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Below is a list of questions I will try and answer in this first "CELTA Concepts" post. Take a minute to reflect on them based on your own teaching practices/beliefs before proceeding to the main discussion:
- What are lesson aims? What different types of lesson aims are there?
- What is the purpose behind setting aims? Do you need to set aims for every lesson you teach?
- Should we share lesson aims with the learners?
- What are some of the pitfalls to watch out for when setting aims for a lesson?
In very simple terms, the aims (or objectives) of a lesson are the end result of the lesson: i.e., the things you would like your students to be able to do by the end of the lesson. In most lessons, you can set both a main aim (the language/skill the learners will be mainly engaged with and learning most of the session) and a subsidiary aim (language/skill the students will be engaged in to further practice the main language/skill introduced in the lesson). Aims, however, do not always focus on a skill. Their focus may, for example, be on a language function, a grammatical structure, or a specific vocabulary group1. You may also find it useful to work out a stage aim for each stage of the lesson or a task aim for the particular task(s) you’ve decided to set your students. In order to identify the aims of a lesson or activity, the teacher needs to answer two questions: “What’s the point of having this lesson/doing this activity? How will the students benefit from it2?”
Setting aims is more like reverse-engineering your lesson: you start from the end of the lesson, the things you want your students to have achieved by the end, and then begin working on the language and/or skill that leads you and your students most effectively toward that end. As such, it is important to realize that ‘lesson content’ is only a means to an end and not an end in itself. Let us assume the main content of a pre-intermediate lesson of yours comprises “a reading passage about success”. Of course, at this level, the students are assumed capable of reading on their own without much help. Also, remember that just saying, “By the end of the lesson learners will have read the text about success in sufficient detail” does not mean anything in terms of improving learners’ reading skills. You need to state, in specific terms, what the learners will be doing and how this will help enhance their second/foreign language skills. The most common main aim tasks in a standard receptive skills lesson are skimming/gist reading and scanning/detailed reading. You may also decide, as part of your lesson’s main aim at (pre-)intermediate level, to incorporate a new sub-skill of reading into the session’s work: making inferences, or reading between the lines (i.e. getting the students to look for or discover meaning that is implied rather than explicitly stated in the passage). For your sub-aim, you may want to give the learners a chance to (be (better) able to) talk about success (maybe work on the vocab needed) or do a role play (e.g. “an interview with a successful entrepreneur”) using specific vocabulary/phraseology from the passage. So one sub-aim for this lesson could be: to speak about success in the context a discussion/role play about success. Here, the teacher sets students a task that helps them relate personally to the subject of the text/lesson, i.e. personalize the topic. Putting your main and sub aims together, you will have something like the following3:
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| Sample: stating main & sub aims for a lesson |
It is useful to set aims for a lesson even if the lesson only involves what is often called ‘free discussion’. Setting aims will help you identify the type of context to set at the start, whether you need to provide specific input (a reading/listening passage, vocabulary to discuss a certain topic, etc), what language the students need to be familiar with (e.g. language of agreement/disagreement), and what types of activities better help you and your students to achieve those aims (pair/group work, collaborative projects, games, etc). This is what I referred to earlier as reverse-engineering the lesson.
There are various types of aims for a lesson4:
A linguistic aim: one that focuses on the language (mostly grammar, also vocabulary) to be presented and practiced in the lesson;
A skills aim: one that focuses on practicing and developing a skill such as listening or writing;
A communicative aim: where the focus is mainly on the communication needs of the learners, enabling them to express notions (e.g. time) and/or functions (e.g. making plans for the future);
An interpersonal aim: one that aims to develop rapport among the learners and to help build a classroom dynamic conducive to learning;
A personal/developmental aim: this concerns the teacher rather than the learners: here the teacher sets him/herself goals, teaching skills that he would like to improve (e.g. using concept questions to check meaning of new lexis, or reducing TTT).
It is also a good idea to let the students know what the aims of the lesson are. Often, students are thrown into an activity/a series of tasks without knowing what they are working toward. They seem to be confused and even demotivated. The teacher begins to think the task is not interesting enough or the students do not seem to want to invest as much enthusiasm/effort in the task. When students are familiarized with the aims of the lesson from the start (and it of course is their right!), they will recognize the reasons behind doing a certain task and what they need to achieve by the time they are done. They often find it reassuring to know where the lesson is going and this may help them find the motivation to carry out the activities with greater determination.
Common pitfalls in stating the aims by teachers on teacher training courses (such as the CELTA) include5:
The aim describes the task but does not state the aim (“Learners will read a text about a parachute jump which will then be followed by a role play and a little bit of correction to finish”).
There is not enough information about the context of the language (“To provide gist and close reading practice; to provide spoken fluency practice”).
The aim is vaguely worded and does not contain enough detail (“By the end of the lesson, learners will have done some reading and a bit of speaking).
The aim does not include enough linguistic information (By the end of the lesson, learners will have had a look at a text. They will have also done a role play using information from the article”).
Formulating aims for the lesson is essential as the aims set a goal that can then be used to assess learner achievement6. To this end, it is important that the aims be expressed in such a way as to indicate awareness of learning objectives as well as the role of the learners, rather than simply being a summary of the contents of the lessons7. Also, stating aims allows us teachers to evaluate whether we have achieved the goals of the lesson, i.e. whether we have succeeded in teaching what we originally planned to teach8. Therefore, questions you need to ask yourself are not only what do I, the teacher, aim to do? But also what do I expect the students to be able to do/to have achieved by the end of the lesson? What specific language will they have understood and can use? Or what specific skills will they have developed9?
1 Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., Williams, M. (2005). The Teaching Knowledge Test Course. Cambridge: CUP, p.86.↩
2 Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching. London: Macmillan, p.135.↩
3 For more examples of lesson aims and lesson plans, see: www.englishlessonplanner.com↩
4 Thornbury, S. & Watkins, P. (2007). The CELTA Course. Cambridge: CUP, p.74.↩
5 Thaine, C. (2010). Teacher Training Essentials. Cambridge: CUP, p.33.↩
6 Thornbury, S. & Watkins, P. (2007). The CELTA Course. Cambridge: CUP, p.74.↩
7 Parrott, M. (1993). Tasks for Language Teachers: A Resource Book for Training and Development. Cambridge: CUP, p.132.↩
8 Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., Williams, M. (2005). The Teaching Knowledge Test Course. Cambridge: CUP, p.87.↩
9 Gower, R., Phillips, D., Walters, S. (2005). Teaching Practice: A Handbook for Teachers in Training. Oxford: Macmillan, p.176.↩
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