Reflection on Teaching Approaches and Methods for Lesson Planning

So far, I have completed three lesson plans and also three real teaching sessions. Basically, the three lessons followed the original designs quite closely. Through this teaching experience, I realized that my lessons mainly aligned with two teaching approaches: SLT and CLT. Some parts of the lessons also partially reflected the ALM and TBLT, but SLT and CLT were the two most obvious influences in my overall design. 

       In lesson 1, SLT was the most obvious approach I adopted. One important principle of SLT is that language should be presented through meaningful situations, with the help of visual support and sentence patterns. For example, I first asked the student to sort clothes into “hot” and “cold” sections. This activity helped me connect the previous topic of clothing with the new topic of seasons and weather. Then, I used various pictures to present season, weather, and feelings together. Instead of teaching isolated words, I scaffolded the student with the target sentence pattern, “In _____, it’s _____ and _____.” These steps strongly reflected the principles of SLT because the student learned the vocabulary and sentence structure through a clear situation, visual clues, and guided sentence practice.

       CLT became more obvious in Lessons 2 and 3. In lesson 2, I added activities such as information gap, guessing games, character cards, and situation task. By adopting this approach, the lesson was no longer only about repeating words or completing worksheets. My student was encouraged to use English to achieve communicative purposes, such as making choices, asking questions, and explaining reasons. For example, in the wedding season task, the student had to choose a suitable season for the characters based on several conditions. This activity required him to understand the situation and express his own decision with the target sentence patterns. While in lesson 3, I tried to make this topic vivid and more connected to real life. Since this topic is closely related to daily experiences, I thought the student could learn more than the textbook content. Therefore, I added a video clue hunt and introduced more natural expressions. These activities helped the student connect textbook sentence patterns with more natural everyday communication and more personalized output.

       However, after teaching these lessons, I realized that my lessons didn’t fully reflect CLT at first. Some activities were still controlled and form-focused, such as repetition and sentence drills. This was partly because my student still needed clear support before producing longer sentences independently. Also, unexpected classroom situations often went beyond my expectations. For example, I could not finish the production part in two lessons because of time constraints and the student’s difficulty staying focused. Sometimes, he also suddenly wanted to share many small things about his day, which affected the lesson pace. In this situation, I think I would reduce some mechanical practice and leave more time for meaningful output in future lessons. I would also simplify the final tasks to make sure the student can complete them within the limited class time.

       Overall, my lesson plans gradually moved from controlled practice to more communicative use of English. SLT helped me build a clear foundation through situations, pictures, and sentence patterns, while CLT helped me design activities with clearer communicative purposes. Although the lessons were not perfect, the process helped me understand that teaching methods should not be copied directly from theory. Instead, they need to be adjusted according to real learners and real classroom limitations.