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https://docs.google.com/document/d/19CtL9QdPoJjRjEYhPTjA1Ur3kiCTo4Gq/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=105674577496812936603&rtpof=true&sd=true

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https://theultimateguidetocelta.com/2019/01/21/listening-skills-in-the-efl-classroom/#more-1434

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Listening, like reading, is a passive skill but this does not make it any less important than the active skills of speaking or writing. After all, we cannot have a conversation if we can't follow what the other person is saying. Think about the following questions related to teaching listening skills and then read on for the answers:

1. What types of listening skills do we use?

2. Is listening in the classroom more difficult than listening in the real world or vice versa?

3. How can we make sure listening in the classroom helps students in the real world?

1. What types of listening skills do we use?
In the same way that we read in different ways, we have different sub-skills of listening too. A teenager listens to their parents talking about what time they have to be home in a different way to how we listen to someone giving us directions that we have asked for. The 3 sub-skills of listening are:

Listening for gist.

Listening for specific information.

Listening for detail.

So what kind of listening do you think the teenager does? Or the person receiving directions? Read on to find out...

It is important that in the classroom we practise all 3 sub-skills to help our students when they're outside the classroom.
2. Is listening in the classroom more difficult than listening in the real world or vice versa?
There are several things that make listening in the classroom tricky for our students:

The quality of the recording may be poor.

Students may be distracted by other students.

Students may feel under pressure to get the answers right.

Students may think they have to understand every word and then panic when they don't.

Students might not understand what they should be listening for.

Students have not had a chance or are not encouraged to activate schemata (think about what they already know about the topic and use that to help them understand the text).

The teacher may not have taken the time to set the scene and set the context.

But similarly, listening outside of the classroom has its own challenges:

The language might not be graded to the students' level.

Students may be confronted with an accent they are not familiar with.

The speaker may speak very fast.

There may be a lot of background noise, making understanding challenging.

Students fail to activate schemata as an aid to understanding.

The speaker is more likely to use phonological features such as connected speech that confuse the learner.

3. How can we make sure listening in the classroom helps students in the real world?

Provide students with lots of listening practice in the classroom and encourage them to listen to podcasts etc. outside the classroom.

Make sure the speakers have a variety of accents so students are exposed to different types of English (coursebooks are now much better at doing this). They should be listening to non-native as well as native speakers.

Grade the task rather than the text. It's ok for students to listen to a more difficult text if the task they are given to do is graded to their level and therefore achievable.

Make sure students know what they are listening for before they start listening so they know how to listen eg are they listening to understand the general gist or for detail?

Make sure students can check their answers in pairs before checking as a class to give them the reassurance their answers are correct or for weaker students to get some help.

Include some pre-listening tasks. This could be pre-teaching some important lexis, prediciting exercises or exercises to activate schemata.

Answers: The teenager listening to his parents is listening for specific information eg what time he has to be home, whereas the person listening for directions is listening for detail, they want to absorb as many of the directions as possible.
What else could we do to help our students with listening?

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Listening, like reading, is a passive skill but this does not make it any less important than the active skills of speaking or writing. After all, we cannot have a conversation if we can't follow what the other person is saying. Think about the following questions related to teaching listening skills and then read on...

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/receptive-skills

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The receptive skills are listening and reading, because learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it. These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. They can be contrasted with the productive or active skills of speaking and writing.

Example
Often in the process of learning new language, learners begin with receptive understanding of the new items, then later move on to productive use.

In the classroom
The relationship between receptive and productive skills is a complex one, with one set of skills naturally supporting another. For example, building reading skills can contribute to the development of writing.

See also:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/productive-skills

Further links:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/using-poems-develop-receptive-skills
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/unit-4-reading-skills
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/a-framework-planning-a-listening-skills-lesson

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The receptive skills are listening and reading, because learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it. These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. They can be contrasted with the productive or active skills of speaking and writing.

