System of long period planning

The easiest way to teach is to plan one day at a time, to follow the teacher’s notes closely, to use just a few techniques again and again in every lesson. This approach to teaching has two drawbacks:

· It will produce lessons which are well prepared and run smoothly, but which lack variety. As a result, both the teacher and the students are likely to lose interest.

· Different students learn in different ways: some students learn best by listening, some by repetition, some by actively speaking, some by learning grammar and so on. If the teacher uses the same techniques, some students may not have the chance to learn in the way that suits them.

In order to keep students interested in learning English it is important to include a variety of activities and techniques in the lesson, and to vary lessons so that there is something different every day. To do this successfully, teachers need to plan not just the next day’s lesson, but think of their teaching over a longer period. To do this teachers are to look at the series of 5 or 6 lessons in the textbook that they might soon be teaching. They are to define the general aim of the whole series of lessons, the main language areas to be taught in the lessons and the logical sequence of activities in skill acquisition. In other words, planning teaching English is aimed at planning the results to be reached at different levels of teaching, varying in periods of time. It means that starting his English course, the teacher should foresee the whole complex of activities, have clear understanding of the final results achieved in teaching. The main aim of planning the course is a scientifically based organisation of teaching and accomplishing the task of attaining optimal assimilation of the teaching material by students.

Successful long period planning is provided if the following aspects are given due regard of:

· Overall aims of teaching English;

· Psychological regularities and main stages of forming habits and skills;

· Existing teaching technologies;

· Basic methodological requirements to a modern English lesson;

· Psychological factors of teaching (students’ age; general level of their intellectual development; spheres of their interests, needs and expectations) and pedagogical factors of teaching (stage of teaching; students’ level of language and communicative competence).

The system of planningin secondary school (both mainstream and specialised) is realised as consecutive and consistent planning within the whole course of teaching English (2 – 12 grades), each year, semester, term, cycle of lessons and a separate lesson. All this planning proceeds from definite aims of every period of teaching.

Academic year planning presupposes writing a project, which:

- contains topics to be taught;

- determines overall didactic goals;

- specifies the period of academic time per topic;

- distributes teaching material per term;

- determines the ways of final and thematic control;

- specifies the main didactic means.

The foreign language syllabus and school curriculum serve the basis for an academic year plan. The academic year plan is compiled by a teacher according to a draft plan presented in the teacher’s book for a corresponding grade.

Thematic planning is further specification of an academic year plan. It is principally aimed at defining final goals of studying a certain theme. A theme plan:

- names a certain topic and subtopic;

- determines the sequence of forming habits and skills;

- determines the number of lessons devoted to attaining practical aims of a cycle of lessons;

- specifies the ways of control and home assignment;

- enumerates possible teaching techniques to be employed.

Theme planning is attached a special value as it enables the teacher to deepen his awareness of interrelation of a lesson cycle in all its aspects. The cycle of lessons devoted to one and the same theme/topic is also called a system of lessons in methodology. The latter ensures forming speech habits and skills within a certain theme/topic on the basis of definite language and speech input. Every cycle of lessons is a system of interrelated work at forming lexical, grammatical and phonetic habits and at developing on their basis speech skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Since a theme plan serves the ground for planning separate lessons within a theme/topic, it should stipulate these lessons objectives, as well as general structure and content of the teacher’s future activity in the lesson. It is considered reasonable to make up a calendar theme plan so that to be aware of the time allowed for the theme/topic from the very beginning. A theme plan may be made up according to the following scheme: