Teacher: Paul Mason
Proficiency level: A group of advanced ESL learners who are preparing to enter college classrooms.
Date of presentation: October 14, 1999

OBJECTIVES

• Students will be able to outline the main ideas of a lecture.
• Students will understand the importance of thinking about the topic before hand (mental preparation)

MATERIALS:

• Video tapes of two college lectures.
• A list of pre-questions related to one of the lectures.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES:

Warm-up: Show comic strip of the classroom of students who have no idea what the teacher is talking about but don't ask the professor. Ask the students if they have ever had this experience or a similar experience. Discuss this topic for 5 minutes.

Presentation:

1. Pass out pre-questions. These questions go with the first lecture. First tell the students the topic of the lecture so that they can start thinking about the topic before they see the lecture. Read the pre-questions together. As the students view the first lecture they will answer the pre-questions. These questions will be aimed at identifying the important points of the lecture. You can rewind the tape at problem areas so that the students can listen again. As a form evaluation, go over the answers to the pre-questions. As part of the discussion you should write the topic and main points on the board in outline form. 20-25 minutes

2. For the second video you will not have pre-questions and you will give them a false topic for the lecture. As students listen they will write down the main point of the article and any important details. What happened, did the expectation of a different topic effect how easy it was to get the main points of the article. Why? Were they looking for different kinds of information. As part of the discussion you should write down the topic and main points in outline form on the board. 10-15 minutes.

3. Now it is time for discussion. Ask questions like:
   • How can knowing the topic help to prepare you to get the main ideas from a professor's lecture or a talk at church or a news article etc.?
   • Were the pre-questions helpful?
   • How will trying to anticipate questions about the topic help you understand the lecture?
   Stress the importance of mental preparation. Discussion: 15-20 minutes.

SELF-EVALUATION:

In the original version of this lesson plan I stated that the object of this lesson was to have the students be able to understand the topic and main points of a lecture. I then proceeded to have the students listen to a news article on tape. The discrepancy was quickly noted by the other students in the class when I presented the lesson. In this revised version of the lesson I have kept the objective consistent with the type of discourse being used. This change made several extensions of this lesson apparent. It would be easy to adapt this lesson to different discourse styles. Instead of a lecture you may want to have the objective be for the student to be able to understand the main points of a news program on tv or a talk in church. These require many of the same skills but may also have some skills specific to their genre of discourse.

One thing that might help the students as they listen to a lecture on a subject with which they are not familiar would be to provide a list of new vocabulary. This vocabulary will become meaningful when the students hea it in context. You may also want to discuss how generating a list of vocabulary words might help to prepare them mentally for the lecture they are about to hear. The students may want to include this as part of their preparation for other lectures they attend.

I also realized that the lesson was somewhat general, without any specific topics for the lectures or specific pre-questions. I felt that It was good to leave the specific topics or questions open to the instructor. The instructor will have a good idea of the needs and interests of his students. With this insight the teacher will be able to choose lectures or articles that will be intrinsically motivating to the students in that particular class.

I think that the overall Idea for this lesson is a good one that can be made relevant to the students own situations. It could also be incorporated into a larger thematic unit. I think that the strength of this lesson is its flexibility.