Shape of a Skills Lesson

Three Stages

A grammar or vocabulary lesson has three stages; Presentation, Practice and Production. A skills
lesson also has three stages: Pre-task, While-task and Post-task. For example, the first stage in a
writing lesson is the Pre-writing stage. The second stage is the While-writing stage, and the third
stage Is the Post-writing stage. This simple framework structures the teacher's lesson plan so that
students not only 'understand' but: use (the four skills in a meaningful, task-based way. Pre While,
Post techniques give students practical tools for using (the four skills in real life. not for just passing
their school exams.

The 'Pre' Stage

The 'Pre' stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation before they
read, listen, speak or write about it. 'Pre' tasks can be brainstorming or discussion tasks, where
students collect all their ideas on the topic; vocabulary preparation tasks, where the teacher pre-
teaches key vocabulary to aid comprehension, prediction tasks, where students guess what they are
about to learn; and production tasks, where students produce language in one skill which will later
be transformed into another skill.

The 'While' Stage

The 'While' stage gives students a 'guide' or framework to help them practice the target skill of the
lesson. 'While' tasks can be comprehension tasks, where students answer questions based on the
text; ordering tasks, where students show that they have understood by putting pictures or
statements into the same sequence as the text; and transformation tasks, where students take one
format and transfer it into another. For example, instead of simply telling students to write a
paragraph on 'The Geography of Vietnam', the teacher gives students a simple passage on The
Geography of Thailand' and tells them to re-write the information according to Vietnam. In this
way, the teacher gives the students a framework on which they can hang new information. This
kind of framework reduces mistakes, provides the correct style, grammar and sentence type, and
"guides' students towards satisfactory completion of the task.

The 'Post' Stage

The 'Post' stage is like the follow-up stage. After students have practised the target skill in the
'While' stage, they do an extension activity. This helps students take the information or whatever
[hey have produced in the 'While' stage, and do something meaningful with it. The 'Post' stage is
usually an 'information transfer' production-type exercise where students 'respond' to what they
have just learnt. The 'Post' task usually involves the productive skills (speaking or writing). For
example, students respond to reading a description of a sports event by writing a letter to a friend,
describing what happened; or they do a roleplay, acting out the story they have just read. If the
'While' task was speaking, for example, conducting a questionnaire on their friends, the 'Post' task
could be writing up the results in a short paragraph.

1
The Teacher's Role

In the 'Pre' stage, the teacher's role is to get the students thinking about what they are going to do
before they do it, so they are prepared, and actively using their brains. The teacher will have to set
up a pre task, so it is very important that the teacher gives clear instructions. In the 'While' stage,
apart from setting up the activity, the teacher doesn't have to do a lot of teaching - because students
will be working on the 'While' task, by themselves, working individually or in groups. Instead, the
teacher will have to do a lot of monitoring and assisting weaker students who are having difficulty
completing the task. Before the 'Post' stage, the teacher needs to evaluate how well students have
completed the task - and whether or not students are ready to go on to the 'Post' stage. In this last
stage, the teacher is again giving instructions, monitoring and evaluating students' performance.

Materials

Because skills lessons are task based the teacher does less up-front teaching; the three stages are
much more based on the materials and the tasks. This means teachers need to prepare skills lessons
in detail so that the materials are fully exploited and so that the emphasis is on students completing
the tasks rather than the teacher teaching the lesson. However, particularly for reading and listening
lessons, non native speaking English teachers should not be expected to develop their own texts
from scratch.

Teachers need to develop the ability to select material that is of interest to their students from
existing, published materials, and perhaps most importantly, teachers should be able to adapt the
suggested tasks into a Pre-While-Post lesson format for their own large classes - without having to
make a lot of photocopies.