I decided to start with publishing a small series of posts focusing on Presentation stage.I know some teachers who consider presentation being a bit – well, how should I put it..? – boring. And it can be boring – if you deliver it in a teacher-centred way (like you do it with Presentation-Practice-Production approach). However, there’re some exciting ways to present FL/vocabulary/grammar point, and in this entry I’ll tell you about one of them: TTT.
What is TTT?
TTT stands
for Test-Teach-Test. This approach works for any level and is as simple as a
pie. Consider though that you can only implement this approach with students who already have some previous learning experience since it requires them to use their passive knowledge!
So let’s say you want to teach prepositions. How would you do it using
TTT?
Stage 1: Test 1
Test
students’ knowledge. For example, give them a gap-fill exercise and ask to fill
in the gaps with prepositions written in the box above the sentences. Students do
the task individually, then check their answers in pairs. After that they
report their answers to you – and that is exactly when you can see how much
they already know and how much you have to teach. Move on to Teach stage!
Stage 2: Teach
Here, you
should build your presentation on mistakes students made in previous stage. First,
praise them for correct answers. Second, ask those student who got correct
answers why they chose these asnwers. Make students teach each other! If they
struggle to explain, help them. If it happens that no one got a correct answer
for some sentence, tell the correct preposition and explain why this is
correct. Don’t forget to ask CCQs (concept-check questions) to ensure that
students got what you were saying!
If all
students get wrong answers (which is quite unlikely to happen), make sure to
comfort them and tell them that there’s nothing to worry about, and carry on
with your teaching.
Stage 3: Test 2
You can do
Test 2 either after practice or before it – you decide. If you want more time
to pass between two tests then conduct some practice activities before Test 2.
Otherwise, repeat Test 2 after Teach stage. Most likely, students will get all
answers correct. Succeeding in Test 2 will give your students the sense of fulfillment
(especially if Test 1 was a bit of a failure). After it’s done, you can move to
semi-controlled practice and freer practice.
Depending on target language you wish to teach, you can design your Test 1 in a different way.
Let’s say
you’re teaching Second Conditional. Provide students with some topics that will
likely make them use ‘if’ (for example, ‘Imagine you have a time machine…’ or ‘Which
technologies do you want to have?’). Let them talk and share their
opinions. Listen carefully for any use of ‘if’. Once you hear it, put the
sentence on the board. You might wish to stop Test 1 as soon as you hear the
first ‘if’, or you can let students speak a bit longer in order to collect more
examples.
If you don't hear any 'if', then choose couple of sentences where 'if' could be used and put them on the board - you will use these sentences to transform them into Second Conditional sentences. For example,
I want to have a spaceship! Then I
can fly to the moon.
-->
If I had a spaceship, I would fly to
the moon.
Teach based
on what you heard during discussion. Elicit from students if they are talking
about real things or not – probably not, because you don't have a spaceship to fly to the moon, do you? So
we’re talking about unreal things, yep. And when we’re talking about unreal
things, we better use this structure.
For Test 2,
ask students to discuss the same topic using Second Conditional.
When they
are done, move on to semi-controlled practice and freer practice.
Pros and Cons
TTT is
probably not the most reliable approach since, like with that box of chocolates
Forrest Gump’s mother always talked about, you never know what you’re going to get
– but it doesn’t mean you should give up on it without trying! TTT requires teachers to adapt
quickly depending on Test 1 results, that’s true. While this might sound scary
for beginning teachers, the more experienced you get the more you enjoy using
TTT. Of course, if you’re a control freak you might want to stick to some less
adventurous approaches (for example, Deep-End), but if you want to make your
lessons more student-centred, if you like to improvise and get inspired by the
feeling of something unknown, go for it!
I remember my frist time ever to try using TTT: it was during CELTA, I taught a lesson on
vocabulary ('Emotions'). It wasn't a particularly successful lesson since I
failed to provide sufficient written record support during Test 1, but
still, students enjoyed it, understood all the words (after Teach stage) and were able to
use them successfully during freer practice. As we say in Russia, the first pancake you bake is always an ugly one, but just keep practicing, and you'll get there. Now, I enjoy teaching FL with TTT approach and I hope you'll find it as exciting as I think it is!
*Next entry will introduce a sample lesson plan on teaching vocabulary with TTT. Feel free to download and adapt it to your needs!
