(Paper  presented  in UGC National Seminar, 2010)

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LESSON PLANNING

-          Vijaya Babu,Koganti

                             

ABSTRACT The different methods that emerged in the teaching of the English language explain the revolutionary changes that occurred in the progress of the English language teaching ideology.  Of all the methods, namely ‘Grammar Translation Method’ ‘Direct Method’, ‘Oral Method’, ‘Audio-Lingual Method’, ‘Bilingual Method’, etc., the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has become the ‘umbrella’ approach with an accepted ‘norm’.  All other methods are teacher – centered or teacher directed in one way or the other. CLT probes the nature of social, cultural and pragmatic features of a language and promotes learner autonomy.  A good lesson plan with Pre, While and Post activities and in a P-P- P (Presentation, Practice and Production) Model will make the class situation and output more interesting and creative. An effective lesson plan guides the teacher in a step-by-step procedure and helps him achieve his goals. Though our experience enables us to plan the steps of our lessons mentally, a concrete plan in black and white is essential to evaluate the progress of our lesson, ourselves as teachers, and our students. Especially in the case of a CLT class with student – centered activities, a carefully planned lesson plan assumes greater importance. This paper attempts to present the steps and intricacies involved in preparing the lesson plan – especially in the CLT Class and analyse the reasons behind them. It also tries to offer checklists to make the Student Centered classes more interesting and communicative.

            COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

          AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LESSON PLANNING

The different methods that emerged in the teaching of the English language explain the revolutionary changes that occurred in the progress of the English language teaching ideology.  Of all the methods, namely ‘Grammar Translation Method’ ‘Direct Method’, ‘Oral Method’, ‘Audio-Lingual Method’, ‘Bilingual Method’, etc., the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has become the ‘umbrella’ approach with an accepted ‘norm’.  All other methods are teacher – centered or teacher directed in one way or the other. CLT probes the nature of social, cultural and pragmatic features of a language and promotes learner autonomy. 

 CLT is a generic approach and it lays emphasis on learning communication through interaction.  Compared to the traditional language methodology, the CLT method gives greater freedom and scope for the learners to break the circle of bondage as a passive observer.   CLT method, as observed by David Nunan (1991:279) provides opportunities for learners to focus not only on the language aspect but also on the ‘process of learning’ it self.  It gives us a scope to link class room ‘language learning’ with ‘language activation’ out side the class room.  Changing the role of the teacher as a dictator, this method shapes the teacher into a facilitator, guide and a mentor. Students work individually, in pairs and in small groups with selected authentic, real – life situation materials and case studies. It provides an opportunity to learn the language through several activities and communicative events like information gap activities, jigsaw activities, task completion activities, information gathering activities, opinion sharing activities, information transfer activities, reasoning gap activities, role plays etc.,  

CLT method can be adopted for teaching a language both in Content-Based Instruction (CBI) and Task-Based Instruction (TBI) - called in brief the Process – Based CLT approaches. Though they are described as extensions of the CLT movement, they take different routes to achieve the goals of CLT. (Jack C. Richards, 2001). Normally in most of the classrooms, while following Content-Based Instruction (CBI) content is covered and language focus is ignored, though the content chosen is prepared around the aspects of grammar, vocabulary, skills, functions etc., CLT helps teachers to devise a number of lessons/ activities with a focus on reading, writing, listening and oral presentation skills, and group discussions as are found in standard course books which are designed to develop LSRW skills.

Task – Based Instruction (TBI) focuses on learning a language through ‘pedagogical’ and ‘real world’ tasks like drills, cloze activities, listing, sorting and ordering, matching, comparing, problem – solving, sharing etc., This facilitates the teachers to develop their own worksheets abandoning the text –books.

A good lesson plan with Pre, While and Post activities and in a P-P- P (Presentation, Practice and Production) Model will make the class situation and output more interesting and creative. An effective lesson plan guides the teacher in a step-by-step procedure and helps him achieve his goals. It helps the instructor to check where he/she is going wrong and whether he is able to take his students towards the right perspective as active learners. A well built lesson plan keeps him confident and comfortable because he has his objectives well fixed.

It also makes him to check the supporting activities along with the elements of Critical Thinking. It is a good driving device to keep all the students motivated and interested. A lesson without a methodical plan makes the students passive. Students lose interest and thus the class turns monotonous and chaotic. A well-designed plan makes the teacher a good classroom manager. When the students are deeply involved in learning, they don’t have time to misbehave. This is all possible with a well made lesson plan. Though our experience enables us to plan the steps of our lessons mentally, a concrete plan in black and white is essential to evaluate the progress of our lesson, ourselves as teachers, and our students. Especially in the case of a CLT class with student – centered activities, a carefully planned lesson plan assumes greater importance.

