A Specimen Lesson Plan

This lesson plan is taken from the following source and invites in general a task-based teaching
procedure. Source: Harmer, J. (1991). The practice of English language teaching, pps: 270-4.
London:OUP

I. Description of the class

- Level: Lower-Intermediate to Intermediate

- Students between the ages of 16-25. 21 women, 9 men (6 secretaries, 5 housewives, 10
university students, 3 teachers, 1 doctor, 1 businessman, 4 secondary students).
- The class takes place from 7.45-9.00 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. The students
are generally enthusiastic, but often tired: concentration sometimes suffers as a result.
Students have completed approximately 200 hours of English.

II. Recent work

- Students have been studying the passive - discovery activities followed by language
practice.
- Writing complete passive sentences about e.g. the world’s first postage stamp, the VW
Beetle, etc.
- Listening work (listening for detailed comprehension).
- Writing notes based on the listening.

III. Objectives (for details see ‘Contents’ below)

1. To create interest in the topic of buildings: to promote discussion.

2. To raise expectations and create involvement in a reading task.
3. To read to confirm expectations.
4. To study relevant words.
5. To prepare a description of a famous building.

IV. Contents

Objective 1: (Estimated time: 15 minutes)

A Context: Students’ own lives - buildings.

B Activity/class organization: Discussion (buzz groups) in small groups. SS are asked to
agree on the five most famous buildings in the world and say how they make them feel.
C Aids: None.
D Language: All and any.
E Possible problems: Students may not have much to say. The teacher will be prepared to
prompt if necessary - or shorten the activity if that seems appropriate.

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Objective 2: (Estimated time: 10 minutes)

A Context: ‘Creating expectations’ about the Empire State Building.

B Activity/class organization: Whole class contributes suggestions to T who writes them
up in 3 columns on the board
C Aids: Board; chalk or board pen, etc.
D Language: All and any; ‘buildings’ vocabulary.
E Possible problems: Students don’t know anything about the Empire State Building! T
can prompt with ‘Is it tall?’ ‘Where is it?’, etc.

Objective 3: (Estimated time: 25 minutes)

A Context: A text about the Empire State Building.

B Activity/class organization: Students read individually and then check in pairs to see if
the questions/doubts written on the board have been settled by the information in the
text. T then leads the feedback session and discusses with the whole class.
C Aids: The text (in the textbook): the ‘expectations’ chart on the board.
D Language: All and any - especially vocabulary related to buildings.
E Possible problems: The ‘expectations’ questions may not be answered in the text. T
will have prepared a series of type 2 questions for detailed comprehension (or will find
them in the book being used) e.g. ‘How many boroughs make up New York City?
Where exactly is the ESB situated in Manhattan? When was it built?’, etc.

Objective 4: (Estimated time: 10 minutes)

A Context: Words about different kinds of building.

B Activity/class organization: In pairs students have to put 'buildings’ words (e.g. block
of flats, skyscraper, house, bungalow, hut, palace, cottage, semi-detached, detached,
terraced, etc.) in order of height, overall size, privacy, worth, etc. T then discusses their
conclusions.
C Aids: Wordlist/textbook.
D Language: As in (b) above); discussion language. ‘Buildings’ words.
E Possible problems: Students don’t know any of the words. Maybe they know all of
them. T assesses the situation and is prepared for more explanation or to cut the activity
short and move on.

Objective 5: (Estimated time: 15 minutes)

A Context: Buildings - the world/students’ lives.

B Activity/class organization: T and SS talk about paragraph organization of a text about
a famous building (e.g. Para 1: identify building, say where and when it was built; Para
2: describe the building and its distinctive features; Para 3: say what people think of the

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 building, why it is famous, what happens/happened there, etc.). Students get into
groups to plan a composition about a particular building. They are then asked to write
the composition for homework.
C Aids: The board and/or handout and/or textbook with notes/ hints about paragraph
organization. Ss’ notebooks, etc.
D Language: As in (b) above. T will try to elicit passives and building vocabulary when
discussing organization.
E Possible problems: SS might not know much about any famous building! T has some
information about other famous buildings, e.g. Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, etc. to help out
just in case.

V. Additional possibilities

1. Find the differences. The teacher gives each pair two pictures of urban landscapes -
with different buildings, etc. They have to find at least ten differences between their
pictures without looking at each other’s.
2. Describe and draw. In pairs one student tells another student to draw a building (of the
first student’s choice). Then they do it the other way round.
3. A co-operative writing exercise in which students group-write a story starting ‘When
she saw the building for the first time she knew there was something wrong.’

A Brief Comment

A number of points can be made about this lesson plan. In the first place decisions were taken
based on what students had been doing recently (recent work). It appears that students had not
been doing much reading and that a lot of their oral work had been either in lockstep or was at
best controlled practice output. There had not been many opportunities for students to express
themselves, but the students had done some listening practice.

The record of recent work led to a number of decisions being taken, therefore. In the first place it
was clearly time for some reading work. Secondly students needed involving in some
communicative oral interaction. They did not appear to have been doing much vocabulary work,
either, so this was a good time to work on some words.

These were the considerations that affected the pre-plan. The plan then allowed for a detailed
response based not only on recent work, but also on what we wished to achieve. The lack of
previous oral interaction is why the opening buzz group and the ‘creating expectations’ activity
were used since they allow the students to use spontaneous speech. The reading text was
appropriate here since we recognized the need for reading. Vocabulary work follows naturally
from a reading so that slotted in nicely. Finally we used the preceding stages to build up to a piece
of guided writing.

Note the ‘additional possibilities’ part of the plan. We realize that things may well go slower than
planned, so any of these activities would be good alternatives to the writing preparation (for
example) since they can be completed in less time. Alternatively the teacher might want to use (one
of) them to liven up the class if either the reading process and/or the vocabulary study have been
too ‘heavy’.

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