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https://teachertrainingcourse2014.weebly.com/uploads/4/0/8/7/40879903/receptive_skills.pdf

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The African teenagers sold a Premier League Lie

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Stages and aims for a receptive skills lesson

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Language Lessons (grammar and vocabulary)

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/conveying-meaning

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In most classrooms this is most commonly done through translation by the teacher or students, but is this really the best way? In this article I'd like to share some alternative methods which I have used in my teaching.

Problems with translation

Moving away from translation

Problems with translation
All though it is quick and simple, there are many possible problems with relying on translation.

The word you want to translate to doesn't always cover the same range of meaning and connotation of the target word.

Some structures or verb forms that exist in English either don't exist in other languages or the parallel form carries either additional or less meaning.

Using translation can make students very teacher / dictionary dependent. By relying on translation, students don't develop the 'real world' strategies, which could help them to negotiate meaning and communicate when they need to make themselves understood or to understand someone who doesn't share their language.

Moving away from translation
Here are some methods I have used in attempting to move away from dependence on translation.

Mime. This includes noises or gestures. Some words particularly actions, are easy and quick to mime.

This can actually make lessons much more enjoyable too, especially if you get the students used to miming words.

Pictures. This includes photos and drawings. These are very useful for when the words you are trying to teach are objects. Doing a quick drawing on the board can very simply convey the meaning of words that come up unexpectedly in class.

Again, if you get students to do the drawing too, then this can make the class more memorable and can be made a regular revision feature of your lessons. Time lines are also a great way of conveying the meaning of different verb tenses.

Clines. These are graphs showing degree and they can be really useful for sets of words like, love, hate, don't mind, fond of, detest, enjoy or things like adverbs of frequency. They rely on students' existing knowledge and extend that knowledge.

If you know that your students understand love and hate then you can place these at extremes on the graph and get your students to decide where the other words in the set should be in relation to those.

Realia or the real thing. This relies on the words you are teaching being objects and you being able to bring that object into class, but it can be really effective for students who are tactile learners and who need to touch.

This can be particularly effective for teaching words like fluffy, rough, smooth, furry, hairy, which have very subtle differences which would be hard to explain.

Dictionary. A monolingual dictionary can be really useful in helping to build up your learners' independence.

Using a monolingual dictionary well is a skill and one that you may well need to work on in order to help your students get the best out of it.

Explanation. Being able to explain what a word means in the target language can be a really useful skill for students.

By giving students concise and accurate explanations of words we can help them to develop the ability to explain words that they want to know.

Synonyms / Antonyms. Giving opposite words or similar words can be a very quick way of conveying meaning, but you will need to be careful.

Using thin as a synonym for skinny can be quite effective, but there is still a difference in connotation and you'll need to consider whether and how you deal with these slight differences in meaning.

Word formation or to be accurate breaking down complex words to their root parts. This method can also help students to understand how some of the suffixes and morphemes of the language work.

The word 'misunderstanding' can be divided into three parts; the root (understand), its prefix (mis) and the 'ing' at the end. By breaking words down in this way students learn more about the language than the word itself and can start to apply this knowledge to other words they want to use.

Context. This could be within a written text, audio, video or even a play and is by far one of the most useful and powerful ways to convey meaning.

If students are able to deduce the meaning of a word or phrase through the context in which they see or hear it, then they are well on the road to becoming independent learners.

Possible problems
Of course using the techniques above takes time and planning and there are always likely to be words that 'come up' unexpectedly in class when it will be just more economical to use translation. There is also the fact that you may have to battle against your students' expectations.

If they are used to having the teacher give them translations of every new word or phrase they learn, then they might not readily take to having to do some of the thinking work for themselves. If this is the case, you might want to start introducing these methods gradually by using them as part of revision games.

If, as is the case with many learners, they are really uncomfortable with not having a translation to match their new language points against, you could try telling them that you will give them translations for new words at the end of the class which will also act as a good way to revise any new language which has come up in the class.

Conclusion
Although many of these ways of conveying meaning may be more time consuming and require more planning than translating words, I believe by using them we are in the long term making better learners of our students. We are not only teaching them words and phrases, but the ability to convey and understand new meaning within the framework of the language they want to learn. This will make them more independent learners and better able to cope when the time comes for them to actually use the language in the 'real world'.

