Third Year Students at the University Unit/Theme: An International Education

Reflection

The lesson was very engaging. Almost all students were active but some of them need more motivation and encouragement.

Summary
Planning is the most challenging part of being a teacher. That's why teachers consequently work on planning for every detail for all skills for their lesson. Everything should be integrated, relevant, appropriate, meaningful, and interesting to the learner. Then only can be achieved the expected goal.
My lesson plan is for students of 3rd year at the University of Foreign Languages. It is designed according to their needs analysis which was taken at the beginning of the project. As Swales (1985) stated that to avoid repetition and achieve the goal, every teacher should be aware of his/her learners' needs. While conducting the needs analysis, it is taken into consideration their strength, weaknesses, goals, and interests. In accordance with the result of the survey, most of their aim to continue their study abroad that's way want to emphasize more to improve speaking skills. However, in their result was a big gap in writing and grammar too. In line with the result of the Placement Test, their current level is intermediate. And our course is designed to achieve the next step of language learning, upper-intermediate. Taking note this information, our curriculum directed to improve above mentioned skill with integrating other skills.
The lesson starts after introducing the topic and its agenda with warm-up activity "Gallery walk." Students will be able to go around the class and explore the schools all over the world. According to teaching principles, instruction and beginning of the lesson needs to take into account the learners' "build in syllabus." (refer to previous knowledge) Behalf of that principle, this activity helps to wake their previous knowledge about schools. After exploring the pictures pair work, they discuss the given questions. Often was given question Why? What do you think? to enhance their critical thinking skills. (Blooms Taxonomy, 1964)
Listening activity was created in agreement with top- down interpretation category which refers the process of using knowledge of grammar, discourse, context and culture to assign meaning.
Grammar part was explained according to Celce-Murcia's (1991) principles which considered the role of grammar in a communicative curriculum and drew predominantly on a linguistic theory of grammar. Meanwhile it was reinforced with individual work of students.
The reading part was the most engaged one. It has information about unusual school that has moral education as well for students. The activity for this part was sketched according to form -focused instruction integrating with discussed grammar topic and vocabulary parts. Students was asked to underline the key information, the lesson’s grammar structure and unfamiliar words.
The last stage of the lesson was writing. In keeping with what we have discussed, students supposed to acquire the knowledge of writing about the descriptive writing. Before they go to the process, the topic was illustrated with the famous method of explaining with using of five senses to compose the descriptive writing. After that we have written two types of the same meaning sentences to differ the distinctive of the descriptive writing. In the article of National Commission on Writing (2004) scholars (Dismuke, A. and Martin, S) have mentioned the importance of learning writing of the language, they say its basic skill for academic and professional achievement. In spite of its difficulties for a learner, especially for a learner who is acquiring the language as a second language.
The assessment and plenary parts were also bases on teaching principles, reviewed the lesson and answered students' questions, like in explicit knowledge of language. (accessed through controlled processing, answering question)