LSA 2 Reflection and Evaluation

Overall, the lesson went well. I believe that I chose the right sub skills for the students to practice.

The activities were appropriate although in the hindsight I can see that some of them would work better
if slightly changed. Nevertheless, my aims were achieved. The students practiced selecting appropriate
content for the email by thinking about the reader; they created a checklist of an email organisation that
they can use in the future. They all had enough time to write the email and to review and edit it using
the checklist 2.

Strengths:
 The materials were useful for the students. Having examples of the different types of styles of
emails helped students notice the differences and they used the semi-formal one as a model for
their writing. The checklists helped the students focus and stay on task.
 I monitored well during different stages by asking questions to point the students in the right
direction.
 The checklist for reviewing and editing ensured that they reviewed first using the questions. It
worked very well. The students were focused; they could see what needed to be changed or
added and helped each other.

Weaknesses:
 Reading and ordering emails activity took longer than planned. While it was useful, it would
have taken less time if the emails were shorter or, as my observer suggested, if there were only
two emails – formal and semi-formal (they have written an informal one before).
 Most of the students didn’t know the names of the parts of an email and couldn’t name them
themselves. It would have been better if I did a matching activity (match parts of the email with
their content and example expressions) first to help them and then put the information into
their checklist 1.
 A lot of activities were very teacher-centred. Because the first activity took longer than planned
I needed to make up the time and did the following two as open class instead of pair work.
 My observer pointed out that if the topic of the writing was different, it would have been easier
for the students to think of the content.

Consolidation and follow-up

In the next lesson the students will get one more email to evaluate using their checklists. They will need
to identify problems with layout and content, review and edit it in groups and discuss as a class. Then
they will receive their marked (using correction code) writings. They will discuss them in pairs (peer
check) and re-write them again.

Later in the course the students will write an email of complaint and compare its layout and content
with the email of enquiry.

Word count: 448 words.