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Teacher: Kazumi Kitagawa
Date of Presentation:
November 14, 1996
Proficiency Level: Intermediate/College Level
Estimated Time of Lesson: 10-15 minutes
Review and warm-up
I will ask the students the meaning of if, and the meaning of the sentence containing the word of if. I will make sure that they know that if indicates condition.
Presentation in context
I will introduce some sentences that have the following structures, "S would V.... if S V (past)" or "If S V (past), I would V..." (If clause can come before or after). I will ask the students what these introduced sentences have in common (if, would, past tense). I will ask them to change these sentences into informational questions: "What would S do if S V (past)."
Focused practice
I will give them three conditional questions and have them write their
responses.
What would you do if you were the only human being alive on
earth?
What would you do if there was no electricity available?
What would you do if you woke up one morning to find out that your
gender had changed?
I will ask volunteers to share their responses to these questions.
Assignment:
For the next class period, write a paragraph on an abstract
idea giving examples from at least three levels on the ladder. Follow the
model on beauty from your class notes today.
Communicative activity/Application
The students will pair up with neighbors. One will write a question on a
slip of yellow paper, starting with "What would you do if...?" The other,
without knowing the question of his or her partner, will write a sentence
starting with "I would+verb" on a slip of blue paper. All question slips
will be collected in a bag, and all answer slips collected in another bag. A
pair of students will come to the front of the classroom. After a person
picks one question slip and one answer slip from each bag, s/he reads
these sentences aloud for the partner who will have to write them on the
board. The partner then takes a turn.
Communicative Activity:
The students will pair up with neighbors. One will write a question on a slip of yellow paper, starting with "What would you do if...?" The other will write a corresponding sentence starting with "I would+verb," responding to the question of his or her partner on a slip of blue paper. They take turns: one writes an answer to the question which the other writes. All question slips will be collected in a bag, and all answer slips collected in another bag. A pair of students will come to the front of the classroom. After a person picks one question slip and one answer slip from each bag, s/he reads these sentences aloud for the partner who will have to write them on the board. The partner then takes a turn.
If there is not enough time left, anyone can pick up the slips from the two
bags and read aloud for the class, instead of having each pair come in
front of the classroom.
I think students mastered the pattern well and were able to actually use it. Because I spent enough time on the structural aspect and gave them enough examples. Many of them said that these example sentences were helpful and interesting. They also said that the lesson was a good combination of grammar and writing skills. The weakness of my lesson today was that I basically ran out of time because I spent more time on the first part of my lesson. As a result, all of them did not have an opportunity to practice one of the objectives, dictation. I also admit that my instruction for communicative activity was not clear enough. Many of the students did not know exactly what to do.
As I said, I spent more time on presentation and focus practice than I had planned. I wanted to give students an adequate explanation on the pattern. Today, almost all of my students were native speakers of English, so they did not need as much of explanation or examples. However, in the real situation where none of the students is a native speaker of English, I may have to spend even more time on explanation and practice.
Another reason that I ran out of time was that I had too many objectives for a ten minute lesson. Many of the students wrote on the evaluation forms that they liked the activity. They thought it was fun and interesting because there was interaction with others. I was happy to hear that, but I should have spent more time on it. Some of the them suggested that I should not have them write the sentences on the board. Instead, I should have one person in a group read (which I had in my contingency plan). I thought that was a good suggestion, but for writing purpose, I would still keep the dictation practice.
As a whole, I learned a lot from this lesson especially on time management. I will pay more attention to it next time.
*I made a single change on the communicative activity to make it easier
for students.
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