What should go into a lesson plan? Yes. Traditionally we talk about objectives, procedure and a conclusion. But we must not forget that our lesson has several things to offer to our students. My experience as a participant in a CTS (Critical Thinking Skills – ELT) Training Programme from Oregon University made me realize and learn various aspects of a lesson plan. A good lesson plan, apart from the topic, level of the students and duration of the lesson, to teach Communicative ability and Critical Thinking skills should have:

a.       Overarching Goal of the Lesson

b.      Prerequisites (These are assumptions we are making about our students’ skills, knowledge, and experience for this lesson.)    

c.       Instructional Objectives (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking Strategies with Macro - micro abilities based on the steps and methods to present the lesson)

d.      Instructional Procedures (Opening of the Lesson , Closing and various steps in between with supporting material and activities)

e.       Assessment (Description of how we will determine the extent to which students have attained the (critical thinking) instructional objective(s))

f.       Follow-up Activities (Description of the activities that will be used to extend/reinforce the (critical thinking) components of this lesson (ex: homework, reviews, activities done in subsequent lessons, etc.), and which (critical thinking strategies) from the lesson will these follow-ups target?)

g.      Evaluation (to appraise the strengths and weaknesses of this lesson)

h.      Self-Assessment (our assessment of our teaching - process/technique for reflecting on our own teaching of this lesson)

As the focus of this plan is about improving Critical Thinking Skills, it has a greater focus on CT Strategies, which require a lot of training and more than that practice, to develop such a lesson plan. Apart from that, the remaining aspects are all the same.

Planning Lessons and Courses, a book by Tessa Woodward (2001) provides a step by step approach to lesson planning. These steps include

-          Who are the students?

-          How long is the lesson?

-          What can go into a lesson?

-          How do people learn and so how can we teach?

-          What can we teach with?

-          How can we vary the activities we do?

-          Getting down to the preparation?

-          What are our freedoms and restraints? ( Woodward, 2001:viii –xiv)

A good lesson plan with communicative activities and focus on language skills must have the following:

a.      Learner Objectives:

b.      Language Skills (L/S/R/W) :

c.       Grammar Focus:

d.      Materials:

e.       Preparation:

f.       Presentation:

g.      Practice:

h.      Evaluation : 

and

i.        Expansion:

After finalizing the selection of the topic and the target audience, the Teacher/instructor has to frame the objectives of the lesson very carefully. The objectives should include the teaching procedures along with the expected outcome of the lesson. We also need to observe which language skill –Listening / Speaking / Reading / Writing is going to be focused; because the activities related to one particular skill may vary from the other. Then the teacher also has to workout the grammar aspect that requires special focus. To avoid ambiguity, the teacher must not take several aspects of grammar for presentation. Then we need to list out the materials selected for the presentation of the lesson – black/white board, chalk, markers, charts, cards,handouts/worksheets/text books etc.,

            The next step is to focus on the most important parts of the lesson plan – namely Preparation, Presentation, Practice, Evaluation and Expansion.

We have to note down the techniques and methods we take up or plan to prepare the students for the class. We can elicit their existing knowledge of the topic by using a K-W-L chart.

(What we) Know	(What we want to)Want to Know	(What we have) Learned

We can use discussions, questions, authentic materials, pictures or previous homework/assignment to review and to elicit their knowledge. Instead of the teacher recapping the lesson, he/she can use the eliciting technique to promote speaking activity.

            The presentation part should include the linguistic or topical content of the lesson and relevant learning strategies. We also need to describe the target vocabulary, target grammar, teacher presentation, student work etc and also the Learner  Centered Activities like  Brainstorming, Mind mapping, Think – Pair – Share (TPS) Activities, Info-Gap Activities, and Worksheets /exercises etc, under the Presentation part. Presentation provides the language input that gives students the foundation for their knowledge of the language. The input may be from the instructor or from the text books. Even while using Content-based text, the instructor can focus on the language/grammar aspect by using content only as support to sustain interest.

            An important part of the presentation is the structured output, in which the students practice the form presented by the instructor. In structured output, accuracy of performance is important and though it is not truly communicative, it makes the learners comfortable to produce language items that are introduced recently or in the previous classes.

            In the next part, i.e, the Practice part, the presentation - focus shifts from the instructor to the learner.  The instructor should carefully choose/design relevant activities to promote communication using the structured output. He/she also should observe the activity closely and record observations whether the chosen activity is communicative, interesting and productive. We have to take time to plan the Follow-Up activities that reinforce the learning of the students.  

As the learners are involved, they get busy with the task assigned to them. The learners work in pairs or in small groups on a topic based task with a specific outcome. The teacher monitors and helps the students and acts as a resource, as a facilitator. He /She also ensures that the target language is used during the completion of tasks.

            Surprisingly the structured output of the Presentation part becomes a communicative output and the class will be abuzz with noise - the productive noise of the students. The criterion of success is when the learner succeeds in his/her learning and gets the message across.