Nik Peachey, British Council

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In most classrooms this is most commonly done through translation by the teacher or students, but is this really the best way? In this article I'd like to share some alternative methods which I have used in my teaching.

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https://celtanotesonline.tumblr.com/post/63465335362/how-to-convey-meaning

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Excuses, excuses. Apologies again for the long wait, which has had nothing to do with a lack of material for the blog, just a lack of time due to trying to drum up business. A part time job on the side would also be nice! Anyway, less of my own woes. This post is the second detailling the CELTA approved methods language teachers can use to convey meaning of Vocabulary and Grammar points, following on from "Elicitation". As always let me know what you think via the 'Ask Me Anything' or if you feel you can improve it, have a go at editting the Google Docs Version.
The first thing to say is that conveyance of meaning is never a case of 'telling the student the answer'; more on this in Elicitation. The following can be used as methods for conveyance of the meaning of a particular word and in some cases grammar point and for elicitation. Often these can be used in tandem with one another, but it is important not to let this stage eat up too much time in the lesson:

It seems like it goes without saying, but so often I have myself made (and seen others making) the mistake of using the target language in the presentation of it, be it through grammar or vocabulary. For example:

S: "What is the word 'cleaner'?"

T: "Some one who cleans."

S: *confused looks*

This is obviously unhelpful because if the student has at least a beginner or elementary understanding of English they will know that the suffix "er" often denotes a person or thing that performs the action in the main part of the word. This approach neglects to add meaning to the main part of the word and how this relates to its respective suffix. It's also worth noting that it's important to draw attention to the context in which the word is placed. As we know, the above example can be used as a comparative adjective that can complicate matters if the rest of the sentence or paragraph is unknown. For this reason (and depending on the level of the student), it is important to try to stick to one definition at a time. As mentioned above, there's a limit to the number of new words that it's a good idea to teach in a single session and you want to make sure that you aren't over-burdening your students. The same applies to the number of meanings or forms that each word carries. This of course could be the subject of a slightly higher level Word Family lesson.

CELTA Notes Online by Jack Clark is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Excuses, excuses. Apologies again for the long wait, which has had nothing to do with a lack of material for the blog, just a lack of time due to trying to drum up business. A part time job on the...

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https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-to-use-context-to-determine-the-meaning-of-words.html

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/time-lines

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https://eltexperiences.com/five-ways-to-use-timelines-in-class/

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The use of timelines is nothing new in the physical classroom but with the ever growing presence of online synchronous teaching, timelines is something which is not really given much thought. I have not incorporated timelines in an online lesson before but after considering this I would actual use them either with a mini-whiteboard and webcam or integrate them within my PowerPoint for the class. One benefit of the use of timelines during lessons is that it helps students visualise tenses and how they are used in English. It will also raise their awareness of potential differences between their L1 tenses and their L2 (that being English).

In this post, I shall be sharing five ways you can use timelines in your remote or physical lessons. If you are unfamiliar regarding timelines, my video introduction below to them will possibly help.

Don't forget to Like, Share and Subscribe!

1. Match The Timeline

One way you can introduce timelines is by having more than one sentence (it is best to be in different tenses) and their corresponding timelines. Students have to match the sentence to the appropriate timeline. It is best getting learners to work in groups so that they are able to discuss and share their ideas rather than getting them to work individually.

2. Group Timelines

A variation of the matching exercise is getting students to draw the timeline to the corresponding sentence. You could either put students into groups to work on their own tense (Past Simple) and a separate group to work on a different tense (Present Perfect). This would allow students to report back and share their thoughts as well as seek out feedback from other groups of learners in the (virtual) classroom.

