ESL 015 Lesson Plan

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General Information
1) Lesson title:
Source Evaluation
2) Provide name of class AND brief description of class.
ESL 015. The goal of this course is to help students develop the reading and writing skills they need to
participate successfully in academic reading and writing tasks at an American university. Four major
assignments are involved: extended definition essay, comparison and contrast essay, annotated bibliography
and problem/solution essay.

3) Describe your students

(i.e., proficiency, age range, motivation for class, L1)
Most of the students are first year international students with the majority from China, South Korea,
and India. Students generally have good command of oral English while their academic writing skills
need to be improved. Students are generally very motivated to participate in the classroom activities and
assignments.
4) How long is the class?
Include the # of hours for each class and length of semester or other time frame.
50 minutes for each class. MWF each week for 16 weeks.
5) Overall Instructional Goal (1 goal):
Help students to the choose the right topics to research for their problem/solution essays.

6) Learning objectives AND how you will measure each (at least 2 objectives):
1. Students decide one or two final topics for them to research by discussing their possible topics
with their partners.
2. Students have clear ideas of what they are going to research about the topics by creating a list of
research questions.
3. Students are able to evaluate different sources such as journals and magazines by considering the
7 characteristics (see details in materials)
1

7) Why this lesson?

Provide justification/reason for why you are teaching this lesson. How does it fit with the goals
for the course?
The reason of this lesson is twofold: academic research skills are very important for students
success in the future courses; the remainder of the classes (final problem/solution essay) are developed
around the topics and researches students (possibly) decide in this lesson.
8) Materials List all materials, websites, handouts, etc.
Be sure to create any materials you list here AND attach them to the end of this lesson plan.
THE PLAN

WHY

(describe the activities & student arrangement)

(give justification for activities & student arrangement)

Orientation ( 0 min.)

This particular class is actually sandwiched

by the other two classes: brainstorming of
Warm-up question: Tell one pet peeve that bothers you
topics for problem/solution essays and
recently.
research in the library database. Therefore,
the presentation par is based on the
brainstorming activity in the previous
class.
Its also important to mention that each
class is only 50 minutes. So we usually
dont have very elaborated orientation for
the lesson plan. What we do have is warmup questions for students to talk with their
shoulder partners. Since students are
going to discuss the problems that bother
them in this particular class, this warm-up
question serves as an ice-breaker for
students to start talking about the real
problems.
The Connection: Great. Let me share with you one of my pet peeves: I cant stand taking out the
clean plate from the cabinet and use it right awayI have to rinse them once more before use. Ok, I
hope you all have your three topics that bother you like your pet peeves. Now, get ready to share them
with your partners.
Presentation (10 min.)
Part 1: Students will be assigned a partner to discuss their 3
topic ideas with (the assignment from the last class). Each
of them will get 3 minutes to discuss their ideas. As they
talk, they have to consider these questions:
2

Part 1: Depending on the time we have for

this activity (in this particular class, we
only have 10 minutes for the activity), I
also made an elevator speech worksheet
to replace the four questions (see
appendix). Since this is the first time that

Why have you chosen these topics?

How interesting are the topics to you?
Why should other people care about these topics?
What research will you need?

Part 2: After hearing each others topic, students will

choose one topic of their partners that they are most
interested in and write down at least 3 research questions
for that topic. The questions could be things they want to
know or things that they think their partners need to
include.

students encounter elevator speech,

teachers may need to spend a few minutes
explaining what is elevator speech and why
they need to learn about it. Assuming
students are already introduced to elevator
speech in the previous class, the
worksheet would make it more efficient
and clear for students to discuss their
topics with their partners.
Part 2: Students pay more attention to each
other in the discussion when they have to
write down research questions for their
partners topics rather than their own.

The Connection: Ok. Everyone get the research questions from your partner? (Yes). Great, now that
we have the research questions, the next step is for us to find sources to support them. One of the most
important research skills for academic writing is to evaluate the sources you find. Lets look at some of
those sources and see if you can see which of them are good.
Engagement ( 15 min.)
In small groups, students will examine the journal,
magazine, and anthology. Then they will make a list of the
characteristics of each, paying special attention to how
they are different. Here are some things to consider:
Their appearance
The topics
The titles
The introduction for each article
Source use
Authors
Potential audiences
After the group discussion, each group will decide and
share with the class one source that they think the most or
the least credible and explain why.

A few good and bad sources (e.g. Onions

newspaper) would make the activity more
interesting and challenging. In case
students have never heard of Onions and
choose it as the most credible source (since
some of them looks very real), teacher may
need to explain what Onions is and point
out the problems related to characteristics
list. Additionally, the goal of this activity is
not merely for students to rank the sources
but go through the seven characteristics
and learn to evaluate the sources by their
own in the future.

THE PLAN

WHY

(describe the activities & student arrangement)

(give justification for activities & student arrangement)

The Connection: Ok, great. Bear the 7 characteristics in mind. For your next class in the library, you
will have more time researching and evaluating the sources you find. Now, once we have the sources,
what we need to do? We need to summarize (and of course paraphrase) the sources. For your next big
assignment, as we touched on briefly in the previous class, you have to write an annotated bibliography
in which you summarize the sources you have. Now, lets open the text book.
Assessment/Evaluation (25 min.)
Students will work individually first. They will read
through the article Columbus Controversy and answer
the following questions:
1. What is the topic of the article?
2. What is the author telling us about the topic
(thesis)?
3. What evidence does the author give?
4. What is the authors conclusion?
After this, they will find a partner and compare answers.
Then, they will have to use their answers to write a short
summary of the article.

I still havent decided the article I will use

eventually. Im also thinking of GRE
argument essay because it not only focus
on cause/effect but also focus on the logic
of cause/effect (and this connects to the
previous class).
This activity seems a little bit off. As I
talked with Jade, he wanted to cover this
before spring break (this is the last but one
class before spring break) so that students
will start to think about the AB and more
time to write the summary. Also, students
usually dont know how to write an
effective summary and they just copy the
abstract. Therefore, an activity that
involves student writing an in-class
summary would be a great practice.
Considering the difficulty of reading, I
provide four general questions for them to
think about before writing the summary.
Also, to ease the anxiety of the in-class
writing, I make the students discuss their
answers with their partners so that they feel
readier to write the summary.

The Connection: Good. Lets call it a day. Remember to bring your research questions with you for our
class on Friday, were meeting in the library. Do not come to this room.
Expansion/Homework (
min.)
As for the time limit, the expansion part
is actually the next class, where students go
to the library and research and evaluate the
sources for their topics.

Special notes:

Appendix:
Elevator Speech Worksheet
My three topics are __Topic A___, ___Topic B___, ___Topic C___. To start with, Im most interested
in __Topic A___ because _____________________________. Moreover, most people should care
about this topic because_______________________________. If Im going to write about this topic, I
think I need to do more research about _________________________________________________.
Second, Im also interested in __Topic B___ because __________________________. Additionally,
I feel many people would care about this topic since ________________________________. If Im
going to write about this topic, I think I need to do more research about
_________________________________________________. Last but certainly not the least, Im
5

interested in _____Topic C____ because ____________________________________. Furthermore,

this topic will undoubtedly draw peoples attention as ______________________________________.
If Im going to write about this topic, I think I need to do more research about
_________________________________________________.