Aslı Meryem's E-Portfolio



03.12.2010

Aslı Meryem LEVENT

07271016

LESSON PLAN

I. PREPARATION

Lesson: English

Subject: Uncountable nouns

Topic: Refreshments

Grade: 9th grade

Level: Intermediate

Duration: 40’+40’

Approach: Communicative Language Teaching

Skills: Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking

Techniques: Reading aloud, Questioning, Repetition, Filling the blanks, Pair work, Peer correction

Role of the students: Communicator, Performer, Active participant, Negotiator

Role of the teacher: Organizer, Facilitator, Monitor, Director

The nature of student-student and teacher-student interaction: Students interact with both the teacher and each other.

Expected errors: Misuse of uncountable nouns such as using “a/an” or plural with uncountable nouns

Error Source: L1 (negative transference of the first language pattern to the foreign language and overgeneralization)

Type of Corrective Feedback: Recast

Materials: Reading dialogue, board, board marker, worksheets, pictures

Basic Characteristics of the Teaching and Learning Process

II. PRESENTATION

1- ) Warm-up and Motivation

The teacher comes to the classroom and greets students as usual. She wants them to talk about that what kinds of food and drinks they like and how often they go shopping. After that, she shows some pictures and asks them to say how much food and drinks there are in Turkish. Thus, students perform a brainstorming activity. Through this activity, the teacher makes the students ready for the subject of the lesson.

|[pic][pic][pic] [pic] |

|[pic][pic][pic] [pic][pic] |

2- ) Stating the Instructional Objectives

The teacher tells the students that they will learn uncountable nouns.

3- ) Presenting the Instructional Objectives

The teacher reads a dialogue that has uncountable nouns. The uncountable nouns are written in bold and underlined.

|Michael and Chris Taylor love being with friends. They often have parties at home. They are going to have a party at home. They are |

|making a shopping list now. |

|Michael: Honey, do we have any drinks? |

|Chris: Well, we have a lot of lemonade and some apple juice; but there isn’t any coke. |

|Michael: Then, we are going to buy some coke. How much coke do we need? |

|Chris: Five cans/tins of coke. |

|Michael: OK, then I’m putting it on the shopping list. Do we need any vegetables? |

|Chris: Yes, I’m going to make a carrot salad; but there aren’t any carrots. |

|Michael: Not again! You always make carrot salad. Let’s make a Mediterranean salad this time. |

|Chris: All right. Oh! We don’t have enough parsley to make a Mediterranean salad. |

|Michael: No problem. I’m adding it to the list. Well, how much parsley do we have? |

|Chris: Just a moment. We have some; but, we need two bunches of parsley more. Oh! We don’t have much oil, too. And we need a bottle of |

|oil. |

|Michael: OK, I’m adding a bottle of oil and two bunches of parsley. You make delicious chocolate cakes. Are going to make one? |

|Chris: Yes, I am. I need a bag of flour, two pockets of butter, three bars of chocolate, and a jar of jam. |

|Michael: OK, I’m putting them on the list. And eggs? |

|Chris: Oh, I need some eggs, too. |

|Michael: How many eggs do you need? |

|Chris: Five |

|Michael: OK, then. Now, we are going shopping. |

After that, she writes them with their translation equivalents on the board.

English Turkish

Five cans/tins of coke beş (teneke) kutu kola

Two bunches of parsley iki demet maydanoz

A bottle of oil bir şişe zeytinyağı

A bag of flour bir torba un

Two pockets of butter iki paket yağ

Three bars of chocolate üç kalıp çikolata

A jar of jam bir kavanoz reçel

Then, she pronounces them and the students repeat after her. Thus, the students start to be aware uncountable nouns.

III. PRACTICE

In practice stage, firstly the teacher wants the students to fill the chart according to the dialogue in order to make them comprehend the text and aware of the expressions.

The 1st activity:

Make the shopping list of Michael and Chris.

|WHAT |HOW MANY |HOW MUCH |

|e.g. coke |_ |five cans/tins of coke |

|Parsley |_ |two bunches of parsley |

|Oil |_ |a bottle of oil |

|Flour |_ |a bag of flour |

|Butter |_ |two pockets of butter |

|Chocolate |_ |three bars of chocolate |

|Jam |_ |a jar of jam |

|Egg |five eggs |_ |

After that, she wants the students to work with a pair and she gives another text to each student in pairs. She wants them to complete the text according to pictures. Then, they exchange their papers and check each other’s answers.

