3665. What Is a Good Lesson like? Some Approximation

 Are you a second or foreign language teacher? Well, you may have realized the fact that that school subject is different from others. 

We are dealing with a practical subject, a very practical one indeed. 

We teachers do not confine to teach language facts, but we help our students would speak in that language, English for example. Even lessons are conducted in that language. 

We do not confine to explain some concepts, like grammar patterns, and subsequently our dear students learn and study them and eventually they will have to pass an exam or test. 

We teach them to use the language. And in class we carry out some practical activities, so our dear students partake a lot: both teacher and students are the lesson protagonists. 

Well, by the way, we must expose our students to much English, by us ourselves as teachers plus from videos and audios. 

Dick Allwright said that in class there must be “exposure, motivation, and opportunities for use”. Those former words have been taken from page 70 in Jeremy Harmer’s The Practice of English Language Teaching, 2003 edition I think. 

Please focus on those ideas: exposure, motivation, and opportunities for use. I guess it’s a good summary of a second language lesson. Well, something else must be done, of course. Thus sometimes we will teach some grammar fact, other times our students will be writing a creative essay, other times they will be performing a role-play, etcetera. It’s all this something great, and we are fortunate we are second or foreign language teachers. Have a nice day. --- Something else I wish to add: other times our students will be reading books, or giving an oral presentation, etcetera. 

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