The organization of teaching

Chapter XII Planning in Foreign Language Teaching

THE NECESSITY FOR PLANNING AND THE APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM

An efficient working level of teaching is ensured by systematic and careful planning. The foreign language teacher plans all the kinds of work he is to do: he plans the essential course, the optional course (if any), and the extra-curricular work.

The first step in planning is to determine where each of his classes is in respect to achievements. It is easy for the teacher to start planning when he receives beginners.

Though the teacher does not know his pupils yet, his success will fully depend on his preparation for the lessons since pupils are usually eager to learn a foreign language in the 5th form (or the 2nd form in a specialized school). Planning is also relatively easy for the teacher who worked in these classes the previous year (or years) because he knows the achievements of his pupils in each class. He is aware of what language skills they have acquired. Planning is more difficult when the teacher receives a class (classes) from another teacher and he does not know the pupils, their proficiency in hearing, speaking, reading, and writing.

The teacher begins his planning before school opens and during the first week. He should establish the achievement level of his classes. There is a variety of ways in which this may be done. The teacher asks the previous teacher to tell him about each of the pupils. He may also look through the pupils' test-books and the register to find out what mark «ach of his pupils had the previous year. The teacher may administer pre-tests, either formally or informally, to see how pupils do with them. He may also conduct an informal quizzing, asking pupils questions in the foreign language to know if they can understand them and respond properly, or he has a conversation within the topics of the previous year. After the teacher has determined the achievement level of his classes, he sketches out an outline of the year's work. In making up his yearly outline the teacher consults the syllabus. Teacher's Book, Pupil's Book, and other teach­ing materials and sets what seems to him to be realistic limits to the content to be covered during the course of the year. In sketching out an outline of the term's work the teacher makes a careful study of Teacher's Book, Pupil's Book, teaching aids and teaching materials available for this partic­ular form. Taking into consideration the achievements of his class, he compiles a calendar plan in accordance with the time-table of a given form.

 

 

UNIT PLANNING

The teacher needs two kinds of plans to work success­fully: the plan of a series of class-periods for a lesson or unit of the textbook or a unit plan, and the daily plan or the lesson plan for a particular class-period.

In compiling a unit plan, i. е., in planning the lesson of the textbook, the teacher determines the difficulties of the lesson, namely, phonetic difficulties (sounds, stress, intonation); grammar difficulties (grammar items, their character and amount), and vocabulary difficulties (the amount of new words, their character).

He then distributes these difficulties evenly over the number of class-periods allotted to the lesson in the calen­dar plan.

1. The teacher starts by stating the objective or objec­tives of each class-period, that is, what can be achieved in a classroom lesson. Of course the long-term aims of the course help the teacher to ensure that every particular les­son is pulling in the right direction and is another step towards gaining the ultimate goals of the course. "To help the class to speak English better", "To teach pupils to aud" or "To devel­op pupils' proficiency in reading" cannot be the objectives of the lesson because they are too abstract to be clear to the learners. The lesson objectives should be stated as precisely as possible.

Pupils coming to the lesson should know what they are to do during the lesson, what performance level is required of them, and how it can be achieved. Here are a few examples:

—Teach pupils to understand the following words... when hearing and to use them in sentences orally.

—Teach pupils to form new words with the help of the fallowing suffixes... and to use them in the situ­ations given.

—Teach pupils to consult a dictionary to look up the meaning of the following words....

—Teach pupils lo recognize the international words... when hearing (or reading).

—Teach pupils to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context while reading text "...".

—Teach pupils to understand the statements in the Present Perfect and to use them in the following situ­ations...

—Teach pupils to ask and answer questions in the Present Perfect and to make up dialogues following the models........

—Teach pupils to find the logical predicate in the sentences... while reading following the structural signals.

— Teach pupils to speak about the following ob­jects on utterance level (in a few sentences).

—Teach pupils to use the words and grammar cov­ered in speaking about the places of interest in our town.

—Teach pupils to find topical sentences while reading text "..." silently.

—Teach pupils to get the main information while reading text "...".

-Teach pupils to write an annotation on text "...".

—Check pupils' skill in reading and understanding an unfamiliar text using a dictionary.

—Check pupils' ability in using the words covered in the following situations: …

The teacher can state no more than three concrete objec­tives for a particular class-period depending on the stage of instruction, the material of the lesson, and some other factors.

2.The teacher distributes the linguistic material (sounds, words, grammar, etc.) throughout the class-periods according to the objectives of each period, trying to teach new vocabu­lary on the grammatical material familiar to pupils, and to teach a new grammar item within the vocabulary as­similated by pupils; or he first teaches pupils hearing and speaking on the new material presented, and then pupils use this in reading and writing.

3.The teacher selects and distributes exercises for class and homework using various teaching aids and teaching materials depending on the objectives of each class-period. For example, for developing his pupils' skill in dialogic speech within the material covered the teacher needs a record with a pattern dialogue, word cards for changing the semantic meaning of the pattern dialogue to make the structure of the dialogue fit new situations.

In distributing exercises throughout the class-periods the teacher should involve his pupils in oral practice and speech, in oral and silent reading, and in writing. Exercises which are difficult for pupils should be done under the teacher's supervision, i. е., in class. Those exercises which pupils can easily perform independently are left for homework. In other words, new techniques, exercises, and skills should be prac­tised in class before the pupil attempts them at home. The homework done, the pupils return to class for perfecting. polishing, expanding, and varying what they have practised at home, they learn to use the new words, the new structures in varied situations.

