Lesson Plan "A  Recipe For Hot Potatoes"

Hsiang-ling Ho 
MATESOL Program at San Francisco State University

This curriculum is designed for a four-week intensive reading/writing class in EFL settings. In Taiwan, many language institutes offer the similar class. This class meets three times a week for ninety minutes. I attempt to divide the whole curriculum into four units and prepare a topical theme for each unit. The topics will be chosen according the result of the poll asking the students what topics they are interested in when they enroll in the class. For the first three weeks of the class, each unit contains three lessons: the first lesson is devoted to developing students' reading skills; the second lesson is devoted to building up students' vocabulary and grammar comprehension and after the class, students need to write an essay regarding the topical theme of the unit; the third lesson is devoted to developing students' writing skills. Students need to bring their essays to class and do the peer reviewing activity which can help them revise the drafts and then turn them in next week. For the last week, students will learn how to use Hot Potatoes to create an exercise. They can select one of the student's essay as reading material and create an exercise practicing a certain reading skill.

The following is the outline of the curriculum:

Target Audience Level

This curriculum is attended for high intermediate adult learners. Generally speaking, in Taiwan, students enrolled in this kind of class are mostly college students and young professionals. One common reason why they want to take EFL class is to help communicating with people in English when they travel to foreign countries.

Rationale

In the book "CALL Environment", Egbert, Chao, and Hanson-Smith(1999) brought up eight ideal conditions for optimal language learning environments. This curriculum attempts to meet five of them.

• "Learners have opportunities to interact and negotiate meaning"
  In all activities, students have chance to interact with the teacher and the other students by means of oral discussion (i.e. teacher leading a whole class discussion after students do a skimming exercise individually) or written comments (i.e. using "comment" function in Microsoft Word to peer review partners' essay.)  

• "Learners have enough feedback"
  One of the advantages of using Hot Potatoes to create an multiple choice exercise is that the program allow teachers to input detailed, appropriate and customarizd feedback for every answers, then students can work through the exercise, learning as they go. 

• "Learner are guided to attend mindfully to the learning Process" 
  For adult ESL learners who are already literate in a their first language, "reading comprehension is primarily a matter of developing appropriate, efficient comprehension strategies.( (Brown, H, 2001) Based on this idea, I'd like to present students microskills for reading comprehension explicitly, such as skimming, scanning, predicting strategies.

• "Learners work in an atmosphere with an ideal stress/anxiety level"
  Many researches show that a learner-centered classroom can help reducing students' anxiety in an ESL class. In this curriculum, I try to involve students' opinion on selecting topic, reading material for their group project so they have some control over their learning.

• "Learner autonomy is supported"
  This idea is reflected on the students' group project. When doing this task-based activity, students have complete autonomy in the classroom. In the last two sessions, the teacher plays a role as a facilitator who makes sure the goal and the level of difficulty are appropriate to the student population and let the students take responsibility for their own learning.

Goals/Expected Outcomes

• Students will practice different reading skills.

• Students will develop strategies for reading and writing.

• Students will create and publish an exercise on the Web with Hot Potatoes.  

• Students will know more websites which provide interactive exercises on the Web.

Performance Objectives

Language learning objective

• Students will practice microskills for reading through focused exercises and incorporate them to best fit in their own learning style.

• Students will practice peer review and revising draft.

Computer literacy objectives

• Students will learn how to use "comment" function in Microsoft Word.

• Students will learn how to use Hot Potatoes.

• Students will learn how to upload an HTML file to the class website.

Technologies & Materials Required

• Required hardware: Windows or Macintosh platforms with floppy disk drive. 

• Required software:  Netscape Navigator or MS Internet Explorer versions 4 or above, a shareware program "Hot Potatoes" and a  companion program "Potatoes skins" (optional) Microsoft Word and PowerPoint (for presenter workstation only).

• Teacher needs to set up a class website in advance for future use. For example, having an on-line poll regarding the possible topics, posting students' essay, publishing student' group project and teacher-developed exercises.

Required Facilities

All classes will take place in a computer lab. There should be a presenter workstation connected with an overhead projector and enough computers for each student. All station must have Internet access and installed with the required software listed in the previous section.

Procedure

Here I'd like to demonstrate the procedure for the first lesson focused on practicing reading skills 

• Teacher will first put on a slide show using PowerPoint, get students brainstorming the possible connection between these slides and predicting what will be the topic for today's reading. This is to activate students' schemata so that they will have some background knowledge for later reading activities.

• 1st reading: Students will do a skimming exercise ( 3 minutes) written with "Hot Potatoes". Then the teacher goes through the questions and leads a whole-class discussion.
  Feedback: The teacher restates the principle and the value of skimming strategy, also, reminds the students that they don't need to understand every single word to get the gist of a reading. Just like when they "read" newspapers in their first language every morning on their breakfast table---they skim!

• 2nd reading: Students will do a scanning exercise ( 2 minutes) written with "Hot Potatoes". Then the teacher goes through the questions and leads a whole-class discussion.
  Feedback: Scanning is another valuable reading strategy when people need to search for some particular information in a reading. It is to help people extract specific information without reading through the whole text. Just like when the students read travel guide or bus schedule, they only want information relevant to our immediate need at the moment---they scan! 

• 3rd reading: The teacher goes over the reading text in details. This activity precedes in a manner of whole-class discussion. The teacher can distribute the printed text for this detail comprehension task if the students feel more comfortable reading the printed text than hypertext.
  Feedback: The teacher recaps the main idea of the reading text.

• Pair work: The teacher pairs up student and have them discuss questions like: What are the key components of a good travel guide or travel log? What are the common vocabulary we usually see in a travel guide? Give two examples of when do we skim and scan a text.

Alternative Plan

All the materials used in this lesson are printable. The teacher can print them out in advance just in case technology fails. The worse case scenario is that the whole lesson need to take place like in a "traditional regular classroom". The students won't be able to have the same amount of control over their learning nor immediate feedback for every answer when doing skimming and scanning exercise. However, the goal of the lesson, practicing reading skills, can still be achieved in an old fashioned way.

Practical Considerations

On students' part: The students need to acquire some computer basics before enrolling in this class. They need to know how to use word processing programs and surf the net.

On teacher's part: The teacher needs to develop the reading exercises and upload them to the class website before the lesson. To ensure a smooth preparation process, s/he'd better be familiar with some technical know-how about web publishing.

Last but not least: Good luck!

Home    My Project

Hsiang-ling Ho © 2001