QUESTION 1

Introduction Lesson plans can play a vital role in the teaching process. It gives the teacher or instructor a effective guide whilst handing out the lessons to the students and pupils. It helps a teacher or instructor use resources and time with efficacy and efficiency. And last but not the least it provides the much-needed preparation, which is essential, for it is not advisable to enter the classroom, not prepared. Most lesson plans include a title, topic, name and number of the standard being addressed, goals, objectives, materials, procedure, practice, evaluation, and ways to extend the learning outside the lesson. Teachers create lesson plans to communicate their instructional activities regarding specific subject matter. Almost all lesson plans developed by teachers contain student learning objectives, instructional procedures, the required materials, and some written description of how the students will be evaluated. Many experienced teachers often reduce lesson plans to a mental map or short outline. However, most teachers follow these rules:
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Explicit goals or goals confirmed in terms of objective skills, habits, knowledge, attitudes, etc.

2. Sources of subject matter with the pages of the manual, courses of study, objectives, textbook and other references, if any and the list of key expressions to be used in enhancement lessons in subjects like Language, Mathematics, Science, Bahasa Malaysia and etc. 3. Techniques or procedure with the names of devices to be utilized, suggested steps, and several guiding questions about the essence and substance of the lesson or unit of an outline of the topic being discussed principally on the part of the high school students. 4. Assignment containing the page or pages of the subsequent lesson, vocabulary for home study and dictionary work, a bunch of questions that are well-organized and clear, or to instruct students or pupils to get the general picture and core of the assigned lesson, exercises or problems to work out and a list of references, citing pages, designed to enrich the basic materials in relation with the lesson being taught. 5. Lesson plans whilst kept short should have the required essentials

Lesson plan 1
Length : 1 hour

Class setting: ESL class Pronunciation: Practicing Stress and Intonation

Objective: Improving pronunciation by focusing on the stress - time nature of spoken English Activity: Awareness rising followed by practical application exercises

Level: Pre - intermediate to upper intermediate depending on student needs and awareness

Outline:

1.Begin awareness raising activities by reading an example sentence aloud to the students (for example: The boys didn't have time to finish their homework before the lesson began). Read the sentence the first time pronouncing each word carefully. Read the sentence a second time in natural speech.

2. Ask students which reading seemed more natural and why it seemed more natural. Using the ideas students come up with, explain the idea of English being a "stress - timed" language. If the students speak a syllabic language (such as Italian or Spanish), point out the

difference between their own native language and English (theirs being syllabic, English stress timed). Just this awareness raising can make a dramatic difference in such students abilities.

3. Talk about the differences between stressed words and non-stressed words (i.e. principal verbs are stressed, auxiliary verbs are not).

4. Write the following two sentences on the board: a) The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance. b) He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.

5. Underline the stressed words in both sentences. Ask students to try reading aloud. Point out how each sentence seems to be approximately the same length in "stress - time".

6. Ask students to look through the example sentences and underline the words that should be stressed in the worksheet.

7. Circulate about the room asking students to read the sentences aloud once they have decided which words should receive stresses.

8. Review activity as a class - ask students to first read any given sentence with each word pronounced followed by the "stress - timed" version. Expect a surprise at the quick improvement students make in pronunciation (I am every time I do this exercise)!!

Pronunciation Help - Sentence Stress Take a look at the following list of stressed and non-stressed word types. Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as

Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct

Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting Adverbs e.g. often, carefully

Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as Pronouns e.g. they, she, us

Sample Worksheet

Mark the stressed words in the following sentences. After you have found the stressed words, practice reading the sentences aloud.

1. John is coming over tonight. We are going to work on our homework together. 2. Ecstasy is an extremely dangerous drug. 3. We should have visited some more castles while we were traveling through the back roads of France. 4. Jack bought a new car last Friday. 5. They are looking forward to your visiting them next January. 6. Exciting discoveries lie in Tom's future. 7. Would you like to come over and play a game of chess? 8. They have had to work hard these last few months on their challenging experiment. 9. Shakespeare wrote passionate, moving poetry. 10. As you might have expected, he has just thought of a new approach to the problem.

