Questions:
Activity 1: Building up questions and vocabulary
Show a photo of a child and explain that this is my daughter “This is my daughter”.
Ask the students if they would like to know more about her. Preview words that ask questions: write these
on the board
Encourage the students to ask a question, modifying it to use the correct question stem. Give the answers
in a short sentence (eg. *”What her name?” “What is her name? Her name is Theresa.”)
Students ask a number of questions, then review the questions by writing them on the board to show the
structure. Then ask for the answers. Students can tell each other the answers that they remember. Ask for
answers and show these in sentences. Show the patterns of the verbs and other words:
What is her name? Her name is Theresa
Extend with any simple questions that might not have been included eg. Is..?
Also, show to use the male pronouns for each question.
Sample questions and answers
What is her name? Her name is Theresa
How old is she? She is 10.
Where does she go to school? She goes to Marrickville Public School.
What year is she in? She is in Year 5.
What does she like to do? She likes to ride her bike.
Does she like school? Yes, she does.
Is she a good girl? Yes, she is, but sometimes a bit naughty!
Activity 2: Using the language to describe their children
Students take out a photo of one of their children. They use the questions as models for their own
questions and answers to talk to each other. Remind them to only respond to a question, but help each
other to form it correctly.
Extend any student who is having difficulty with a new question or particular vocabulary: write this on the
board for others to use.
Activity 3: Reading to find details
Explain that they are going to read a description of a boy this time and look for the answers to these
questions: (have these on the board)
What is his name?
How old is he?
Where does he go to school?
What year is he in?
What does he like to do?
Does he like school?
Does he have many friends?
What How Where Does
Give the students this text:
This is my son, Benny. He is 15 years old. He goes to Marrickville High School and he is in Year 9. He
does not like school and just likes to play soccer all day! He has many friends. He is a very happy
boy and he makes me laugh a lot.
Ask students to think about the questions as they read. They can do this with a partner. They underline any
parts that give information about the child to answer the questions below.
Then go through the passage, asking for the answers and the words that tell the answer.
Use the same questions and read this next text:
Here is Tomas, my son. He is very tall, but 9 years old. He goes to St Christopher’s School and he is
in Year 3. He likes going to school and drawing pictures. He only has one friend, but he is happy
with his friend!
Again, go through the passage, asking for the answers and the words that tell the answer.
Activity 4: Writing a description, focus on elements
Use the text about Benny to ask the students to look at how we write a description. Model with the
students:
1. Highlight where the writing uses capital letters at the beginning of sentences and the names (child,
all the words in the name of the school, year level).
2. Circle the pronoun he and underline the verbs is, goes, does not like, likes, has, makes to link to the
questions.
Ask the students to find the same information in the text about Tomas.
Activity 5: Writing a description, composing the text
Students now use Benny or Tomas as a model for their own description. They can work with a partner on
one then the other if they like. Provide other vocabulary where needed. Provide feedback to students as
they are writing and encourage use of the model. Particularly look for verb forms, pronouns and capital
letters. Encourage students to read aloud and listen for the language that they are using/partners to listen
and correct.
When completed, students can added the photo of their child to the description to display.
Activity 6: Reading for information
Once the class descriptions are on display, students need to read each one to find out information about
the class:
What are the ages of children in this class?
Where do children go to school?
How many children like school? etc
Exercise will be for students to compile information from texts.
Answers:
- Identification of the learners briefly
The learners on whom the activity will be imposed include 15 students who are from my practicum observations last year in an international high school. The students are stage 5 students and are currently studding in the first term of year 10 class. Since the students are from non speaking background, they have English as their second language or additional language. The basic skills of the student, when it comes to English are learnt from their countries of origin that includes Korea, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Japan. The chief goal of this student is to study at Australian universities after completing graduation from high school. In order to achieve this goal, they will require effective knowledge of basic as well as academic skills that includes listening speaking, reading and writing. The following 5 activities has been developed keeping in mind the above-mentioned needs o the selected students.
