TEFL Supervision
The Structure of the Language Lesson
Research on teaching in mainstream classes has found that when
teachers structure their lessons effectively, they:
Begin a lesson with a short review of previous, prerequisite learning.
Begin a lesson with a short statement of goals.
Present new material in small steps, with student practice after each
step.
Give clear and detailed instructions and explanations.
Provide a high level of active practice for all students.
Ask a large number of questions, check for student understanding,
and obtain responses for all students. ( formative questions)
Guide students during initial practice.
Provide systematic feedback and corrections.
Provide explicit instruction and practice for seatwork exercises and,
where necessary, monitor students during seatwork.
The focus will be on four dimensions of structuring:
Opening: How a lesson begins,
Sequencing: How a lesson is divided into segments and how the segments
relate to each other.
Pacing: How a sense of movement is achieved within a lesson.
Closure: How a lesson is brought to an end.
Opening:
The way a lesson opens reflects a number of decisions that a teacher makes,
either consciously or unconsciously. A number of options are available. For
example, the teacher could choose to:
Describe the goals of a lesson.
State the information or skills the students will learn.
Describe the relationship between the lesson / activities and a real world
need.
Describe what students are expected to do in a lesson,
Describe the relationship between the lesson/ activities and a forthcoming
test or exam.
Begin an activity without any explanation.
Point out links between this lesson and previous lessons.
State that the activity the students will do is something they will enjoy,
Do something in order to capture the students' interest and motivation.
Review learning from a previous lesson.
Preview the lesson.
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TEFL Supervision
The purpose of a lesson beginning will determine the kind of activity or
strategy the teacher uses to begin the lesson. The beginning of a lesson with a
short review provides additional opportunities to learn previously taught
material and allows the teacher to provide correction or reteach areas that
students are having difficulties with. This can be accomplished by:
Asking questions about concepts or skills taught in the previous lesson.
Give a short quiz at the beginning of class on material from previous
lessons or homework assignments.
Having students meet in small groups (two to four per group) to review
homework.
Having students to prepare questions about previous lessons or homework.
They can ask questions to each other, or the teacher can ask them to class.
Having students prepare a written summary of the previous lesson.
Having students ask the teacher about a problem on homework and having
the teacher review, reteach, or provide additional practice,
Be aware that learners are sensitive to the contributions of lesson
beginnings.
Sequencing
Another dimension of structuring in lessons has to do with the format of the
lesson itself. Most lessons do not consist of a single activity; rather, the teacher
analyzes the overall goals of a lesson and the content to be taught and the
plans a sequence of activities to attain those goals. These sequence of sub-
activities for a lesson establishes a kind of format or script for the lesson.
Experienced teachers often have a mental format in mind when they think of a
particular kind of lesson, such as reading lesson, a composition class, a listening
lesson, and so on. This format represents the sequence of activities which make
up the lesson, In the third and fifth grade reading lesson, the teacher was
observed doing a typical lesson format:
Presenting new vocabulary items used in the text at hand.
Eliciting discussion on the meanings and uses of the new words and
relating them to known the words.
Having the group read the words together from the list.
Having the group read the text silently.
Having learners take turns reading the paragraphs in the text.
Discussing the meaning of the text with the students.
Making an assignment for seatwork to be done individually.
In second and foreign language teaching, a number of principles have
emerged for determining the internal structure of lessons. These principles are
based on different views of the skills and processes underlying different aspect
of second language learning and how learning can be accomplished most
effectively. The following are examples of principles of this kind, which are
taken from ESL methodology text of different persuasion:
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TEFL Supervision
Simple activities should come before complex ones,
Activities involving receptive skills should precede those that
involve productive skills.
Students should study a grammar rule before trying to use it
Students should practice using a tense or grammar structure
before studying the rule that underlies it,
Accuracy-focused activities should precede fluency-focused
ones.
There should be a progression within a lesson from mechanical or
from based activities to meaningful-based activities.
Often these principles reflect a specific school of methodology.
For example, in Situational Language Teaching, lessons often
have the following format:
1 . Presentation: The new structure is introduced and
presented.
2 Controlled practice: Learners are given intensive
practice in the structure, under the teacher's guidance
and control,
3 Free practice: The students practice using the structure
without any control by the teacher.
4 Checking: The teacher elicits use of the new structure to
check that it has been learned
5 Further practice: The structure is now practiced in new
situations, or in combination with other structures.
In Communicative Language Teaching, the following
sequence of activities is often used:
l. Pre-communicative activities: Accuracy-based activities
which focus on presentation of structures, functions, and
vocabulary.
2. Communicative activities: Fluency-based activities which
focus on information sharing and information exchange.
