Individual Response to lesson plan

I initially thought that this lesson adopted the behaviourist appraoch, exposing the students to the preferred pronunciation through negative and positive reiforcement. After relooking the learnign theories, I decided to change my opinion and say that this lessons mainly adopts a cognitivist approach while there are instances where the constructivist approach can be seen.

Giving the students a cheklist with images helps students understand what they need to look out for when they are listening to their peers. When they are evaluating their peers and discussing which of the recordings is a good/average/bad reading, they are in a way constructing their own knowledge. These are instances when I believe the constructivist approach is adopted.

Like how Chapelle & Jamieson (2008) mention, the use of ICT needs to be weaved into the learning of language; it needs to be used as a tool for learning, not merely a type of display to make the environment look IT-savvy. This teacher has attempted to introduce 21st century literacy skills to students by getting them to use the record their own readings and posting them on a forum, and making them critque their peers work.

Even though there are instances when the students have some control over their learning, this lesson plan seems to be mainly teacher-centred. I say so because the teacher selects the materials and the topic. Hence, it restricts the students' interaction in some way.

While I think the video clip for the pre-activity is good, I find the questions to be too demanding for the target students. I also find the content of conversation script clip a mismatch for the target age-group. Perhaps a dialogue out of a movie or local sitcom might be more apropriate.

The lesson in whole does make a decent attempt at catering for audio, liguistic and mybe even visual learners. The fact that the teacher plan for immediate feedback is beneficial to students' learning as even Towndrow (2007) has pointed out.