Trần Đình Gia Bảo

TDIP201 – 209140111106
FOCUS 4 – SUMMARY

A course in ELT. Chapter 16, 17

Classroom Interaction

Purposes of teacher questions

+ To provide a model for language or thinking

+ To find out something from the students
+ To check or test understanding, knowledge or skill
+ To get students to be active in their learning
+ To direct attention, or provide a ‘warm-up’, to the topic which is about to be studied
+ To inform the class through students’ answers rather than through the teacher’s input
+ To provide weaker students with an opportunity to participate
+ To stimulate thinking
+ To probe more deeply into issues
+ To get students to relate personally to an issue
+ To get students to review and practise previously taught material
+ To encourage self-expression
+ To communicate to students that the teacher is genuinely interested in what they think

Types of questions

Communicative authenticity
+ Genuine questions are authentic communication, involve a real transfer of information  give students
experience of using English for communication

+ Display questions get students to demonstrate what they know, practise something, or speak or write in order
to increase fluency.

Length of expected response

+ Questions that require longer responses create more student activation and lead to better learning

+ Short ones: find out if a student has understood or not.

Number of expected responses

+ Close-ended questions  short responses: useful for quick checks of knowledge or comprehension, or for
testing.

+ Open-ended ones  multiple responses: get lots of practice of a particular language point, or of fluent speech
or writing  more activation  more interesting responses

Level of thinking required

+ Lower-order thinking: simple recall or basic factual information.
+ Higher-order thinking: deeper understanding, application, analysis, criticism, evaluation or creativity.
Effective questioning

Checklist:
1. Clarity: Do the students immediately understand not only what the question means, but also what kind of an
answer is required?
2. Interest: Do the students find the question interesting, challeging, stimulating?
3. Accessibility: Can most of the students at least try to answer it, or only the more advanced, confident and
knowledgeable ones?
4. Level of answer: Are the answers demanded within the level of the students, both cognitively and
linguistically?
5. Learning value: Does the question lead to, or effectively check, learning?
6. Teacher reaction: Are the students sure that the feedback to their responses will be respectful, that they will
not be put down or ridiculed if they say something inappropriate?

Group and pair work

Group work:

+ Advantages:
 fosters learner autonomy
 motivating (students enjoy the sense of group solidarity)
 important for practising oral fluency

+ Problems:

- Teachers: fear that they may lose control (students using the L1 too much, make a lot of noise, not engaged in
the task)
- Students: some do not like group work (prefer teacher-led classrooms or working on their own, not be used to
it, think that it does not result in serious learning, individual learning style)

Addressing the problems:

+ If the task involves talking  a lot of noise  using L1: can help students perform the task more effectively,
save time.  need to keep an eye on what is happening and limit L1 use as you feel necessary/ use student
monitors.
+ Prevent clearly counterproductive developments through carefully organized presentation, management and
closing of group tasks.
+ Group work does not produce much learning may be due to faulty task design  the exact process of the task,
including the outcome, needs to be carefully structured.

Individual work

Self-access centres: ‘individualized learning’

+ Different materials are available (equipment, library, computers,…)  the students choose where to work and
how to engage with tasks they have selected.

+ More common in universities and colleges.

- Problems:
 cost a lot to set up, need constant maintenance
 most students need a structure to their learning
Individualization in the regular classroom

+ Individual students have some freedom to choose how, what or how much they learn within the conventional
classroom framework.

+ Classroom procedures: worksheets, questions for homework, varied tasks, computerized exercises, readers,
writing.

+ These activites are individualized to different extents, depending on what aspect of the task can be varied. The
aspects are: Speed, Level, Quantity, Task, Teaching/Learning focus.

Blended learning

Within the lesson

+ The interactive whiteboard (IWB):

- Attractive and increasingly widely used tool.
- Move the class towards teacher-led interactions  be careful how or how much we use it

+ Computers:
- Influence the kind of interaction that can take place in the classroom in a different direction: attract and focus
attention  moves the class towards individual and personalized learning, away from cooperative or teacher-led
classroom process  be aware of where and why computers are useful.
- Easy for students to access websites that are irrelevant to the work in progress and/or do not facilitate learning
 need careful direction and monitoring

Outside the lesson: Email, wiki, blog, learning management system

+ In asynchronous interaction with students, you can do all or any of the following:
. provide explanations or other written input
. upload reading texts, audio or video
. start a discussion through a ‘forum’
. set tasks
. receive, comment on and assess tasks
. give final grades

Instead of the lesson

+ online synchronous teaching: useful, productive and fun.