Lesson plan 2
Lesson Question: How can students use Visual Thesaurus word maps and the Community Spelling Bee to learn how to pronounce some tricky words?

Applicable Grades: 3-12

Lesson Overview: In this lesson, students grapple with some hard to pronounce words, and master their pronunciations with help from the Visual Thesaurus audio pronunciations. They then review custom-made lists of hard-to-pronounce words with a VT Community Spelling Bee that they produce.

Length of Lesson: One hour to one hour and a half

Instructional Objectives: Students will:

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understand the limits of phonetic analysis in pronouncing certain words use Visual Thesaurus to learn word pronunciations plan and present some words with tricky pronunciations to the class create VT Community Spelling Bees to review word pronunciation and spelling

Materials:
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student notebooks white board computers with Internet access "Tricky Words to Pronounce" charts (one per group) (this is on the Internet)

Learning to pronounce pot, depot, and despot:

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Write the following words on the board, in this order, without pronouncing them: pot depot despot

Ask students to turn to a partner and try to say the words in order aloud. If they are unfamiliar with the words, encourage them to guess at their pronunciations --based on the words' spelling or their similarity to words they may know.

On the white board, look up all three words in the Visual Thesaurus. Define each word as you display its word map, and then ask for volunteers to click on the speaker icons to the right of the words to reveal their pronunciations.

Discuss the three words' pronunciations. Are students surprised by how they sound? If so, why? Based on their knowledge of how the word pot is pronounced, did they expect the other words' endings to sound similar? Were they able to sound out depot and despot phonetically?

Instruction: Investigating some tricky pronunciations with the Visual Thesaurus:

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Explain to students that it's not always possible to sound out words phonetically and get their pronunciations right. Words like depot (derived from the French with a silent "t" at the end) will stump English readers the first time they try to pronounce them as they read them (or to spell them if they are hearing their pronunciations). Organize the class in ten small groups or partnerships and assign each group a different set of words from the "Tricky Words to Pronounce" chart:

Group A trough toupee subtle Group F epitome mosque massacre

Group B herb colonel choir Group G heir respite licorice

Group C tomb indict corps Group H acre yacht aisle

Group D debris machete draught Group I suite gourmet circuit

Group E coup queue bouquet Group J debut silhouette souvenir

Direct groups to look up each of their three assigned words up on the Visual Thesaurus, record its definition, and to then listen to its audio pronunciation by clicking on the speaker icon to the right of the word in its word map display.

Explain to groups that it will be their job to teach those three words and their pronunciations to the rest of the class. Beyond explaining to the class the words' definitions, how can they help students to remember their pronunciations? Can they think of a funny rhyme that might make the pronunciation memorable? Should they have the class repeat the words aloud? How can they make their presentation interactive?

Creating VT Community Spelling Bees: Groups can also create a VT Community Spelling Bee so their classmates can review the words that they are presenting. To create a bee, have students follow these steps:
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Click on the Spelling Bee, from the Home page or from the Educators page. Scroll down to the Community Spelling Bee and click on the "Create your own Spelling Bee" button.

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Give your Spelling Bee a Title. List the words to review in the text box at the bottom of the page (separated by commas or each in a separate line).

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Click the "Add Words" button. Click the "Save this Word List" button. Note the unique URL for your spelling bee; this is how you will share your spelling bee with others.

Closure Group teaching:

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Invite each group to teach their set of words and pronunciation tips to the class. If groups created Community Spelling Bees, they can share the unique URL of the bees so their classmates can review those words online for homework.

Wrap up the lesson with a short discussion about any similarities or patterns students noticed among the tricky words presented. For example, which words contain silent t's, Silent p's or an Unexpected syllables?

Extending the Lesson:

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Have students choose one of the tricky words reviewed in class and research its etymology and how it might relate to its pronunciation. For example: the English noun souvenir comes from the French verb souvenir meaning "to remember." (A great resource for researching etymology is The Online Etymological Dictionary at etymonline.com.)

