Part 3
Background to language teaching
Unit 15   Presentation techniques and introductory activities
What are presentation techniques and introductory activities?
Presentation techniques are ways used by the teacher to present (introduce to learners for the first time) new language such as vocabulary, grammatical structures and pronunciation. Introductory activities are those used by a^teacher to introduce a lesson or teaching topic.
Key concepts
Look at the presentation stages (the areas that are shaded) in these descriptions of two lessons for elementary-level secondary-school students. How are the stages different?
Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP) lesson	Taskrbased Learning (TBI) lesson
Aim: students learn the difference between countable and uncountable nouns, and when to use a and some with them. Procedure: 1 Ask students what food and drink they like at birthday parties. 2 Stick on the board magazine pictures of different party foods. (They should be a mixture of countable and uncountable nouns e.g. ice cream, sandwiches, cola, fruit, bananas, chicken legs, cake, a box of sweets.) 3 Ask students the names of the food items, write the names on the board under each picture and then do a quick choral drill on the pronunciation of these words.	Aim: students choose food and drinks for a birthday party. Procedure: 1 Hold a discussion with the students about when their birthdays are, what presents they would like, what good birthday parties they have been to and what they like to eat and drink at birthday parties. 2 Put students into small groups and give them a worksheet with the pictures, names and prices of lots of party food and drink on it. 3 Tell the students to do this task: choose the food and drink they would like for a birthday party for ten friends keepingwithin a price limit e.g. $10. 4 The students do the task while the teacher goes round the class listening and answering any questions. 5 Each group tells the other groups what decisions they have made.
Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP) lesson	Task-based Learning (TBI) lesson
q «•-!* 1 fhV-il f - r-/e-T-rr'olik'->   k* il 8 Students do a written gap-fill exercise, filling the gaps with a or some. 9 Students work in pairs with a worksheet of pictures of food and drink items. One student tells the other what they'd like for their party, e.g. 'I'd like some/a...', while the.other student takes notes. Then they swap roles.	:he new
The introductory stage of a lesson helps students to settle into the lesson and focus on its content. There are two kinds of introductory activities: warmers and lead-ins. Warmers are often used to raise students' energy levels or to make them feel comfortable. They are not always connected to the topic of the lesson, for example, they could be a quiz, game or pairwork activity. Lead-ins focus on the topic or new language of the lesson. They can also focus and motivate students and make a link between the topic of the lesson-and the students' own lives (personalisation). For example, if in one lesson students are going to read a text about the Internet, rather than giving them the text immediately, we could do one or more lead-in activities such as discussing with students how often they use the Internet, what they use it for, what their favourite websites are, etc. Or if in another lesson they are going to listen to a conversation about favourite television programmes, the lead-in activities might be making a list of their favourite television programmes and discussing them with a partner. These activities will probably lead on to teaching relevant vocabulary for the texts and comprehension tasks to follow.
If you look back at the PPP and TBL lessons on page 61 you will see that they too include introductory activities. Step 1 in the PPP lesson provides a lead-in to the topic, and steps 2 and 3 a lead-in for language needed for the lesson's main aim. In the TBL lesson, steps 1 and 2 are lead-ins.
Key concepts and the language teaching classroom
The two lessons on pages 61-2 show two common and different approaches to presenting new language items. The lesson on the left is an example of a PPP lesson, the lesson on the right an example of a TBL lesson. There are many differences between them.
In the Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP) lesson: The lesson has a language aim.
The teacher first contextualises the new language, i.e. puts it into a situation which shows what it means. (Step 1)
The teacher then makes sure that the students remember previously studied language needed to practise the new language by eliciting it, i.e. asking students to say the language rather than giving it to them, and by doing a choral drill {getting the students to repeat as a whole class what he/she says). (Steps 2-3)
The teacher next presents the new language and the students just listen. (Step 4) The students then say sentences including the new language in a very controlled or restricted practice activity, i.e. one in which they can use only the new language and without making mistakes. (Step 5)
• The teacher tells students about the grammatical use of the new language. (Step 6)
• The teacher asks the students concept questions, i.e. questions that check their understanding of the use of the new language. (Step 7)
• The students then carry out another controlled practice activity. {Step 8)
• The students do less controlled or freer practice (i.e. where they can use their own ideas) using the new language. (Step 9)
You can see that in a PPP lesson the teacher:
1 presents new language in a context
2 gets students to practise it in controlled practice activities
3 asks the students to use the new language in less controlled activities, in a communicative way.
In the Task-based Learning (TBL) lesson:
• The aim of the lesson is for the students to complete a task (an activity in which students try to achieve something real, and have to communicate to do so).
