Private Adult Education classroom set in a metropolitan area (Adelaide, Melbourne). Focused on Practical Australian English, with some content for reading and writing in General English (using Australian English orthography).

Students are here to learn Conversational English as used in Australia as they wish to commence a working holiday, or working visa in Australia (students that are granted the working visa have passed the English tests in the working visa application, but wish to advance their level of speaking and confidence in a safer and more relaxed environment). Many students take this course with the intentions of interacting and/or Integrating into Australian society.

Description of student cohort:
The age of students ranges from 18 to 30, with students hailing from East Asian, SE Asian, and Middle eastern nations, predominantly China (Hong Kong, PRC, Taiwan), Vietnam, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Students have a level of proficiency equivalent to Level 5 IELTS proficiency, gender percentage of the classroom is 60 percent Female and 40 percent male. None of the females originate from Saudi Arabia. Classroom size will be 20 people.

Proficiency level(s):
Students will have acquired a level of proficiency equivalent to Level 5 IELTS proficiency.

1- Think about the last context or situation in which you taught or were a student.
Considering the issues Harmer (2004) raised (time, space, marking) would it be
possible to use process writing in your situation? f you haven’t done so already, it is worth trying to list the micro-skills which make up this macro-skill. It’s also important to remember that this skill, unlike the skill of speaking, is not automatically acquired. Learning to write is not a natural, more or less inevitable process.
-What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to teaching writing?
-Would you need to modify the classic approach to make it useful in your context

2- Thinking about what we have learnt about the writing process, the need to combine
product and process approaches and the discourse focus of writing teaching, do you
think the tasks in Harmer (2003) qualify as good writing tasks?

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How do they compare with the tasks we looked at in the section A Discourse-Based
Writing Program, pp. 290-296 of your textbook?
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Could they be improved? How? Please consider all tasks, then choose 1-3 to discuss
in detail.
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3- Evaluating a CALL task
Consider the eight conditions of optimal learning environments provided by Egbert et al (1999). In the light of these, read Table 1 from the PDF (Golonka et al, 2014), Technologies for foreign language learning, and choose one technology to evaluate in terms of its contribution to language learning. It will be helpful if you also read the associated literature review relating to this technology which you’ll find later in the article. Suggest improvements which could be made. This replaces the existing Core Online Activity (p.178) for this unit, as well as Readings 11.2 and 11.3. The reason for this change is that Golonka’s article is far more current than those it replaces. However, Reading 11.4 (Egbert) and its eight conditions is still applicable.

4- Lesson planning and enhancing communication in the target language
Activity 10.2 Understanding the much-favoured approach of Communicative Language Teaching. NB: The Study Guide listed Core Reading 10.4 is unavailable for copyright reasons. Please substitute the Richards on CLT PDF and the chapter from “A Brief History of ELT” under the “For Student Interest” FLO heading to carry out Core Online Activity 10.2.

What are your thoughts on CLT?
• Are there aspects which appeal, or elements of your context that might make it difficult to employ this approach?
• Are you thinking of using any communicative activities in your developed Lesson Plan?
• Are you considering a blend of approaches? If so, think about (and try to gather substantiation for) your decision. This will be useful material to highlight in your Lesson Planning Journal
Online Activity 10.4: Planning your own lesson. Practicum students should use a lesson they delivered at TAFE for this task

You do not necessarily have to plan an entire Unit or course in detail. Just construct an outline, and decide where the lesson you are developing would best fit into this outline.
The questions in the Study Guide imply a degree of detail which you do not need to go into here. However, have a broad idea of your framework will help you to contextualise your lesson.

Plan to assess student learning.

5-Deciding how to assess student learning
Use your experience of assessment, and what you have learned about ways of assessing in your reading and research to determine some ways of assessing your students’ learning. A mix of assessmnet types tends to create a richer and more accurate picture of where students are at.
Post your own assessment plan under this Activity banner. Be sure to give another student feedback on this one too.
From the point of view of this topic, assessment can be formal or informal, or a mix. It does not have to equate to a grade. For example, it could be a list of competencies achieved by students.