+ not a substitute for face-to-face interaction
+ best used together with and as a supplement to conventional lessons rather than the sole basis for a course

Classroom discipline

What is classroom discipline?

Defining terms: Classroom discipline exists when teacher and students accept and consistently observe a set of
rules relating to classroom behaviour in order to facilitate smooth and efficient teaching and learning.

Possible characteristics:

1. Learning is taking place.

2. It is quiet.
3. The teacher is in control.
4. Teacher and students are cooperating smoothly.
5. Students are motivated.
6. The lesson is proceeding according to plan.
7. Teacher and students are aiming for the same objectives.
8. The teacher has natural charismatic authority.

What teachers can do to create a disciplined classroom

+ Classroom management skills: knowing how to organize the beginning of a lesson, how to get students to
raise their hands instead of shouting out answers…

+ Selection of an appropriate methodology: students feel that they are learning through procedures that are
‘right’ and useful for them  willing to cooperate. If they feel they are being made to do activities that they feel
irrelevant, then the immediate result will be discipline problems.

+ Good interpersonal relationships: you need to maintain an attitude of respect and goodwill towards them.

+ Good planning: carefully and clearly organized lesson is likely to contribute to good discipline.

+ Student motivation: key factor. The more interesting and motivating the learning activity, the more likely it is
that students will be cooperative and stay on-task.

Dealing with discipline problems

Before the problem arises:

+ Make an agreement: work out a written agreement with the class stating clearly what is and is not acceptable.
+ Plan the lesson carefully: when a lesson is clearly planned and organized, there is likely to be constant
momentum and a feeling of purpose.
+ Instruct clearly: need to clarify precisely what the task involves and what the options are.
+ Keep in touch: need to be sensitive to what students are doing.

When the problem is beginning:

+ Deal with it quickly and quietly: the best action is a quiet but clear-cut response, keeping the problem as low-
profile as possible.
+ Don’t take it personally: try to see the problem, not the student, as the object to be attacked and dealt with,
even if you are quite sure the criticism was meant personally.
+ Don’t use threats: use the formula ‘if you… then…’ only as a real, factual option that you are ready to put
into practice, not as a weapon to make an impression or intimidate.

When the problem has ‘exploded’:

+ ‘Explode’ yourself: often a quick, loud command will do the trick, with a display of anger. Do not really lose
your temper or become aggressive.
+ Give in: if students refuse to do homework you might say: ‘All right, don’t. Instead, let’s…”  immediately
defuses the situation and will not be seen as dishonourable surrender, puts you in a position to demand
something from them in return.
+ Make them an offer they can’t refuse: postponement, compromise, arbitration.
+ Call in assistance from a higher authority: if none of the previous strategies have worked, then it is better to
call for help than to let the situation escalate.

Reflective teaching in second language classrooms. Chapter 6. Harmer, J. (2007)

The structure of a language lesson

Openings

+ Consists of the procedures the teacher uses to focus the students’ attention on the learning aims of the lesson.

+ Lesson beginnings can serve a variety of purposes: help learner to relate the content of the new lesson to that
of the last or previous lessons, assess relevant knowledge, establish an appropriate “set” in learners, allow
“tuning-in” time, reduce the disruption caused by late-arriving students.

+ The way a lesson opens reflects a number of decisions that a teacher makes, either consciously or
unconsciously.

+ The purpose of a lesson beginning will determine the kind of activity or strategy the teacher uses to begin the
lesson.

+ Lessons openings are used principally to “establish an appropriate cognitive framework.”

Sequencing

+ Most lessons do not consist of a single activity; rather, the teacher analyses the overall goals of a lesson and
the content to be taught and then plans a sequence of activities to attain those goals.

+ In second and foreign language teaching, a number of principles have emerged for determining the internal
structure of lessons:

- Simple activities should come before complex ones.