- Identification of the curriculum elements of the teaching
The learning outcome that has been followed while developing the task includes Module A2 “Develop independent learning skills”. The criteria of the learning activity includes organizing study materials, locating resources and facilities in the learning environment and understand their purpose, using a range of learning resources, following learning resource instructions and participating in assessment tasks (Nguyen, 2017). The five activities have been developed in order to enhance their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The first activity that has been developed will help the learners to develop their grammatical sense. Possessing knowledge of grammar is highly essential for learner since it will help them while both speaking as well as writing English. the second activity that has been developed includes talking about a specific topic. The topic that has been selected for this activity includes parents. this activity has been design in order to address the fluency of the students. Developing fluency in English will not only help the students in their academic and professional life but will also help them to communicate with native English speakers and this will enhance their communication skill. Learning English is highly crucial for learners since it will enable them to communicate easily with fellow Global citizens. The third activity that has been developed includes writing an account of the student’s day. writing an account of their day will help them to enhance their English writing skill writing has the capability to provide the learner with physical evidence of his or her achievements and develop his ability to measure his improvement not only this writing in English language helps them to consolidate their grasp of vocabulary along with the structure does developing writing skill possess the potential to Foster the learners ability to summarize as well as use the language in an independent manner hence the purpose of this activity is to address the writing ability of the learners. The fourth activity that has been developed includes listening to an essay and then answer the question that will be asked to the listeners. This activity has been developed in order to address the listening capability of the listeners. Listening is a receptive language skill which is often found to be most difficult for learners. This is because majority of time the learners imposes unnecessary pressure to understand each and every word they are listening to. It is highly crucial for the listener to get oriented to the listening portion and be all ears. it is highly crucial for the learners to be highly attentive the major skill that needs to be nurtured while listening is anticipation. Not only that in everyday life the scenario, the visual clues and the speaker also enhance the capability of the listener to decode oral messages. Thus listening skill could be increased by focusing on making the student listen to the sound of the particular language. the intensive listening will gradually help the student to understand more on the actions to be used and the appropriate pronunciation of the words. The fifth activity that has been developed for the students includes reading for information in this activity students have to read article given by the educator and answer questions associated with the article. reading is considered to be a highly crucial learning skill it helps the students to enhance all part of the English language that is vocabulary spelling Grammar and Writing. Developing effective capacity of reading will help the learner to develop language intuition in an appropriate form. Thus it can be clearly understood that this task has been designed to enhance the reading capacity of the learners. Developing reading skill will help them to grasp the content and draw conclusions not only that the learners will also make it a point to family arise them self with the new words as well as jargons by making reading a habit. The chief materials that will be required for the above mentioned activities include a display boar to display the reading materials, computer and pointers.
- Foreground of the approach and methodology that will be used and why they are appropriate for the learners
As being discussed earlier, the first activity that will be performed is named “finding the tense”. The chief focus of this activity is to enhance the knowledge of grammar of the learners. The students will be asked to look on the white board. The educator will pick up a word and the student have to answer in which tense the word is in. Considering the fact that tense is found to be the major weak point of a students while writing as well as reading, this activity will definitely help them to develop their sense of tense while writing as well as while reading. In case the students are able to identify the proper tense of the word, the student will be asked to write down a sentence using that word. This act will enhance their imaginative and writing skills.
The second activity that has been designed includes talking about a specific topic the topic provided to the student includes parents. With the help of this topic the speaking skill of the students will be assessed and modified. Students will be encouraged to talk about their parents and family in English. The activity will include two partners. While one partner will be speaking another partner will be taking note of the grammatical or construction mistakes done by the student while speaking. The next step, the second student will be asked to modify the errors. In this process, both their fluency in English and knowledge of grammar can be assessed. At the final step, the educator will correct the errors.
In the third activity the students will be write a 500 words essay on their day. Students will be asked to recount 5 special things that they have performed the day before lie waked with their dogs or attain the English class. Then they will be asked to turn their thoughts into paragraphs using sentence starters. During this activity, discussion with partners will be allowed. The educator will monitor in oder to provide additional spelling as well as vocabulary if required. All the students will be encouraged to show each other the written paragraphs after they have completed. This activity will enhance their writing skill as well as vocabulary. Enhancing the stock of words will be helpful for the students since it will enhance their quality of witting and thus help them to achieve their goal.
