Lesson Rationale: Business English
When talking about a business lesson plan is important to know the background of the students in order to make everyone participate in the class, and of course the level so we can have a better idea of the type of activities to be develop so we can have all the students engaged and motivated to learn and improve their skills. Having this in mind, a whole description of the plan will be described starting from the structure of the lesson, possible difficulties and solutions, how the activities will contribute to their learning and activities that could have been there but it was decided to exclude them, and how an activity might change if it is not going as planned; and most importantly if the objectives were successfully achieved.
To start with, the structure of the plan chosen was the Presentation - Practice - Production (PPP) because of the flexibility at the moment of planing and the easy-matching with the speaking skill and the topic with is telephone language. Now, having in mid that even though the level of the class is advanced, the background of the students and work positions are very different so this planning will engage and make them feel that the target language is important in every position in a company.
As explained above, the positions within the company where they work might be one of the difficulties that the teacher might encounter but it has to be tackled in a way that all the students might see it as a way of improving as a whole and that what really matter is to get the best of the target language. Furthermore, there’s also the possibility of having students, even though they are grown ups, who might think that the lesson is not necessary because their department have different responsibilities; nevertheless, the teacher needs to address this situation by giving examples of what if and then make them understand the importance of having different skills regardless of the role they have in their department.
Moreover, last but not the least, the lack of motivation might be a big obstacle since they can feel the pressure from the company, due to the fact that the classes were paid by the company, hence, the teacher intervene by praising the students as soon as they accomplish one of the tasks.
Heading over to one of the most important points to consider, the activities are the motivation that can easily trigger students interest and most importantly how high is the contribution of these ones in the learning process. As explained before, the activities must be chosen meticulously so they can engage all the students and make them feel that: on the one hand, they are learning and on the other hand they are improving. So, by putting both together, the result is the confidence and motivation.
Being said that, the activities were centered in the target language, a set of important and common phrases that are highly used when speaking on the phone; so in order to give them a clue and taking into consideration the multiple intelligences, a video is shown as a warmer so they all can have an idea of the main topic will be about and at the same time the y will all use prior knowledge and that will make them reflect according to their own experiences. Once the first part is done the list of phrases is given (Presentation: meaning and pronunciation) is done by them and under the teacher guidance (which that’s the teacher’s role).
After having clarified the meaning and practice the pronunciation, the following steps which are controlled practice and production come to play where students are given the last two worksheets. In both phases students will work as a whole, group and individually allowing them to fully interact in English, giving them the confidence and the ease to be working with colleagues from different departments.
Since this lesson was planned taking into consideration the background, position in the company and English level, the possibility of having any interruption or an issue is minimum, however, if such thing would have happened, changing the activity in more writing level since most of the activities were speaking.
All in all, the plan was made and followed in the way students of such level deserve, but most importantly the lesson aims were fully achieved starting from confidence and motivation to vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency and interaction; having learned the target language as planned.