- Activities involving receptive skills should precede those that involve productive skills.
- Students should study a grammar rule before trying to use it.
- Students should practise using a tense or grammar structure before studying the rule that underlies it.
- Accuracy-focused activities should precede fluency-focused ones.
- There should be a progression within a lesson from mechanical or form-based activities to meaningful-based
activities.

+ In dividing a lesson into sub-activities, the teacher also needs to consider the transitions between one sub-
activity and another within a lesson.

+ Skilled teachers mark the onset of transitions clearly, orchestrate transitions actively, and minimize the loss of
momentum during these changes in activities.

+ Teachers achieve transitions through cuing and interactional negotiation, which signals the beginning of a
change, the reorientation of focus, or the beginning of a new segment.

Pacing

+ Pacing is the extent to which a lesson maintains its momentum and communicates a sense of development.
+ Strategies recommended to help achieve suitable pacing within lessons often include:

- Avoiding needless or over-lengthy explanations and instructions, and letting students get on with the job of
learning.
- Using a variety of activities within a lesson, rather than spending the whole lesson on one activity.
- Avoiding predictable and repetitive activities, where possible.
- Selecting activities of an appropriate level of difficulty.
- Setting a goal and time limit for activities.
- Monitoring students’ performance on activities to ensure that students have had sufficient but not too much
time.

Closure

+ Closure refers to those concluding parts of a lesson which serve to reinforce what has been learned in a
lesson, integrate and review the content of a lesson, and prepare the students for further learning.

+ Strategies which teachers use to achieve closure include:

- Summarizing what has been covered in the lesson.

- Reviewing key points of the lesson.
- Relating the lesson to the course or lesson goals.
- Pointing out links between the lesson and previous lessons.
- Showing how the lesson relates to students’ real-world needs.
- Making links to a forthcoming lesson.
- Praising students for what they have accomplished during the lesson.

Planning lessons. In How to teach English (new ed., pp. 156-165)

Reasons for planning

+ For students, a plan that the teacher has devoted time to thinking about the class, strongly suggests a level of
professionalism and a commitment to the kind of research they might reasonably expect.

+ For teachers, a plan gives the lesson a framework, an overall shape. In the classroom, a plan helps to remind
teachers what they intended to do

+ When a teacher is to be observed as part of an assessment or performance review.  The observer can have a
clear idea of what the teacher intends in order to judge how well that intention is carried through.

A proposal for action

+ Lesson plans should be thought of as proposals for action rather than instructions to be slavishly followed.
+ We have an idea of what the learning outcomes for the lesson should be  only really know what they are
once the lesson itself has finished.  how closely lesson plans are followed depends on what happens when we
try to put them to work.
+ Good teachers need to be flexible enough to cope with unforeseen events.
+ A student suddenly says something really interesting that can provoke fascinating conversation or suggest a
completely unplanned activity  a good teacher will recognize the magic moment and adapt.

Lesson shapes
+ A good lesson needs to contain a judicious blend of coherence and variety.
+ In effective lessons, the teacher has thought carefully about the balance of engagement, study, and activation,
and how one can lead to the others in a variety of different sequences.  both variety and coherence are almost
guaranteed.
+ The ideal compromise is to plan a lesson that has an internal coherence but which nevertheless allows
students to do different things as it progresses.

Planning questions
Who exactly are the students for this activity?
+ The make-up of the class will influence the way we plan. The student’s age, level, cultural background and
individual characteristics have to be taken into account when deciding what activities, texts or methodologies to
use in the classroom.
What do we want to do and why?
+ We have to decide what we want to do in the lesson in terms of both activities, skills and language. We also
need to know why we want to do it.

+ Before deciding to use an activity just because we or the students might like it, we need to try to predict what
it will achieve.

How long will it take?

+ Try to estimate how long each activity will take so that we can measure our progress as the lesson continues
against our proposed ‘timetable’.
+ We can also plan for our material taking too little time by having some spare activities with us.

How does it work?

+ We need to know how we and our students are going to do an activity. Who does what first? How and when
should students
be put in pairs or groups? When do we give instructions? What should those instructions be? What should we
be doing while the students are working in groups?, etc.

What will be needed?

+ It is important to think about the best way of doing something, rather than automatically choosing the most
technologically exciting option.

