SequencingSequencinghas to do with the format of the lessonitself. Most lessons do not consist of a single activity. Rather, the teacher analyses the overall goals of a lesson and the content to be taught and then plans a sequence of activities to attain these goals. This sequence of sub-activities for a lesson establishes a kind of format or script for the lesson. Experienced teachers often have a mental format in mind when they think of a particular kind of lesson, such as a reading lesson, a composition class, a listening lesson and so on. This format represents the sequence of activities, which make up the lesson. In L2 teaching, a number of principles have emerged for determining the internal structure of lessons. These principles are based on different views of the skills and processes underlying different aspects of L2 learning and how learning can be accomplished most effectively. The following are examples of principles taken from ESL methodology texts of different persuasions: - Simple activities should come before complex ones. - Activities involving receptive skills should precede those that involve productive skills. - Students should study a grammar rule before trying to use it. - Students should practise using a tense or grammar structure before studying the rule that underlies it. - Accuracy-focused activities should precede fluency-focused ones. - There should be a progression within a lesson from mechanical or form-based activities to meaningful-based activities. Often these principles reflect a specific school of methodology. E.g., in Situational Language Teaching, lessons often have the following format: 1) Presentation. The new structure is introduced and presented. 2) Controlled practice. Learners are given intensive practice in the structure, under the teacher’s guidance and control. 3) Free practice. The students practise using the structure without any control by the teacher. 4) Checking. The teacher elicits use of the new structure to check that it has been learned. 5) Further practice. The structure is now practised in new situations, or in combination with other structures (Hubbardet al., 1983). In Communicative Language Teaching, the following sequence of activities is often used: 1) Pre-communicative activities. Accuracy-based activities which focus on presentation of structures, functions and vocabulary. 2) Communicative activities. Fluency-based activities which focus on information sharing and information exchange (Littlewood, 1986). In dividing a lesson into sub-activities, the teacher also needs to consider the transitions between one sub-activity and another within a lesson. Research on elementary classrooms suggests that over thirty major transitions occur per day in such classes, accounting for approximately 15% of classroom time (Doyle, 1986). In many ESL classrooms, particularly those focusing on communicative activities in pairs or small groups, there is frequent reorganisation of learners for different activities and transition time can be significant. According to Doyle, skilled teachers mark the onset of transitions clearly, orchestrate transitions actively, and minimise the loss of momentum during these changes in activities. Less effective teachers, on the other hand, tend to blend activities together, fail to monitor events during transitions, and take excessively long to complete the movement between segments of a lesson. Thus, effective transitions help maintain students’ attention during transition times and establish a link between one activity and the next. Teachers achieve transitions through cueing and interactional negotiation, which signals the beginning of a change, the reorientation of focus, or the beginning of a new segment. The way in which teachers handle transitions depends on the nature of the transition. E.g., the teacher might: - write an assignment for an exercise on the board so that some students can start the assignment while others are still getting their books; - write the objectives for the lesson on the board, so students can see how the different activities in the lesson are connected; - work out rules and routines for things like passing out books, moving into groups and handing in assignments at the beginning of each new term for each class. Pacing Since the formats used for most language lessons consist of a sequence of sub-activities, which address the overall goals of the lesson, deciding how much time to allocate to each sub-activity is an important issue in teaching. Pacing is the extent to which lesson maintains its momentum and communicates a sense of development. How much time to allocate to each part of the lesson is thus an important decision which teachers must make while planning or teaching a lesson. Decisions related to pacing are important aspects of interactive decision making, since teaching involves monitoring students’ engagement in learning tasks and deciding when it is time to bring a task to completion and move on to another activity before students’ attention begins to fade. Strategies recommended to help achieve suitable pacing within lessons often include: - avoiding needless or over-lengthy explanations and instructions, and letting students get on with the job of learning; - using a variety of activities within a lesson, rather than spending the whole lesson on one activity; - avoiding predictable and repetitive activities, where possible; - selecting activities of an appropriate level of difficulty; - setting a goal and time limit for activities: activities that have no obvious conclusion or in which no time frame is set tend to have little momentum; - monitoring students’ performance on activities to ensure that students have had sufficient but not too much time. Tikunoff(1985) points out that pacing is sometimes teacher controlled and at other times student directed. Pacing might be negotiable, particularly if several tasks are underway concurrently. In this case, an understanding must exist of the optimal time one can spend on a task, and the time by when it is expected to be completed. Many teachers increase options in this area by negotiating contracts with students, which include, among other things, the time by which a task will be accomplished. Pacing is identified as a basic teaching skill in manuals for pre-service training of ESL/ EFL teachers. Thus, Gowerand Walters(1983), in discussing classroom management, comment: ‘You must get the timing right. If the activity lasts too long, it’ll drag. If it doesn’t last too long, it won’t give any sense of satisfaction’. If one group finishes the activity early, the teacher should give it a further activity, related to the task. Alternatively, you may wish to stop all the groups at that point. But don’t let a group or pair sit around with nothing to do. Generally, it is better to stop an activity when it’s going well, provided it has achieved its broad aims, than to let it peter out.
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