Teaching method

Listening & Reading skill:

Lead in:
- Ask questions around the topic.
- Show a video, pictures for students to discuss.
- Play a game (vocab …)
Pre-Listening/Reading:
- Setting the context: give an idea about who is speaking, where and why.
- Generating interest: show pictures, pair work discussion about the topic
- Activate current knowledge: what do they know about the topic? Where are
they? What are they? What problems do they face? Why are they important?
What might people do? ….
- Acquiring knowledge: students may have limited general knowledge about a
topic. Providing knowledge input will build their confidence for dealing with a
listening. This could be done by giving a related text to read or, a little more
fun, a quiz.
- Activating vocabulary / language. Knowledge-based activities can serve this
purpose, but there are other things that can be done. They can brainstorm
language beforehand, and then perform the scene. By having the time to think
about the language needs of a situation, they will be excellently prepared to
cope with the listening.
- Predicting content
Once we know the context for something, we are able to predict possible
content. Try giving students a choice of things that they may or may not expect
to hear, and ask them to choose those they think will be mentioned.
- Pre-learning vocabulary
When we listen in our first language we can usually concentrate on the overall
meaning because we know the meaning of the vocabulary. For students, large
numbers of unknown words will often hinder listening, and certainly lower
confidence. Select some vocabulary for the students to study before listening,
perhaps matching words to definitions, followed by a simple practice activity
such as filling the gaps in sentences.
- Checking / understanding the listening tasks
By giving your students plenty of time to read and understand the main
listening comprehension tasks, you allow them to get some idea of the content
of the listening. They may even try to predict answers before listening.

While listening - Reading.

Global comprehension (understand the very general ideals or gist of the listening text)
 - Allow students to listen to the text two or three times as a whole before going
to intensive listening.
- Encourage student to focus on global meaning first and don't pose questions
that ask them for details after the first listen.
- Encourage students to make assumptions after the first listen and verify them
after the second listen.
- Focus your questions and attention at this stage on the segments of the texts
that are accessible to the students in terms of vocabulary and structures. Always
remember that students don't need to "get" everything in the text.

Intensive listening:
- Getting more detailed understanding of some segments of the text
- Transcribing certain segments in the text
- Guessing the meaning of a word or phrase from context
- Looking at certain grammatical structures in the text to see how they can aid
comprehension, etc.
Post-listening/reading
- Reaction to the content of the text: discus what they’ve heard (do they agree or
disagree or even believe what they have heard?) or it could be some kind of reuse of
the information they have heard.
- Summarize information
- Analysis of language: focusing students on linguistic features of the text
(Take the form of an analysis of verb forms from a script of the listening text or
vocabulary or collocation work)

Vocabulary:
- Choose a vocabulary topic, tell students to write a list of words they associate
with this topic
- Pre-teach / revise structures for definitions e.g. It’s a thing which / that.... You
use it for... You find this in.... It’s an animal / object / place... It’s the opposite
of... etc.
- Tell students to look at their lists and give them time to think of how they can
define these words (3 -5 mins).
- Now students work in pairs (or groups of 3) to define their words. Their partner
must guess the word they are defining.
- A faster moving, fun alternative to this activity is a team game.
- Change the vocabulary to lists of famous people / books / films / objects.
- Each team writes a list for another team (students can also 3 or 4 words each on
strips of paper to draw out of a hat)
- Pre-teach / revise structures for definitions e.g. It’s a thing which / that.... You
use it for... It’s a film / book / object.... He/

Writing lessons
 - Using a sample text is a good way to model output and language for a writing
task. I guess this is similar to a text based presentation really. Below is the
framework for a writing lesson that was suggested on my CELTA:
- Lead-in – generate interest, set topic
- Reading (optional) – provide a model of the text type
- Language preparation – vocabulary, expressions, etc. that are introduced
through the reading or by the teacher. These include specific features of the text
type (e.g. layout)
- Content preparation – students’ think of ideas via a mind map, notes, etc.
- Writing – the production stage
- Feedback to content
- Feedback to language – including error correction
- In practice my writing lessons almost always include providing a model. I often
use writing as a follow-up activity after reading/listening, but I’m normally
interested in the content rather than any language, and rarely provide specific
language input in that instance. This is the framework I’ve referred to the least
– I rarely teach lessons with a specific writing focus. Plus, when I do they seem
to follow this pattern quite naturally – they must have taught me well on the
course!
- Top tip – always feedback to content before feedback to language’. This is one
of the most useful tips. Students are often very keen to share what they’ve
written with others, especially if they’ve written something funny. Give them a
chance to discuss the content first to show what they’ve produced is actually
important/interesting, rather than just correcting their errors.

Speaking lessons
Warmer – lead in: to set the lesson context and engage the students in the activities.

Pre – speaking stage: Preparing the students for the context and making it much
more understandable for the students through teaching a couple of new vocabulary or
the blocking vocabulary and structures.
- Play a video or recording relating to the topic and get students to answer some
questions.
- Construct though webs and graphic organizers
- Read and search
- Listen
- Jot down ideas
- Reflect upon personal experience
 Determine speaking format:
- Conversation
- Discussion
 - Formal speech
- Dramatic presentation
- Monologue
- Readers theatre.

