Every great lesson starts with a good lesson plan, and it’s no different for Modern Foreign Language (MFL) teachers. When lessons have to balance speaking, listening, reading and writing practice, as well as cultural considerations, it can be difficult to find the right balance.
In this guide, we’re exploring what makes a good lesson plan, how to keep foreign language learners at the heart of your lesson, and we’ll give you an actionable checklist to make sure your students have the best possible learning experience.
A language lesson plan should give you an idea of what your classroom time will cover, complete with activities and learning objectives in-line with the curriculum. It sets a clear roadmap for your lesson, which can help you to stay on track to achieve learning goals even when unexpected challenges arise.
A good lesson plan should balance speaking, listening, cultural context, and include fundamentals like:
Learning objectives - What the lesson will cover, and what students should be able to do by the end of the session.
Starter activity/icebreaker - A quick 5-10 minute task that focuses on what students already know from previous lessons. If it’s your first lesson, this can be an activity that encourages students to introduce themselves in their chosen foreign language.
Presentation - Introduce the new content. This should be the bulk of the lesson, where students are faced with fresh concepts, vocabulary, or grammatical rules.
Practice - Here, the students should put the new concept into practice. It often takes the form of pair work, or writing or listening tasks that help students apply what they’ve just learned correctly.
Assessment - As the teacher, you can jump in and correct mistakes as they happen during the practice session, but it can also help to build in a quick quiz or questions to ask your class post-practice before the class concludes.
Homework - Language learning takes practice, so it’s worth considering any worksheets or media like movies, songs, podcasts, or book excerpts you can assign the students to take away after the lesson.
Following this structure can help you to pace your lesson while keeping the class focused on your objectives when managing larger groups or classroom disruptions.
Every lesson plan will be unique to your learning objectives, curriculum, and class year group. You can follow these steps to make sure you’re as prepared as possible for common challenges like mixed ability groups and disruptions.
Setting learning objectives at the beginning of the lesson gives you and your students clear goals throughout the lesson, as well as some idea of what to expect. Keep your objective displayed on the board throughout the lesson to help students remember what their goal is.
Objectives should be measurable and specific, like:
Introduce yourself in Spanish by the end of the lesson
Confidently order food from a French restaurant by the end of the lesson
Use the future tense to describe your weekend plans in German by the end of the lesson
Whether your lesson lasts 45 minutes or you have a block spanning multiple periods, time management can make or break your lesson. You’ll need to balance speaking, listening, reading, and writing across the time you have, while also factoring in more human elements like warming up, practice between students - not to mention the presentation portion of the lesson!
Remember to build in some buffer time into your lesson, especially if you’re planning on interactive activities like roleplaying and 1-1 practice between pupils, which can often run over. Likewise, have a quick 5-10 minute activity up your sleeve as a contingency plan if your students move through the rest of the lesson faster than expected.
Age grouping is everything, not just in terms of the curriculum, but learning styles can also vary greatly between younger and older students. For example, primary school students may need more visuals, repetition, and movement-based activities that engage them and make them feel like they’re at play throughout the lesson.
Conversely, sixth form students probably won’t take kindly to a language-themed dance party when they’d prefer to be challenged with practical debate topics, reading comprehension, and conversational practice.
Try to consider your class’s interests and cultural zeitgeists as part of your lesson plan, with popular sports teams, singers, TV shows or cartoons all being a great way to seize attention with certain age groups.
Your activities should suit your learning objectives and the overall subject matter of the lesson. Start with a controlled activity where you lead the class, such as:
Repeat-after-me style drills.
Working as a group to solve problems, like conjugating sentences or filling in gaps in a sentence on the board.
Vocabulary bingo focused on a theme like food, verb forms, or numbers.
Then allow the students some time to practice more freely between themselves with activities like:
Group discussions and debates.
1-1 conversations or roleplays based around a relevant topic.
Writing or verbally telling a short story, or journaling on a certain theme.
Make sure you patrol the classroom and spend time listening to each group or pair and provide feedback where appropriate. This can help to build student confidence and make sure they avoid errors in the future.
No matter what, practice time should always put students in the driver’s seat. While they need the presentation portion of the lesson to teach them what and how to use the new information, practical language skills develop best when students can use the language actively.
Aim for a ratio of 30% passive learning (presentation time) and 70% active learning (practice, activities, and more practice!) within your lesson plan.
Consider what types of lesson materials will best suit the topic of your lesson:
Audio clips - Best for teaching pronunciation and understanding different or regional accents.
Video clips - Best for combining listening practice with cultural learning, especially if you’re showing a clip from a foreign film.
