Activities and Lesson

This chapter offer some basic information and ideas about running lesson and activities. The aim is to start small and then gradually widen the focus. This chapter reflects the way that we learned to teach.

1.    Classroom Activities
A basic skill in teaching english as a foreign language is to able to prepare, set up and run a single classroom activity, for example a game or a communication task or a discussion. In this chapter looks at some typical activities, and considers on in detail.

These the following activities that would be possible to use
a.      A whole-class discussion of ideas and answer
b.      Individual written homework
c.       A dictation
d.      Students prepare a short dramatic sketch.

Each of these activities is possible by using the same material in different ways, for example;

• The class discuss the problems and possible solutions.
• The students write their feelings about the situations at home or perhaps turn them into story.
• The teacher dictates a situational description to the students and then invites one student to invent and dictate the first line of the dialogue, then another student does line two, and so on.Students make up dialogues in pairs and perform them.

As well as working on language, the activity involves students in talking and listening to one another on a personal level. This may help to build good relationship within the class and help create a good working atmosphere.

2.    Four kinds of Lesson
A complete lesson may consist of a single long activity, or it may have a number of shorter activities within it. These activities may have different aims; they may also, when viewed together, give the entire lesson an overall objective.

Here description of four basic lesson types

a.      Logical Line
In this lesson there is a clear attempt to follow a ‘logical’ path from one activity to the next. Activity A leads to activity B leads to activity C. activity C builds on what has been done in activity B, which itself builds on what has been done in activity A.

In work on language skill, the sequence of activities often moves from overview towards work on specific details. For example, the learners move gradually from a general understanding of a reading text to detailed comprehension and study of items within it.

b.      Topic Umbrella
In this kind of lesson, a topic (eg; Rain forest or education or wheater or good management) provides the main focal point for student work. The teacher might include a variety of separate activities (eg; on vocabulary, speaking, listening, grammar, etc) linked only by the fact that the umbrella topic remains the same.

The activity can often be done in a variety of orders without changing the overall success of the lesson. In some cases activities may be linked; for example, when the discussion in one activity uses vocabulary studied in a proceding activity. There may be a number of related or disparate aims in this lesson, rather than a single main objective.

c.       Jungle Path
An alternative approach would be not to predict and prepare so much but create the lesson moment by moment in classs, the teacher and learners working with whatever is happening in the room, responding to questions, problems and options as they come up and finding new activities, materials and tasks in response to particular situations.

The starting point might be an activity or a piece of material, but what comes out of it will remain unknown until it happens.

The essential diffrences between this lesson and the previous lesson types is that the teacher is working more with the people In the room than with her material or her plan.

d.      Rag Bag
This lesson is made up of a number of unconnected activities. For example; a chat at the start of the lesson, followed by vocabulary game, a pairwork speaking activity and a song. The variety in a lesson of this kind may often be appealing to students and teacher. There can, however, be a ‘bittiness’ about this approach that makes it unsatisfactory for long-term usage.

There will be no overall language objective for the lesson (though there might be a group-building aim). Each separate activity might have its own aims.

3.    Using a course book
A coursebook can be a good source of useful, exploitable material. It will also sequence the activities. Sadly not all coursebooks are equally helpful, but as a starting point, I’d certainly recommend finding out of your book is usable or not.

You do not necessarily need to be a slave to the book, you can adapt and vary the activities if you wish, you can do them in a different order.

The coursebook writer is a more experienced teacher that you knows something of the problems learners have, provides a useful syllabus for them to follow, and has devised a course to help them learn.

Conclusions

Coursebook are written:
-          To give less experienced teachers support and guidence and control of a well-organized syllabus.
-          To give more experienced teachers materials to work from.

Using a coursebook as a resource you must know.
-          Select, choose what is appropriate for you and your students
-          Reject, leave it out if it’s not appropriate
-          Teach, the book is a resource to help and inform your work
-          Exploit, find interesting ways to adapt or exploit the material

-          Supplement, use teachers recipe, books, magazine, picture, etc.