Foreign Language Lesson Planning SASLI: June 2007 Benjamin Rifkin Temple University brifkin@ temple.edu How to Structure Lessons? • 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 • • • • 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 • • • • 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 • • • • • 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 • • • • • • • 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 • • • • • • 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?