Report on :Recommending New York lesson plan The class is an intermediate level Chinese group of four students.

They have recently finished reviewing chapter six, authentic Chinese food. The lesson was held on Tuesday, November 19, at Hamilton 607. The students are in their early twenties. All of the students seem to have a good grasp of the target language except for one student who seems to have more difficulty. The instructor kicked off the class by reviewing some of the main vocabulary from chapter six. This was a practice activity matching characters. On each flash card, there was only one character. The cards were mixed together and the students were invited to match characters forming the vocabulary (from chapter six) and producing a sentence. The instructor grabbed two characters from the pool, and and produced a sentence as an example.

There were about 27 pairs of words to match. Each student produced about 7-8 sentences. Each of them had the opportunity to pick the word to form and the sentence to produce. The learners were active and attentive at all times while the teacher was mainly receptive. The activity went better than expected since the students were proactive participating in the activity. They did not pick easiest vocabulary from the pool. The last characters left in the pool were one of the easiest ones and none of the students picked it up. The main activities consisted of giving directions for the subway and to places the students would recommend for a tourist (Chinese) to visit. The class was divided into two groups and given a subway map. From each group, one would play the tourist and the other the New Yorker. One student would ask on how to get to the suggested places while the other one provide directions. The activity was first introduced in Chinese and later in English making sure that the instructions were understood and checking if students had any further questions. The students

were given a list of vocabulary (from chapter six) that the instructor wanted them to use when talking among themselves and when presenting. New vocabulary was introduced to students so they could express themselves. Vocabulary introduced: . The instructor intervened little while walking around the class listening to what the students were saying. On one or two occasions the instructor would ask students for directions on how to go to a specific place by subway. Throughout the entire activity the students used the language communicatively. The last activity was a small survey regarding the students favorite fast food restaurant and making recommendations. The instructor went over the survey with the class asking them about their favorite fast food restaurant. Feedback was not strictly emphasized. There was some oral corrective feedback in the lesson. For example, when the student said: The instructor provided a recast saying: which was later repeated by the student. Maybe it should have been an elicitation feedback inviting the student to finish the sentence rather than finishing it for them. On other occasions, the instructor would not emphasize much on the correctness as long as the student were able to communicate their ideas. The output might not have been one hundred percent correct but the students had understood what was asked. Their mistakes did not interfere with the communication so the teacher did not point out the errors. For example: . Although it should have been , the instructor did not point out the mistake. In the last activity, the instructor asked the student which was her favorite fast food restaurant. The student replied with the restaurants name. Although the student understood the questions perfectly, maybe the instructor should have emphasized in asking the student to reply with a

complete sentence. E.g. The instructor would not emphasize much on the correctness as long as the student were able to communicate their ideas. The classroom interaction was more active than expected. The learners were attentive and proactive all the time. They seemed to have enjoyed the lesson and were motivated especially when doing the first activity. They were engaged in matching the characters and generating a sentence. Maybe the instructor should have added more words in the pool for students to practice. For the main activity of lesson, the teacher grouped students of higher proficiency with students of lower proficiency. The reason for this is because higher proficiency students could help their classmate who had more difficulties. Interaction between themselves helped them to figure out the ideas they wanted to convey. The teacher was also walking around the classroom but provided a couple of minutes to stimulate their thinking and responses that contributed to the practicing of the material. There was much more interaction on the other activities since they had to prepare a dialog with their partners to present. The objective of was to have students engage into transmitting the information to each other. The lesson in general was effective having the students concentrate on their fluency. The lesson went to according although there was an extra activity that was used which was not expected to fit in the lesson plan. There was five minutes left before the session ended so the survey activity was introduced to the student. However, from the students fast and fluent response it showed that it was below the students level. In other words, it felt that they were not challenged. They seemed to be very confident and made less mistakes when working on this activity. On the main activities the students were engaged in conversation and had the choice on what vocabulary to use when producing the dialog. The reason the first activity introduced at the beginning was a warm up so this would facilitate students incorporating these words in the conversation/dialog

activity that followed. Much more time was invested in this activity. Followed by the first activity, the instructor first let them discuss among themselves and walked around to provide assistance if needed. On occasions, the teacher would ask the students to give directions on how to get to a specific location. After some rehearsal students were invited to present before the class. The overall performance of the class was much better than expected and students had achieved the lessons goal of engaging into fluent conversation (making recommendation and asking for directions).