The 2nd activity

Look at the pictures and complete the text.

|My little son always has [pic] a piece of (1) c_ _ _ _ _, [pic] an (2) e_ _, [pic] some (3) h_ _ _ _ and [pic] a glass of (4) m_ _ _ for|

|breakfast. At lunchtime he usually has[pic] a (5) h_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _,[pic] an (6) a_ _ _ _ and [pic] a bottle of (7) a_ _ _ _. Sometimes |

|he eats [pic] a piece of chocolate (8) c_ _ _ with [pic] a can of (9) c_ _ _. In the afternoon, he often eats [pic] two (10) o_ _ _ _ _|

|_ and [pic] a (11) b_ _ _ _ _. For dinner he usually eats [pic] a bowl of (12) s_ _ _ and some grilled [pic] (13) s_ _ _ _ with [pic] |

|(14) r_ _ _. Whenever he eats out, he prefers eating [pic] (15) d_ _ _ _ with[pic] a bowl of (16) s_ _ _ _. He usually drinks [pic] a |

|glass of (17) a_ _ _ _. |

IV. PRODUCTION

In the production part, the teacher again wants them to work with a pair and gives a list to them. There are some food and drinks in the list and she gives a situation to them. For example, she says “You are going to have a party this Saturday. Prepare a shopping list for your party using these items like the one of Michael and Chris”.

|[pic][pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] |

V. SUMMARY

The teacher summarizes the lesson by saying “We talked about the refreshments and learned uncountable nouns with expressions”. She thanks them for their participation and finishes the lesson.

The Perspectives of Linguistics

1- ) Why do I choose uncountable nouns?

I think that it is one of the subjects students have difficulty in understanding and they make mistakes. Also, comparing with Turkish, there is confusion of classifier-type expressions in Turkish. In other words, there is a distinction in English between things treated as uncountable. It is ungrammatical in English to use “a/an” or the plural with uncountable nouns like a butter, a chocolate, an advice. To avoid these ungrammatical forms, we should use classifier-type expressions such as “item of” or “piece of”.

2- ) Why do I use the Communicative Approach?

I organize my lesson according to CLT because communicative competence is my ultimate and desired goal. That is, I teach the language to communicate. I want my class to be learner-centered and expect them to interact with other people through pair and group work. Also, I provide a social context so that class interactions are realistic and meaningful. My students practice real-life situations like shopping. The subject is also suitable for my students’ interests. Additionally, I give them the opportunity to negotiate meaning and make themselves understood by others. Lastly, I pay attention to the classroom atmosphere in which my students can express their opinions, feelings and emotions freely and they can learn to communicate by communicating. These things can be provided only by using CLT.

3- ) Why do I use brainstorming?

I use brainstorming at the beginning of my lesson as a teacher. I use some questioning techniques and systematic practice; because I believe my students’ inference ability can be improved with the help of these things. Also, I use some pictures at the warm up stage; because, visual aids are one of the important teaching aids. They are useful for getting the students to predict what is coming next in a lesson. Also, I use them especially to elicit their mistakes about classifiers.

4- ) Why do I benefit from Schema Theory?

As a teacher, I want my learners to make sense of the topic. For this reason, they need to have pre-existent knowledge of the world. This theory puts heavy emphasis on the importance of the learners’ background knowledge. If the students have background knowledge or cultural base about the topic, it will easy for them to understand it; because, when the students are familiar to the topic, they can process it better. For these reasons, I can say that my students have a schema of the refreshments in their mind; they can know the characteristics of the refreshments. Thus, they can connect their knowledge with the new structure. In addition to these, shared schemata make spoken and written communication efficient. Without the right kind of pre-existing knowledge, comprehension becomes much more difficult. And that is the problem for some foreign language learners who have to work hard to understand what they see or hear because they have a different shared knowledge of cultural reference and discourse patterning in their own language and culture from that in English variety they deal with.

5- ) Why do I use reading material?

I use a reading material which includes a dialogue at the presentation part. There are many reasons for it. Firstly, it helps the input be comprehensible for the learners. Secondly, it has a communicative value and function as an active skill; because, one’s cognitive process is working during reading. My students both read and try to work on the information in the reading itself. Lastly, form and meaning are integrated with reading. Thus, meaningful and social context are provided for learners.

6- ) Why do I write the uncountable in bold and underlined at the presentation stage?

According to Michael Sharwood Smith, input enhancement is useful to draw learners’ attention to the features in the target language. For this reason, I give the reading material designed to draw my students’ attention to the forms which are embedded in the task. I do this with enhancement like writing in bold type and underlined. Thus, my students can see the difference between countable and uncountable nouns; also, they can realize classifier-type expressions with uncountable nouns.

7- ) Why do I write the uncountable nouns with their equivalents on the board?

Charles Frie gives an emphasis to that contrastive analysis of the two languages can decrease the potential problems stemmed from the first language. So, I write uncountable nouns with their equivalents on the board. Thus, my students can grasp the similarities and differences uncountable nouns in Turkish and English. I think that I can help my learners to be aware of the classifier-type expressions with uncountable nouns.

