1. Prepare

You may feel perfectly clear in your own mind about what needs clarifying, and therefore think that you can improvise a clear explanation. But experience shows that teachers' explanations are often not as clear to their students as they are to themselves! It is worth preparing: thinking for a while about the words you will use, the illustrations you will provide, and so on; possibly even writing these out.

2. Make sure you have the class's full attention

In ongoing language practice learners' attention may sometimes stray; they can usually make up what they have lost later. But if you are explaining something essential, they must attend. This may be the only chance they have to get some vital information; if they miss bits, they may find themselves in difficulties later. One of the implications of this when giving instructions for a group-work task is that it is advisable to give the instructions before you divide the class into groups or give out materials, not after! Once they are in groups, learners' attention will be naturally directed to each other rather than to you; and if they have written or pictorial material in their hands, the temptation will be to look at it, which may also distract.

3. Present the information more than once

A repetition or paraphrase of the necessary information may make all the difference: learners' attention wanders occasionally, and it is important to give them more than one chance to understand what they have to do. Also, it helps to re-present the information in a different mode: for example, say it and also write it up on the board.

4. Be brief

Learners - in fact, all of us - have only a limited attention span; they cannot listen to you for very long at maximum concentration. Make your explanation as brief as you can, compatible with clarity. This means thinking fairly carefully about what you can, or should, omit, as much as about what you should include! In some situations it may also mean using the learners' mother tongue, as a more accessible and cost-effective alternative to the sometimes lengthy and difficult target-language explanation.

5. Illustrate with examples

Very often a careful theoretical explanation only 'comes together' for an audience when made real through an example, or preferably several. You may explain, for instance, the meaning of a word, illustrating your explanation with examples of its use in various contexts, relating these as far as possible to the learners' own lives and experiences. Similarly, when giving instructions for an activity, it often helps to do a 'dry run': an actual demonstration of the activity yourself with the full class or with a volunteer student before inviting learners to tackle the task on their own.

6. Get feedback

When you have finished explaining, check with your class that they have understood. It is not enough just to ask 'Do you understand?'; learners will sometimes say they did even if they in fact did not, out of politeness or unwillingness to lose face, or because they think they know what they have to do, but have in fact completely misunderstood! It is better to ask them to do Something that Will Show their Understanding; to paraphrase in their own words, or provide further illustrations of their own.

Основная литература: 4, 5, 41, 42, 46

Дополнительная литература: 52, 54, 67, 78.

Тема лекции №3.

Practice activities

3.1 Characteristics of a good practice activity

3.2 Practice techniques

3.3 Sequence and progression in practice

Practice can be roughly defined as the rehearsal of certain behaviours with the objective of consolidating learning and improving performance. Language learners can benefit from being told, and understanding, facts about the language only up to a point: ultimately, they have to acquire an intuitive, automatized knowledge which will enable ready and fluent comprehension and self-expression. And such knowledge is normally brought about through consolidation of learning through practice. This is true of first language acquisition as well as of second language learning in either 'immersion' or formal classroom situations. Language learning has much in common with the learning of other skills, and it may be helpful at this point to think about what learning a skill entails.

Characteristics of effective language practice