Second edition

Read these lips and tick ihe ones which arc most important for you,
ф The syllabus (i.e. the course programme) and/or the coursebook will give us a general direction for planning our teaching. To specify main aims for a particular lesson (i.e. to say exactly what the aims are), we think about our learners' needs and the stage they have reached in their learning.

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   Aims are not the same as procedures. Aims describe what the learners will learn or what they will be able to do with the language, while procedures - for example, listening to a recording and answering questions - are what the teacher and learners do at each stage of the lesson.
   

© Our main aims should not be too general. Aims such as 'to teach the past simple' or 'to develop learners' reading skills' do not say enough about the purpose of the lesson. More specific (or exact) aims might be 'to introduce and practise the past simple for talking about personal experiences' or 'to give learners practice in predicting content, scanning for specific information and deducing meaning from context'.
m Another way of looking at main aims is to think about the lesson from the learners' point of view. Instead of using infinitives to describe what the teacher plans to do (e.g. 'to introduce To practise ...'), many teachers prefer to describe the learners' objectives, or learning outcomes (e.g. 'By the end of the lesson, learners will be able to use polite requests to ask for information').
© Once we have identified the most appropriate main aim for a particular lesson, it should be easier to make decisions about everything else, e.g. the selection of materials and activities, the organisation of the classroom, procedure, timing of different stages, the stage aims.
© Learners of all ages find it helpful to know why they are doing things. It is often a good idea to announce our main aims (or to write them up on the hoard) at the beginning of the lesson, and/or to repeat them at the end.
© Sometimes there may be good reasons for not announcing a lesson's main aims immediately. For example, you may want the learners to discover something about the language during the lesson, or to identify a need for new language, without knowing the aim of the lesson in advance. In a lesson like this, it will be important to announce or elicit the aim at the end of the lesson, so that you can be sure the learners know what they have done, and why.


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Procedure