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Date Posted: 11:12:50 06/18/03 Wed
Author: Danilo Cristófaro Alves da SiIva
Subject: TaskSeven

TaskSeven June 16th - 19th
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras LET 076C Professora: Vera Menezes
Aluno: Danilo Cristófaro Alves da Silva - No: 2002026917
_____________________________________________________________________
Task: Analyse the following lesson plan having Ryan's text as reference.

In Ryan’s text he presents what is supposed to be the six most problematic areas in a Japanese classroom environment and possible solutions to these problems.
Our analysis of the “Buy a Car” lesson designed by KARLYS WELLS will be focused on these possible problems and the elements present in the lesson planning in relation to Ryan’s main six areas of concern, as he puts it.

PROVIDE ADEQUATE FEEDBACK

In my opinion, Wells’ lesson is not rich in detail. Therefore, we will have to assume some actions by the teacher. As for feedback, I could not pinpoint anything, specifically, related to that coming from the teacher, directly. Ryan says that feedback can be given in all levels (big or small) and it simply seems to be overlooked in the lesson-planning sheet.

CLARIFY GOALS

In his text, Ryan says that “Students can benefit more if they know specifically on a class-by-class basis what language they trying to practice and in what context”. In Wells’ lesson there seems to be a good indication of what he wants done but necessarily in terms of language learning. Not for the students or for the teachers who may take his lesson plan to, actually, teach a class. So, again, I think Well’s could set some goals and, perhaps, tell his students, briefly, what they will be learning on that day.

HAVE CONSISTENCY IN TEACHING STYLE

I am not sure if we can comment on this one without being present in one or more lessons. There is not enough information for me to discuss it.
What I can say is that, as it looks, students interact too much with the computer and not with the teacher and other colleagues. This is something we will have a look at later on this text.

LESSONS NEED ROUTINE OR FRAMEWORK

There is a framework on this lesson plan but it does not follow the usual Warm-up, Presentation, Controlled practice, Free Practice and Feedback framework. The brainstorming suggested for the beginning of the lesson could be seen as a Warm-up. In Research Phase 1 it is not clear how much the teacher participates in the division of categories or even as presenting new vocabulary, terms, etc. Again it is not clear to me if the question given to the students before the ACTION phase is actually to present new structures or vocabulary or simply a straight-down-their-throat question.
As Ryan describes how this framework should be done (Topic: Hotel Reservations) there is a lot of students’ interaction with the teacher and then, with other students. The same does not seem to happen in Well’s lesson.
HAVE CULTURAL AWARENESS
Here I find we would need to know more about the students we would be teaching and I do not see any comments to that in Wells’ lesson plan. What I am not sure of is whether the subject he has chosen for his students will be a popular one among the students or not. As a teacher you, definitely, have to know your students before going ahead with this.
BE CLEAR ABOUT STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP
The Communicative Approach tends to favour a more friend-coach relationship. From what I can see in Wells’ lesson plan there is very little contact between teacher and student. He seems to prefer the use of computers and the Internet for students to interact with the language. The presence of the teacher within the classroom environment is hardly felt.
CONCLUSION:
I hope I will not sound too harsh on this and, obviously, we would need to know more details about whom Wells’ would be teaching and for what purposes.
I, personally, find his lesson plan full of gaps and blurred bits. If students were to be dealing with the language in such environment they would need to have extremely good IT skills and have no difficulties working with grids and graphics. I took the time and visited the websites suggested by Wells. One never downloaded and two of them were confusing and too specific. Only one was user-friendlier with lots of pictures and interactive features but still confusing for someone who does not know much about cars.
Something that has called my attention is the absence of clear goals whether he would be working on writing or oral skills. In fact, there is very little in terms of language production on the sentence level let alone the “text level”. Even the “publication” suggested by Wells looks more like a list rather than a piece of writing.
To put it mildly, and following Ryan’s advice, this particular lesson needs a good deal of improvement.

Bibliography:

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ryan-Communicative.html
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/OConsumerEdBuyCar912.htm
_____________________________________________________________________

TaskSeven June 16th - 19th
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras LET 076C Professora: Vera Menezes
Aluno: Danilo Cristófaro Alves da Silva - No: 2002026917

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