Lesson Plan: Integrating Target Structure

This article presents a lesson plan to focus on one targeted area while using different language skills. The example lesson plan focuses on the use of recycling language, namely the passive voice, to help students learn inductively while at the same time improve their oral production skills. By often repeating the passive voice in various guises the students become comfortable with the use of the passive and can then go on to actually employ the passive voice in speaking. It is important to remember that the subject area that the should speak about needs to be limited as to not male the task too difficult by giving students too much choice. In the past, I have often allowed students to choose their subject, however I have noticed that when the oral production task is clearly defined, students are more able to produce the targeted structure because they are not worried about inventing some subject or saying something clever.

Please feel free to copy this lesson plan or use the materials in one of your own classes.


LESSON AIMS

1. Students will improve recognition of the differences between the passive voice and active voice with particular attention paid to the present simple, past simple, and present perfect passive forms.
   
2. Students will inductively review passive form structures.
   
3. Students will quickly review language used to express opinions.
   
4. Students will contextualize the use of the passive by first making guesses about Seattle, and then finding out about certain facts about that city
   
5. Students will focus on passive oral production skills in the context of speaking about Tuscany.
   

1. Students will almost certainly have problems with using the passive form in production activities. As the class is an intermediate level, students have principally concentrated on acquiring oral skills using the active voice. For this reason, I have chosen the narrow focus area of speaking about Tuscany so that students can focus on a specific subject in the context of speaking about their part of the world.
   
2. Students might tend to place the subject of the passive sentence after the participle as they are used to an object being the object of a verb and not the subject of the sentence.
   
3. Students might have difficulties in recognizing the difference between the passive voice and the present perfect active.
   
4. Students might substitute /d/ for /t/ in certain participle endings with verbs such as 'send'.
   

1. Develop skimming skills by scanning text to locate facts about Seattle.
   

You'll find all the materials you need to teach this example lesson on the next page.

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