THINK ON: MAJOR ARTICLE
Step 1: Give students flash cards with commands like Find some who... wakes up at 7, eats toast for breakfast, watches TV in the afternoon, etc. Step 2: Ask students to go around the class asking the questions using Do you...? and making notes. Step 3: Once the activity is over, students report back to the rest of the class the answers obtained. As an alternative, students can draw charts, as if compiling the results of a survey, to find out how many students wake up at seven or watch TV in the afternoon. Mingle activities appeal to adult learners and older adolescents at any given level because logical thinking plays an important role in the activity.
• Information Gap activities are often designed to provide highly controlled practice of particular linguistic items. By swopping bits of information, which requires the use of a particular language pattern, the students complete grids or tables, and sometimes even solve a problem. Step 1: Divide the class in two groups, Students A and B. Step 2: Student A receives a shopping list and specifications of products they need to buy. Students B receive different pricing lists with varying prices and specifications of the products available at the different shops where they work. While talking to each other, students have to complete a grid with the information they hear. Step 3: In pairs, students A and B ask and answer questions about the prices and the products. Step 4: The whole class discuss where the products can be found and where the customer would get the best price. Information gap activity is very popular among teenagers and older adolescents. Depending on the content of the activity, adults will find it motivating. This kind of drill can be used at any level.
• Storytelling is not only popular among young learners but is also essential for their cognitive, intellectual and emotional development. In ELT,
storytelling can be used to raise the learner awareness towards new language items and, by the same token, to encourage fun repetition of language. Step 1: Tell the students a story in which the target language item presented appears repeatedly. Step 2: Ask comprehension questions about the story to check their comprehension. Step 3: Tell students you are going to read the story and from time to time you will pause and they have to complete the sentence. Do this as a challenge. Step 4: Retell the story, making strategic pauses every time the language item being drilled appears. Step 5: Repeat the story, challenging different students or groups of students to complete the sentences. The element of fun must be present throughout the activity. The same technique can be applied to reading comprehension passages with students at all levels and belonging to different age groups. The technique fosters language awareness and enhances logical thinking. To conclude, for drilling to be meaningful, it has to be contextualised. It is of paramount importance that learners understand the aim of the activity clearly. Monotonous chanting of decontextualised language will demotivate learners, bore them, and make the activity counter-productivity. Therefore, work on meaning must come before drilling.
Noticing and Recycling Memory researchers have concluded that humans learn by meeting an item cyclically or repeatedly. The emphasis lies on the limited capacity of working memory, as well as, on the importance of meaningful rehearsal. In his book The ELT Curriculum, White (1988) describes different types of syllabi and points out that a good syllabus should incorporate recycling. According to White, the cyclical or spiral syllabus does not merely return to a point introduced earlier, but adds a new dimension to what has been seen before.