Best Practice: Pre-Teaching

Every activity has three parts: the introduction, the activity itself, and some kind of follow up. The introduction to an activity is called pre-teaching. This involves getting students ready to a reading, writing, listening or speaking task by:

• activating students' prior knowledge to link the new material to something they may already know
• teaching key, unfamiliar vocabulary using visuals, props, and examples
• asking questions to find out what learners remember or think about the topic or grammar point so they can start thinking about it
• enabling learners to anticipate content, facilitating comprehension
• explaining the purpose of the activity
• clarifying the learners' task

Examples

Before playing a song

1. share the title of the song and ask learners to guess what it will be about
2. ask true/false predictive questions based on students' guesses in #1
3. discuss the topic and/or grammar focus of the song
4. show a picture that sets the scene
5. talk about the singer/musician and why he/she is important
6. look at some words and phrases form the lyrics to pre-teach key vocabulary
7. clarify what the listening task is

Before reading a story

1. set the scene with pictures
2. talk about the title and ask learners to predict what it will be about
3. administer a questionnaire to find out what learners think or know about the topic
4. generate some questions from learners related to the topic and revisit the questions after reading
5. ask true/false questions about the topic
6. do a word web, eliciting vocabulary from the students related to the topic
7. clarify the reading task, e.g. reading for the main idea, looking for specific information, reading to form an opinion