1

Activity 4
Lesson Plan
I.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Lesson Date (hypothetical) Oct 7, 2016

Subject Area(s)

Reading/writing

Topic(s) of Instructional
Unit

Transition words

LEARNERS PRIOR KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS

II.

Students learnt to know how to use COCA and other copora in the intermediate and
upper-intermediate levels. The first five units of Face2Face aims to enable learners to use some
connecting words in their writing. Learners have encountered these connecting words in previous
levels. So, it is now time to use these words in their academic writing. Before writing an essay
about globalization, this activity aims to familiarize learners with some connecting words
(transitional words).

III.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

Choose four transitional words and tell the teacher how frequent they are in
different registers in COCA.

IV.

ACTIVITY SEQUENCE / PROCEDURE

Give learners handout of a list of transitional words

Go over the hand out with the whole class.

Write some sentences on the board and ask learners if the transitional words are used
clearly and appropriately

Elicit answers from learners

Present some recommendations from the handouts such as avoid the overuse of
transitions, make sure the logical connections are clear as you use transitions and avoid
errors that can occur with the use of transitions.

Ask learners to pick up four transitional words from the list and look them up in COCA.

Instruct learners to check the frequency of the four words they have chosen

Ask learners to look at the concordance lines and see how the transitional words are used
(e.g., at the beginning of the sentence, in the middle of the sentence or at the end of it).

Give an example to students by looking up the word although

Show the learners the frequency of the word although and ask them about the position
of although in the concordance lines

Instruct learners to work individually and discover the patterns.

Instruct learners to work in pairs and share what they have found.

Ask the learners what they have found and present examples from COCA.

V.

CLOSURE

Do a formative assessment and ask learners

What did you learn today?

Ask learners to do Exercise 2 on page 86. Read the tables on p 88 and 89. Real grammar.

Reflection:I used an indicative approach to present traditional words as learners have encountered
these words throughout the course. The activity aims to familiarize learners with transitional

words and prepare them to master these words in their academic writing as they will be asked to
write an essay about globalization in the coming weeks. The activity helps learners discover the
patterns of using transitional words in academic texts.

VI.

MATERIALS
I adapted some materials from the internet for this activity. The first one has to do with

English compositions. It has a list of some transitional words. It also has some explanations and
recommendations about transitional words such as problems to avoid when using transitional
words.

__________________________________________________________________________________
The activity above has been developed from the following websites:
1. http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/transitions.htm

2.
3.

Reppen, R. (2012). Using corpora in the language classroom. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Homework
Conrad, S & Biber, D. (2009). Real Grammar: A corpus based approach to English. New York, NY:
Pearson Education.