3. Draw The Timeline

This is a variation of the task above with students working individually on this and it is probably best to get a class set of mini-whiteboards and board markers. However, if you are working online then perhaps getting students to use a marker and a piece of A4 would suffice. Dictate a sentence to all students and they must write it down. Check that they have the correct sentence written down before continuing. Next, tell students that they must draw their timeline and they have 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, ask all students to reveal their timelines to everyone else and check whether there are any patterns that are emerging. Reveal the appropriate timeline to all students. Once learners have become more confident, they will be able to draw timelines more accurately.

4. Story Planning Timeline

One thing that can be quite challenging for students is writing a story in their L2. However, with suitable support, modelling and inspiration, they will be able to create an engaging story. One way to get students inspired for stories is with the use of Rory's Story Cubes: I posted about lesson ideas associated with these cubes here. Anyhow, once students have an idea of a story (characters, challenges, solutions) they will be able to time their story before even attempting to write. This give their creative story some process and they will be able to share their ideas if they work in groups. One final thing is that students could present their story to the class for feedback before writing in their groups.

5. Weekly Lesson Timeline

I used to put up the weekly lesson plan in the classroom at the start of the week and give learners a copy. This allowed learners to request any areas that they wished to focus on and for me to respond to such requests. A variation of a weekly lesson plan and a weekly lesson timeline is that students could use the latter to reflect upon what they have studied for the week and what they would like to study for the forthcoming week. This allows learners to develop that much required self-reflection and to express their thoughts with the teacher and one another. Place a large timeline in the classroom (possibly A3 in landscape) and note down achievements during the lesson at the end of the class or you could get learners to complete a personal timeline. This could be used for tutorials and course feedback, as well as a reminder for learners about topics and lexis.

I hope you enjoyed these five lesson activities which involve timelines. Let me know if you have used timelines in a creative and engaging manner with your online or physical classes.

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The use of timelines is nothing new in the physical classroom but with the ever growing presence of online synchronous teaching, timelines is something which is not really given much thought. I have not incorporated timelines in an online lesson before but after considering this I would actual use them either with a mini-whiteboard and webcam or integrate them within my PowerPoint for the class.

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/checking-understanding

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Analysis of the language consists of two sub-stages, often known as highlighting and concept checking.

Highlighting is taking the model sentence and showing, telling or eliciting what the problems are in terms of form, function, and phonology.

Concept checking is checking the understanding of difficult aspects of the target structure in terms of function and meaning. Concept checking is vital, since learners must fully understand the structure before any intensive practice of form and phonology is carried out.

Ways of checking understanding

Learning to construct concept questions

Ways of checking understanding
Concept checking is normally achieved by the use of a set of questions designed to ensure comprehension of the target language, raise awareness of its problems, and to indicate to the teacher that the learners have fully understood.

The question 'Do you understand?', or the remark '' do not achieve any of these aims, and are unlikely to receive a truthful answer from all the learners. Concept questions are one way of checking understanding, but are often used in combination with other methods, often visual, depending on the nature of the target language involved. Here are some other methods:

Time lines to establish tenses. Time lines are not a substitute for concept questions.

Truth lines to establish probability e.g. must be / could be / might be / can't be.

Reality lines to establish degree of reality or imagination e.g. conditional sentences

Clines to show grades or scales e.g. yellow-amber-orange, frequency adverbs

Pictures to distinguish between similar objects e.g. cup / mug, lane/ road / highway

Discrimination to check function and register e.g. Do I say 'hey!' to my boss?

Negative checking e.g. Do I say 'I were'?

Translation (where appropriate and possible).

Extensions to consolidate understanding. Homework often reveals lack of understanding, as do guided practice exercises.

Concept questions
Concept questions themselves are often difficult to construct since they involve clarifying function and meaning using simple language but not the target language itself.

Apart from their classroom value, thinking of good questions also helps inexperienced teachers to understand the complexities of form, function and meaning, and to practise grading their language. Some basic tips for good concept questions are:

Make sure the questions are simple and that no difficult language is required to answer the question. Yes/no questions, either/or questions and simple 'wh' questions are particularly effective

Don't use the new (target) grammar in your questions

Don't use unfamiliar vocabulary

Bring out basic concepts such as 'time' and 'tense' in your questions

Use as many questions as possible to check various aspects of the language and to cover as many learners as possible.

