Writing and Speaking Tasks

In a writing or speaking lesson, there are different tasks compared to a reading or listening lesson. Here is the structure and some examples for a productive skills lesson:

Controlled practice: This is to improve writing or speaking accuracy

This can include:

• Gap-fill exercises
• 50/50 choice questions
• Changing something in a sentence

Then remind students of the context of the lesson

Free practice: This is to improve fluency and it requires a specific context 

This can include

• Group writing
• Presentations
• Debates
• Role-plays

When setting a free practice task, include:

• The language structure
• Context
• Task (what they need to do)
• Procedure (how they are going to do it)

Reading and Listening Sub-Skills

When you are teaching reading or listening, there are sub-skills that you will be focusing on teaching your students. These are:

Gist/skimming

• Short time, read quickly
• Don't need to read every word
• Get a general understanding of the text
• Give task before they read or listen so they can look for it

Specific information/scanning

• Answers are easy to find
• Don't need to think about the meaning
• The words in the questions are similar/related to the words in the text

Detail (comprehension)

• Requires students to think a bit 
• Need to understand the text and context to answer the questions
• Need to read more slowly and carefully

Guessing meaning from context

• Includes some new words
• Read text then use what they've learnt to answer questions
• Afterwards use CCQs and drill to check that they have understood the meaning and pronunciation

Reading for inference (reading between the lines)

• Need a deep understanding of the text
• The answers can't be specifically found in a particular sentence or part of the text
• Requires the students to make assumptions based on what they have read

Drilling

Drilling is another method that you will use in lessons. This is to help the students to pronounce the lexis.

How to drill:

When planning- 

• Have the word or sentence on the board
• Have the phonemes below potential problem words
• Show circles above parts of the word or sentence that are stressed (but let these come up after you have drilled)

During the lesson-

• Model the word or sentence
• Ask everybody or particular people to say it, you can do this numerous times 
• You can ask them where the stress is and then show it on the board

Eliciting

Eliciting is a way to obtain the answer from students without giving them the answer. You can elicit by:

• Including a picture and asking them what they think the picture is of
• Using the meaning of a word and asking 'what do we call...'

You can use elicting at the beginning of a lesson to set the context but you can also use it to introduce new words and phrases.

Elicting is used to teach lexis alonside CCQs and drilling.

Planning and Teaching: CCQs

Concept check questions, or CCQs, are very important for teaching English as a language. These are questions you use to check the learners' understanding of the context and meaning at different points of the lesson. You should include your CCQs in your lesson plan and make sure you ask them during lessons. 

So how do you come up with CCQs? Well when you do your lesson plan and your language analysis you will highlight any words or concepts that you think could be a potential problem for students to understand. In your language analysis you will include a definition for words and phrases and this is what will help you to create those questions. 

• Look at the context of the word or phrase you are teaching
• What is the meaning?
• What could students think it means that it does not?

You can use these misunderstandings to come up with your questions. Your questions should be short and to the point. Answers should be short, for example yes or no or past, present or future etc.

CCQs check the students' understanding of the meaning and context of a word or phrase. They should be simple and not above the language level of the students. Do not use the word or phrase in your question!

If you are teaching grammar, your CCQs should be focused on the grammar point in the sentence in context from your lesson.

Grammar Lesson Structure: Guided Discovery

One way of structuring a grammar lesson is to use guided discovery. This is where you use examples followed by the meaning, form and pronunciation of the grammar and then practice of using the grammar. 

An example structure of a guided discovery lesson:

• Set the context using pictures and eliciting 
• Personalise the context by asking students to discuss their own experiences related to the topic
• Receptive task (listening or reading)
• Grammar: meaning
• Grammar: form
• Grammar: pronunciation
• Controlled practice (help students understand the use of the grammar with a limited task)
• Free practice: a productive task (writing or speaking) to help the students with forming the grammar themselves

Hint: remember to use your lesson plan and language analysis to help with all of this.

Classroom Activities and Resources: Realia

Realia are the real world resources you use in activities or to demonstrate something. These can include newspapers, magazines, recipe books, leaflets etc. Anything that was not created specifically for teaching. These resources help students to learn by being exposed to real things. It also helps them to be engaged with the topic and motivates them to be able to understand it. 

Some things to consider when choosing realia, or an authentic text are:

• The language level of the learners
• Any cultural sensitivities
• The age of the learners (try to find something they will find interesting)
• The length of the text
• Whether the text effectively demonstrates your teaching point

If you have an online text, you can use this website to check what level of learners the text is suitable for. You can use a resource that is 1 above your students' level to challenge them.

Classroom Activities: Storytelling

So this can work both ways. As a teacher, it is so important to use examples, or stories, when explaining concepts and lexis. Use physical things, facial expressions and body actions to show the meaning of what you are teaching. Allow students to ask questions, explain their understanding or discuss their own examples. You should include any stories/examples in your lesson plan ahead of time so you don't forget to use them and so you use them at the right part of the lesson.

It is also important to allow the students to tell stories. This helps the students in speaking and understanding and it also helps the other students with listening and understanding. Students really help each other in the classroom to explain things to each other and it also allows them to question each other and the teacher to improve understanding. 

Remember that TTT (teacher talking time) should not take over the lesson. Allow the students plenty of time for tasks and to give their own feedback. 

It is also important to allow students to give examples from their own lives or things that they think of and to frame any feedback you give them in a positive light: use positive reinforcement when students have used a term correctly or given a good example. Write down any mistakes you notice and correct them at the end of the lesson with a statement such as 'one thing I heard was (insert example), is this correct?' and see if the students can correct it. If they can't, show them the correct answer and explain.

Classroom Activities and Resources: Story Pictures

Pictures can be used to help students to tell a story and see the actions taking place. You can use pictures of actual short stories, or comics. Or you can put some different images together to show a story and assist the students in using their vocabularly to explain what is happening or to help them with writing, reading or listening. Images are very important when teaching English as without images and your actions, the topic or lexis would be taught in an abstract way and students would find it very difficult to understand!

Make sure you include pictures in your presentations, handouts and any activities where necessary. 

Classroom Activities and Resources: Flashcards

In English language teaching, flashcards is the term used for pictures, diagrams or words that you can hold up in front of your students to assist in their understanding.

Demonstration and examples are very important when teaching English. They help the students to understand the language in context and to better understand the meaning, for example, of different tenses. 

You can find images on the internet or from books, magazines, newspapers or leaflets and you can create diagrams yourself. It's a good idea to save anything you create so you can use it in future lessons or adapt it if things didn't go so well and your resources could use some improving to help the students further. 

Laminate or stick pictures to cardboard so that they are more durable. It's a good idea to organise any paper and digital resources by topic so that you have everything in one place for easy reference in the future.