Within the empirical teaching philosophies, understanding the fact that every move by the teacher in class should have a well-defined objective is the first step when designing the teaching plan and class activities. That is to say, a class activity or a certain task designed for the students must have a reason. The students are expected obtain some benefit or acquire certain skill through the class activities. Therefore, any classroom activity is considered as ineffective without fulfilling a purpose or an objective, which should be avoided.

By having an objective, in particular, it means, in class, one must focus on checking if the objective behind class activity is fulfilled or not. Why do I design and perform such an activity for students? Has it met the purpose? For example, after finishing all the in-text quizzes in a reading class on the subject of Geography of New Zealand, if a teacher decides to ask the students to explore on six more self-designed questions of different aspects of New Zealand, he or she must keep in mind that the objective of asking students those extra questions. The questions asked must have a specific purpose, such as in order to dig deeper on the already introduced history of the Maori people or to improve the students' translation skills by asking them to translate certain sentence.

The teacher must explain or at least know for oneself that the purpose or the importance of such activities: whether it is to practice the use of English or to prepare for the exam etc. What should not happen is just to ask the additional questions around the circle again without knowing the benefits of answering those questions for students. Another example is that if multimedia apparatus, a video clip for instance, is to use in the warm-up section in a listening class, the choice of the video must be related to the topic and the purpose of using that video must be clear, either to introduce important concepts, to teach vocabulary or to lead in the students to the topic of the class. The playing of a video clip to students watching with their mind turned off and with their arms crossed up talking to each other is a failure of applying a multimedia tool in class, as it serves no function to the class at all.

As a result, one must be aware of the objectives of the class activities. Within an effective lesson plan, every step of doing must have a clear purpose, whether it is to introduce, lead in or summarize.