Some examples
These examples show how concept questions could be used to help differentiate between the main functions of the present simple and present continuous.

Target sentence: Look! They're painting the wall

Target sentence: She's a shop assistant. She works in a shop

This example shows how concept questions can be used to clarify the meaning of more complex structures:

Target sentence: If I won the lottery, I'd buy a new car

Learning to construct concept questions
One way of beginning to think about concept questions is to break the meaning of a word or structure into components. A vocabulary item might be diagramatically represented. Here are some examples of the concepts included in the word ' bed-sit'

Questions may be of different types:

Yes/no questions. 'Is a bed-sit a room?', 'Are there other rooms in the house?', 'Can you sleep in it?'.

50/50 chance questions. 'Is it a room or a building?', 'Is it cheap or expensive?', 'Do you buy it or pay money every week or month?'

Information questions. 'Who lives in it?', 'How many people live in it?'

Discrimination questions. 'Do you only sleep in it?', 'Can you cook a meal in it?', 'Is it the same as a flat?'

Shared experience questions. 'I s there a bed-sit in this building?'

Life experience/culture questions. 'Have you ever lived in a bed-sit?' 'Are there bed-sits in your city/country?'

Another way of constructing concept questions is by writing a sentence containing all the elements of the concept, from which questions can be formed. This is a useful method when distinguishing between two functions of the same structure, particularly where those functions would be expressed by different forms or tenses in other languages. For example:

'He's been eating garlic.'
Concept: He isn't eating garlic now, and I didn't see him eating it, but I know he was eating garlic because I can smell it.

'Harry's been working here for two years.'
Concept: He started working here two years ago, he's still working here, and he'll probably continue working here.

Conclusion
The value of concept questions should not be underestimated, but many teachers either forget to use them or find them difficult to construct. Teachers are often satisfied that the learners 'seem to understand' on the basis of their performance in practice exercises. A few important points to remember are:

Concept questions are particularly valuable after the presentation and explanation of an item, and may be asked at any stage during a lesson. They are valuable after guided practice, particularly if the learners seem not to have grasped the target language fully, and at the end of a lesson, as a final check and review.

Time lines and other devices are not substitutes for concept questions. They are aids to explanation, but do not necessarily check understanding. Concept questions, however, may be used to elicit a timeline from the learners.

Concept questions are particularly valuable where a concept does not exist, or is different in the mother tongue (e.g. the perfect aspect, ways of expressing the future), and where a language item is culturally loaded as in the case of the word 'subway' which has very different meanings in British and American English. In such cases, concept questions often form part of the initial teaching process.

Concept questions are also useful for raising awareness of association and connotation, and for drawing attention to collocations and fixed expressions. They are also good listening practice for learners, and can even lead on to class activities such as guessing games in which the learners write their own questions.

The teacher does not have to concept check every new item. In many cases, function and meaning are clear because the language has been presented in a meaningful context.

When learners perform poorly in guided or less guided practice, it is often because they are not clear about the function or meaning of the target language. This may well be because the teacher has asked 'do you understand?' or 'is that clear' rather than good concept questions.

Further reading
Graham Workman - Concept Questions And Time Lines; Chadburn Publishing, 2006.

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Analysis of the language consists of two sub-stages, often known as highlighting and concept checking. Highlighting is taking the model sentence and showing, telling or eliciting what the problems are in terms of form, function, and phonology. Concept checking is checking the understanding of difficult aspects of the target structure in terms of function and meaning.

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/resources/secondary/lesson-plans

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Here you can find a wide range of full lesson plans to use in your secondary classroom. All of our lessons are designed around themes engaging and relevant to secondary learners and can be used to complement your school curriculum, giving students an opportunity to develop their English language and skills in motivating and enjoyable ways.

