Page 107 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

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Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
lesson you aim to get the students concentrating on the new words or grammar without them showing off everything else they know. The students take their first tentative steps at using the words to test whether they can get it right.
Some of the many benefits of the Practice activities include:
✓ They help the students to focus on accuracy. This doesn’t mean that the activities should be dry, meaningless exercises like the old days of Latin lessons. It’s very important that you challenge students with an activity that can only be completed if they really understand how the piece of language works. You should be able to predict the the students’ responses, though. In these exercises the answers are predictable because there’s only one correct way to complete the sentences. In the following examples the only possible answers are have, has and/or the past participle form of the verb given.
An example of a bad practice activity first:
Complete these sentences in the Present Perfect Example: I . . . (have) seen that movie.
They . . . visited the zoo.
You . . . read that book.
We . . . eaten there.
Students can simply take a guess and write ‘have’ in every gap. Here’s an improvement:
Complete these sentences in the Present Perfect, using the verb in parentheses.
Example: I . . . have seen . . . that movie. (to see) They . . . the zoo. (to visit)
She . . . that book. (to read)
We . . . there. (to eat)
Notice that students have to apply the grammar rule more vigorously to come up with ‘has’ for the third person she.
✓ These exercises force attention on the new piece of language through frequent repetition. Students can fix their attention on the new point without being distracted by too many other rules they’ve learned.
At the same time, by repeating the new language, students form new habits in the brain.
✓ This type of exercise allows students to come to a gradual recognition of the new language in a safe way. That is to say, the students feel very supported.