            Our next part is Evaluation. Evaluation enables the instructor to monitor individual student comprehension and learning, and also to observe the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson, the progress of the lesson, student responses, the need for changing the steps/activities of the lesson plan, and finally the outcome. It helps to reinforce the linguistic or topical content that is presented in the class. Under this part, we have to plan about the strategies we will take up to ensure the learning of the students. We have to listen, observe and document the participation of the students in the class. Our follow up activities also help us to evaluate their learning.

            Under Expansion, we can plan for assignments or project-work to allow the students to apply the knowledge outside the classroom also. They should be practical and realistic and must build confidence among learners. Expansion activities also help us to evaluate and assess the teaching – learning process.

            The following Teacher Self-Reflection Checklist (www.teachnet.com)  will help us to evaluate our lesson planning:

1. Do I provide students with exemplary models of oral and written language?
2. To what extent does my questioning foster critical and creative thinking?
3. Do I encourage students' questions and curiosity?
4. Do I encourage students to rethink, reorganise and refine their oral and written ideas?
5. Am I encouraging students to listen and respond to the remarks of their peers during large and small groups discussions?
6. Am I providing sufficient opportunity and time for students to work independently, in pairs and in small groups?
7. Do I collaboratively structure language and learning experiences with students?
8. Does my classroom environment encourage students to take risks during speaking and writing activities?
9. Do I provide a variety of resources and experiences to meet the needs of all students?
   To what extent do I assist students in setting purposes for reading, in relating material to previous experiences, and in constructing meaning from printed text?
10. Do I encourage and enable students to access and use a wide variety of resources?
11. Do classroom resources reflect fair, equitable and accurate portrayals of peoples of different cultures, ages and genders?
12. Am I aware of how culture and gender influence students' interaction and communication styles?
13. Do Students see me as one who appreciates and enjoys reading and writing?
14. To what extent are my assessment techniques fair and appropriate for evaluating progress and for making instructional decisions?

And with a slight modification the same checklist can be extended to evaluate the effectiveness of a lesson plan in a CLT class:

1.  Does the lesson plan emphasise learning to communicate through interaction in the target language? And how?
2. Does the lesson plan introduce authentic texts into learning situation? And how?
3. Does the lesson plan provide opportunities for learners to focus not only on the language but also on the learning process itself? And how?
4. Does the lesson plan enhance the learner’s own personal experience as important, contributing element to classroom learning? And how?
5. Does the lesson plan attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom? And how?
6. Does the lesson plan incorporate learner activities that include 1) an information gap, 2) a choice and 3) feedback? And how? And how?
7. Does the lesson plan provide for more student talk and less teacher talk, where teacher serves as a facilitator? And how?

The lesson plan for a CLT class should promote communication through interesting interactive games and activities. The teacher also has to keep in mind the Student Talk time and Teacher Talk Time ratio.

            A quick look at the Lesson Evaluation Sheet (prepared during the CLT workshop, Hyderabad) will make us realize the intricacies involved in planning for a CLT lesson.

No	Area	Observations (Yes/No)
1	Lesson Preparation a)      Clear objectives? b)      Well planned? c)      Realistic
2	Lesson Presentation a)      Teacher Talk Time: Student Talk Time b)      Eliciting? c)      Dealing with Activities?
3	Classroom Management a)      Clear instructions? b)      Time management? c)      Class monitoring?
4	Classroom Atmosphere a)      All Ss actively involved? b)      T encourages Ss?       c)  Student -Friendly?      d)   T sensitive to Ss’            needs?

           

As teachers we need to remember that we must take time to build effective lesson plans. Our lesson plan must outline clearly the roles that should be played by the teachers and students in the class. It is a kind of screenplay. It should also mention the timeline – the time allotted for preparation, presentation, practice activities and evaluation. The instructor should realize the objectives and design activities to promote meaningful communication. The activities need to correspond with the objectives to make the learners retain information in an active way. An effective lesson plan helps both the teachers and the students to move in a correct direction. If we fail to plan, we need to plan for our failure.

                                                                                               K.Vijaya Babu,

                                                                                                M.A,B.Ed,M.Phil,CTS-ELT(Oregon)

                                                                                                                               Lecturer in English, ELT Trainer,

                                                                                               Academic Cell,                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                               O/o Commissioner,

                                                                                               Collegiate Education,Hyderabad

                                                                                                                           

                                                              References

1. Nunan,D., “ Communicative Tasks and the Language Curriculum”, TESOL Quarterly, 25.2(summer1991): 279-295
2. Richards,Jack C and Theodore Rodgers.2001. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Second Edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.
3. Woodward, T.(2001). Planning Lessons and Courses. Oxford: OUP

Web resources

4. www.nclrc.org
5. www.teachnet.com
6. www.adprima.com