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https://www.teach-this.com/ideas/lesson-planning

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Planning a lesson before teaching is a fundamental part of giving an effective ESL lesson. Depending on the experience of the teacher and the nature of the lesson, the planning process can be quite varied. Less experienced teachers should consider detailed lesson plans with one or two variations of tasks and exercises in case things don't go to plan, or at the very least, they should have an organized list with a logical and effective order of activities. The more experienced teachers become, the simpler their lesson plans can be. But planning is always essential no matter the experience of the teacher.

Lesson planning is important for developing the structure of a lesson and organizing its content. Planning improves your ability to select teaching activities and materials that will best match the needs of your students. A lesson plan gives the teacher a framework for the lesson and guides classroom management, student participation, and interaction patterns. A lesson plan also helps the teacher with the timing of activities to ensure the students receive a well-balanced and time-managed lesson. Furthermore, planning encourages the teacher to think about the process of teaching, which gives them a feeling of security knowing they are prepared to instruct the class.

Planning should not limit or restrict the teacher. On the contrary, teachers still need to employ creativity and improvisation skills. Following a lesson plan to a tee is not recommended. Teachers need to be able to think ahead for unexpected scenarios because it is not realistic to expect that a meticulously planned lesson will proceed accordingly.

Many factors need to be accounted for when planning a lesson. For example, consider students' learning preferences, their level of proficiency, the class size, seating arrangements, etc.

To create effective yet realistic plans, teachers should try to anticipate and prepare for what can happen during a lesson to the best of their ability.

Here is a list of factors to consider when planning a lesson:

Lesson Aims

A good place to start is to ask, ''What language skill am I trying to develop?" A lesson plan needs to start with aims so that classes have a clear purpose and direction. Using 'will be able to' statements is a useful way of articulating lesson aims. For example, 'By the end of this lesson, students will be able to follow a lecture and note down key points by listening for signposting language.'

By doing this you are prioritising aims that focus on achievement and help ensure lessons are more student-centred. In other words, you are aiming to create a lesson that ends with students possessing more knowledge and skills than when they started. At the end of any lesson, students should get better at something.

Language Focus

The language focus should be directly linked to the aim of the lesson. If the aim is what you want your students to be able to do by the end of the lesson, the language focus specifies the elements of the language they need to work with to achieve the aim that was set. Look at the example below:

Aim: By the end of the lesson, students will be able to employ a variety of sentence structures in their writing.

Language focus: complex sentence structure: subordinating conjunctions, dependent and independent clauses.

For students to become better writers, the teacher has set the aim of having students use varied sentence structure as this is an important component of good writing. Therefore, the lesson could review complex sentence structure as a way of helping students achieve that aim.

In short, think of the 'aim' as the communicative skill you want the students to achieve and the language focus as the elements of the language that will allow them to achieve that skill.

Teaching Activities

After defining the aim and the language focus, consider the types of activities that will be used in the lesson. Activities should have a clear link to the aims and language focus.

A good lesson plan needs to include careful consideration of teaching activities. For example, does the lesson require or is it suited to speaking activities, role-plays, brainstorming, listening exercises, etc. Teachers should also consider if activities should focus on accuracy or freer practice or both. For accuracy, the teacher leads and controls the practice, usually through structural and accuracy-focused exercises such as drills, grammar exercises, and mirroring. These normally take place in the early stages of a lesson. Freer practice activities give students opportunities to use what they have learned without direct control by the teacher and could include discussions, mini-presentations, or timed writing on a topic of their choice. Freer practice normally takes place at the latter stages and should be as authentic as possible. In other words, if the aim is to improve writing skills and the language focus is complex sentences, the students should be given a writing practice that resembles a writing task they are likely to encounter outside of the classroom. For a business English student, this could be an email, or for an EAP student a timed essay.

Suitability

Students should be interested and motivated by the activities provided. Therefore, consider if your students will enjoy the lesson. And just as important, consider if you would enjoy teaching the lesson. It is key that you know your students and what they are interested in.

No two students and no two classes are the same, so what you have planned for one group may not be suitable for another. Would the topic of your lesson be the same for a group of teenagers and a group of adults? Catering to the interests of your students helps foster more engagement and interest which are two important requirements for successful language acquisition to occur.

