Making a Lesson Plan

As we have briefly noted before, a teacher may choose to directly call learner attention to the forms of a language or not.  When the focus is direct, it is called explicit grammar instruction.  When students’ attention is not directly focused on the forms, implicit grammar instruction is taking place.  The distinction, then, is primarily one of learner attention to the forms, not the presence or absence of the forms, nor on the teacher’s attention to the forms.  A teacher should always be attending to the forms of the language in a language-learning lesson.  Fig. 7 shows the relationships between instructional design terminology and the focus on forms in a lesson.

	Course Approach
Submersion		Immersion
	Implicit		Explicit
		Inductive		Deductive

Fig. 7: Instructional Design Terminology and Focus on Forms

The diagrams illustrates that submersion entails no attention on language forms, and indeed, can not be called a language course at all.  In an immersion approach, language forms have a place, but learner attention may not be called to those forms in the case of implicit instruction.  In implicit instruction, however, the teacher still attends to form in the crafting of the lesson, but does not ask learners to look at it or to think about it.  In the case of explicit instruction, the learners do focus on the language forms, but they may do so either before studying examples and practicing the use of those forms themselves or after studying examples and practicing the use of the forms.  The former is called deductive reasoning or presentation and the latter is called inductive reasoning or presentation.

Hedge’s recommendations, then, in Fig. 4, suggest that young, beginning, and undereducated learners shouldn’t focus attention on forms, and the resulting implication is that the teacher is entirely responsible for paying attention to the forms of language that show up in the lesson to ensure that submersion is avoided, but explanations needn’t be provided in lessons for these learners.  Instead, a focus on meaning will be the key to a successful lesson; that is, the teacher should ask learners to attend to the meaning of the language, not to the form of the language, and the teacher’s attention to forms in the planning of the lesson means that the language will be accessible to the learners on a strict meaning basis.

In contrast, older, advanced, and well-educated learners can benefit if they are asked to attend to language forms, and in lessons with these learners, teachers will likely be able to use more authentic materials with less adaptation on their part, and can provide direct explanations of how the meaning varies with variations in forms.  And, of course, between the two extremes, teachers will find the great majority of learners: not all learners will be young, not all learners will be beginners, and not all learners will be undereducated.  For these learners, teachers must constantly weigh how much time to spend looking at forms compared to focus on meaning alone, and how much to spend showing the interconnections between the two.  In some cases, the designated focus of the course will guide the decisions to a certain extent.  A course entitled “Grammar and Writing,” for example, will most certainly require greater attention to syntactic form than a course on “Oral Skills.”

Certain approaches advocate for either more or less attention on form, too.  TPR and The Natural Approach advocate for the implicit teaching of form, as does ALM.  Many other approaches, such as Community Language Learning, communicative language learning, or Suggestopedia allow the focus to shift as the learners develop their competence in the target language.

When the decision has been made that a focus on form is helpful or important to the learners, a teacher should go about planning the lesson seeking to maintain as strong a connection to meaning as possible.  This challenges a teacher to identify situations of authentic use of the particular structure in order to contextualize the form, maintain meaning, and provide practice with the form that is portable to other similar situations.  There are many resource books that offer ideas on particular activities that match certain individual language items.  These books aren’t textbooks for student use, but are reference and idea books to inspire teachers.  They suggest meaningful learning activities.  The selection of an activity, however, is only the beginning of a lesson plan.

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