Page 84 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

Chapter 4: Starting from the Beginning: Planning the Lesson
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Figure 4-4:
Bad and good exercises.
Bad exercise
Example: He/like/cats – He likes cats
1) She/drink/coffee – She ..................................................... 2) It/eat/fish – It .....................................................
Good exercise
Example: What is Peter’s favourite animal? (like)
He likes cats
1) What does Mrs Smith do in the morning? (drink/coffee)
............................................................................................
2) What does the cat have for dinner? (eat/fish)
............................................................................................
Giving your students free practice
By the time you reach the production stage of the lesson, the students should be fairly comfortable with the new language point. After all, they’ve heard what you had to say about it and practised it for themselves. Now, in this stage they get to practise in a freer way. In the production stage the aim is for the students to be fluent and use the language in a natural way rather than just an accurate way.
When students engage in free production activities, they have a chance to express themselves and show off all they know that’s relevant to the topic. They have the opportunity to use the new language point but they can decide when to use it and when to opt for something else.
Storytelling is a typical activity for production exercises. There’s a theme but not a sentence by sentence structure. Other activities include debates and