Assessment:
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As an assessment, have students play a Community Spelling Bee that reviews all 30 of the words presented in class: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/wordlists/40155. They can print out their scores as proof of their mastery of the words.

How to improve the lesson plans

These two lesson plans really interest me. I can see that the authors were very adept at establishing a context, an audience, and the desired outcomes of this lesson.

Introductory Information Both lesson plans clearly identified the target audience for the lesson. These students have average to above average intelligence, and have a foundational knowledge of language and cognitive theory, and are highly motivated to learn the subject matter. I felt careful attention was given to describing the audience. There is not much to be improved since the teachers are well prepared.

Before choosing the lessons, I suggest that it is important for every teacher to know more about what kinds of experiences these students have. If they have had significant experiences already, this activity may seem interested to them, as to the real-life experiences they encountered.I think it is best if they learn something but with the schemata.

Goals & Objectives The goals were clearly and effectively stated though. This helps the teacher to make sure that the objectives can be achieved according to the students ability.

Media The use of video and the Internet (refer lesson plan 2) is a good one, though I dont believe it is a substitute for an actual clinical experience. We can see that, if we apply this lesson in Malaysia, especially in the rural areas, there might be no Internet connection. But if it is implemented in urban schools, then there will be no problems.

Material & Procedure The materials used and the procedures are accordingly suited to the students needs. But I can see that the time is too long. For Malaysian schools, usually we have one -hour lesson. Maybe there are some steps to be left out to adhere to the time.

Evaluation I like the approaches used in the lesson plans, and it does match the objectives of the lesson. In this way, a larger body of knowledge and understanding is constructed.

Ways to improve a lesson plan.

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No matter how good our lesson plan may be, there are always little ways that we can make it even better. And if we happen to fairly new at writing a lesson plan, here are some easy ways to improve your lesson plan.

Plan the lesson ahead of time. If we know what we plan to teach our students on, then we will know the most important things to cover in our lesson plan. While it's important to give a wellrounded lesson, it is difficult to attract the students attention. When they are not interestedthey might ignore the future lessons, no matter how good the students are. That is a loss to the teacher so it is very important to plan well because this will determine what the students get in learning.

Other than that the teachers must consider individual students and their needs. At least the teacher must know the basic information about the students. This is not to say that our lesson plan must be tailored to any one particular student. Rather, an easy way to improve a lesson plan is to tailor it to the entire class. We can also ask ourselves what we would want to know about this if we were a child. We have to think about what would have excited us as a child and consider how that translates to kids today. Maybe on of the way is to relate the lesson with their favorite television show or games. Consider not just the individual lesson, but the big picture. You've likely given some lessons before this one and you'll likely be giving some lessons after this one. Where does this fit into the broad spectrum of what you are teaching your students? Will they gain any kind of benefit from it or will it be isolated? If it is isolated, maybe it is time to think about how it can be directly tied to another lesson you're teaching.

Lastly, consider homework carefully. This is such an obvious way to improve a lesson plan that it bears repeating again. Homework should re-enforce what we taught our students in class. It should never be a simple review. So if we taught your students about the minimal pairs, homework should be related mainly to the topics learnt in class. Expand the scope while re-enforcing what they learned, instead of simply giving themhomework and the teachers will easily make the lesson plan much better.

QUESTION 2
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Introduction

In recent years, language teachers have generally agreed that teaching word stress, timing, and intonation are very important. Not every class, nor every student, needs prosody work; but many do. The problem is how to teach it. First, in the introduction to Sue F. Millers wonderful book Targeting Pronunciation: Communicating Clearly in English, she says that the most important thing in any lesson on prosody is listening and repeating. Also, there needs to be something to practice. This lesson plan covers the three features of supra-segmental, stress, timing and intonation.

The lesson plan below is designed to the students to teach the pronunciation covering the suprasegmental features. The three supra-segmental features touched in the lesson plan are stress, tone and intonation.

