Teachers should consider several factors when planning lessons for secondary students learning a new language. First, teachers must create an engaging learning environment that gives all students opportunities to practice the language through classroom interaction, instructions in English, and a variety of techniques. Additionally, teachers should promote diversity and inclusion by implementing specific techniques for students with special needs. Finally, teachers are responsible for motivating students and developing their autonomy by selecting interesting materials and exercises that encourage decision-making.

1. To begin with, before planning lessons for our secondary level course, we, as
teachers, should bear in mind the following:
Firstly, we have the responsibility of giving each student different opportunities
to learn the new language. To do so, we have to be able to create an
appropriate learning environment. In this sense, Scrivener states that there are
skills which can be developed by teachers. Some of them are:
- Fostering effective classroom interaction gives students the possibility to
interact with others to put the new language into practice.
- Giving instructions in English helps students familiarize with the new
language.
- Using a variety of techniques helps students learn the language in a
better way.
Another relevant point is that we, as teachers, should be prepared to promote
diversity and inclusion. It means that if we have a student with some special
need such as dyslexia and autism, among others, we have to implement specific
techniques. In this way, we can give all our students the same possibility to learn
and experience the new language.
Furthermore, we, as teachers, have to put emphasis on the importance of
developing students´ motivation as well as autonomy in ELT. In this regard,
Steven Mc Donough in the PDF file Motivative 1, claims that we, teachers, have
the role to facilitate “the development of the learners´ own motivational
thinking.”1
It means that we have the responsibility to choose the appropriate
material so as to catch students´ attention. In this way, students will feel
motivated to learn the new language in an enjoyable way.
Richard Smith also states that we, as teachers, have to help our students
become autonomous learners. To do so, we have to provide students with
different exercises in which they have to implement decision-making. In this
sense, we give students “the power and right to learn for themselves”2
.
Another important point is that David Nunan mentions that the organic
approach is a new perspective which helps students understand language
acquisition and its use. Within this approach, there are different ways to teach
the language such as teaching “language in context, teaching language as a set
of choice and providing opportunities for learners to explore grammatical and
discoursal relationships in authentic data”3
, just to name a few. Taking all these
1 STEVEN MCDONOUGH (2007), “Motivation in ELT, Key Concepts in ELT, page: 370.
2 RICHARD SMITH (2007), “Learner autonomy”, Key concepts in ELT, page:
3 DAVID NUNAN (1998), “Teaching grammar in context”, page:102, 104 1nd 105”.

2. different ways into account, we, teachers, have the possibility to decide on the
best alternative to teach the new language according to students´ needs.
With respect to classroom dynamics, we should decide what kind of classroom
dynamics we want to implement in our classes. To do so, we should investigate
how students like to work in the classroom. In this respect, Scrivener mentions
that we, teachers, can choose from “whole class working together with you;
whole class moving around and mixing together as individual; small groups,
pairs and individual work”4
. Moreover, he states that there are some useful ideas
that maximize students´ interaction such as:
- Encouraging a friendly, relaxing classroom atmosphere;
- Giving students time to listen and think and understand the new topic;
- Arranging seating so that students can see their classmates and interact with
them in groups;
- Giving students interesting opportunities to practice the new language.
Another point is that we, teachers, must have clear aims in our lessons. Knowing
this helps us to predict what kinds of resources are suitable to implement in our
class. According to Scrivener, our lessons should be based on contexts and
situations relevant to students´ lives and should include activities that are highly
meaningful and interesting to students.
Last but not least, after finishing our lessons, it is important to evaluate our if we
succeeded in helping our students learn the new topic. According to Scrivener,
it is also important to evaluate teachers´ performance and what worked and
didn´t work. In this way, we, teachers, can plan our future lessons in a better
way.
To conclude, we, as teachers, should take all the aspects mentioned above to
achieve successful classes.
4 SCRIVENER, JIM (2013)” Language Teaching”. Chapter 3, “Classroom management”, page: 58.