Timing

A common problem encountered by teachers is not completing everything that they set out in their plan. This is often because they have underestimated the time certain activities require, or they have not allowed for flexibility in their timings. Therefore, if your first guess is that an activity will take 15 minutes, plan for 20 minutes instead. Also, consider incorporating flexible time into your plan. For example, when your plan is completed and you have added up all your timings, allow for extra time. So, for a 60-minute lesson, aim for your timings to total 50 minutes, so that you can allow for the unexpected. In this situation, it is wise to also plan a backup activity just in case you need it.

Backward planning, which simply means starting from the final activity, is also helpful when trying to account for timings in your lesson plans. This is particularly so for lessons that are planned to end with a communicative task such as a role play. In this case, all the other activities in the plan should be working towards this end and should be subordinate to it. Try to look for any lead-up activity that might be considered superfluous and scrap it if it means there is not enough time to complete the role play.

Sequencing

A simple way of sequencing a lesson is to view it as a collection of three basic stages that can be categorised as input, learning, and use.

Input is the way language is presented to students which can be through authentic materials such as magazine articles, movies, or instructional materials specially designed for language learners. Another way of presenting input is through clarification where students examine a feature of language and seek and receive explanations from the teacher.

Learning deals with the process of understanding, memorizing, and noticing new language features. For instance, in this stage of the lesson, a teacher may decide to plan pre-communicative accuracy-based activities that focus on the presentation of structures, functions, and vocabulary.

In the later stages, students are commonly prepared for spoken or written outputs. Output at this stage should usually be authentic (free and more natural) practice such as discussions and role-plays. After free practice, it is usually a good idea for the teacher to check using elicitation that a new structure, skill or strategy has been learned. A final step at this stage could include further practice where students are required to use the new structure, skill, or strategy in a new situation.

During these stages, consider if the tasks make sense regarding the level of difficulty and complexity in the order they appear. It is more productive to work on simpler tasks before complex ones as a way of building up the lesson and gradually increasing the difficulty of the learning process, continuously providing students opportunities to practice and produce. It is also recommended that activities that involve receptive skills come before those that require productive skills.

Materials

The choice of materials used in class should be thought of as a means of achieving the stated aims of the lesson. When considering the suitability of materials to the students' background and level, aim to provide comprehensible input that is slightly beyond their current level. Krashen's simple equation of 'I + 1' is a useful tool for doing this. 'I' represents 'input' that is at the students' current level and '+1' 'input' which is at the next stage of language acquisition. This helps ensure that materials are not too easy nor too difficult but present a more optimal level of challenge.

Using authentic or real-life content such as magazines, books, or podcasts can be used with higher-level classes as an effective way of finding material that is relevant to their interests. Conversely, lower-level students might benefit more from traditional instructional materials as they tend to focus on specific language points and provide clear examples. Being simplified and using graded language they can actually boost students' motivation and sense of accomplishment. This contrasts with materials that, despite their authenticity, students may find too challenging.

Learner Interaction

During some activities, students are expected to work alone such as in reading or listening tasks. Pair work provides optimal speaking time if you consider students individually and not being in the spotlight can be beneficial for introverts. Group work fosters social learning and allows students to perform more complex tasks, e.g. a role-play with four or five characters in the same dialogue. Also, group work can provide more points of view when having discussions and working with expressions for agreeing and disagreeing, for instance. Regardless of the interaction pattern, they are all necessary for language acquisition to occur in the classroom. Therefore, lesson plans should always accommodate for a healthy amount and mix of student interactions.

To enhance student interaction, consider some of the following suggestions:

* Provide opportunities for students to work in pairs and small groups and use multiple modes of interaction such as discussions, individual and group presentations, or brainstorming.

* Encourage students to work together in group projects.

* Devote a significant proportion of class time (15-30%) to student interactions.

* Set time limits to give interactions a sense of urgency.

