Guidelines for foreign language lesson planning

In 1982, Knop provided beginning teaching assistants with a "recipe" for planning foreign language lessons; James revisited this effort in 1992. In this article, lesson planning is examined again in light Of recent years' research and discussion of foreign language learning and teaching. The background discussion aims to give beginning teachers a sense of the recent history of the teaching of foreign languages in North America and the theoretical foundation of the communicative approach to foreign language teaching. The article also provides practical guidelines for the design of daily lesson plans that integrate culturally contextualized accuracy and fluency activities (for a broad range of skills and in a range of modes) with strategy-based instruction for the communicative curriculum.