Hey, Grade Teachers! 

We're back with our weekly English newsletter, full of great ideas to enhance your teaching experience. And today we'd like to ask you one question – How often do you have to change the instructions for the exercises in the coursebook or use other teaching materials in class?

Most of us do this all the time, especially after the completion of the CELTA course, as we really want to add more communication and interactivity to the sometimes really boring tasks from the book. Students are also more willing to do the tasks where they need to interact with each other rather than gap fills or opening the brackets. Today, we will share a few ways to help you diversify your lessons and help your students hone their accuracy – grammatical and lexical. However, let's talk about everything in order.

What is controlled practice?

Controlled practice is a stage of a lesson in which students use learned vocabulary or grammar with certain limitations. Such tasks usually focus on building their accuracy rather than fluency. Usually, the tasks given by the teacher at this stage of the lesson contain such elements as:

• repeating;
• scaffolding;
• focusing on target language (TL).

The tasks at this stage of the lesson can focus on one of the systems: vocabulary, grammar, functions (as well as spelling and pronunciation).

What is not controlled practice?

• questions on comprehension of a reading or listening passage;
• guided discovery;
• noticing tasks;
• tasks which focus on fluency.

Let’s have a look at some examples of tasks that a teacher can do with students at this stage of the lesson, usually after presenting new vocabulary or grammar.

Drilling

This teaching technique involves the oral repetition of a certain TL. Drills can be mechanical – with no specific context – or meaningful – within a specific context. Ideally, the context should be meaningful. However, many popular language learning apps, such as Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, rely heavily on mechanical repetition. Watch the video to learn some examples of how the drills can be used.

Bingo

Distribute grids with words, sounds, or grammar items to students (depending on the focus of your lesson). Students should cross out the items in the bingo cells (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) on their worksheet as they listen to  what you say. Here are a few variations of the game:

• Vocabulary. The teacher reads a word, definition, or hint (This animal goes ‘moo’) for each word or phrase in the grid (Cow).
• Pronunciation. The teacher reads the different words, and the students should tick which word they hear on their sheets. Note that the words should be chosen strategically, i.e. minimal pairs with specific sounds that are difficult for students to pronounce (e.g. ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’).
• Grammar. The teacher reads the sentence and the students have to indicate which grammatical rule corresponds to the sentence. Example: 'I have been to Spain' = Present Perfect.

Crosswords

They are also great controlled practice activities that can be done both individually and in pairs or groups. 

• Individually. Each student works on  a crossword and then checks the answers with a partner before all students do the whole class feedback with the teacher.
• In pairs or groups. Students work in pairs / groups, solving a crossword puzzle together.
• Information gap. One student has half the answers to the crossword puzzle and the other student has the other half. The first student gives clues for answers, and the second has to guess the answer by clues. Then they change roles.

Find a great tool for creating your own crossword puzzles here.

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