related to language learning). For example, in one of my classes, I have four boys and ten girls. I noticed one day since one day of the recent days, the boys' behaviors in class have been really strange. They don't seem to concentrate on the lectures as much as they did. What happened was one boy has been bullied by the other three boys. This is not something related to the language study but if the teacher is not sensitive enough to notice and solve the problem, then the learning process wouldn't go well as well. So the teacher should be alert what is going on in class, and be ready to react properly to what happens in class.
ReplyDeleteI think those six issues are very important though, For me LANGUAGE PLANNING is more important. In my opinion is language does not exist in a vacuum. The teachers propose a sensible progression of syllabus elements such a grammar, lexis and functions for using language in productive skill work. And we should keep a constant eye on how things are going and with the knowledge of 'before and after', modify the progarmme. It is necessary to weave garmmar and vocabulary through the lesson. Especially L2 learner's. That`s why it is very important thing that who gives them to input.
ReplyDeleteSix issues are very important when planning a sequence of lessons. But, I think the most important issue among six issues is skills because five issues are influenced by teachers’ skill. I’d like to show the reasons as below.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the skills of teacher influence on students’ participation directly rather than content, planning, goals, activity balance, and reacting to what happen. It means that skill make other issues breath as making an alive class. Even if the content is not interested, teacher’s skill could change their situation to make a fun. For example, If a teacher have a good skill to sing English song well, He will teach the song to students more well rather than some teacher doesn’t have the skill.
Secondly, the skills are a window between teacher and students. It means the skills are sensor what they want. After finding their level, and need, teacher could make better activity, schedule and goal. It will be optimizing the class.
Therefore, the most important issue for me is skills to improve English skill of students.
There are a number of issues we need to bear in mind when we plan a sequence of lessons but I think "Reacting to what happens" are most important thing to consider.
ReplyDeleteI don't have rich teaching experience but I have experienced lots of mistakes and unexpected things since I started teaching.
Even though I chose course books, materials and activities carefully and and made the plan in advance, unforeseen things happened.
I need to continually modify many things according to students' level and response.
Especially I changed and re-draw my lesson plan due to lack of understanding of mixed ability class-each student-and grouping.
When students didn't like the new coursebook which I chose and didn't look interesting at all, I had to prepare completely different materials instead of what I prepared.
There were many other factors, usally related to students' condition and situation, to make me modify the plan.
I think that planning a sequence of lessons need to be flexible to be modified whenever it nenes. And all plans and activities should be based on student reaction.
I will pay careful attention to understand students' goal and interest before I make lesson plan and also modify them according to students' response flexibly.
I think to decide "short- and long- term goals" is the most important among those Harmer mentioned.
ReplyDeleteFirst, education is an activity based on a specific world view. That is, education could not be neutral. Even though a teacher does not intend to teach according to a his or her viewpoint, it happens unconsciously. Education is not like running machines. Therefore, teachers have to aware their sense of values and careful where they indicate.
Second, education is very purpose - built activity. If there is not any goals, we could not define the activities as education. It is just an exciting play if a teacher have a good skill or it is just wasting time. There is a reason why we have a class and what we want to give students. Teachers have to keep in mind their short and long term goals to not spoil students' precious time.
Third, we cannot assess lessons if there is no goals because assessment is to evaluate the goals. How can we distinguish good or bad lessons without goals? Goals are like a mariner's compass keeping lessons go on correctly. We can recognize that we lost and we can back on track because of goals.
Finally, it is easier to motivate students if there is clear goals like Harmer mentioned in the book. Goals give the direction and the reason that students concentrate.
In short, to build in goals is essential and everything.
All six are very considerable issues Harmer identifies in book for planning a sequence of lessons but in my opinion, the most important point is activity balance. Especially in the case students are formed with young people, activity balance is essential matter.
ReplyDeleteThe rational behind this is that students can get better result of learning language through various actual activities than just lecture teacher leads most time of class. What is more, for young students,activity balance will play an integral role in concentrating their focus on the class. With unswerving conviction, I strongly believe that activity balance is the most significant issue for Language planning.
Wonju Kim (MB)
ReplyDeleteTeachers always think over how they can make students learn well. In such a way, I think the most thing over a sequence of lessons. is the balance of activities. Above all, I think appropriate activities during lessons could provoke students' interest and motivation, even stimulate their learning desire and make them learn better. Especially, to young students, interesting and various activities are likely to make the atmosphere of their lessons more vivid and lead to successful learning. Therefore, I think suitable activities is an essential element in planning lessons. But, if teachers adhere to the same activity, they make students feel bored and drop their interest. Teachers have to use varied and suitable activities depending on the level of students' language ability and age, the kinds of lessons. Also it is important to keep the balance of activities.