STRUCTURING A LESSON AND CREATING LESSON PLANS FOR THE EFFECTIVE TEACHING ENGLISH

Good teaching happens when competent teachers with non-discouraging personalities use non-defensive approaches to language teaching and learning, and cherish their students.
Dr. James E. Alatis
Effective teaching languages as well as any other subject is predetermined by careful preparation of the teacher. And this preparation means that the teacher should:

• pay attention to the content, i.e., be aware of the curriculum and materials of the course;
• choose the proper teaching methods to be used and decide whether the teaching is more teacher centered or learner centered;
• find out the students’ level of knowledge, materials they have already learnt and the perspectives of their future study;
• and, of course, outline a semester plan and elaborate a plan for every lesson of the semester.

In order to assist their students in fulfilling the goals and attaining learning objectives the educators are creating adequate teaching materials, introducing effective teaching techniques, thinking of new forms of assessment, still the perfect effective teaching cannot be provided without thorough planning of each classes of the course. Planning lessons plays a vital role in teacher’s organizing of the teaching / learning process, no matter how experienced or competent he/she is, and, therefore, it is very important in teaching.
Realizing the importance of structuring the lesson the teachers make up plans by combining different approaches, mixing up various techniques and using different lesson plan formats. There are a great number of the lesson plan types depending on the teaching strategies and approaches pursued by an educator. The main instructional approaches are considered to be:

• PPP (Presentation, Practice and Production)
• TTT (Test, Teach and Test)
• TBA (Task-based Approach)

Presentation, Practice and Production is highly recommended and widely used approach, which is commonly taught in institutions providing TESOL and TEFL certifications. It consists of three sections: the presentation (teacher-centered) of new language concepts, the practice (joint participation of teacher and students) of the new language concepts, and the production (student-centered) of new language concepts. During the presentation section, up to 80 percent of the period is occupied by teacher’s explanation of lesson concepts. Though, different forms of presenting new material may be used, such as reading, listening, videos, student presentations, etc. In the practice section, the students are encouraged to active participation, and the student talking time is up to 70 percent while the teacher assumes the role of moderator. Some educators call this part of the lesson the controlled practice section.
In the production section (sometimes called the free or authentic practice) student participation reaches up to 90 percent. During this period the students use the target language structures in different types of activities, such as discussions, written work, listening comprehension, games, etc. The teacher only monitors the student using new language concepts for the communication.
Test, Teach and Test is another rather frequently used method. Actually there are three sections similar to the Presentation, Practice and Production, but in another sequence. The first Test section corresponds to the production phase in the PPP approach, where the students produce a language concept based on their existing knowledge and without any prior input. Then follows the Teach stage corresponding to the presentation phase in the PPP approach, but which is based on an overall assessment. After that the final section of the TTT approach comes which allows checking students learning the new language concepts. This approach having its pros and cons is recommended for use at the higher competency levels.
Task based Approach is highly approved by many teachers because of being based on real life language contexts it makes learning natural, arising from actual needs of learners. Besides it allows learners to use all their language resources for the fulfillment of the task. TBA-structured classes comprises the following main phases: 1) a teacher’s pre-task introduction; 2) the students' fulfilling a task involving a particular language aspect; and 3) reporting, analysis and feedback to be performed by the teacher concerning how the students accomplished the task.
Structuring the lessons on the basis of PPP approach is the most widely used and advocated by the educators in scientific literature. National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC), located in Washington, DC, in one of the online publications “The Essentials of Language Teaching” presents the description and structure of the effective lesson.  Emphasizing the necessity of including a variety of activities that combine different types of language input and output it is recommended to construct the lesson in five parts: Preparation, Presentation, Practice, Evaluation, and Expansion. The paper gives analysis to every part of the lesson, paying attention to the setting the goals of the lesson to be fulfilled, identifying the materials required for the lesson, and describes activities and methods to be used.
So, using one of the above mentioned approaches or combining them the educators are creating lesson plans. The details and elements of lesson plans vary, however, every good lesson plan include some common components such as:

• Lesson Title
• The period of time necessary to complete the lesson
• Class details (class name or section, age, skill level, etc.)
• The lesson objectives
• Instructional approach to be used
• Instructional materials
• Methods for practicing the lesson concepts
• Evaluation and testing methods to be used, etc.

To start with NCLRC delivers a simplified scheme of planning a lesson:
Instructor Lesson Planning Worksheet

Lesson Topic
The topic of the lesson is _________________

Lesson Goals
Linguistic content:

 
Communication tasks:

 
Learning strategies:

Lesson Structure
Preparation

 
Time:

 
What teacher will do:

 
What students will do:

 
Presentation

 
Time:

 
What teacher will do:

 
What students will do:

 
Practice

 
Time:

 
What teacher will do:

 
What students will do:

In spite of the existence of many different approaches to teaching English most educators still use PPP approach, sometimes modifying it. That’s why lesson plan format is rather standard. One of the examples of the lesson structure is: Warming-up, Presentation, Controlled practice, Free practice, and Feedback.
In order to keep this standard lesson plan format from becoming boring, it is important to remember that there are a large number of variations that can be applied within the various segments of the lesson plan format. Designing a lesson plan the teacher should keep in mind that great lesson plans are organized in a way that is easy and a delight to follow; each lesson should fit the curriculum and be an integral part of it; perfect lesson plan must have a detailed version and a brief one page summary.
References:

• National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC). (n.d.). The essentials of language teaching. Retrieved April 23, 2007. – Режим доступу:  http://nclrc.org/essentials.