Content and Language Objectives for Each Lesson

My experience at the British School in Manila taught me to explicitly inform my students about their activities and the objectives of the lessons. Students were constantly and consistently asked to read the objectives for both the lessons and the activities. The teachers required students to write the learning objectives on their activity sheets. Instead of using the phrasing “Students will be able to”, teachers phrased the objectives in a manner that had meaning for the students. The objectives were written beginning with the phrase “I can”. An example is “I can name three inventors and identify their inventions.”

I have never experienced writing language objectives for my content area lessons. My activities might have included tasks which touched upon language objectives which were not explicitly presented in my previous lessons. In the future, if I am given the opportunity to work with students who can talk, I would like to include content and language objectives in my lessons. I can appreciate the importance of making language objectives part of the lessons; not only for students but also for teachers.

What are the advantages to writing content and language objectives for students to see prior to a lesson?

I see a lot of advantages when writing content and language objectives for students to see prior to the implementation of a lesson. Students will be able to identify the lesson’s language and content objectives and perform according to the expectations of the objectives. The affective filter for English learners will be reduced because knowing the objectives and the expectations of the lessons prior to their execution increases the predictability of the learning tasks and outcomes. Thus, students will be aware of the expectations associated with the lessons.

By being informed about the content and language objectives of the lessons prior to their implementations, students will be able to see that language is of vital importance. They will hopefully perceive not only the semantics, the syntax and the pragmatics of the English language but also the varied forms of communication (verbal and non-verbal) that involve different aspects of the academic, social, behavioral and cultural components of people’s lives.

By being informed about the content and language objectives of the lessons prior to their implementations, students will be able to see that content courses do not merely start and stop with memorizing the information contained in them. The knowledge that content courses provide is highly connected with language. The more students know about a certain content-related idea, the more they can communicate about it.

How might they affect both teacher and student performance in the classroom?

Having content and language objectives in the lessons affects both the teacher and the students. Teachers and students will be more aware that content courses are not isolated from language. While content courses provide numerous pieces of information about a certain body of knowledge, language gives life to it when people make it comprehensible and meaningful.

The combination of language and content objectives in lessons presents to both teachers and students the inseparable relationship of content courses and language. Both parties will hopefully realize that content knowledge will be useless if not expressed through language and language will be futile if there is no meaningful information with it.