Focus
Everyone likes to know why they are doing things and where they
are going. So, you need to make this clear and focus people.
The other reason, often neglected, is that learners are not passive
receivers of data. If learners know what the targets of the
lesson are and what it leads to, they can use their own resources to
help themselves to achieve the aims of the lesson. They are
not, after all, your aims but theirs.
When you did the research for your lesson or teaching slot, you
may have come across the terminology for the area and impressed
yourself that you understood it and can use it in your lesson plan.
Do not get carried away. You may know that the focus of the
lesson is on transferred negation or deontic modality but your
learners need that focus to be expressed in a way that accords with
their aims and experience. So,
Instead of
This lesson is
about ways of expressing obligation
prefer
This lesson is on
how to say what you must do and what you must not do
and instead of
This lesson is
about how we make negative sentences in English
prefer
This lesson is
about agreeing and disagreeing with someone
This way, the learners can see what it is they are
trying to communicate and bring their own knowledge and resources to
bear.
This is not the place for a mini-lecture – you just need to
set the topic of the lesson and say what people will learn to do.
The same considerations apply to activities and tasks.
People need to have some idea why they are being asked to do them.
This should not be a mini-lecture on task purposes but you do need
to focus people on what they are doing. For example:
This task will ask
you to think carefully about the form of the language
This task is to see if you can remember which preposition
goes with which verb
This task is to practise quickly finding small bits of
information in a text
This task will help you learn how to listen for the general
message without understanding all the words you hear
and so on. That's enough.
Focus also needs to be maintained throughout the teaching slot or lesson so you need to be continually alert to what people are thinking and talking about. If they go off target, you need to nudge them back gently.
Focus is particularly important for skills work. When you
read, write, listen or speak, you do so for a purpose. Being
asked, therefore, simply to read something or listen to something
without knowing why you are doing it is quite
disorientating for most people. Never, ever, therefore, say:
Please read this
text
Listen to these people talking
Write three sentences about hobbies
Talk to your partner about the weekend
but always prefer
Read this text and
write down three new facts you have learned about the USA
Listen to these people talking and write down what they say
when they want to change the subject
Use the words you learned yesterday to write three sentences
that are true for you about holidays and hobbies
Talk to your partner and find out two things she or he did
last weekend
Here's a little test. Read the things a teacher may say and ask yourself how useful and helpful it is. Then click on the for some ideas. |
This lesson is
on modal auxiliary verbs |
The problem here is twofold:
This lesson is about ways to say how sure we are that something has happened. For example, The garden's very wet so it must have rained hard last night |
Please read
this text and underline the adjectives |
Why?
What's the text about? Do I want to read this? Why should I underline adjectives? Do not do this. Before learners can start to analyse the language in a text, they need to respond to it personally and understand what it is about. A better way to put this is something like this (with a gap between the two tasks for you get some feedback and clear up any comprehension problems): This is story about a haunted house. There are lots of words in the text which describe the house and the things in it. First read the text and talk to your partner about what you have understood. ... Now, go back and re-read the text underlining all the adjectives |
The list of
verbs here comes with a list of prepositions. Try to
match the correct preposition with the verbs so you can
remember which one goes with which. The first one is an example. |
This is much better because you have made it clear
what the learners need to do and why they should try to
do it.
Better still, you have provided an example so no-one is in any doubt about what to do. This will only be successful if the words have already been encountered in the work that went before this task. You can't ask people to come cold to this kind of activity. It is reinforcement, not presentation. |
Talk to your
partner about your earliest memories as a child |
Why?
How is this relevant to what will follow? What language am I supposed to be using? Who cares? This can be an interesting and motivating lead in but the learners need to be told about it. A better instruction is: Today we are going to look at the language we use to talk about what we did in the past but do not do now. Think of three things you did as a child and no longer do. Things you have stopped doing. For example, when I was child, I used to like ... but now I don't like ... (Two minutes) Now, tell your partner about them. The purpose of the exercise is twofold:
The other important thing the example did was to introduce the target of the lesson (the semi-modal auxiliary verb used to for talking about discontinued habits). |
Rehearse |
Now is a good time to do as you did for the guide to First impressions and try to visualise exactly how you will focus the learners:
- At the beginning of the lesson
- How are you going to tell the learners what the topic is?
- How are you going to say what they will be able to do by the end?
- Before each activity
- What is the activity for?
- What will happen at the end?
- At the end of each activity
- How did the learners do?
- What have they learned?
- At the end of the lesson
- What have we done?
- What have you learned?
(See the section of this course concerned with summing up a lesson for a little more.)
Try practising your focusing language and instructions now and when it comes to the lesson, they'll be second nature so you can think about more important things: the learners.