APLNG 570

Yuanyuan Wang & Tianyu Fu

Lesson Plan #1 - Focus on text structure
Class
Chinese first-year graduate students, 25 Students, 70min class - 3 times a week
Teaching Aim
Students are able to have an awareness of the structure of academic (research) paper. This
lesson plan uses the practices as students need to know the importance of structure in reading
comprehension. The goal of the lesson, and subsequent lessons, would not be for students to not
just recognize the structure of paragraphs, but to have the ability to use it to better understand the
academic paper.
Learning Objectives:
1. Students will be able to have awareness of simple structure in the research (academic)
paper.
2. Students will be able to consciously use structure when they read such paper.
Materials and Tools
1. Chalk and chalkboard
2. Worksheets practice
Procedure & Time

Purpose

Orientation (10 min)

First, the teacher will ask students, What
This orientation question will have students to
comes to you when mentioned the research recall the research or academic paper they have

paper or academic paper?

read.

Next, the teacher will give students several

Open discussion will allow the instructor to
see whether students can figure out the
different types of articles and let students
find out which of them is research paper or research (academic) paper by the structure of
the whole paragraph.
academic papers.
Instructors will give students a few minutes to
discuss and share with their ideas.
Presentation (20 min)
The instructor will begin by showing students
the structure of this article and explain the
details of it.

This presentation is used to help students get

familiar with the structure of the academic
(research) paper.

First is the general introduction of the

whole article, which readers can know the
main idea and can be easily understood by
it.

Using data plays positive role in teaching. In

this data, the structure is kept very similar so
that students can see that easily.

Second is the date analysis. It may use

several categories, which are used three
paragraphs to demonstrate. In each
paragraph, the author used data,
explanation and conclusion to make
readers clear.

Third are the conclusion and some

suggestions toward the whole article.
For this part of presentation, instructor will
follow the Swales Johns book about academic
writing but our aim is have our students known
about what kind of information should be
included in each part and what their function to
the whole academic paper is.
The instructors will select some related data to
illustrate this idea, making students more clear
about the structure of simple academic paper. It
isn't just appearing in the whole paper, but also

Students should recognize the role and

function of structure in reading
comprehension.
Introduction ---- Data Analysis -----Conclusion

in each part of data analysis.

Engagement (40 min)

Instructor picks out own paper with very clear
structure.
The instructor will cut the paper into
different separate parts and ask students to
number them.

By finding the structure of the whole passage,

the students will have a better understanding of
the basic structure of the academic reading.
And students need to acquire the skill of
finding the specific parts of the academic
writing by themselves.

Give student one part of the article and a

worksheet. Ask students to fill out which
part is introduced, which is a data analysis
and which is the conclusion,

The instructor will guide the students to find

out the main idea of the academic paper by
using this particular structure.

Using the answer from previous activity,

helping students find out the main idea of
this part of the article.

Since there are three parts of the article, there

should be some conjunctions making them
together into a whole and complete paper.

Reread this part of the particle and find out

all the conjunction the author has used to
make the part cohesion.
Students need to fill out a part of the essay
with some blank, using the given
conjunctions.
Evaluation
The instructor will be walking around during
the activity listening to the students
discussion.
After students finish filling out the worksheet
the instructor will have each student states
aloud the answers that they work out.

The instructor will be able to identify students

understanding towards the article structure.
The instructor will be able to see if further
clarification or practice is needed in learning
about it.

Expansion
For homework, the instructor will have
students practice the other part of data filling
out the work sheet.

Students will be able to appropriately use

structure in reading comprehension of the
research (academic) paper.

Worksheets that students need to focus on structure

Sample article may be chosen in the class:

Reading the academic paper is a little bit hard for the first year Chinese graduate students, and
they need to acquire the ability like skimming and scanning to help them grape the major idea
about the paper as soon as possible. It may have some more complicated paper but at least we
need to start with the simplest one. And for this article, it doesnt include the part like abstract or
the acknowledgement and the topic may sounds a little bit unfamiliar. But it has several
advantages. First of all, it is about one of the most common word-and. Everyone knows it, using
it every day and it may become interesting to them to say it used in another way. Secondly, the
structure in this article is very clear and basicintroduction to the data analysis and then a
conclusion. Even for each data, if follows directly with a signal of explanation. It will be really
helpful for students to learn about the basic structure for the academic paper. For the further one
or two courses, our suggestions is to have some more complicated material to practice in the
class so that they will enhance their ability of how to understand the academic paper effectively
based on its particular and fixed structure.