Very rich IT materials were used in the lesson e.g. puzzle game, PowerPoint
slides, pictures and videos of Beckham. These helped not only to arouse
and sustain students' interest, but also to illustrate the teaching points.
Due to copyright restrictions, video excerpts used in the lesson cannot
be shown in this resource package. Interested viewers may refer to ¡§Beckham
unwrapped¡¨ produced by world Wide Entertainment.
Strategies in teaching grammar rules
In this lesson, grammar rules were explicitly explained to students with
the support of visual aids (i.e. PowerPoint slides). The teacher highlighted
the features of 'WH' questions through contrasting them with those of
a statement.
Although
the teacher was much concerned about grammatical accuracy, effort had been
made to avoid mechanical drills. A balanced emphasis on form,
function and meaning was kept through different purposeful activities.
Purposeful activities
Throughout the lesson, students were involved in different activities.
Each activity required students to practise making 'WH' questions with
an authentic purpose e.g. 1) The guessing game required students to ask
questions which gave them clues as to who the person behind the puzzle
was; 2) students set quiz questions on a Beckham passage
in order to challenge their friends; 3) as reporters of the school radio,
students needed to prepare questions for an interview with Beckham. Through
the above purposeful activities, students needed to attend not only to
grammatical correctness, but also to whether the questions were appropriate
for the context.
Integration of four language skills
Although the main focus of this lesson was on grammar, it provided opportunities
for students to practise the four language skills in an integrated manner:
speaking (in group discussions); reading (the Beckham passage); listening
(to teacher's instructions); writing ('WH' questions for the interview
with Beckham).
Organizing thinking through the use of a mind map
The use of a mind map (i.e. the slide showing the themes of different paragraphs
in the Beckham passage) helped students to develop categories that they
wished to explore. This helped students to organize their thinking in
order to generate more ideas. It is important that tasks given to students
be cognitively challenging, otherwise students will easily become uninterested
souls with no ideas of their own.
Possible development of this lesson
The lesson has great potential for further development into a task-based
unit: using the mind map, students may generate more categories and under
those, more questions can be raised about Beckham. According to the questions
that students have proposed, they may start searching for the answers
on the Internet or magazines. Using the Beckham passage as a model, students
can then write a report and present it to the class. In the process of
completing the above tasks, students will have higher exposure to authentic
language, greater responsibility in learning and stronger ownership of
the products. Of course, tasks must not be thrown to students without
guidance and practice. For how students can be equipped to accomplish
a task, audience may refer to the unit entitled 'Fashion' in this package.
Post-lesson
Interviews with Students
After the lesson, 3 students of high, average and weak English
ability were invited to attend an interview. In the post-lesson interview,
the students
expressed positive comments about the effectiveness of the lesson. They
thought that explicit grammar teaching with rules described in grammatical
terminology
was useful. This made them feel strongly that they were no longer primary
students. In primary, they did drills on 'WH' questions by following teachers'
examples without knowing the underlying rules. Students also commented on
the good learning atmosphere of the lesson. On the whole, they enjoyed the
activities; without which, one student said, their learning interest would
have been lowered.