* Switch up groupings of students so that they are not always talking to the same partner.

* Repeat tasks so that they become familiar and less time is wasted setting up an activity.

* Pre-teach task language that is critical to task achievement.

* Give adequate preparation time to allow learners time to think about what they want to say and how to say it.

* Have different levels of a task prepared in classes with mixed levels so that, for example, lower-level students are enabled to participate.

* Provide activities that give students a reason to interact such as an information gap activity or project work.

Alternatives to Formal Planning

There are some reasons for not using a formal plan. Possibly it is not a priority as the lesson focuses on feedback, or maybe the session has been given over to project work, or perhaps the teacher simply doesn't have the time.

An alternative to a formal plan could be to use a simple running order, which simply involves jotting down activities in a logical order with brief observations and comments as in the example below.

1. Lead-in to the topic: Students discuss questions related to university study.

2. Vocab preview: vocab definition matching activity for difficult words in the reading.

3. Students read the article and answer short answer questions: students share and discuss answers in pairs and report back to the class.

This approach is simple and can be done virtually anywhere, on a piece of paper or a notes app on a mobile phone.

For more experienced teachers, planning may only require listing critical moments. They can be organized like a bulleted list of aims and what is significant and relevant for each of them to be achieved. They can also be articulated as an important instruction, example, or response that needs to be prepared in advance. For example, a critical moment could be a phrasal verb that students might find confusing: 'I ran into my friend last night' versus 'The driver lost control and ran into a tree.'

As conceptualising is a big part of planning a lesson, it is a good idea to just sit down and try to visualize the lesson taking place. Ask yourself how you could start the lesson and what the possible outcomes of activities could be. This can help you better handle issues that emerge on the spot and that wouldn't fit in a lesson plan or adapt to problems like an activity finishing much earlier than anticipated.

After the Lesson

After the lesson has taken place, reflect on how the lesson went. In many cases, a lesson plan is just used before and during the lesson, but a good practice is to revisit plans regularly to keep track of activities that worked well. Lesson plans should also be kept as a record of what has been covered.

Lesson plans are also a valuable resource of feedback in the form of self-reflection. Going through the plan after the lesson helps promote self-development and address recurrent issues such as reducing teacher talk time, providing better examples, clearer instructions, and optimizing time management.

Here are some questions that you can use to evaluate a lesson's success:

* Did the students enjoy the lesson?

* What problems were there during the lesson?

* Which activities were successful, and which were not?

* Did I manage to achieve the aim of the lesson? How do I know this?

* Will I teach this lesson again in the same way?

As a teacher, you may find a lesson that worked perfectly well with one class has different results in another. You should always be prepared to go off plan if needed and adapt to the needs of the students. However, planning is an essential component of good teaching as it helps ensure lessons are relevant, purposeful, and most importantly, effective.

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ESL Lesson PlanningPlanning a LessonPlanning a lesson before teaching is a fundamental part of giving an effective ESL lesson. Depending on the experience of the teacher and the nature of the lesson, the planning process can be quite varied.

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/aims

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Aims are what teachers (and learners) want to achieve in a lesson or a course. Activity in a class is planned in order to achieve these aims.

Example
A lesson aim could be for the learners to demonstrate that they understand the form or use of the passive better, or to have practised intensive reading. A course aim could be to improve the report writing skills of a group of business students.

In the classroom
Aims on lesson plans often describe what the teacher wants learners to be able to do by the end of a lesson, or what they will have done during it. Teachers can tell learners their lesson aims, or involve learners in setting them. This can help create a sense of purpose and progress.

Further links:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/planning-1 https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/planning-2

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Aims are what teachers (and learners) want to achieve in a lesson or a course. Activity in a class is planned in order to achieve these aims. Example A lesson aim could be for the learners to demonstrate that they understand the form or use of the passive better, or to have practised intensive reading.

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Concept Checking Questions and Timelines

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Concept Checking Questions and Timelines

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168- Teaching English Grammar - What to Teach and How to Teach it

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Materials you will teach from - check the schedule for the pages

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