SUSANA MARTIN DEL CAMPO & ARELY RODRIGUEZ

Are the designers and creators of the following grammar activities

Grammar activities

Describing the PPP stages and integrating productive and receptive skills.

• Teacher shows a set of visual to the students (whole class)
  
  
  


• Teacher emphasizes that those are about the last holidays; showing them a cue word: “L A S T” and transmits the word meaning to the students by the implementation of body language and gestures.
  


• Teacher starts giving them the first ideas of the past tense everything in affirmative by now and nothing written, the teacher points the visual and shows a cue word [a verb in past tense]
  
  
  Teacher I visited Cancun , I went there the last summer
  
  


• Teacher points another visual and waits until students mention the activity described in the image. The teacher points all the visuals and shows the verb in pas tense every time the students mention it.
  

Rested

Had fun

Ate

• Teacher repeats the activities she did on her last holidays using body language and pointing the verbs
  
  I rested on the beach
  I had fun with my friends
  I ate lots of junk food
  I Practiced sports
  
• She encourages students to give the last 4 examples by pointing the visual, showing the cue word and eliciting ideas. ( Whole class / ss take turns)


• After that and having all her examples covered she starts writing the examples on the board and make students help her with the example creation; students start mentioning their own examples and T guides them meanwhile
  
• She gives some minutes for the students to copy the information and to process it. So far they have been receiving and processing the information just as Nunan states; after continuing in the exercise production, students need to process what they have just learned.
  
• After, the teacher presents a listening exercise where the students will reinforce the tense and they will listen more ideas and by consequence more verbs and complements. (Individually)
  
• They listen the conversation again and while they are listening they have to solve a fill in the blanks exercise; it is about past verbs and simple past structures. (Pairs)
  
• After the exercise and the peer correction [mean while teacher monitors and guides] there is a linkage with the next exercise; there are some questions sticked on the board and they are requiring student’s information about their last vacation time.
  
  
  
  
• Students are working in pairs, they read the questions and they answer them by following the model and taking into consideration the previous tasks.
• After exchanging the required information, students have a new task; they are going to write about their last vacation time and they are going to add as many aspects as possible trying o have a purposeful writing (Byrne, 1991) and accomplishing the usage of productive skills.

Lesson plan

Universidad Autónoma del Estado México
Licenciatura en enseñanza del Inglés
Docencia de la gramática en inglés


Class time: 1 hr Size: 15 students Level: Basic 1

Main goal: That students start knowing simple past and the basic stages of the tense. Topic(s): vacations
Previous Knowledge: Students recognize basic tenses and are able to manage them as the class requires it. They know basic vocabulary as well as basic pattern expressions.

Recycled grammar: frequency words, simple present, WH words
Material: visuals, realia, cue words, hand outs, peripherals,

WARM-UP

• Objective
  Put students in the correct channel. (Cognitive and communicative strategies) and get them involved in the class mood.
• Dynamics
  1 Whole class
  2 pairs
  3 small groups
• Procedure
  1. Ss get an idea from listening a popular song and teachers elicits as many ideas as possible
  2. Ss write whatever comes to their minds while they’re listening a song’s sequence (guiding the writing through peripherals)
  3 Ss answer some questions about being on vacation
  
  a) How do you feel when you are on vacations?
  b) How many times a year do you take vacations?
  c) Which is the best about going on vacations?
  d) How often do you on vacations?
• Material
  Visuals
  Peripherals
  Music
• Time
  
  8 min

Vocabulary presentation

• Objective. Provide students with new voc. they might need when they express their ideas using the new grammar topic.
• Dynamics
  1 Total class
  2 pairs
• Procedure
  1 Teacher presents a set of words about vacation time {through a story, using body language and gestures}
  2 After the story Ss are going to order the new voc. deciding the order and discussing it by the time they are arranging it
  - get a passport
  -go to the travel agency
  -get information about the place
  -Prepare your luggage
  - buy the tickets
  -make hotel reservations
  -check the forecast report
• Material
  Visuals
  Hand outs
• Time
  3 min
  4 min
  

PRESENTATION

• Objective. To have students using past tense to express their experiences and ideas about the past
  { specifically about vacations} (the presentation is done in a very inductive way trying to avoid grammar explanation, but providing them with the rules inductively)
• Dynamics
  1 Total class
  2 Whole class
• Procedure
  1 T presents some past ideas about her last vacation time showing the verbs (in past) to the students every time she uses them {3 or 4 ex.} (teacher uses mimicry and gestures and tries to maintain the tempo during the explanation)
  2 Teacher writes some examples on the board (3) and make students help her with the example creation
  3 students start mentioning their own examples and T guides them meanwhile
  Recognition of verbs in past, and the placement they have in the structure using affirmative and negative statements. Ss produce examples helped by the teacher and the visuals as well as peripherals.
• Material
  Visuals
  Cue words
• Time
  5 min

PRACTICE / Drills

• Objective. To set up situations in order to have students develop grammatical competence in each of them. Three drills: communicative, mechanical and meaningful.
• Dynamics
  1 Pairs
  2 small groups
  3 Individually
  4 Trios
• Procedure
  1 Mechanical: students answer to a general questions and they give 6 specific answers.
  2 Meaningful. Ss read a short article from the text book, “the worst vacation time” after reading it they fill in the blanks with the missing verbs in some sentences about the previous reading and they organize them in a time sequence.
  3 Communicative: taking the last article as a model, students write down about their worst vacation time, and then they report the experience to their classmates.
  1
  -What did you do on your last vacations?
  -Where did you go?
  -With whom did you go?
  -When did you go?
  -What did you visit?
  -Did you have a good time?
  2
  “ The worst vacation time”
  3
  “My worst vacation time”
• Material
  Peripherals, visulas
• Time
  1. /6min
  2. /7min
  3. /7min