Textbooks - Best for improving reading comprehension.
Worksheets - Best for individual practice, or when you need to set additional homework for solo practice.
Flashcards - Best for building vocabulary, or as a quick icebreaker at the start of the lesson.
Save prep time before each lesson by gradually building up a bank of resources that you can use over and over again, year after year. This can include familiar audio and video clips, games, and other resources.
Any number of challenges can pop up in a lesson - this is especially true when you’re an MFL teacher. The most common disruptions to consider are:
Students struggling with pronunciation - Choral repetition, phonics activities, and audio or visual media in your lesson plan can help students overcome this.
Low student confidence - Nothing beats a supportive classroom environment, but a lesson plan that starts with small, structured activities before moving on to pair and small group work can help students build confidence before they’re expected to use new concepts.
Difficulty focusing - Have a few replacement activities at the ready, and consider how long students in your age group can generally focus on a task before becoming distracted. Set clear expectations for classroom behaviour, but keep these realistic!
Consider your students' struggles in your lesson plan, and you’ll find many students become comfortable enough to challenge themselves as they follow the curriculum.
Language learners need hands-on experience and real personal connections to truly work towards fluency. Planning cultural days, pen-pal exchanges, full exchange programs, or even organising an MFL school trip to a relevant country (picture a French learner’s trip to Paris) can immerse students in the language and help them add context to the curriculum. Ordering tapas at a restaurant in Barcelona on a Spanish school trip or browsing Parisian market stalls creates experiences students will never forget - and comes with a few extra benefits:
Enhancing overall language skills
Builds confidence in speaking, comprehension, and pronunciation
Deepened cultural understanding
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Language Lesson Template |
Example Content |
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Lesson Topic |
Describing weekend plans in Spanish |
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Learning Objectives |
Use the future tense in 3 full sentences to describe what you are doing this weekend. |
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Timing Breakdown |
Warm up: 5 minutes Presentation: 10 minutes Practice: 15 minutes Reflections: 10 minutes Homework & final remarks: 5 minutes |
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Warm-up Activity |
Flash cards to act as a vocabulary refresher |
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Presentation |
This can be a presentation talking the students through the fundamentals of the future tense, with examples. Add a group activity like choral repetition for added engagement from students. |
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Practice Activities and Production |
Pair work, debates, or a writing exercise. |
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Wind-down Reflections |
Provide feedback to the class and encourage them to practice using the future tense. |
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Homework |
Set a writing task for them to write a paragraph describing their weekend plans, using the future tense. |
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Anticipated Challenges |
Timing overruns, student confidence, pronunciation errors |
For good measure, run yourself through this checklist to make sure you're ready to deliver your next language lesson:
Set specific learning objectives.
Estimate times for each stage of the lesson: warm-up, presentation, practice, and wind-down.
Choose activities that suit the ability level and age group of your class, and make sure you prioritise active learning opportunities.
Gather your learning materials and make sure they’re ready on the day of the class.
Prepare contingency activities in case students finish tasks ahead of schedule.
After your lesson, you can review how it went and refine the above plan and checklist to suit your class.
No matter how well you plan, some things are out of your control as a teacher - but there are a few extra ways you can keep things running smoothly come lesson-time:
Balance group and individual needs - Whole-class activities should prioritise collaboration, while students should break off into smaller groups or pairs to receive more individual feedback, both from their peers and from you as you observe.
Anticipate disruptions - Plan a few quick activities that can refocus your class, keep you on track if you experience tech issues, or otherwise engage your students if distractions pop up.
Stay flexible - Adapt your pacing, activities, and other parts of your plan if it becomes clear students aren’t benefiting from the specific parts of the lesson.
Use AI tools - AI tools can help you to create a lesson that engages students while also saving you time at the planning stage.
Consider different learning styles - Mix activities that cater to auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners - this helps all learners in the class feel engaged during your lesson.
Use your plan strategically - For instance, before a French language school trip, you can prepare a lesson to give students a refresher on useful vocabulary. You can also plan a ‘debrief’-style lesson to reduce anxiety and make sure pupils understand the cultural differences they’ll encounter.
A well-planned language lesson is just the start: it sparks passion, curiosity, and sets the foundation for what language learning is all about. But to immerse students, the impact of a school trip abroad is immeasurable. Nothing enhances fluency like the chance for students to interact directly with native speakers, whether it’s a German school trip, a French language trip, or an educational tour to Spain.
At NGT, we tailor our school trips to your learning objectives and the curriculum while making sure you have an engaging itinerary that fosters confidence and cultural understanding with visits to iconic landmarks.
Get a quote today to see how an MFL school trip could benefit your students.