The fourth activity includes listening to a piece of story and answering the questions asked from the story by the educator. For the activity purpose , the story that has been selected is a parable of the thirsty crow. The educator will play a recorder where the story has already been recorded. After all the student have completed listing to the story, small questions like why the crow decided to pick up the pebbles from the ground and put it into the pot, will be asked. Students who will not be able to answer the question will be made to hear the recording again. Not only that, other students will be encouraged t retell him or her the story. This activity will be beneficial for the students in two ways. Firstly, this will develop the listing and interpreting ability of the students. Not only that, answering a specific questions or explain the story to their peers will also enhance the speaking skills of the same.
The fifth activity that has been developed for the students includes reading for information. In this activity students have to read article given by the educator and answer questions associated with the article. In this activity, a story will be displayed in the screen. Each and every student will be asked to read aloud the story that has been displayed. While the student is reading, the educator will assess the pronunciation and fluency of the student while reading. All the wrong pronunciation will be written down by the educator. Once the reading of the student is complete, he or she will be informed about his or her wrong pronunciation and will be encouraged to repeat the word or sentence. After that, the student will be asked specific close as well as open ended questions from the paragraph that was just read by him. In case, the student is unable to answer, all his or her peer will be encouraged to answer the same. This activity will be beneficial for the students in two ways. Firstly, the reading ability as well as the pronunciation of the students will get enhanced through this activity. Secondly, this activity will also enhance their skill of listing. When one student will be reading the others will be listening the story and thus this will enhance their interpreting skills and provide them with a better understanding of their accents.
- Summary of the lessons
The major skill that has been focused while designing activity 1 includes the grammatical sence of the students. When it comes to the second activity, it has been designed in order to enhance the speaking capability of the above mentioned students. The third activity is based on enhancing the writing skill of the students. The fourth capability has been designed in order to enhance the listening and interpreting skills of the TESOL students. Finally when it comes to to the 5th activity, it has been designed in order to improve the reading capability of the learners.
- Justification of how these activities support the approach that has been identified and why they are offered in this sequence
From the above discussion it can be clearly understood that all the activities described in the five activities described in the above paragraphs are interlinked. Considering the fact the chief objective of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL) includes enhancing linguistic knowledge and ability of the learners, all the activities has been designed keeping accordance to the TESOL approach (Nguyen & Brown, 2016). In the first lesson, that I finding the tense, the grammatical knowledge of the student is the chief focus. Enhancing the grammatical knowledge of the student will help then both with their speaking as well as writing ability in their professional, academic as well as personal life. Lack of grammatical knowledge is one of the chief reasons that hinder their verbal communication and make them feel uncomfortable while speaking in the English language with native peers.
TESOL learning approaches other innovative approaches like task-based approach and the communicative approach. The task-based approach can be described as a root which has in itself the methodology of teaching communicative language. This teaching procedure is conducted through an entirely communicative way (Van den Branden, 2016). In order to gain knowledge of the language one must be have of the words that are used in the context. In the task-based learning procedure, the teachers ask their students to compete a task which involves the usage of the targeted language. The final assessment depends on the outcome of the task rather than the focusing on the separate elements. After successful completion of the task, the success of the student is celebrated which in turn boosts the confidence of the student (Long, 2014). Another effective learning approach involves the communicative approach. It is entirely based on the idea that the language can be learnt successfully only if the real meaning is communicated effectively. Thus, in this learning approach a topic is presented to the learner and the context is made natural and in correlation to the reality. In this approach the meaning is given the paramount importance (Dornyei, 2013). If in this learning approach any dialogue is used then, such dialogues are not memorized. Reading and writing might begin from the first day, and translation is used whenever students need to benefit from the same. The main goal of this approach is to achieve desired communicative competence. The students are encouraged to interact with the other people and also to communicate with the other members of the group and also through writings (Morrow, 2018).
