2.1 Personal Aims & Teacher Development

2.1 Personal Aims and Teacher Development

TKT Module 2 is titled Lesson planning and use of resources for language teaching. About half of the official 80-item paper tests whether you can plan a lesson or a sequence of lessons. One of the most reliable distinctions on that half of the paper is this: can you tell a personal aim from a learner aim when both are written as short professional notes?

A personal aim does not describe what learners will know or do. It describes what the teacher would like to improve in his or her teaching. Candidates who treat every infinitive on a plan as a learner outcome will map “to keep the pace lively” onto motivation or onto a main aim. That mapping is the trap this section is built to close.

OpenExamPrep publishes this chapter as independent study material for teachers preparing for TKT Module 2. The definitions follow TKT Glossary senses of the terms so you can recognise them on matching tasks. This guide is not an official Cambridge English publication.

Glossary sense: personal aim

The TKT Glossary defines a personal aim as what the teacher would like to improve in his or her teaching. The stock example is reducing the amount of time the teacher spends writing on the whiteboard. Trainer notes used in TKT courses add two further classroom examples: simplify teacher language, and keep the pace lively. All three are teacher behaviours. None of them is a language point, a skills subskill, or a learner product.

After the lesson, you should be able to check the personal aim by watching the teacher, not by marking learner work. Did the board stay leaner? Were instructions shorter and checked? Did the teacher stop repeating every answer? If the only evidence would be a learner test score, you wrote a learner aim and put it in the wrong box.

Learner aims sit beside personal aims — they are not the same heading

Main aims, subsidiary aims, and stage aims are learner-focused. They belong to the lesson’s language or skills outcomes.

• A main aim is the most important thing learners will achieve in the lesson: one clear system or skills outcome, such as learners can use past continuous interrupted by past simple to tell a short anecdote.
• A subsidiary aim is an additional learner outcome in the same lesson, often a skill that supports the main aim, such as learners listen for gist in a model anecdote before they speak.
• A stage aim is the purpose of one section of the lesson for the learners, such as learners notice the two tenses on a timeline, or learners complete a gap-fill to check form.

Write those three as learners will / learners can / to enable learners to. Write personal aims as I will / the teacher will, naming a behaviour.

A quick filter used on Module 2 items: if you replace the subject with learners, does the sentence still make sense? “Learners will reduce time spent writing on the whiteboard” is absurd. “Learners will keep a lively pace” is not a learner language outcome. Those notes are personal aims.

Personal aims do not replace learner aims. They are recorded on the same document because planning is also a teacher-development tool. Observed lessons in initial teacher training almost always include one. TKT tests whether you can still see it when it is mixed into a list of learner outcomes.

Typical personal-aim topics

Module 2 scenarios recycle a compact set of teacher-development foci. Memorise them as actions, then you will recognise paraphrases.

Teacher talking time (TTT). The teacher lectures the rule, narrates every example, and answers her own questions. A personal aim: use a marker sentence, a timeline, and concept-checking questions so clarification lasts two or three minutes, not ten.

Instructions and instruction-checking questions (ICQs). Learners start the wrong task because the teacher stacked four instructions while handing out paper. A personal aim: give instructions once, after the handout is on the desk, then ask two ICQs (“Are you writing or speaking?” “Do you show your partner the card?”).

Elicitation. The teacher supplies every example. A personal aim: ask for two learner examples before revealing the marker sentence.

Monitoring. The teacher either never leaves the board or interrupts the first pair after ten seconds. A personal aim: monitor silently for the first minute of pair work, then collect two errors for delayed feedback.

Board work. The teacher writes full paragraphs with her back to the class. A personal aim: write only the target form plus two examples; nominate a learner to add a third.

Timing. Controlled practice swallows the communicative task. A personal aim: display a six-minute limit and stop on the signal.

Including quieter learners. Two confident students answer every open question. A personal aim: after an open question, nominate by name, including two quieter learners in each stage.

Reducing unnecessary echo. The teacher repeats every answer. A personal aim: accept a correct answer with “thanks” or a nod instead of restating the sentence.

Personal aims versus lookalike lesson aims and procedures

Use the table as a sorting drill. On the paper you will not get a heading labelled “lookalike.” You will get four notes and four headings.

The lively-pace trap

A note that says the teacher will keep the pace lively is a personal aim. It is not a learner aim, not a stage aim, and not a procedure. Pace is a teacher-management behaviour. Learners can be energetic as a result, but the plan heading still belongs to the teacher.

Candidates miss this when the option bank includes “to motivate learners” or “to make the lesson enjoyable.” Motivation and enjoyment can be reasons for an activity, or even subsidiary affective aims if they are written as learner outcomes. “Keep the pace lively” is still about how the teacher runs the hour. On a matching task, map it to personal aim.

Simplifying teacher language is the same family. Graded language is a teacher skill. “Use short sentences and one instruction at a time in the pre-task stage” is a personal aim. “Learners will understand the instructions” is a hoped-for result, not the heading.

Worked example: grammar lesson

Sixteen B1 teenagers; 45 minutes. Main aim: learners can tell a short anecdote using past continuous interrupted by past simple (I was waiting for the bus when it started to rain). Subsidiary aim: learners listen for gist in the teacher’s model story. Stage aims: activate holiday verbs; notice form on a timeline; complete a controlled gap-fill; tell a partner a two-event story.

A defensible personal aim for this lesson: reduce TTT during clarification by using the timeline and three concept-checking questions instead of a five-minute lecture.

What does not belong in the personal-aim box:

• “Learners will enjoy talking about holidays” — a vague learner affective aim, and usually untestable.
• “Students practise speaking” — a procedure slogan, not an aim of any kind.
• “Present the past continuous” — a teacher procedure, and still not a development target unless you specify how you will present differently from last week.

If last week’s observer comment was “You filled the board with eight full sentences and the class waited,” this week’s personal aim should be board work even if the language aim stays the same. Personal aims track the teacher across lessons; language aims track the syllabus item.

Worked example: skills lesson

Twelve adult pre-intermediate learners; 60 minutes. Main aim: learners can scan a job advert for four details (salary, hours, location, start date). Subsidiary aim: learners ask a partner for a missing detail. Procedures: work lead-in, pre-teach shift and overtime, timed scan, pair check, feedback.

A useful personal aim: give scanning instructions once from the front, then check with ICQs (“Are you going to read every word?” “How many minutes do you have?”) instead of walking the room repeating the task.

A lookalike that is not a personal aim: “Learners will scan for specific information.” That is the main aim. Another lookalike: “Teacher hands out the adverts.” That is a procedure. The personal aim is the improvement the teacher is practising while doing those procedures.

Writing a personal aim that survives a matching task

1. Start with I or the teacher, not learners.
2. Name a behaviour from the list above (TTT, ICQs, elicitation, monitoring, board, timing, quieter learners, echo, graded language, pace).
3. Locate it in a stage (“during clarification,” “in pair-work monitoring”).
4. Make it checkable.

Then keep learner aims in their own rows. Module 2 is not asking whether personal aims are more important than main aims. It is asking whether you can label the box when a lively-pace note sits next to a scan aim.

How to read the diagram on an exam item

If the stem is about what learners will be able to do, stay on the left branch: main, subsidiary, or stage aim. If the stem is about what the teacher is trying to do better—pace, graded language, ICQs, TTT, echo, nominating quieter learners, leaner board work—stay on the right branch: personal aim. The two branches share a document. They do not share a heading.