+ It is also important to consider the physical environment of the classroom itself and how that might affect
whatever teaching equipment we wish to use.

What might go wrong?

+ If teachers try to identify problems that might arise in the lesson, they are in a much better
position to deal with them if and when they occur.  give the teacher insight into the language and/or the
activity which is to be used.
How will it fit in with what comes before and after it?

+ The point of answering this question for ourselves is to ensure that we have some reasonable vision of the
overall shape of our lesson and that it is not composed of unrelated scraps.

Plan formats

+ The following elements in a lesson plan are usually included:

Description of the students: anything from a general picture of the group (its level, age range, atmosphere, etc)
to detailed descriptions of individual students (what they find easy or difficult, how they respond to different
activities, etc).

Aims and objectives: what we hope to achieve

Procedures: the section on procedures can include patterns of interaction. Frequently we will include timings
and the actual procedures as well.

Anticipated problems: a list of potential difficulties - and suggestions about what to do if they arise.

Extra activities/material (just in case): many teachers make a note of extra activities they could include if
things go quicker than anticipated.

Material to be used in the lesson: teachers attach examples of the material they are to use with the students to
their plan.

+ The purpose of a plan is to be as useful as possible to the people who are going to use it (whether they are the
teachers themselves, their observers or an examination board).

Planning a sequence of lessons

+ When teachers plan a lesson, they build in changes in pace and a variety of different activities.

+ The same principles also apply to a sequence of lessons stretching.  Students will want to see a coherent
pattern of progress and topic-linking so that there is a transparent connection between lessons, and so that they
can perceive some overall aims and objectives to their program of study.

+ Two dangers may prejudice the success of a sequence of lessons. The first is predictability; if students know
exactly what to expect, they are likely to be less motivated than if their curiosity is aroused. The second is
sameness; students may feel less enthusiastic about today’s lesson if it starts with exactly the same kind of
activity as yesterday’s lesson.

+ Thinking about the three ESA learning elements will help us to avoid such problems. There are many
different ways of combining and sequencing the three elements, and that our choice of how they should be
sequenced will often depend upon the task, the level and age of the students and what exactly we want them to
achieve.

+ An ideal multi-lesson sequence has threads running through it. These might be topic threads, language
threads (grammar, vocabulary, etc) or skill threads (reading, listening, etc). Over a period of lessons students
should be able to see some interconnectivity.

+ The most important thing to remember is that a long teaching sequence is made up of shorter sequences which
are themselves made up of smaller sequences. And at the level of a teaching sequence we have to ensure the
presence of our three elements, engage, study and activate in their various permutations.

After the lesson (and before the next)

+ Evaluation of how well things have gone (for both teacher and students) is vital if our lessons are to develop
in response to our students’ progress.

+ Our decision about whether to use an activity more than once will depend on how successful it was the first
time we tried it.

+ One kind of data which will help us evaluate lessons and activities is feedback from students. Modifications
will greatly enhance our ability to manage the class.

+ Another way of getting reactions to new techniques is to invite a colleague into the classroom and ask them to
observe what happens and make suggestions afterwards. This kind of peer observation is most successful when
both teachers discuss the content and practice of the lesson both before and after the observation.

+ Some teachers keep journals in which they record their thoughts about what happened as soon as possible
after the lesson has finished.

+ Good teachers also need to assess how well their students are progressing. This can be done through a variety
of measures including homework assignments, speaking activities where the teacher scores the participation of
each student and frequent small progress tests.

The Cambridge Guide to Pedagogy and Practice in Second Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter 6.

Managing the classroom

Background

Managing classrooms: A thinking framework

+ Classroom management is associated with teachers’ management of student behavior.

+ Goal: the creation of conditions for students to work and listen to their teacher.
+ Classroom management is locally constructed.
+ Framework for classroom management: four linked elements: time, space, engagement, participation.

Managing classrooms: Influences and Trends

1. International, regional, and national

+ Greater demand to learn English  greater material pressure on classroom space and time.
+ Political and socioeconomic changes govern broad educational policy, the financing of language learning and
the role and value of English.
+ Teachers’ and students’ expectations have been influenced by the importance of a knowledge of English for
one’s career prospects.
+ Demographic change has also had an effect on language learning (complex diversity in classrooms)
+ New technologies for information and communications technology are being imported into formal second
language education.