• The teacher starts by holding a discussion on the topic of the lesson. (Step 1)
• The teacher then gives the students tasks to do. (Steps 2, 3,4, 5)
• Then the teacher and students discuss any new or problematic language they needed for the task. (Step 6)
• Lastly, the students do an exercise on the new language. (Step 7)
You can see that in a TBL lesson the teacher:
1 gives students tasks to do
2 presents new language after students have needed to use it, and only presents language that he/she or the students have identified as needed.
A PPP approach to presenting new language gives students an opportunity to practise language in a safe learning environment where it is difficult to make mistakes. It can therefore be quite a confidence-building approach for students. But it makes students learn language items they may not be interested in or ready to leam and gives them few opportunities to really use the language for communication. The TBL approach, on the other hand, allows students to find new language when they want to, and to use language experimentally and creatively for real communication. In this way it puts second language learners in a situation which is quite similar to the one in which
children learn their first language. Some learners may find this approach to language learning exciting and challenging. Others may wish for more guidance and structure to help them.
PPP and' TBL are not the only ways of presenting new language. It is also possible, for example, to present new language to'learners after they have met it in a reading or listening text which is first used for comprehension. Another possibility is to hold a discussion on a topic and introduce new language in the context of the discussion; another one is to give learners a task that requires them to use new language, then after the task, present the new language to them and then give them another task to practise the new language (Test-teach-test).
Presenting new language involves making various choices:
• When to present the new language? Before (as in PPP) or after (as in TBL) learners try to use the new language?
• What and how many language items to present (new grammatical structures, new vocabulary, new lexical phrases, new functional exponents, new topics)? In PPP the teacher makes this choice; in TBL the teacher and/or the learners make the choice.
• What context to present the new language in? In both TBL and PPP new language items are presented in a meaningful context, i.e. one that shows the meaning of the new language, and is personalised.
• What aids to use to help create the context, e.g. pictures, video, cassette, a worksheet?
• How to show the meaning or use of the new language, e.g. explanation, translation, presenting through a situation?
• What aspects of the new language to present, i.e. one, some or all of the following: meaning/use, pronunciation, grammar, spelling?
Introductory activities involve the teacher in selecting interesting and relevant warmers and lead-ins. The warmers make the students feel comfortable and ready for the lesson, and the lead-ins introduce the topic of the lesson and main language points needed by the learners to complete the main tasks of the lesson. You may not always need to do warmers as learners may arrive at a lesson ready to léarn.
The ways you present new language or introduce lessons will depend on your learners - their level, interests, age, what language they already know, weaknesses and strengths in English and learning styles. They will also depend on the resources available to you in your school and the approach to presentation used in your coursebook.
See Unit i6for types of activities and tasks, Unit 18 for selecting language for presentation and planning 0 lesson, Units 23-25 for resources and materials useful "fór presentation and Unit 26 for classroom functions " often used by the teacher to present new language.
FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITY
(See page 173 for answers) Which of these are presentation activities?
1 The teacher says two new functional exponents and asks the learners to repeat them.
2 The learners read a newspaper article and do a comprehension task on it.
3 The learners ask the teacher how to say ... in English and the teacher tells them.
4 The teacher points out to learners that in the task many of them mispronounced the word station. She asks them to repeat it after her.
5 The learners have a discussion.
6 The learners translate a short poem into their own language.
7 The teacher uses a picture story to create a context for introducing he and she.
Think about these comments from teachers. Which do you agree with and why?
1 TBL is close to the way we learn new language in our first language.
2 Learners prefer a PPP to a TBL approach.
3 I always present new language in the same way as I was taught at school.
TKT practice task (See page 176 for answers)
For questions 1-6, match the parts of a presentation stage with the names listed A-G. There is one extra option which you do not need to use.
Parts of a presentation stage
1 went, came, chose, swam, ate, thought, ran
2 The teacher tells the learners about a wonderful holiday she went on last summer.
3 Photos of last summer's holiday.
4 The teacher asks: 'When am I talking about, the past, the present or the future?'
5 The teacher drills pronunciation of new words.
6 The teacher says: 'We use the past tense to talk about actions in the past that have completely finished.'
Names
A concept question B aids in presentation C context for presentation D freer practice activity E language selected for
presentation F controlled practice activity G explanation of use
FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES
I What do these activities aim to.develop? Put them into the correct column.
Communication <	Accuracy
	
A choral drilling of pronunciation
B role-play
C dictation
D discussions
E gap-fill exercise
F story writing
G copying words
H repeating new words
I describing pictures
J learning conversations by heart
K problem solving
2 Which skill(s) could these activities be used to develop?
A story completion B form-filling C information gap D true/false questions E role-play