=> Help students to plan and organize before speaking.

While-Speaking (Controlled Practice)

- Discuss or develop with students criteria for a variety of formal and informal
speaking formats and post these on board.
- Model a variety of formal and informal speaking formats for students (handouts,
videos or recordings)
- Make available to students audio and video equipment so that they can practise prior
to formal speaking situations
Post - Speaking (Production Stage)
Reflect upon their performance (oral or written)
Set goals for improvement
Peer feedback
Helping the students enhance their writing skills in the context.
Back-up (freer activity) (3-5 minutes)
Helping the students enhance their speaking ability letting them interviewing their
classmates.

Grammar
Deductive: when the rule is presented and language is produced based on the rule
Inductive: when the rule is inferred through some form of guided discovery. (Teacher
gives the student a means to discover the rule for themselves)

Presentation – practice – Production

Presentation
- Teacher presents the new language in a meaningful context. (Build up stories on the
board, use realia or flashcards and mining to present the language.)
- Ask for students’ opinion then introduce the target language.
- Practice and drill the sentence orally before writing it on the board (positive,
negative, question and short answer.
- Focus on form by asking the students questions.
- Move on to the practice stage of the lesson.
Practice
- Use controlled activities at this stage that progress from very structured (students are
given activities that provide little possibility for error) to less-structured (as they
master the material). Ex: gap-fill exercise, substitution drills, sentence
transformations, split sentences, picture dictations, class questionnaires, reordering
sentences and matching sentences to pictures.
Production
- The students take the target language and use it in conversations that they structure
(ideally) and use it to talk about themselves or their daily lives or situations
- It is important to monitor and make a note of any errors so that you can build in class
feedback and error analysis at the end of the lesson.

Test – Teach – Test

Use this framework for language based lessons (specifically grammar and vocabulary)

Lead-in – generate interest in the topic

Test

- to diagnose the students familiarity and ability to use the target language. This stage
may be executed with a simple restricted practice activity (e.g. gap-fill, matching,
categorizing) or a freer speaking activity designed to encourage use of the target
language (e.g. role-play with giving advice - target language 'should'). Feedback from
this activity will give us the necessary information to make the correct choices in the
teach stage.

Teach

This stage needs extensive planning in order to get right. Remember that the first test
can result in one of two situations. Either the students show significant familiarity
with the target language, or not.

- In the first case, the teach stage can be shortened to save room for more productive
practice and error-correction. One might simply ask a few well-placed CCQs about the
grammar or the more difficult lexis items, then elicit forms and highlight tricky
pronunciation areas before drilling.

- In the second case, however, it becomes necessary to present and clarify the target
language in context. Here, an easy solution is revert to guided discovery. Provide the
students with a text (reading or listening) which presents the target language in
context. Then highlight the language and clarify it as you would in a PPP lesson
before moving on to the last test stage.

Test
- Observe the students use of the target language in a freer setting. This should involve
setting up a speaking (or potentially writing) task with a communicative goal (as
mentioned in a previous article), but no restrictions on language use (i.e. don't tell
students what to say or how to say it in terms of grammar/lexis). => allows the teacher
to monitor and observe how well the target language has been absorbed and integrated
into students use. This stage can then be followed with delayed error-correction
focusing on how students used the new language and highlighting the
differences/improvements from the first test stage.
Engage – study – activate

- Engage: This is the point in a teaching sequence where teachers try to arouse the
student’s interest, thus involving their emotions.
- Study: study activities are those where the students are asked to focus in on
language (or information) and how it is constructed. They range from the study and
practice of a single sound to an investigation of how a writer achieves a particular
effect in a long text.
Students can study in a variety of different styles: the teacher can explain grammar,
they can study language evidence to discover grammar for themselves, they can work
in groups studying a reading text or vocabulary. But whatever the style, study means
any stage at which the construction of language is the main focus.
- Activate: this element describes exercises and activities which are designed to get
the students using language as freely and communicatively as they can. The objective
for the students is not to focus on language construction and/or practice specific bits of
language (grammar patterns, particular vocabulary items or functions) but for them to
use all and any language which may be appropriate for a given situation or topic

Task-based approaches

Scrivener (2011:32) says that a Task-Based Learning (TBL) approach is a variant of

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and it focuses on ‘the preparation for,
doing of, and reflective analysis of tasks that reflect real life needs and skills’. We
didn’t cover TBL much on the CELTA – I think the British Council have summarised
that pretty well here too. We’ve been using TBL approaches on our CELTA Young
Learner extension course recently, with these main components:

Pre-task – students prepare for completion of the core task. They are given
appropriate language input (or choose the language they need themselves), the core
task is modelled, success criteria is highlighted, etc.

Core task – students complete the main task

Post task – extension work based on the main task, which normally involves feedback
or use of main task content, delayed error correction, etc