Stress A stressed syllable is one with relatively greater length, loudness, and higher pitch in which extra respiratory energy. In languages such as English, stress may involve linguistic function and cause differences in syntactic category such as noun or verb. One function of supra-segmental features is to divide speech into chunks variously known as information units, tone units, tone groups, intonational phrases or word groups. The example that is used by the teacher in the class

I wanted chocolate and cake I wanted chocolate and cake I wanted chocolate and cake I wanted chocolate and cakeTone

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It is a contrastive pitch of syllables, which conveys different meanings of a word. In languages such as Mandarin, the pronunciation of two words may be the same except the pitch difference.e.g.[ma] pronounced with a high-level tone means mother, and with a high falling tone means scold.In Cantonese, [ma] produced with a high-level tone means mother too, but with a low mid to mid rising tone means a horse. Intonation It is the use of varying pitch to convey meaning. If the same utterances are produced with different intonation, the meaning conveyed will be different e.g. in English, the utterance It is a cat will be regarded as a statement when there is a fall in pitch, and the same utterance will be regarded as a question if the pitch rises.

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Length : 1 hour

Class Time Proficiency level

: Year 6 Elit : 8.00 9.00 am : The students are excellence in English language (Advanced Learners)

The main objectives :

At the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

1. Analyze English pronunciation using a standard transcription system. 2. Describe and explain the production of supra-segmental (stress and intonation) elements of English. 3. Diagnose the causes of the inaccurate pronunciation of ESL students. 4. Design and present lessons that incorporate effective methods for teaching English pronunciation to second language learners. 5. Evaluate the merit and potential uses of published materials that address pronunciation.

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Objectives are very important because they determine what the students will be taught on specific days and why they will need to learn what has been specified. Good objectives are essential for teachers because they make it possible to know what criteria will be used for the assessment of performance. It is easier to fully comprehend what is expected and what the students will be required to know by the time the unit is completed. The objectives above will be able to help the teachers to analyse the level of the students understanding about pronunciation under the segmental features where it can be a scale to measure what the students will get at the end of the lesson.

Topics

Outlines

Behavioral Objectives

Teaching Methods/ Activities

Time . Set Induction Introduction The students are expected to be able to: 1. explain briefly what phonetics is. Exposure to language through - Lecture - Conversation between teacher and students.

(8.00-8.10 am) 1.1 Overview of English Phonetics. 1.2 Introducing of suprasegmental features (stress, tone, intonation)

2. give the ideas of what the three samples of suprasegmental are.

The students are Unit 1 Studies of Speech Sounds (8.10-8.40 am) 1.1 Studies of Speech Sounds 1.2 Deeper explanation of Supra-segmental Features (stress, tone, intonation) expected to be able to: 1. explain briefly what phonetics is. 2. tell the basic examples of suprasegmental features. 15

Exposure to language through - Lecture - Questions and Answers (Q&A). -discussion

The students are Practice (8.40-8.50 am) Practice on the speech sounds and analyzing the supra segmental features Using the audio tape player. expected to be able to: 1.participate in the class activities 2. practice the speech sounds correctly.

Exposure to language through

- Lecture - Individual and group work: finding examples of different and similar sounds and letters in English.

Closure (8.50-9.00 am) Reviews

Teacher reviews the lesson with students

The students are expected to be able to: 1.Describe and explain the production of suprasegmental elements of English.

Exposure to language through

-Discussing the difficulties they have with English consonantal sounds in groups - Questions and answers.

The reasons why I use audio player in this lesson is because we often ask students to listen. We might be lecturing or playing a music recording. Each situation requires students to pay attention, and to develop a specific type of listening skill. The students will be more attracted other listening to the teacher.

Conclusion

A well-developed lesson plan reflects interests and needs of students. It incorporates best practices for the educational field. The lesson plan correlates with the teacher's philosophy of education, which is what the teacher feels is the purpose of educating the students.

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REFERENCES

Gloria J. Edwards. (2002)Developing a Project-Based Lesson using Leecy Wises template for Star Schoolsteachers.Mountain Plains Distance Learning Partnership

Ladefoged, P. (2006). A Course in Phonetics ( 5th Ed. ). Heinle&Heinle, Thomson Learning.

Roach, P. ( 1991). English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. ( 3rd. ed.). Cambridge University Press

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