Grammar Post-Lesson Evaluation

This is a post-lesson evaluation of the Grammar Lesson plan that took place last Thursday 11th September 2008 at CELT Athens premises with a group of five PreIntermediate students from Iran. On the whole, I believe that the primary aim of the lesson, which was to teach the difference between Past Simple vs. Present Perfect, was achieved to a degree. In reality, the lesson started off well, with a clear, organized board plan and vocabulary presentation well linked thematically to the content of the song; it guided learners to the content of the song. During the presentation stage, the use of timelines pointed out the difference between Simple Past vs. Present Perfect satisfactorily, after certain lyrics of the song had been placed under their respective categories. The strips of paper and underlining of tenses also guided students comprehension of tense form and uses. Unfortunately, the adverbial phrase these days used along with the Present Perfect has been vaguely used as opposed to its equivalent so far, which would have been much clearer to them. During pair/ group work activities, I noticed a few mistakes concerning the irregular verb form of past participle as well as the auxiliary verb to have for Present Perfect and I corrected them or their fellow students did it for those who had misused verb forms. On the other hand, ignoring some other grammatical inaccuracies made students use improperly tenses to convey messages, i.e. I have wash my clothes today. Grammatical inaccuracies, unfortunately, do not promote fluency and under no circumstances, should I ignore accuracy at the expense of fluency; what should have been done in the first place was to correct students mistakes upon noticing them by repeating correctly what had been mispronounced. Another option includes keeping notes of students errors and reminding of them to the learners after group work/pair work activities had been completed. As for the controlled practice of the stage, the game with the wallet gave students some pleasure finding out about their classmates life experiences and when they did them, too. They enjoyed doing activities related to the topic of love disappointment, although it is culturally targeted at women, as opposed to men. Role plays were contextualized and used in the topic of love disappointment, although the very last one should have been acted out without the students looking at the previous model. Finally, it was conducted within proper set time limits.

Action Plan:
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I ought to try not to ignore accuracy at the expense of fluency, especially with language activities I have to keep a note of student errors and analyse them to Ss, after the activities have been completed I must ignore Ss` comments on the lesson and carry on with the teaching procedure I should avoid pre-teaching vocabulary , when Grammar is on the agenda I should not omit checking concept questions for language purposes