ASSIGNMENTS 2 & 6 GUIDELINES - LANGUAGE SKILLS

1. Background Assignment:

A. Select the language skill to be taught to your class.
This can be a language skill - involving sub-skills e.g. Reading - Skimming and Scanning;
or you can focus on just a particular sub-skill e.g. writing - text organization;
or you can integrate skills e.g. Listening, reading, and speaking.
Be careful!!
If your lesson is a reading, the students should focus on reading a text(s) and work with the text for the majority of the lesson.
This applies to all of the skills or sub-skills.
Take care with your expression of aims, they must be precise and not vague:
"to practice reading/speaking/listening/writing is NOT good enough.

B. Provide a general analysis of the language skill chosen.
This should include the areas of difficulty inherent in this language skill/sub-skill.
Consider the following:
- Transference of L1 skills
- Mental Processing required
- Establishing particular sub-skills for a language skill
- Theoretical background to the particular skill
- Authentic and non-authentic materials/tasks

C. Provide reasons for choosing this particular language skill for your lesson with reference to your specific students.
You should include areas of anticipated difficulty with reference to:
- The needs of your students
- The L1 of the students
- Motivation and confidence of your students
- Learning styles of your students
- The cultural/social background of your students

D. Discuss the approaches and methods available to teachers in teaching this language skill.
You should include:
- Methodological approaches. e.g. Top down, bottom up; conversational skills; process writing etc.
- The principles underlying the above approaches.

E. Describe the activities and materials you are using in the lesson with your rationale for choosing them.

F. Provide a list of references used in writing the above.

2. Lesson Plan
Produce a lesson plan as outlined in the input session.

3. Teach the Lesson
Make sure you have arranged for one of the course tutors to come and observe the lesson.

4. Post-lesson Analysis
This should include
- Reflection on the lesson in actuality as opposed to your lesson plan
- What changes you would or would not make to the plan/lesson with your rationale
- Comment on issues brought up in your feedback with the course tutor
- A detailed action plan for your further development in the areas highlighted by your analysis