Main Aims:

1. To produce a cohesive written text

2. To introduce students to sequencing devices and cohesion to order a text

3.

4.

5.

6. Subsidiary Aims

7.

8.

9. Students will work together to produce their work

10. Students will have the opportunity to peer correct their completed woprk
1) To introduce students to sequencing devices and cohesion to order a text. (see stages 2 and 3).

2) To analyse meaning and use of the following discourse markers (stage 5):

on the whole, but, unfortunately, except for, however, although, besides, in conclusion, also, as I see it, for
example, despite, taking everything into consideration, another point in favour, a further disadvantage

Subsidiary Aims:

1) To produce a cohesive written text using some of the above discourse markers (stage 6).

2) The students will work collaboratively to produce their work. (see stage 6)

3) The students will be able to peer correct their completed

work after regrouping to form their completed essays. (see stage 7)

I chose my material from another source Instant Grammar Lessons (Battersby 1996) which has suitable
activities for FCE. The idea I have used is based on a dictogloss style activity incorporating a 'bottom-up'
approach but in a written rather than audio form. Using a dictogloss (or dovetailing as it is known. See stage
6) type activity can encourage learners to call upon their linguistic resources, considering the various
language options open to them and it encourages the learners to discover what they do and do not know
about English.

I chose the discursive essay from Instant Grammar Lessons (1996 unit 2.1) which compares the advantages
and disadvantages of watching television and reading books. However, there were certain things on the
original text which I wanted to adapt because I felt that the 'reproduction of text' style activity chosen called
for a simpler version, I wanted it to be challenging but not demotivating. I changed some of the vocabulary
and phrases which I thought would hinder the reproduction of the text (see stage 5) for example, "well-
stocked". I also felt it was necessary to change the phrase about television licences as it was not culturally
relevant to the students. I reduced some of the longer sections in order for the students to have similar
length paragraphs to reconstruct. I removed the sentence in line 10 because I thought the idea of a question
would distract from the idea of using discourse markers, so I rewrote the sentence adding another discourse
marker (i.e. "Besides" see Main Aims). I removed one of the discourse markers in case it might confuse the
students. I reduced the amount of sentences that the students would have to reproduce to make it a more
manageable task, leaving the groups of students with the first and last two sentence cards. I should point out
that this class will be mostly experimental for me and the students, and although the students have already
been exposed to some activities of the lesson plan in previous lessons (see stages 2 and 4) we were looking
at an informal letter context.

Materials

White board, board pens, blutak, pencils, white paper strips, help cards, essay photocopied on card and cut
into strips for each group, discourse markers on large pieces of card, photocopies of the essay in
paragraphs (enough for each student), 2 x copies of the essay on OHTs (one with the discourse markers
underlined, see appendix ) , OHP.

Assumptions

1) The students will find the task challenging but not too difficult as to be demotivating.
2) Students will be interested in the topic as the two activities (reading and watching television) are common
past-times, however, some students may not be familiar with the genre especially if they have never had to
write a formal essay like this).
3) The students will be interested in building up their writing skills for exam purposes or equally for those
students who have to write letters at work.
4) The students may be fully capable of writing formally in their own language but there may be differences
in style or structure which they are not aware of in English.
5) The linking devices should not all be completely new for the students and they should have some idea of
how to use most of them. Likewise, they should be able to categorise them without too much difficulty (see
problems and solutions section for the discourse markers which may cause some problems).
6) Students will transfer their knowledge of the discourse markers to future written compositions of this
nature.