PRODUCTION

• Objective .Have students practice what they just have learned.
• Dynamics
  1 Individually
  2 small groups
• Procedure
  1 Students are going to listen a mini dialog about the best vacations ever. It is supposed that the same person of the reading is reporting the info.
  2 While they are listening they are going to organize the person’s speech on the board.
  3 Students are going to retell what they just have listen while they ask and answer questions about the listening.
  Recognition of verbs in past, and the placement they have in the structure using affirmative and negative statements. Ss can handle a conversation in past and they are able to answer and ask questions using that tense.
• Material
  Listening CD
  Hand outs
• Time
  10min

APPLICATION

• Objective. Have students apply into real situations what they just have learn
  Pairs
  1 T sets up a situation for starting a role play
  2 Ss using the previous voc. start telling the steps for planning a good trip.
  3 Then they mention the negative aspects of the trip highlighting what the best friend does not have to do.
  4 Finally they report the best aspects about their last vacation time
  Role play where they –helped by some questions that the teacher provides them with and some others that they create through their activity advance- take turns and characters in order to develop a situation.
• Material
  Peripherals
• Time
  10 min
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Purpose of the activity

The purpose of the activity is to carry out an observation among the colleagues and their classes, where different perspectives of grammar are identified.

A study case: how grammar is being taught in L2 classes

Class observations; in order to identify the perspectives the teacher uses when grammar is taught and how those processes affect or benefit the second language acquisition

Subject of study

College education teacher, nine years of experience at giving English as a second language classes. Her main goal is to have a communicative environment in her classes and in order to do that, she considers she knows her student’s needs and the abilities and dispositions they present against English language. She mentioned -after the observation- that she has used an integrated curriculum in order to give her students the best way to connect their knowledge acquisition with their real life contexts.

About the students

A group of fifteen College students with very varied goals. Most of them in their early twenties and starting their college education; they are motivated about learning a second language and they are conscious about the great importance of English in their educational programs.

Supporting theory

When the grammar presentation was performed, the teacher used communicative grammar theory and the transformational one; the last one states that a phrase structure is quite adequate for a small part of the language and that the rest of the language can be derived by repeated application of a rather simply set of transformations to the string given; so she used it at the very first stages of the presentation. However all the drills and exercises where derived from the communicative approach because the tasks as well as the dynamics were designed in order to make students learning realistic stuff in set up situations, whole language (Harmer, 2000). Yet, as Johnson specified, how the teacher and students used language to communicate in the classroom mediates between teaching, learning and second language acquisition

Students learn about how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures, or expressions; they learn to communicate in the culture of the language studied by getting immerse on it. In a second language classroom, the language -English- is the medium through which teachers teach and students demonstrate what they have learned. Acquiring that language is the ultimate instructional goal of second language education (Johnson, 1996)

Observation results

• The teacher started the class with a warm up: brain storming and some questions; there was when students were recycling the grammar acquired in previous classes…It could be inferred, because the teacher mentioned constant references to the topic checked a day before.
• After a linkage and a vocabulary presentation as well as a vocabulary activity, the teacher proceeded to have the first presentation of the class. The grammar topic was simple past and she neither gave formulas nor mentions grammatical rules during her presentation. She elicited student’s examples (after four of her own ideas) and after that she had three drills.{ during the eliciting, the students participation was great, but when the first drill was performed some of them were a little lost; however because of her monitoring the teacher realized about the problem and with student’s cooperation she helped them to get a better understanding}
• She had three presentations the first one affirmative and interrogative, the second one negative and interrogative and in the last one she gathered the three forms. After the first and the second presentations she had three drills, in those drills the students had oral, written and listening activities where they were practicing the grammar stuff that the teacher had given them. The activities after the third presentation were an application of the grammar topic in a real situation activity.
• the teacher ends the class by telling them what the grammar topic name was and the construction and usage of it. After practicing the grammar topic where the four skills where integrated all the time
• All the class was given in English, and if the students wanted to know a word they had to explain it to the teacher. The teacher as well did not speak Spanish at all; instead she used body language, gestures and examples

• The class was communicative and dynamic which was great for students because they had fun while they learnt. Some students were cooperative however some others were kind of moody and lazy; but the teacher solved it by having personalization in her class, so as the moody and lazy students were having topics they like, little by little they became more interested in the class.
  
• It has been considered that the class was really communicative even though the teacher talking time was a little bit longer when giving directions to the students. Another aspect to be emphasized is the weakness of the consolidation part; she could have another exercise instead of just writing the grammar formula and its different usages.

Conclusion:

- Grammar was used during all the class; when the teacher was recycling information and during the presentation of the new topic; and of course through all the drills. The students were having communicative exercises and as they were working in pairs, trios or small groups, the peer correction was presented all the time.

- In general the class was communicative, the grammar information was taught in a very inductive way, and the student’s necessity to know about grammar rules was satisfied at the end of the class after a great amount of practice during the class.