2. Intellectual and professional

+ Language teaching theorists now posit a postcommunicative and postmethod era in which teachers and
learners are liberated from the dogma of “methods” and in particular “communicative methodology.”
+ The second language classroom has become a major research site in its own right.
+ The view of classrooms that is emerging, as “cultures” and learning communities in their own right is
beginning to influence thinking about pedagogy and has implications for practices of managing learning in
classrooms.
+ Broader trends in educational thinking have also percolated into practice and theory in second language
teaching and are becoming increasingly influential on classroom practice and teacher preparation.
+ At the same time, the knowledge base of second language teacher education has widened and deepened to
include understanding of learning-to-teach, teacher cognitions, teachers’ cultures, and institutional cultures.

 These trends have led to a greater degree of challenge in managing classrooms.

Key issues

Contemporary issues in managing language classrooms

1. Dealing with pedagogic change

+ Apparently trivial methodological changes introduced into transmission-dominated classrooms have the
effects of social evolution, or can be viewed as unwanted social engineering, and treated with suspicion by both
teachers and students.
+ A deeper shift of thinking from a concern with teaching to a concern with learning can be deeply unsettling.
+ The postmethod classroom is not a less complicated environment in which to live and work.  both teachers
and students have to become more skilled.
+ Teachers have to incorporate change management into their core practices and the skills that they employ.

2. Working with diverse student populations

+ Mass migration has created more ethnically and linguistically diverse student populations.
+ The social and emotional aspects of managing classrooms are priorities for teachers in such situations.  it is
up to teachers to create a sense of belonging to a group with a common learning purpose, to accommodate
students’ contribution to an evolving classroom culture, and at the same time deal with individuals’
disorientation, social isolation, difficulties in understanding the behaviors of classmates, possible conflicts, and
the ever-present possibility of disruption of learning activity.

3. Absorbing technological change

+ New data sources, new types of data and new ways of accessing them open up new possibilities for classroom
language learning.
+ Teachers often experience intense pressure to adopt technological solutions to learning problems, even when a
case for adoption has not been made.
+ Teachers are faced with the challenge of working with innovatory means of presenting and processing
information, both practically and pedagogically.
+ Despite these apparent deficits, many teachers have successfully incorporated word process and wikis,
interactive whiteboards,… and more into their pedagogy. However, they are either a minority or early adopters
of ICT.
+ Learning online is presented as a means of solving such problems as access to second language education in
remote or deprived areas.

4. Managing the professional domain

+ Teachers in many contexts have become more accountable to authorities in institutions and beyond for their
work in recent years.
+ Their work is controlled and regulated by rigid standardized curricula and assessment regimes in ways that
constrain what they are able to do in the classroom.
+ Managing these conflicting messages inevitably produces dilemmas and conflicts in teachers’ minds and
practices, which students invariably experience and notice.
+ Teachers have to cope with the tendency toward prescriptivism in pedagogical literature and in professional
development programs.

5. Learning classroom management

+ This can only done with regular access to opportunities to learn in classrooms through teaching and
observation of other teachers.
+ Learning “classroom control” becomes a separate learning task, rather than integrated into the development of
various other teaching skills. Once learned, it is then assumed that managing classrooms does not need to be
revisited in professional development activities.

Renandya, Willy A. (2015). L2 motivation: Whose responsibility is it? English Language Teaching, 27(4),
177-189.

I. What is motivation?

+ Motivation deals with the questions of why people choose to do an activity over another, how much energy
and effort they will be putting in to do the activity and how long they will continue to do the activity (Dörnyei,
2001, 2012).
+ When students choose to participate enthusiastically in a language lesson and are willing to extend sufficient
efforts even when the
activity is challenging, they are said to be motivated to learn and are likely to take in more and remember more
from the lesson. The definition of motivation above is quite straightforward to understand.

