Foreign language lesson planning

Foreign Language
Lesson Planning
SASLI: June 2007

Benjamin Rifkin
Temple University
b ri f k i n@ t e m p l e . e d u


How to Structure Lessons?
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Present new material
Motivate students
Prepare them to engage with the material
Ensure they are ready to learn
Balance of lecture and interactive practice
Integration of language and culture


Other Considerations
• Balance of grammar and communicative
practice
• How and when (whether!) to correct errors
• Correlation of lesson design and course
design

• Correlation of course design and curricular
design


Still More Considerations
• External influences (literature or linguistics
curriculum, preparation for study abroad)
• Dialect choices
• Heritage and foreign language learners
• Availability of textbooks
• Availability of technology


Other Considerations?
• Adolescent psychology: autonomy,
competence
• Performance anxiety
• Unrealistic expectations


Importance of Motivation
• Heritage learners who have some modicum
of communicative skills may have little
interest in acquiring more language until you
prove to them why they should do so
• Foreign language learners may have difficulty
understanding why they need to learn a
particular structure that seems so foreign

Balance of Grammar
and Communication
• Multiple curricular tracks?
• Grammatical competence of critical
importance only at the superior level
• If we ignore it at the beginning, students may
never work to acquire it
• Bearing in mind expectations for development
of grammatical competence at all levels of
instruction


Interactive Learning
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Impact of imbalance of teacher talk
How we learn to swim or drive
Active learning in other disciplines
Learning by doing in the American
educational system
• Performance in the ACTFL Proficiency
Guidelines


Curricular Design
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Proficiency Guidelines
Learning Outcomes Research
Number of hours of instruction
Difficulty classification of your target language


Course and Lesson Design
• Krashen’s i + 1
• Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development


Lesson Design
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Motivate students
Prepare students
Present to students
Engage students in interactive practice
Check that students have mastered the
targeted language material, function, task
• Follow-Up

Overview
• Explain briefly to the students what we are
doing and why we are doing it
• Keep this brief
• Use target language if possible, use English if
not
• Overview may be written on the board, in the
course syllabus, etc.


Prime and Preview
• Provide students with opportunity to review
language structures from previous lessons,
structures they will need in today’s lesson, or
preview something coming (e.g.,
pronunciation)
• “Mind the gap!”
• Receptive and productive review and preview


Presentation
• Teacher-guided or teacher-fronted
• Remember i + 1
• Make sure that language presented is
meaningful for students
• Do not ask students to perform until they are
ready or risk enhanced anxiety


Practice

• Students use new language material to
communicate meaningfully with one another
• Information gap is essential
• Information gap may be authentic or contrived
• Students must be working in pairs or groups
• Extended performance period


Practice Do’s and Don’t’s
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Do observe student performance
Don’t participate in that performance
Do observe student errors
Don’t correct student errors
Do coach
Don’t impose, don’t intrude
Do remember this is student-centered



Accountability
• Ask students to report singly or in groups
• No need to ask all students to report, you can

manage this as a random check
• Make sure all students know they are going to
be held accountable


Accountability (2)
• Don’t correct individual errors
• Consider individual student errors as
evidence of failure to master a particular point
• After all groups you will check have
presented, correct the most salient errors
(choose carefully)
• Ask for choral repetitions to reduce stigma
and keep anxiety low


Follow-Up
• Another practice activity to show competence
• Discussion of cultural implications
• Analysis of strategy use (students share with
one another)


Suggested Lesson
Plan Design
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Overview
Prime and Preview
Presentation
Practice
Accountability
Follow-Up


How Does It Work?
• Three-four modules in one 50-minute lesson
• Each module builds into the next
• Each instructional unit (one to two weeks) has
its own pattern with more grammar and
vocabulary drill lessons in the beginning and
more intensive comunication towards the end


Your Questions?