THE TESOL TRAINING CENTRE SINGAPORE

ASSIGNMENT FOR
DIPLOMA IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF
OTHER LANGUAGES (TESOL)

Name : Keshava Hari Loganthan

NRIC Number :

Module Name : TESOL005 – Lesson Planning and Use of Resources For

Language Teaching

Submission Date : 27 November 2015

Reflection 1, Question 3 – My coursebook always tells me what my aims should be.

I agree with this comment because the coursebook will give us the direction for planning our
teaching to decide on specific aims for a particular lesson, however, we should think about our
leaner’s needs aims the stage they have reached in their learning. There are three types of aims.
Those aims are main aim, subsidiary aims and personal aims. A main aim describes the most
important thing we want to achieve in a lesson or sequence of a lesson. Subsidiary aims show the
language or skills learned must be able to use well in order to achieve the main aim of the lesson.

(102 Words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 2, Question 3 – Writing a lesson plan is the important thing. I always have a
written plan, but often I don’t look at it while I’m teaching.

I agree with this comment because it is a vital component of the teaching-learning process.
Proper classroom planning will keep teachers organized and on track while teaching, thus
allowing them to teach more, help students reach objectives more easily and manage less. The
better prepared the teacher is, the more likely she/he will be able to handle whatever unexpected
happens in the lesson. Letting your students know what they will be learning and doing in class
will help keep them more engaged and on track. You can share your lesson plan by writing a
brief agenda on the board or telling students explicitly what they will be learning and doing in
class. You can outline on the board or on a handout the learning objectives for the class.
Providing a meaningful organization of the class time can help students not only remember
better. As a teacher we must not look through the lesson plan while teaching.

(156 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 3, Question 1 – The coursebook gives me everything I need to plan a sequence of
lessons.

I agree with this comment because it provides a clearly thought out programme which is
appropriately sequenced and structured.It also provides a wider range of materials than an
individual teacher may be able to collect. This can give a course a sense of security, economy of
preparation time and a source of practical ideas. Coursebooks have a lot of information about the
relevant lesson from the staging of a lesson. It provides a basis for discussion and comparison
with other teachers and work that the learners can do on their own, so that the teacher does not
need to be centre stage all the time.

(104 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 4, Question 3 – Most of my assessment is informal. It’s much better than formal
testing as a way of finding out what my learners can do.

I agree with this comment because our main role as teachers is determined by how we recognize our
students’ progress and stagnation through few informal assessments like formative assessments,
portfolios, role play, record tracking, etc. These methods allow the teacher to easily maneuver where and
how his or her instruction is going. The amount of informal assessments we do depends on the size of
class, age of the learners and language knowledge or skills we want to assess. We need to plan informal
assessment in the same way as we plan our teaching. We may also wish to assess other things such as
motivation and effort. We can do this by observing and also by talking to learners about their learning.
We can give the feedback to individuals or return to the problems later in a revision lesson.

(138 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 5, Question 2 – What are the reference resources you use most often when
preparing lessons? In what ways do they help you?

The reference resources I use most often when preparing lessons are grammar book, dictionaries,
and the teacher's book. Some grammar books are written for teachers, with a very detailed
explanation. Other designed for learners at different levels, use simpler language to give essential
information about grammatical structures. Grammar book for leaners can help us to see what
information our learners need about grammatical structures and can provide us with suitable
ways of describing or explaining grammar. The most useful dictionaries for teachers to use
themselves are advanced learners’ dictionaries which include example sentence, as well as
information about the formation and use of words. Learner dictionaries also can be used by the
teachers to find the most suitable ways of defining words and giving examples of their use. The
teacher’s book provides suggestions about how to use the materials in the coursebook. Some
teacher’s book includes different possible ways of planning a lesson, as well as an explanation of
answers to exercises and extra resource that is, things can use to support their teaching in the
classroom, such as homework tasks and activities for further practice.

(186 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 6, Question 4 – I use a coursebook, but I change most of it so that learners don’t
get bored.

I agree with this comment because not everything is suitable for our learners. I replace material
with materials with the same focus/aim from another cookbook or resource, such as a teacher’s
website or supplementary materials. For example, write extra items,following the same pattern
and give the different parts of the text or task to different learners. Changing the interaction
pattern, for example, use a matching task as a mingling activity where learners move around the
class to find partners. Teachers have to make materials more challenging, e.g. learners try to
answer comprehension questions before reading and teachers should also make materials less
challenging, e.g. break up a long text into shorter sections. These changes will not get the
students bored.

(120 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 7, Question 2 – My students get bored with the same book in every lesson, so I
use supplementary materials as often as I can.

I agree with this comment. There are various reasons why we might want to use supplementary
materials and activities. Some of the main reasons are to replace unsuitable materials in the
coursebook, to fill gaps in the coursebook,to provide suitable material for leaners’ particular
needs or interest, to give learners extra language or skill practice and to add variety to our
teaching. Supplementary materials and activities can provide variety in lessons and useful extra
practice.But it is important to make sure that they fit into the learners programme, are suitable for
the class and match the aims for particular lessons.

(100 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching
Reflection 8, Question 3 – Which aids are the most motivating for your learners? (for
example, young learners may learn best through playing games, while teenagers may enjoy
working with computers.)

Aids are the resources and equipment available to us in the classroom, as well as the resources
we can bring into the classroom. The most motivating aid for my leaners is Charts. We can use
posters and wallcharts (drawings or graphs that can be put on the wall of a classroom) to display
larger, more detailed pictures, or a series of picture telling a story or showing related objects in a
lexical set. A phonemic chart shows the phonemic symbols and the positions in the mouth where
the different sounds are made. The teacher can point at the symbols to prompt learners to correct
their pronunciation. We can also use charts to display diagrams, prepared drawings and tables of
irregular verbs, or to build up a class dictionary. This aid is more motivating than the other aids
for my learners.

(140 words)
Reference

1. http://www.slideshare.net/JennyYon/the-tkt-teaching