+ The sources of student motivation

a. Students’ perception about the utility of the target language beyond the classroom. They become more
motivated if what they learn in the classroom can be put to immediate use outside the classroom.

b. Their attitude towards the target language. Students who have a positive attitude towards the target language,
its culture and community, and who appreciate the social and economic benefits associated with it, tend to have
a higher degree of motivation.

c. Their sense of competence in the target language. Students’ motivation goes up when they feel that they have
the required skills and abilities to perform a task. They are more confident and more willing to participate more
actively in the classroom.

d. Their perception about the enjoyment level of the lesson. Students become more motivated when they find
the lessons intrinsically interesting and enjoyable, where they learn things that they like and want to learn, and
not because they have to.

e. Their perception of the value of the language lessons. Students feel motivated when they can see the value of
what they are learning.

f. Their classroom learning environments. When the classroom is stress-free and students can participate
without fear of being ridiculed when they make pronunciation or grammar mistakes, they tend to be more
motivated to learn.

g. Their teacher’s personality and teaching effectiveness. Students tend to have higher motivation if their
teacher is warm, humorous and caring, and who can teach well.

+ More often than not, students’ levels of motivation are the results of a mixture of factors that are at play
simultaneously at any given time.

II. Why is motivation important?

+ Motivation is perhaps the single most important factor affecting the outcome of L2 learning. Dörnyei (2001)
contends that when L2 learners have sufficient motivation, most of them can acquire a working knowledge of
the language.

+ When we see motivation as a fixed entity, we simply describe our students as being either motivated or
unmotivated. The students are responsible for their own motivation and there is not much we can do to change
it.

+ If we believe that motivation is a dynamic construct and can change depending on the learning situation in the
classroom or school, then it should no longer be seen as a student problem, but should be viewed more as a
‘teacher problem’.
+ The dynamic view of motivation also means that during the course of their studies, students’ motivation does
not stay at the same level; it fluctuates, going up and down in response to changes in learner internal as well as
external factors.

+ Instead of looking at the myriad of factors that can affect student motivation within the school context, we
should focus on classroom specific factors that teachers are most familiar with and which they can make the
most impact on. These classroom specific factors are referred to as the 5 Ts of motivation:

1. T1 = The Teacher

+ The teacher plays an important role in ensuring that students are motivated and continue to be committed in
their learning throughout the tenure of their studies.
+Almost everything about the teacher, including his or her personal characteristics, can have an influence on
student motivation.

a. Good teachers are enthusiastic. Enthusiastic teachers love their subject matter, and teach it with great passion.
Their enthusiasm is infectious and acts as an open invitation for the students to enjoy learning the subject matter
as much as the teachers enjoy teaching it.

b. Good teachers are warm and friendly. Students appreciate having teachers who are friendly and
approachable, those who they can talk to not only about school work, but also about other things related to their
personal and social lives.

c. Good teachers are caring. Students remember their teachers who are caring and show sincere concern of their
learning and also their general well-being. Students also feel safe, knowing that the teachers are there to help
them when they encounter learning problems.

d. Good teachers are encouraging and patient. Students enjoy having teachers who are encouraging and does not
show any sign of unhappiness when students make the same mistakes frequently, and who are always available
to provide extra help even after normal school hours.

e. Good teachers are humorous. Humorous teachers can make a dry subject interesting. They use humour
skilfully to make their lessons more appealing and make the key points of the lessons more memorable by using
anecdotes and hilarious stories etc.

f. Good teachers are fair. Students have a deep respect for teachers who treat every student fairly and who do
not practice favouritism. In class, these teachers give equal attention to every single student without regard to
their ability level, gender, race, ethnicity or social backgrounds.

+ Effective teachers have deep understanding of motivational factors that can enhance students’ learning
experiences in the classroom. Listed below are principles derived from mainstream motivational theories:

a. Students are likely to be more motivated when they have a high expectancy of success in completing the task
and when they value the outcome. This principle is informed by the expectancy value theory (Brophy, 1998).
b. Students’ motivation increases if they feel that they have the ability to do a certain task and are confident of
successfully completing the task. In order words, the level of their self-efficacy determines the amount of effort
they will put in and the extent to which they persist in their effort. This principle is based on the self-efficacy
theory (Bandura, 1997).
c. Students who are intrinsically motivated, who perform tasks because they want to, tend to work harder and
achieve more success compared to those who are extrinsically motivated, and who do things because they have
to. This is based on Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory.

d. Students become more motivated when they feel good about themselves as a result of their being able to
complete a task. Because of this they tend to do things that increase their personal value and worth and avoid
face-threatening activities as these can undermine their self-worth (Covington, 1998).

