Becky Ross

CALL- Spring 2015

Class Demo
Setting:
The setting for this particular lesson is an ESL or IEP classroom at the university
level in the United States, and the class would alternate between using a computer lab and
a regular classroom.
Learners:
The learners are adult ESL students at an American university who plan to enroll
in regular university classes. The students are between high-intermediate and lowadvanced levels in English and have very diverse backgrounds and L1s due to the nature
of the class, and the major goal for the course is to improve their English in order to do
well in their university undergraduate and graduate classes. Ages of students range
between 18-35 years old. Exposure to technology may be limited in some cases, but
overall, students use computers and technology in their daily lives.
Teaching Content:
The goal of the course is to improve the skills that the students already have,
which includes expanding and improving writing skills in order to communicate better
with English speakers. As part of the curriculum, the class will be entirely conducted in
English because the students are capable of holding conversations with their peers and
the teacher. Since not all students have access to a computer at home, it is essential that
the class is small enough to be in a computer lab, and ideally, there will be no more than
15 students at a time. However, since the class is held on a university campus and the
students have access to a CMC technology, such as Blackboard, it is not unreasonable for
the teacher to assign homework online. Each class period will last for 90 minutes, which
should allot enough time to explain the activity, introduce Mindmeister as an online

Becky Ross
CALL- Spring 2015
Class Demo
graphic organizing tool, and have the students complete the activity before the end of
class. In addition to this lesson, the students will be required to review other students
mind maps on a Blackboard discussion board before the next class.
Realistic Goals:
The target language skill for this lesson is to improve the students writing skills
in a real and meaningful way. The ability to write a cover letter, use information provided
in a resume, and communicate information to an employer are useful skills that university
students should develop. Through a series of lessons with a focus on the American
workplace, they will learn about the culture of the American workplace and how it differs
from their own. Outlining and writing a cover letter to an employer is also a good activity
to practice writing a type of persuasive essay, but in a familiar way that allows them to
talk about themselves. By the end of this lesson, I hope the students will have taken into
account the structure of a cover letter, used the mind map to outline their major points
that will be used to write a real cover letter in the next class, and benefitted from looking
at classmates outlines online.
Selection of Teaching Material:
In this lesson plan, I will be using an online graphic organizer from
Mindmeister.com. This tool allows students to develop and outline ideas that help
organize a written paper. In this example, the students will be creating an outline before
writing a cover letter. I believe that the activity is beneficial for the students because it a
real and meaningful use of writing skills. According to the principles of Communicative
Language Teaching, activities should be communicative, meaningful, and task based.
(Brown, 2007). This activity is communicative in that it promotes the development of

Becky Ross
CALL- Spring 2015
Class Demo
writing skills in order to communicate and persuade, and it is meaningful because it
relates directly to the students lives and futures, so there is a high level of intrinsic
motivation for the students to participate and do well.
The use of a graphic organizer helps learners develop their writing skills, and
prewriting or outlining ideas can help writers organize their thoughts. This is especially
important for L2 learners who need to think out points in a paper before they write it in
order to be effective in producing comprehensible output (Chapelle & Jamieson, 2008).
The use of an online graphic organizer instead of pen and paper is useful for
several different reasons. First, it helps the student to stay organized and write out more
information that they wish to include. It can also be difficult for L2 learners to read their
own handwriting, especially if it is scribbled writing of an outline. It also gives students a
way to collaborate, exchange ideas, and get corrective feedback from their peers. If
students understand what is asked of them for peer-reviewing, their classmates can
benefit greatly from the response (Dippold, 2009). According to Sun (2009), online
communication between students can allow for students to take control of their learning
process. The use of an online mind mapping site, where you can share your maps with
your peers, limits the teacher-centered approach, and creates opportunities for students to
take ownership of their projects. It is also a way for students to share ideas about what is
important to include in an assignment. Many of the students in Suns experiment
indicated that they got ideas for their own vlog post by watching other students. (Sun,
2009) This idea is similar when sharing graphic organizers, and it also provides a tool for
scaffolding among students, meaning that lower levels can benefit from seeing their
peers work.

Becky Ross
CALL- Spring 2015
Class Demo

Sequence of Teaching Points:

1. The first part of the lesson will be a discussion about what a cover letter is and
how it is important in a job application. The students will be partnered with their
neighbor and discuss these two points and brainstorm about what needs to be
included in a cover letter. This conversation will last about 5 minutes, and then
open up to a class-wide idea exchange.
2. In order to give the students a better understanding of what a cover letter is, the
teacher will bring up an example cover letter from a website
(http://susanireland.com/letter/cover-letter-examples/find-cover-letter-samples-byoccupation-career/ ) and ask the students to pick out the different characteristics
they see in the letter. For example, what does the introduction look like? What are
some key words that the author uses? This activity allows the students to focus on
the composition of a cover letter. When focusing on writing skills, it is important
that the lesson teaches a genre as well as linguistic knowledge and strategies
because research shows that learners need help distinguishing what language is
important in different genres, so teaching language that is necessary in a specific
context is very important to students goal of communication (Chapelle &
Jamieson, 2008). This discussion will last about 15-20 minutes depending on the
detail the students give.
3. The teacher will then open up the pre-made graphic organizer that was made on
mindmeister.com, and go through to point out the major points of writing a cover
letter. She will also reflect on the points that the students made in the discussion,

Becky Ross
CALL- Spring 2015
Class Demo
and even edit the mind map when an important idea is proposed. This will last 10
minutes.
4. Students will then get a quick tutorial on how to edit the Essay template in
order to create an appropriate mind map. The teacher will encourage students to
use her map as a guide, but the organization of the map is left up to the individual.
The only requirement is that the details be personalized to each student. This will
take about 10-15 minutes at most.
5. Now that the explanation of a cover letter is finished, the students will be asked to
create a detailed mind map in preparation for writing a cover letter in a future
class. (The details of this will be written in the following section, since it is the
activity that will be presented in class.) This activity will last between 40-45
minutes in a real class.
6. After students finish the mind map, they will be required to share their mind map
links on in a Blackboard discussion. In this way, classmates will be able to see
other students ideas for creating a cover letter, and it allows for a more
collaborative writing assignment.
7. For homework, the students will be asked to look at and comment on at least 3
classmates maps, and then take the comments into consideration when writing
their cover letter in a future class.
Delivery of Instruction (in-class Activity):
1. Students will log-in to computer and go to www.mindmeister.com to create an
account. (5 minutes)
2. For the CALL Class activity, there will be a quick review of what students
think should be included in a cover letter. And the presenters pre-made
graphic organizer will be on the overhead as an example to the students. (2-3
minutes)

Becky Ross
CALL- Spring 2015
Class Demo
3. Students will then create and write their main points on the graphic organizer.
The job for the CALL class is applying for a teaching position and it is up
to the student to decide what type of position. (5-7 minutes)
a. The teacher will walk around the classroom to answer any questions
about cover letters, organization, brainstorming, or the technology.
Sample Activity & Material:

Sources:
Brown, H. (2007). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language
pedagogy (3rd ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman.

Becky Ross
CALL- Spring 2015
Class Demo
Chapelle, C., & Jamieson, J. (2008). Tips for teaching will CALL: Practical approaches
to computer-assisted language learning (pp. 95-124). White Plains, NY: Pearson
Longman.
Dippold, D. (2009). Peer feedback through blogs: Student and teacher perceptions in an
advanced German class. ReCALL, 21(1), 18-36.
Sun, Y. (2009). Voice blog: An exploratory study of language learning. Language
Learning and Technology, 13(2), 88-103.