Lesson Topics: learned helplessness, learning, motivation, psychology
Skill Focus: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.5 hours
Lesson Plan Download: learned-helplessness-upper-intermediate-102024.docx
Lesson Overview:
- After warm-up questions, students do a short anagram quiz to prepare them for the video.
- The YouTube video, three minutes in length, shows a teacher doing an experiment to teach her students about a condition known as learned helplessness. Through the experiment, the students learn how a lack of faith in their abilities can prevent them from accomplishing tasks that they could otherwise do.
- The video is followed by recall, retell activity, comprehension questions, and a vocabulary-matching activity. After vocabulary matching, students form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- There are two debate topics: one about the best way to motivate students and the other about the role of motivation in academic performance. about the existence of guardian angels.
- The lesson has two roleplay scenarios. In the first, a husband and wife discuss whether their overbearing parenting styles are creating too much overdependence in their son. In the second scenario, a concerned friend tries to convince her friend to get out of an abusive relationship that she seems helpless to escape.
- As an extra activity, students identify a social group that is struggling academically and then present a list of strategies that might help them have greater success.
- After famous quotations and a collocation review, students review vocabulary by creating their own story with five illustrations.
- Finally, students review key vocabulary before answering some final discussion questions.
UPPER-INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED (C1) Lesson on Motivation & Helplessness
Warm-up-Questions
- When you were a young child, did you feel confident in or doubtful of your abilities?
- Who was the best teacher you ever had? Why?
- Have you ever tried something repeatedly but felt like giving up? What made you feel that way?
Pre-viewing Activity: Anagram Test
An anagram is a group of letters that can be rearranged to form a word. For example, “GDO” can be rearranged to form both dog and god. Before you watch the following video, try to solve the below anagrams. Spend about 15 seconds on each group of letters.
- BAT LEMON · CINERAMA
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.
Comprehension Question Answer Key
- The teacher gave two groups different sets of anagrams. One group had solvable anagrams, while the other group had unsolvable ones. The third anagram was the same for both groups. The objective was to demonstrate learned helplessness.
- The left side of the room developed learned helplessness because they were given impossible tasks at the beginning, which affected their confidence. Despite having the same third word, no one on the left-hand side succeeded in solving it.
- It showed that the only factor influencing success was mindset, not intelligence or capability.
- They reported feeling frustrated, rushed, confused, and stupid.
- …
Vocabulary 1-struggling, 2-induce, 3-random, 4-anagrams, 5-frustrated, 6-shot, 7-significantly
Collocations: 1-a, 2-d, 3-c, 4-b