Chapter 4: Starting from the Beginning: Planning the Lesson 63
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