Giving Students Practice Chapter 6: Holding the Reins and Letting Them Loose –
One thing to avoid is letting students make a habit of an error. Once engrained,
bad habits are really difficult to root out. For example, students say things like
‘Is good!’ and ‘I gonna do it’, even though they know the correct grammar, just
because no one forced them to break the habit initially. So while the students
are practising, monitor closely.
This practice is called controlled because of the limited range of what the
students have to do, not because you stand over them commenting on every
word. That would be counter-productive. You need to step back and let them
get on with it, but make notes.
Use the feedback session immediately after the activity to root out any prob-
lems you’ve picked up on and tackle additional questions from the students.
Keep the target language as priority though. After all, if you spend too much
time going through errors in other areas, students may forget what the pri-
mary aim of the lesson is. You can cover any significant error that’s off the
point right at the end of the lesson.
Make your Practice activities long enough to allow you to go round and listen
to everyone in the class. You’re bound to miss some errors, but that’s life! And
by the way, arrange the room so you can walk around as easily as possible.
Practising with the whole class fi rst
During Presentation you had the attention of the entire class (hopefully).
So the transition from Presentation to Practice is seamless if you continue
to work with the entire group. This also allows you to offer correction that
benefits everyone; after all, the students are likely to make similar errors. You
can egg them on, offer reassurance that they’re doing well and quickly spot
anything you’d forgotten to include, before the students work in small groups
out of earshot. Doing practice activities with the whole class gives students
tools for doing the activity that follows, because the practice activities serve
as examples.
Pairing up with a student
Open pairs is one way of practising while you remain in control. In an open
pairs exercise, you ask a student questions or role play in full view and hear-
ing of everyone else in the room. The class sees an example of how to use
the new piece of language, but because you’re one of the partners in the
exchange, the level of accuracy is very high. Students also know that you’ll
point out immediately any mistake made by your partner.
You can continue open pairs with two students as partners, but still in front
of everyone else. You have slightly less control but still plenty of opportunity
for correction – by you or the classmates.
