Grammar practice
1. Mechanical practice
Mechanical practice involves activities that are aimed at form accuracy. By doing mechanical practice, the students pay repeated attention to a key element in a structure. Substitution and transformation drills are most frequently used in mechanical practice.
- In substitution drills, the students substitute a part in a structure so that they get know how that part functions in a sentence. Sometimes certain prompts are given.
- In transformation drills, the students change a given structure in a way so that they are exposed to another similar structure. The type of exercise also helps the students to have a deeper understanding of how the structures are formed and how they are used.
2. Meaningful practice
In meaningful practice the focus is on the production, comprehension or exchange of meaning. Meaningful practice usually comes after mechanical practice.
Using picture prompts
The students are asked to produce sentences based on the pictures provided. Below are two example practice activities. In the first activity, the students describe what the people in the pictures are doing by using the present continuous tense. In the second activity, the students spot the differences between the two pictures. Hopefully, the students will use the forms "There is" and "There are".
Example:
What are they doing? / Can you find the differences?
Using chained phrases for story telling
The students try to tell a story based on given prompts.
Example:
7 o'clock — got up— had breakfast— hurried to school— school closed---surprised—?