Final Project

Sample Activity lesson plan

No. Students: 15 - 20

Level: Intermediate to advance

Time: 4 sessions of 1hr

Age: 18 - 25

Objectives:

Students will:

• ·         Read and analyze a project description posted on the class webpage.
• ·         Write a technical report using a guide given and discussed in class.
• ·         Work in teams.
• ·         Use Google docs’ resource.
• ·         Use a peer feedback check list to revise other team’s work.
• ·         Come up with an accurate and complete technical report.
• ·         Upload their work to the class webpage in order to let other writing learners see their work and improvement.

Materials

·         Computers with internet access for students’ and the teacher

·         Over head projector connected to teacher’s computer

Procedures

1.       Review the project description posted on the class web page (http://marianagorillaz.wix.com/writing-activities) in which the activity is based on.

2.       After the elements analysis, students must find solutions to such problems; also they will need to include proposals, and recommendations for management.

3.       The ideas are going to be written in a brainstorming or free writing style

4.       Each team will receive a handout with information about the technical report structure and language use

5.       Each section of the technical report structure is going to be analysed and written in class so language doubts can be solved

6.       By the end of each section analysis each student is going to be able to turn in a first draft

7.       Students will be asked to form teams of four people

8.       Students will be introduced to the Google Docs’ resource

9.       Each team is going to come up with one piece of writing by comparing ideas and sharing information about it, the new document is going to be written in Google Docs so all team mates are able to edit the document and discuss changes made, the teacher is going to be monitoring each team Google Docs’ work

10.    After the second draft is finished, the teacher will introduce students to peer feedback method, a checklist is going to be developed in class

11.    Based on the check list developed in class each team is going to revise other teams’ work

12.    After the peer feedback activity, teams will turn in the third draft with corrections based on peer feedback

13.    Third draft is going to be analysed by the teacher, the final draft is going to be based on this analysis

14.    Students will turn in the final draft which is going to be published on the class webpage.

Evaluation

The following rubric is going to be used to evaluate students’ work and improvements during this activity:

-          100% : The team members were engaged in class discussions during the activity; the students created an accurate and organized piece of writing containing all the sections and contents mentioned in class; also they expressed their suggestions and solutions using an accurate language, it has been used a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical structures appropriately.

-          75%: The team members had the necessary information form discussions; the students created a good piece of writing containing all the sections mentioned in class while contents need more work; suggestions and solutions were understandable but not written in an accurate mode, vocabulary was well used and grammatical structures were mostly used appropriately.

-          50%: Team members where barely present on class discussions; the students developed a basic piece of writing containing most of the sections described in class while contents were incomplete or wrong; suggestions and solutions were hard to understand, vocabulary was used repetitively and grammatical structures were not appropriate.

Materials Evaluation and Design

This essay intends to explain and present justifications to the materials used in the lesson plan included that consists of an activity for Mechatronic Engineering students in an ESP writing course. Such justifications and explanations are going to be based on the lectures from the materials evaluation design course. The lectures come from texts of specialists on the materials design and evaluation field.

The lesson plan is going to be analysed section by section in order to cover all its elements and the thoughts, ideas, or theories in which these materials for the lesson activities where based on. This analysis will also include a description of each electronic material used in the lesson plan, its components, and usefulness.

For the materials selected and included on the lesson plan, it has been taken into account the learner factors list for materials selection suggested by Daoud and Celce-Murcia (1979), Mathews (1991), Harmer (1991), Mc Donough and Shaw (1993), and Cunningsworth (1995), which consists of a list of factors that has to be considered when selecting a material for a specific purpose in order to be suitable for learners needs and proficiency, usefulness, and according to the lesson’s goals, topic, and items. The next chart shows the elements in the list, and the results:

1.     Age range (18 – 25)	2.     Proficiency level in the target language (intermediate to advanced)	3.     First language (Spanish)
4.     Academic and educational level (College)	5.     Socio-cultural background (same)	6.     Occupation (students)
7.     Reasons for studying the target language (academic and future professional use)	8.     Attitudes to learning (it is very necessary for them to learn ESP)	9.     Previous language learning experience (ESP courses on college)
10.  Language-learning aptitude	11.  General expectations	12.  Specific wants
13.  Preferred learning styles	14.  Sex distribution (mostly male students)	15.  Interests (Mechatronic engineering  related topics)

The first electronic material that is going to be needed for this activity is the http://marianagorillaz.wix.com/writing-activities class web page; Wix.com is a cloud-based web development platform that allows users to create professional websites, through the use of online "Drag & Drop" tools. Users can add contact forms, email, community forums, etc. to their websites using a variety of Wix applications.

 The web page has been designed to present the writing activities of the course and tools that might be useful for students during the writing process, also student’s doubts about any activity or tool included can be answered by the teacher on the blog section that the webpage wix.com offers.

Some of the electronic tools that come handy when writing are included on the web page by some buttons with links to the web pages, such tools are:

-       Linguee: a translator webpage that covers many languages including English and Spanish. Something that is particular about this translator is that the translated word is given with context so the user can read between many (correct) options and choose the word that is more suitable.

-       Cambridge Dictionary webpage

-       Thesaurus

-       Wittenstein Engineering Glossary

The next electronic resource for teaching writing may demand certain conditions for its proper use like Gmail account, internet connection while writing; request the entire group to work on the page by sending request notifications, also certain technology knowledge on students, but its benefits worth it. This resource is named Google Docs.

Documents, spreadsheets, presentations can be created and edited with Google Docs,  also documents imported through other web pages, or sent via email can be edited. Documents can be saved to a user's local computer in a variety of formats, documents as well are automatically saved on Google's servers to prevent the loss of documents when being edited, and a revision history is automatically kept so past edits can be viewed when needed, these can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes too.

The main characteristic that made me choose Google Docs for my lesson plan is that it serves as a collaborative tool for editing documents in real time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously. The editors are able to leave comments about the text in order to have a better revision experience so the document passes through many revisions from people with different criteria, as much as needed.

The author (in this case the student) is going to obtain a well written piece of text, still there are previous lesson activities to be done like the check list developing for peer feedback, or at least previous instruction for a good paper examination.

Something that may interfere or modify the materials effects on students or performance during the activity is the teacher performance, (according to Bruder 1978, and Cunningsworth 1995) the teacher needs to:

1.    Think of them as target language users and the speakers of the learner’s first language, this way the teacher is going to be able to notice what kind of help students are going to need in determined activity and design or adapt materials for that need.

2.    Familiarize with the target language culture, in this case I think that the teacher needs to become familiar with the correct or appropriate terms and vocabulary for Mechatronic engineering in order to present appropriate and helpful materials for these students.

3.    Have the ability of adapt materials and prepare supplementary materials

4.    Experience of teaching the kind of learner for whom the materials are being selected.

5.    Attitude to teaching and o learners

6.    Time available for preparation

7.    Beliefs about teaching-learning preferred teaching style and method.

When teachers are conscious of these characteristics, then the lesson content and the class itself can be considered as complete and successful.

Conclusions

The materials mentioned during this essay cover the main characteristics to be considered as suitable and useful for student’s needs and characteristics. The materials are also adaptable because the writing genre can be changed by the teacher and these tools are still useful and relevant for students, it also helps to increase the student’s performance.

Both teachers and students need to work together to make an appropriate use of the materials selected and take the best from its characteristics, not only for this activity but for any, at any course.

References

Mc Grath , I. (2003). Materials evaluation and design for language teaching. (1 ed., p. 321). Edinburg, Scotland : Oxford university press.

Tomlinson , B. (1998). Materials development in language teaching. (1 ed., p. 368). Cambridge university press.