Abstract:

The students of the English Language Teaching (ELT) training program at the National University of Education in Ecuador need to develop the competencies of planning lessons and teaching English as part of their exit profile. For this reason, they study the subject Didactics of English in the third semester of their training program. In this subject, they have to learn to use and apply ELT methods and approaches such as the Audiolingual Method (ALM), Total Physical Response (TPR), Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP), Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) among others. However, the minimum contents of the curriculum design of the subject only include the ELT methods to teach and a couple of expected learning outcomes that do not lead to the development of the afore mentioned competency. This problematic situation has led the authors of this paper to come up with the following research question: How to teach the subject Didactics of English so that it contributes to the students exit profile and helps them develop the desired professional competencies? In order to answer this question, the following overall aim has been created: To illustrate how lesson plans and demo lessons can contribute to the development of the professional competency in the exit profile of the ELT training program at UNAE. For this purpose, the authors have used a qualitative paradigm based on the action research methodology using class observation, self-reflection and interviews. Peer observations of a demo lesson of students teaching using ALM in the first action research cycle demonstrated that the methodology used to plan and teach was not effective to develop the desired professional competency, so a second cycle of action research considering the observations made in the first one and including actions to improve the identified weaknesses was planned and put into practice when the students taught the demo lesson applying the TPR method. It offered a more satisfactory result, but interviews made to teachers and students revealed that they were not completely satisfied with the obtained advances in the development of the target competency so the authors conducted a third cycle of action research in order to have the students overcome the weaknesses identified in the previous cycles and to plan and teach demo a lesson using the PPP methodology. This improved methodology characterized by adapting the Cambridge Delta Observation Criteria for EFL teachers to the students’ needs, giving not only oral but also written feedback to the students, using Instruction checking questions (ICQs) and engaging all the students in the peer evaluation proved to be effective and allowed the authors to arrive to the following conclusion: planning and teaching demo lessons based on the weaknesses identified by peer observation and interviews to teachers and students contributes to the development of one of the most important components of the major’s exit profile.

Keywords:

Planning, demo lesson, professional competencies, exit profile, ELT training program.