8- ) Why do I use pair/group work?

CLT is a learner-centered approach and the teacher serves as more of a facilitator, allowing students to be in charge of their own learning. It allows students to work and interact independently without the necessary guidance of the teacher; thus promoting learner independence. It encourages cooperation and negotiation. Also, it promotes learner autonomy by allowing students to make their own decisions.

9- ) Why do I choose these activities for the learners?

In these activities, the aim is for the students to communicate their needs and thoughts. Through these activities, I can create meaningful context in which the language is useful. Since there are many different linguistic forms used in real language, a variety of linguistic forms are presented together. I expect my students to make predictions and they state their predictions in different words like tin or can.

10- ) What kind of errors do I expect from my students and what can the causes of them be?

When they have learned countable and uncountable nouns, they may use “a/an” or plural with uncountable nouns such as a butter, a chocolate, a good advice and informations. These errors may be based on some causes. The first one is the factor “overgeneralization” that the students make while they are developing their interlanguages. The students overgeneralize the apparent rule adding “-s” to form uncountable nouns like informations. The second reason is the negative transference of the first language to the target language e.g. adding “a/an” to the uncountable nouns. And lastly and actually, the main problem for the learners is that there is a difference between Turkish and English culture; because, the learners have a different shared knowledge of cultural reference and discourse in their own language and culture from English. In our culture, there is a lack of linguistic relativity. That is, the structure of our language with its predetermined categories affects how we perceive the world. For example; in Turkish, we say “bir su alabilir miyim?”. Actually, we know it as “bir şişe su” ; but, we do not use. Namely, we neglect using classifier such as “item of”, “piece of”. The equivalent nouns in many other languages are treated as countable like in Turkish. The existence of a grammatical class of “uncountable entities” is evidence of a type of cognitive categorization based on expression of quantity in English.

11- ) How should I correct these errors?

Considering my learners’ age and their learning goals, I correct them through recasts. It is an implicit corrective feedback with repeating what the students say correctly or reformulating the sentence. According to the studies conducted by Rod Ellis, Helen Basturkmen and Shawn Loewen, learners notice and respond to recasts in ways that contribute positively to their language development. Also, it is used at consistently high rate in management, communication and content exchanges.

12- ) Why do I adopt “Let’s talk” and “Get it right in the end” proposals?

In “Let’s talk” proposal, comprehensible input and conversational interactions with teacher and other students are very important. As a teacher, I give them the opportunity to negotiate for meaning. My learners work together to achieve a particular goal in practice and production stages. They can express their thoughts, opinions and feelings in a free classroom environment in which they can interact with each other through pair/group works. Additionally, according to “Get it right in the end” proposal, the teachers should find the balance between meaning-based and form-based learning and teaching activities. As a teacher, I think so. In this proposal, if the learners have adequate exposure to the language and motivation to learn, they can acquire language easily. Also, this proposal underlines that some aspects of language must be taught explicitly. Explicit instruction is particularly needed when learners in class share the same L1; because, the errors resulting from L1 transfer are not likely to lead any kind of communication breakdown; thus, it will be difficult for learners to discover errors on their own. For these reasons, I draw my learners’ attention to their mistakes and help them to be aware of this concept at the beginning of my lesson. Also, proponents of this proposal argue that what learners focus on can lead to changes in their interlanguage systems.

13- ) What is the role of “Information Processing” in my lesson?

It is interested in what stages humans go through when engaging in four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Learners at the earliest stage will use most of their resources to understand the main words in a message. They do not understand grammatical morphemes attached to some of the words. Gradually, through experience and practice, information that was new becomes easier to process and learners access it quickly and even automatically. In my lesson, I help my students to be aware of the classifier-type expressions with activities in practice and production stages. So, their learning starting with declarative knowledge becomes procedural knowledge through practice.

As a conclusion, I want to add some things. Certainly, it is not impossible that our view of the world may be influenced in some obvious ways by the way our native language (Turkish) encourages us to classify concepts; but that does not mean that our language defines a shell in which our thought is confined or that there are untranslatable thoughts that only a speaker of some other language can have. If we find ourselves trying to think on unthinkable thought, we will not give up and blame our language; just we should think a little harder although some claim that your language creates your world for you.

REFERENCES

- Lightbown, M. P., Spada, N., “How Languages are Learned”. 2006. Third Edition. Oxford University Press.

- “New Bridge to the Success 9th Grade”

- Rickerson, E. M. and Hilton, M., “The Five Minute Linguist”. 2007. Equinox.

- Yule, G., “The Study of Language”. 2006. Third Edition. Cambridge.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download