ESL English Teaching Tips – Making a Lesson Plan
While a conversation class may seem like it needs no or limited preparation (“all I have to do is talk to them – I’ll bring in my photos from India and we can talk about my trip there.”), the opposite is true. Students will more than likely be timid, especially at the beginning, and the purpose of the class is to get them talking, not for you to talk the entire time. If all they wanted was to listen to English, they could go to an American movie and save themselves time and money.
So how do you go about planning for a class? Begin by deciding what content you want to cover and what your objectives are for the lesson – this will depend a lot on your class’s level and it might depend on an ESL textbook that the school has provided for you or that you have brought yourself. Ideally, these objectives will include both new vocabulary and new grammatical forms. Then think about what activities you want to use to accomplish these goals. These may include a short introduction to the class, a warm-up activity to get everyone involved, group work on dialogues, presentation of skits or survey results in front of the class, and a short conclusion reviewing what was learned and pointing out common mistakes.
Finally, you should always have a “contingency plan” to fill up any space that might exist at the end of the class. These plans may consist of an additional game/activity, or of an exercise that will help students to build bridges in their minds between structures and vocabulary learned in different lessons and that learned that day.
Content to be covered: Visit to the doctor/pharmacist
- Review vocabulary: parts of body, where to go to find something (type of store, where in store)
- Review grammar: command forms of verbs (“Take two aspirin every morning”)
- New vocabulary: ways to describe illness and methods of remedying it
- New grammar: giving advice “I would recommend” + [verb+ing]
Introduction: quick review of parts of body, command forms
- Warm-up activity: Simon Says (10 minutes)
- Introduction of new material: common ailment vocabulary, advice language. Write it on the board, and have them copy it into their notebooks.
- Group work: worksheets with two dialogues – doctor/patient, pharmacist/client
- Report back to class: Doctors describe patient’s ailments, patients describe doctor’s advice
- Review of new material, point out common mistakes
- Contingency plan: review of city directions, combined with advice form. Write a command sequence on the board: take bus #12 to downtown, walk three blocks north.” Next, have your students convert it to advice form: “I would recommend taking bus #12, walking three blocks north.”
Materials: Worksheets with dialogues and word replacement suggestions, large picture of human body to review parts of body.
Content to be covered: Clothing/Fashion Attitudes
- Review vocabulary: frequency vocabulary (once a week), commands (stand up, touch your ear)
- Review grammar: expressing opinions (I think that, I prefer to)
- New vocabulary: fashion, advertising terms (in style, out of style, good taste, bad taste, traditional style, latest fashion, department store, boutique, model, effective advertisement, ineffective advertisement)
- New grammatical structure: reporting survey results (all, most, the majority, about half, the minority, some, a few, none + of the students)
- Introduction: pass out list of new ESL terms, ask if any are familiar. Use pictures of magazines to discuss those that aren’t familiar.
- Warm-up activity: Ask questions related to vocabulary and write key words on the board, then have students stand up (touch their ears or put their hands up if they agree). Report the results on the board.
- Stand up if you go to department stores more than once a year. Remain standing if you go to department stores more than once a month. If not, sit down. (Twice a month, three times a month, once a week, twice a week.) [Record the results]
- Do you think this woman is dressed in the latest fashion? If you do, lift up your book; if you don’t, to