TESL+approaches,+methods,+and+strategies

**APPROACHES, METHODS, STRATEGIES** //TESL Approaches, Methods, Strategies// This page includes several lesson plans I created in collaboration with my course-mates that demonstrate different TESL approaches, methods, and strategies. The first is a generic lesson plan. The last is an integrated lesson plan with an explanation of how the different methods and approaches were added to the generic lesson to support ELLs. These lesson plans and their materials document various strategies, alternative assessments, and materials adaptation.

** Generic Lesson Plan **

Materials: Sample Advertisement, Independent Practice, Corrective Practice, Extension Practice

**Audiolingual Method Lesson Plan**

Materials: Repetition-Substitution Demo Sheet, Transformation Demo Sheet, Transformation Demo Ad

**Direct Method Lesson Plan**

Materials: Fill-in-the-Blank Exercise

**Communicative Language Teaching Lesson Plan**

**Natural Approach Lesson Plan**

** Total Physical Response Lesson Plan **

**Integrated Lesson Plan**

The Integrated Lesson Plan shows how my group members and I integrated the various TESL methods, approaches, and techniques into the Generic Lesson Plan to make it more ELL friendly.

The post secondary Generic Lesson Plan (GLP) was initially designed without the implementation of learned English as Second Language (ESL) methods or approaches. Consequently, the original lesson design was very lecture-based with students performing most tasks individually. For example, interactive activities, such as dialogues and planned opportunities for role-play were minimal. Also, new information that students could refer to during the lesson, like lesson vocabulary, was absent from the plan. The implementation and integration of various ESL methods, approaches, and techniques helped the GLP’s designers mitigate such deficiencies and improve applicable quality, culminating with the development of the Integrated Lesson Plan (ILP).
 * Objectives and explanations **

**Warm-up** Activities and exercises in the GLP were created under the assumption that students would be adequately alert and “warmed up” at the beginning of the lesson. Through the study of other methods, approaches, and techniques it was learned that such readiness on the part of second language (L2) students should not be taken for granted. Most people, no matter what their L2 ability, process thoughts and ideas in their first language (L1) and might only speak the target language while in the L2 classroom. Before any L2 lesson a capable instructor should create an early opportunity for students to make the necessary transition from L1 processing to that of the L2 they are studying. The addition of Total Physical Response (TPR) to the beginning of the GLP is geared to help students get appropriately warmed up by following simple demonstrations and commands made by the instructor in the target language. Verbalizing simple and visible actions with universally-known realia stimulates the psychomotor awareness of students’ minds and mouths and acquaints them with basic grammatical structure and the lesson’s vocabulary. Though it was believed by its designers that some vocabulary would be new to some students, no vocabulary list was originally included in the GLP.

**Check for Understanding** To check for students’ understanding of learned material, an interactive and low-anxiety activity learned from the Natural Approach (NA) was added. At this point in the lesson the instructor asks students questions specific to the topic, using recently-introduced vocabulary. The idea here is to continue the process of warming-up the students’ minds, but also to build a mental bridge from the foundation of L1 literacy and habits formed in L1 processing to those that are necessary for effective L2 production. This is achieved by minimizing error correction on the part of the teacher and allowing students to answer the questions non-verbally or in their L1, if necessary. Mistakes made in L2 grammar and vocabulary are acceptable here; the primary goals at this juncture are merely to maintain student interest and establish that the lesson’s concepts are understood.

**Guided practice** To apply learned concepts from L2 lessons and generalize them to settings outside the classroom, students must form proper L2 habits and overcome inhibitory ones from their L1. This is attempted in the Guided Practice section by implementing repetitive verbal drills adopted from the principles of the Audiolingual Method (ALM). In contrast with the GLP, the ILP now includes speaking practice and patterned repetition. By listening to the instructor and repeating verbalizations that move from simple to more difficult structure, students become more acquainted to the rhythms and characteristics of everyday target language speech. This familiarizes them with patterns that are necessary for L2 learning progression.

**Independent practice** For ILP Independent Practice, students engage themselves in the Extension Practice activity originally designed for the GLP (in this case, using provided information and a template to create their own advertising billboards). Though not interactive, the activity is intended to further students’ individual understanding of topical terms by applying their own creativity and critical thought.

**Corrective practice** ALM exercises used in the Guided Practice portion are adjusted in the Corrective Practice section of the ILP to meet the students’ academic needs and to assure that concepts learned thus far are understood. Repetition and transformation of common target language speech patterns are employed; transformation of sentence structure guides students toward exhibiting the level and quality of their comprehension to this point.

**Extension** In contrast with the individual activity involved with the GLP’s Extension Practice, the corresponding section of the ILP is more interactive. It is taken from the Direct Method (DM) and it challenges students to demonstrate their current understanding and progress via the applied skills of listening, reading, and writing. In this section the instructor dictates a passage that the students must first listen to, then write on their own, followed by self-correction. This gives them the opportunity to practice the syntax of L2 production and helps them develop their own inner criteria for deciding if what they have written is correct or not. This activity also allows the instructor to check what the students know because they have to understand what is being dictated to them in order to write it correctly. Of all the additions made to the GLP, the DM is the only one which focuses on the improvement of L2 writing skills.

**Closure** For the ILP Closure section, principles of the NA are again employed to gauge the students’ progress and their understanding of the lesson’s key facets. The instructor and students wrap the lesson up with a final question and answer discussion. But this time, answering the questions demands more abstract thought on the part of the students and requires them to produce more words and grammatical structures indicative of their target language development. All of the previous methods and approaches in the ILP will have guided students to be able to participate in this exercise. A feeling of success here between both students and teachers will justify the ILP additions made to the GLP’s original design.