Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2010
INTRODUCTION
The two articles in this section focus on two aspects of a language lesson: planning the lesson and managing learner behavior during a lesson. Planning is often viewed as a key aspect of teaching a successful lesson. During the planning phase, the teacher makes decisions about goals, activities, resources, timing, grouping, and other aspects of the lesson. Harmer (1991) includes the following elements in a lesson plan:
a. Description of the class
b. Recent work
c. Objectives
d. Contents (context, activity and class organization, aids, language, possible problems)
e. Additional possibilities
Even though a lesson may have already been planned (by the textbook writer), a teacher will still need to make decisions that relate to the needs of his or her specific class, adapting the lesson from the book in different ways to make it better suit the class. This process of planning and adaptation is a crucial dimension of teaching because during this process the teacher makes many decisions that are essential for a successful lesson. Planning can be regarded as a process of transformation during which the teacher creates ideas for a lesson based on understanding of learners' needs, problems, and interests, and on the content of the lesson itself. This does not necessarily result in a detailed, written lesson plan. Many teachers teach successful lessons based on mental plans or on brief lesson notes.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.