When the teacher determines the pupil's homework he should take into account that the subject he is teaching though important and difficult is not the only one the pupil learns at school. The realities of schools militate against more than 20—30 minutes of everyday homework in a foreign language. This requires the teacher to teach in class rather than test. Practice proves that pupils do their homework provided they know exactly what to do, how it should be done, and that their work will be evaluated. Besides, pupils should know that six twenty-minutes' work at their English on consecutive days is more effective than two hours at a stretch.

The unit plan, therefore, involves everything the teacher needs for the detailed planning of a lesson (class-period).

namely: the objective (objectives) of each lesson, the mate­rial to work at, and the exercises which should be done both during the class-period and at home to develop pupils' habits and skills in the target language.

All this should be done by the teacher if there are no teacher's books (guides) to the textbooks, for example, if he works in a specialized or an evening school. If there are such books, the teacher's planning should deal with (1) the study of the author's recommendations and tabling the material so that he can see how hearing, speaking, reading, and writ­ing should be developed, and (2) the development of these recommendations according to his pupils' abilities.

The teacher starts by studying the authors' recommen­dations. He takes the tcxtbook and the teacher's guide and table the material. Let us take Lesson 22, Fifth Form English by S. K. Folomkina and E. I. Kaar for illustration.

The unit plan includes nine columns:

l. The number of class-periods. The authors plan four periods for Lesson 22.

2. T h e objectives of each period.

3. Language material. By language mate­rial we mean words, word combinations, phrases, and sen­tence patterns. In Lesson 22 there are six new words {April, May, June, speak, learn, chess), four word combinations (in (he evening, that's right, that's nut right, go swimming), and the following sentence patterns: Where do you go...? Where does lie (she) go...? When do you go? When does he (six) go...? What do you do? What does he (do) do...? I can't read English. I can't (don't) skate either.

4—7. Language skills. In developing each lan­guage skill the authors observe the main didactic principles. For instance, they develop pupils' speaking (monologue) gradually, starting with the sentence level (1st period), then passing to the utterance level (2nd period), and finally, to the speech level both prepared (3rd period) and unprepared (4th period) within the material covered. Pupils develop writing habits and skills independently at home. They write only once in class; it is a dictation drill.

8. Accessories. While working at Lesson 22 the authors propose to use records twice (2nd and 3rd periods) for developing listening comprehension.

9. Homework. The authors plan pupils' independent work at home after every class-period. It is connected mainly with copying and «riling. (By the latter we mean creative work on (the part of (he learner as in exercise 5: What your does friend do at the English lesson? Write five sentences.) Besides, pupils read what they have read in class.

If we fill in all the columns of the table, we can see that Lesson 22 was well compiled. This allows the teacher to enrich pupils' knowledge and develop habits and skills in the target language. It also shows that recommendations given in the teacher's guide can ensure the gradual development of pupils' skills in speaking and reading and, therefore, their progress in language learning.

The teacher tries to adapt the unit plan to his pupils. He may either take it as it is and strictly follow the authors' recommendations, or he may change it a bit. For instance, if he has a group of bright pupils who can easily assimilate the material, the teacher may include some additional mate­rial or stimuli (pictures or objects) for the pupils' use in speaking within the same four class-periods. This can be shown in column "Accessories". If the teacher has a group of slow pupils, he needs at least one more period to cover the material, since special questions with do, does are difficult for his pupils, he may use writing during the lesson and make pupils write down the questions in their exercise-books. Writing may help them in keeping the words and sentence patterns in memory. Me may also increase the number of oral drill exercises and give pupils special cards to work on individually and in pairs. Thus the teacher includes word and sentence cards in column "Accessories".

The importance of unit plans cannot be overestimated since unit planning permits the teacher to direct the develop­ment of all language skills on the basis of the new linguistic material the lesson involves. He can lead his pupils from reception through pattern practice to creative exercises, and in this way perfect their proficiency in hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. He can vary teaching aids and teaching materials within the class-periods allotted to the lesson. Unit planning allows the teacher to concentrate pupils' attention on one or two language skills during the lesson; in this case the class hour is divided into two main parts: a period of 20—25 minutes, during which he takes his pupils through a series of structural drills or other exercises supplied by the textbook, and a period of 20—25 minutes during which the teacher engages the class in creative exercises, when they use the target language as a means of communication. The teacher should bear in mind that pupils lose | all interest in a language that is presented to them by means of endless repetitions, pattern practices, substitutions, and so on, and which" they cannot use in its main function of exchange of information through hearing or reading. That is why, whenever possible, the teacher should make his pupils aware of the immediate values of his lessons if he hopes to keep and stimulate their interest in language learning which is very important in itself. When a pupil is convinced that learning is vital, he is usually willing to work hard to acquire a good knowledge of the target language. It is well known that some pupils see little value in much of their school work in a foreign language and feel no enthusiasm for their work at the language. Careful unit planning helps the teacher to keep pupils' progress in language learning under constant control and use teaching aids and teaching materials more effectively and, make his classes worthwhile to pupils.