Lesson Planning in English Language Teaching: A Systematic Review of Pedagogical Frameworks, Practices, and Implementation Challenges

Lesson planning is a core aspect of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL). However, research on lesson planning extends beyond the production of written lesson plans and encompasses the development of teachers’ ability to plan consistently, effectively and responsively. Literature broadly reflects four strands that are not always sufficiently interconnected: general planning components, skill-specific models, language-component models, and cross-cutting principles. This review pulls together these strands with a practical purpose: to identify the aspects of lesson-planning guidance that are backed by evidence and where important gaps exist. The search and screening process was guided by the PRISMA 2020 statement and resulted in the selection of 28 sources, mostly published after 2016, with independent verification of the bibliographic details of all the sources included. Selected literature was thematically synthesized based on planning components, frameworks, principles, obstacles, and prospects. The findings indicate that the technical aspects of lesson planning, such as the setting of learning objectives, the organization of language-skills lessons around pre-, while- and post-activity stages and the use of instructional frameworks such as Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), are fairly well established. Differentiation, inclusion and the ongoing incorporation of technology are still more difficult. Teachers usually find the principles valuable, but they do not always implement them consistently. The evidence reviewed suggests that this inconsistency is due less to teacher knowledge deficits than to contextual and structural constraints such as large class sizes, limited training opportunities, lack of planning time, and institutional barriers.