Considering the act that enhanced knowledge of tense posses the potential to eradicate the barriers to communication ad writing faced by the TESOL students, this activity is a highly crucial one and is perfectly aligned with the requirements of the students. When it comes to the second activity, that is speaking abort a specific topic, this activity has been designed keeping in mind the speaking ability of the students (Oliver et al., 2017). Majority of the non-English speaking students hesitate to converse in English since they lack fluency in the language. The second activity will thus not only enhance the ability of the students to speak in the English language but will also enhance their confidence. Besides that, they will be able to understand their errors in sentence construction and grammatical errors since it will be pointed out as well as corrected by the educator Thus, it can be said that that like the first activity, bears appropriate alignment with the TESOL approach. One of the major strengths of this activity includes it will be able to enhance the confidence and vocabulary of the students and enhance his or her communication skill. However, this activity lacks the capacity to enhance the written skills of the same. In order to eradicate the weakness of the second activity, a third activity has been introduced to the students. When it comes to the third activity, it includes writing a 500 words essay on a specific day of the student. This activity has been designed to enhance the writing skills of the students (Yang, 2018). Considering the fact that the mother language of the TESOL students is not English, a good number of students lack the capability to properly construct a sentence in English that will express the appropriate emotion they wants to demonstrate through their writing. Considering the fact that the chief goal of the selected students is to be get admitted at reputed Australian universities after completing graduation, efficiency in written English is highly crucial since this will be considered to be a basic requirements for getting admitted in the Australian University. Since this task is fully focused on enhancing the writing skills of the students, it can be clearly understood that the third activity is aligned with the TESOL approach (Lin, 2013). While the above discussed factors are the strengths of the mentioned activity, one of the major weaknesses of the activity includes it does not contribute to those students who have efficient writing skills but lacks fluency while communicating verbally with the peers. When it comes to the fourth activity that is listening to an essay provided by the educator and then answer the same, it can be clearly understood that this activity will enhance their listening skill. One if the major communication issues faced by the TESOL students include lack of interpreting skills to the Australian accent. Lack of this skill has the potential to hinder the path of their progression towards the goal. Hence in order to deal with that, the fourth activity has been designed (Moloney, 2017). Lastly, when it comes to the fifth activity, it includes reading aloud a story followed by answering questions associated with the story. The chief focus of the activity includes the pronunciation of the students and the interpreting skill of the same. Inappropriate pronunciation of English term has the potential to reduce their chance of getting admitted into a well mentioned Australian university. Thus it is highly crucial for the TESOL student to learn proper pronunciation. Besides that, this activity is also focused on enhancing the vocabulary of the students. Thus like the above mentioned activities, the fifth activity is also directly linked with the TESOL learning approaches.
Reference List
Dornyei, Z. (2013). Communicative language teaching in the twenty-first century: The principled communicative approach. J. Arnold, & T. Murphy, Meaningful Action (Eds.), 161-171.
Lin, A. (2013). Toward paradigmatic change in TESOL methodologies: Building plurilingual pedagogies from the ground up. Tesol Quarterly, 47(3), 521-545.
Long, M. (2014). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. John Wiley & Sons.
Moloney, R. (2017). The Plurilingual TESOL Teacher: The Hidden Languaged Lives of TESOL Teachers and Why They Matter Elizabeth Ellis. Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016. Pp. xiv+ 313. TESOL Quarterly, 51(2), 475-477.
Morrow, C. K. (2018). Communicative language testing. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1-7.
Nguyen, M. H. (2017). Negotiating contradictions in developing teacher identity during the EAL practicum in Australia. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 45(4), 399-415.
Nguyen, M. H., & Brown, J. (2016). Influences on preservice writing instruction during the secondary English as an Additional Language practicum in Australia. Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 41(8), 84.
Oliver, R., Rochecouste, J., & Nguyen, B. (2017). Esl in Australia-a chequered history. TESOL in Context, 26(1), 7.
Van den Branden, K. (2016). Task-based language teaching. The Routledge handbook of English language teaching, 238-251.
Yang, P. (2018). Developing TESOL teacher intercultural identity: An intercultural communication competence approach. TESOL Journal, 9(3), 525-541.
