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Keep it short
Don’t spend too much time on explaining. As soon as you’re fairly sure they’ve got the main idea, go on to
practice in context. Talking ‘about’ the language is useful only up to a point; the main learning takes place
when students are actually ‘languaging’ – using what they’ve learnt to create and understand meanings. In
most cases, keep the explanation to less than five minutes. Aim to keep the basic explanation to less than
five minutes – though with more advanced classes and grammatical points you may need more.
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Explaining Grammar
Contrast with L1
If you know your students’ mother tongue then this will help you decide which grammatical features need
more teaching, because they are different from – or even non-existent in – the students’ L1. And it often
helps a lot if you can explain to students how the grammar being presented differs from their mother tongue.
If they know, for example, that English uses a present perfect progressive with since, for (‘We’ve been
waiting for hours’), but their L1 in the same context uses the present, this will help them avoid errors later.
Go straight on to practice
Immediately you’ve finished explaining, go into a simple practice activity. This doesn’t have to be the
traditional ‘gap-fill’; it can equally well be a brainstorm, requiring students to think of as many examples as
possible. If you’ve taught the modal can/can’t for example, ask students for as many things as they can think
of that a rabbit can or can’t do, or a baby, or a computer, or whatever. The main point is to elicit plenty of
examples of the target grammar and help students to feel that they are in control of it, and can use it
themselves to make meanings.
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