2. T2 = Teaching Methodology

+ Motivating teachers are knowledgeable about different kinds of teaching methods. But more importantly, they
have deep understanding about how these methods work with different groups of learners in different learning
contexts.

1) Instructional skills

+ What distinguishes effective from ineffective teachers often lies in their skills in teaching their daily lessons.
Effective teachers are very skilful in formulating the objective of the lesson. They think through the objective
carefully, making sure that the objective relates to the overall plan of the language programme and is formulated
in ways that are achievable and measurable.

+ They are effective in choosing and organizing learning activities. Effective teachers carefully select and
structure learning activities that support the attainment of the lesson objectives in ways that engage students’
interest and attention and stimulate their motivation.

+ They are also good at evaluating how well the lesson went.

2) Keeping student motivation level high

+ Some of the strategies that teachers can use to keep students sufficiently motivated and engaged in the
language learning process:

- First, use a variety of teaching methods. Our teaching methods may be intrinsically interesting, but over time
students may get bored and lose interest

- Second, provide students with choices. Choice is a key element of motivation. Students feel unmotivated
because they often are not given a choice in their learning process.

- Next, inject some novelty into the lesson. Novelty can enliven students’ motivation. We can introduce a few
surprises in our lesson so that the structure and flow of the lesson becomes less predictable.

- Finally, add some element of curiosity. People are naturally curious. But we often do not provide enough room
for students to be curious in the language lesson.

3. T3 = The Text

+ Instructional materials play an important role in the language classroom. It is hard to imagine a language class
without instructional materials because much of the tasks and activities of a language lesson are often organized
around coursebooks or other instructional materials.

+ It is essential that the materials we use are interesting and motivating. Not much learning can occur if
the materials are linguistically, cognitively and affectively unappealing to the learners.

+ The following questions can be used to gauge the interest level of the instructional materials we use:

- Are the materials pitched at the right linguistic levels, not to easy and not too demanding?
- Do the materials contain language items that attract students’ attention?
- Are the contents appropriate for the students you are teaching?
- Do the materials help the learners make personally meaningful connections with their own lives?
- Do the materials help the learners make connections with the lives of the people in their surrounding?
- Do the materials provide positive learning experiences and promote students’ self-esteem and self-
confidence?
- Do the materials provide ample opportunity for students to learn what they really need or want to learn?
- Are the materials emotionally stimulating and engaging?

4. T4 = The Task

+ Language tasks and activities serve pedagogical purposes, but unfortunately not all of them
are perceived to be useful, interesting and engaging by the students.

+ When language learning tasks designed for classroom use are both interesting and enjoyable, and well-aligned
with the skills and experience of the students, there is more than a fair chance that the tasks will be both useful
and motivating.

+ Some ideas that teachers can use to make language learning tasks more engaging and motivating:

- First, tasks should have a clear and tangible outcome.

- Second, tasks should provide an optimal challenge. Tasks should not be too easy or too difficult.
- Third, tasks should be interesting. What is interesting for the teachers may not be so for students.
- Fourth, create tasks that arouse students’ competitive spirit. Adding an element of competition in the learning
tasks can be very motivating as people are naturally competitive.

5. T5 = The Test

+ Our teaching is often overshadowed or even dictated by tests and examinations. Not surprisingly, teachers
often teach in order to prepare students for the tests and examinations.

+ We seem to forget that testing should serve teaching, and not the other way round.

+ However, in addition to using formal, high-stakes tests, we should also consider using less formal assessment
procedures, known as alternative or authentic assessments.

+ Features of authentic assessments include the following:

- they reflect closely what we teach and how we teach in class both in terms of contents and also assessment
formats
- they provide information about areas of students’ weaknesses AND their strengths. This is unlike traditional
assessments that tend to give undue emphasis on what students CANNOT do more than what they CAN do.
- the goal of these assessments is to test AND to teach, thus blurring the distinction between assessing and
teaching. We teach when we assess; we assess when we teach as well.
- they mirror more closely how language is used in real life, thus is more motivating. Students can see the real
value of these assessment procedures and are likely to work hard to perform well