1) Lead-in 2) Pre-language focus (4 ideas) 3) Language / Skills focus 4) Controlled Practice 5) Freer Practice 6) Post-stage
Within these 6 boxes are multiple suggestions in bullet points. In particular, stage 2 has 4 different possibilities (numbered) depending on the type of lesson you are doing. The aligned procedure bullet points correspond to them.
For feedback, again these are multiple suggestions. I’m not suggesting you do all of these!
Stage / Why am I doing this? / Procedure Possibilities / Feedback (post-stage) / Time
Lead-in / To activate schemata, to generate interest, to focus students on lesson topic /
- Ask “Do you remember…” from yesterday
- Ask students what they know about something
- Show a picture, what is it of?
- Show a headline / text summary – what do you think it’s about (prediction)
- Students make a list
- Students watch a video clip / listen to an audio clip and react
- Students summarise key language points
- Students feed back in groups and agree / disagree
- As above
- As above
- Give points for accuracy of spelling, genre etc.
- Could be comprehension questions, opinion questions, group discussion, brief task
Pre-Language Focus
1) Text (Reading / Listening
2)Task (Writing / Speaking)
3) Test (Grammar / Vocabulary)
4) Presentation / To allow students to discover new language in authentic context
To allow students to attempt a task on topic. To focus students on what they can’t do
To evaluate students’ understanding of language
To introduce new language /
- Students process text for meaning / listen for comprehension.
- Teacher asks personalised questions – encourage students to respond with opinion
- Could give text in two stages, second time with language focus bolded – guided discovery
- Set up task clearly – give parameters so students aren’t distracted. (Eg if they are doing a role play in a bank, give them info like what they want, who they are speaking to)
- Students perform task
- Students answer self-evaluation questions to understand where their gaps are
- Focus of lesson outlined and test given, with time limit
- Elicitation questions, language analysis procedure followed (see below)
- Through student opinion
- Students could be asked to highlight language points (“Underline all examples of past simple”) in prep for language focus
- Emerging language (MPFA)
- Through the students’ self-evaluation
- Delayed error correction of language as a lead-in to language focus
- Input of useful lexis / grammar before task is expanded
- Peer to peer, then teacher-led feedback. Ask students “Why” they got the answers they did, and check other students agree before validation
- Through controlled practice stage (see below)
10-15 minutes
10 minutes
15 minutes
Language Focus / To introduce or develop new language and focus students on meaning, form, pronunciation and register / appropriacy /
- Language is boarded – either elicited from text / test examples or focus is directed by teacher
- Focus on meaning first
- Focus on form – looking at collocation, boarding sentences, not individual words
- Focus on Pron – stress, pron within a sentence, intonation
- Focus on appropriacy – is it a positive or negative word / formal or informal / any connotations?
- If it’s grammar, when do we use it and what message does it communicate?
- Don’t worry about “Teacher Talking Time” – this section is where you teach
- Students have the chance to negotiate meaning by asking questions. Make sure you are nominating and checking agreement / understanding at all times
Controlled Practice (If you are teaching grammar / vocab / discourse / phonology)
If you are teaching a skill (Speaking / Reading / Writing / Listening, skip this stage – students ought to be practising the skill again – see below) / To give students the chance to interact with target language and recall stages of the language focus / A controlled practice is where students are practising in an environment where this is only one correct answer
- Gap fill – sentences or gapped text (could be a repeat of the text from pre-language focus)
- Drilling – individual / choral / repetitive (“y’know y’know y’know…” – now say it faster), peer drilling
- Language exercise – matching / discrimination / course book exercises
- Peer feedback before whole class feedback. This doesn’t necessarily need to be pairs; could be groups, vary interaction patterns, students CAN move!
- As above, ask students if they agree, encourage discussion before validating an answer
Freer Practice / Skills Practice / To give students the opportunity to interact with the target language
To provide students with a realistic context in which they can use the target language
To check students have understood MFPA of target language / If you are teaching a skill, this is where students practise the skill for the longest time. If you are teaching one of the four systems, they need to be producing this through some kind of speaking (or writing, if the system is written discourse) activity here. In this situation, new language can ‘emerge’ because students have more freedom to experiment
- Students read and respond to some questions containing target language
- Students are given a scenario in which the teacher knows they will need to use the target language (eg role play in a shop for making requests)
- A test
- A task – something where the students have a goal to reach
- Students can reflect on their own success
- Teacher responds directly to student success at using target language – error correction, boarding correct and incorrect language
- Teacher may wish to make students who have been particularly successful repeat the activity to the class
- With a test, revise MPFA as you go through the answers
Post-stage / Closing / To allow for emerging language
To get student feedback on the lesson
To provide students with the opportunity to practice chatting /
- Board new language that has been requested / not used during your monitoring
- What did we study? What can you do better now? How / Why?
- Don’t be afraid to chat!