Lecture 1: General problems of Foreign Language teaching

LECTURE 25: Lesson planning
Plan:

1. 
   Lesson planning of English.
   
2. 
   Stages of English lesson: warm-up, presentation, checking-up.
   
3. 
   Samples of lesson plans in English.
   

Given below is a general outline of a daily lesson for the 5th form during the oral introductory course with its inter­pretation:

1. The beginning; of the lesson 2—3 min.
2. Pronunciation drill 8—10 min.
3. Oral practice 30—35 min.
4. Homework 1—2 min.
The beginning of the lesson is used by the teacher for greeting the class and getting everyone ready for the lesson, for telling his pupils what they will learn and how that will be achieved. The latter is said in the pupils' mother, tongue, because the class is not prepared for understanding the foreign language.
Pronunciation drill enables the teacher to concentrate pupils' attention on sounds, sound combinations, rhythm, and melody. The teacher usually utilizes the material already covered to get the pupils to practise in producing sounds, words with these sounds, phrases and-sentences correctly by asking the class to pronounce all this in unison and individ­ually. Since learning to pronounce properly in the target language is the most important objective for beginners during the oral introductory course, eight-ten minutes' drill is need­ed to achieve necessary pronunciation habits. To help pupils to acquire these habits the teacher either conducts pronuncia­tion drill himself or uses audio-visual materials so that pupils can watch how to produce sounds, words, phrases and sentences, i. е., how wide or narrow the teacher opens his mouth, whether the voice goes up (the teacher moves his hand up) or it falls (the teacher moves his hand down).
If the pupils find difficulties, they can get some further help by listening to the teacher's explanation and watching how to produce this or that sound, word, etc. When the teacher has only an audio means, for instance, a tape-recording or a record, he uses this to support his efforts in teaching pronun­ciation.
Since pronunciation in the English language differs greatly from that of the Russian language, the teacher should not hurry and should do his best to help each pupil to make prog­ress in discriminating and producing English sounds to be able to aud and speak this language. As there are 18—20 pupils in the group and each needs special attention on the part of the teacher, eight-ten minutes should be devoted to pronunciation drill.
Oral practice implies the revision of the material covered and, the presentation and assimilation of some new linguistic material for further developing pupils' hearing and speaking activities. This is the core of each lesson providing the theme or topic as well as the new vocabulary and structure. They are all woven into natural English whether in simple questions and answers, dialogue or monologue. Thus within this part of the lesson we can easily distinguish:
Revision. Pupils perform exercises which make communication possible, however elementary the level of such communication may be. Their speech is stimulated by the teacher's commands and requests, objects and pictures. The work is done mainly individually and in pairs.