Stage 1: The pre-task. The teacher introduces the topic and familiarizes
students with situations/lexical areas/texts (reading and listening)). This draws the
students into the topic and brings up language that may be useful. The teacher then
explains what the task is and sets up the activity.
Stage 2: Students perform the task in pairs or groups. They may then
present their findings/conclusions to the rest of the class. In this stage, mistakes are
not important; the teacher provides support and monitors. The learners focus on
communication, perhaps at the expense of accuracy, but this will be dealt with in the
next stage.
Stage 3: The teacher works on specific language points which come up in
stage 2. (During the monitoring stage, most teachers make notes of common errors