2. The structure of the EL lesson and types of lessons There is no general scheme of the lesson structure which can be obligatory for all lessons. Some of the stages of a lesson are constant, others can be varied. A constant stage of a lesson is an involving into language atmosphere. This stage includes various tasks or activities. One of them is a phonetic drill. The atmosphere of communication created at the beginning of the lesson lasts during the whole lesson. The dominant place is given to the teacher’s communicative action related to motivation, instructions, control and evaluation.
These stages are considered as reasonable from methodical point of view:
Involving into the language atmosphere;
Explanation of the new material and algorithm of operations and actions with it;
Writing down and explanation of the homework, summarizing the lesson’s results and marking.
In the domestic methodology the following types of the lesson are distinguished15:
The lessons are directed to acquire a) language elements on lexical, phonetic and grammatical levels and language use as a result of this type of a lesson is obtaining the linguistic competence.
The lessons are directed to acquire communicative activity. The aim of this type of a lesson is forming or developing listening, reading, speaking and writing skills.
The lessons which combine previous types of lessons are directed to acquire knowledge, language sub-skills and communicative skills. In the practice of teaching the preference is given more to this type of a lesson.
Besides in methodology of FLT the different lesson organization approaches as teaching models are used:
1) Presentation -> Practice -> Production (PPP);
2) Engage -> Study -> Activate (ESA);
3) Test -> Teach -> Test (TTT);
4) Task-based approach (TBA).
1.PPP works through the progression of three sequential stages. Presentation stagerepresents the introduction to a lesson, and necessarily requires the creation of a realistic (or realistic-feeling) "situation" requiring the target language to be learned that can be achieved through using pictures, dialogues, imagination or actual "classroom situations". The teacher checks to see that the students understand the nature of the situation and then he/she builds the "concept" underlying the language to be learned using small chunks of the language that the students already know. Having understood the concept, students are then given the language "model" and engage in choral drills to learn statement, answer and question forms for the target language. This is a very teacher-orientated stage where error correction is important.
It is necessary to take into consideration that at the presentation stage of the lesson eliciting is a useful way of involving the class by focusing students’ attention and making them think; it establishes what students know and what they do not know; and it encourages students to make guesses and to work out rules for themselves. For example, eliciting can be organized on the basis of a picture, or a headline of the text as a pre-reading activity.