Unit 16 - Presentation techniques and introductory activities

What are presentation techniques and introductory activities?

Presentation techniques are the ways used by the teacher to focus learners’ attention on the meaning, use and sometimes form of new language, when introducing it to them for the first time. Introductory activities used by a teacher to introduce a lesson or teaching topic.

The students read a text, then the teacher asks them to find and underline all the examples it contains of the second conditional.	Contextualization, noticing, focus on form, text as input
The teacher shows the students a video of some children fighting and asks them to give her reasons why they might be fighting. She encourages them to say ‘it might/could be because…’	Contextualization, focus on meaning, using aids, eliciting, text as input
The teacher shows the students pictures pf people doing lots of boring duties, e.g. washing up, washing clothes, shopping, cleaning the house. After she has told the students which of the activities she must do tonight, she says ‘Am I talking about something I want to do or something I have to do?	Contextualization, concept checking, focus on meaning, using aids
The students listen to a recording of a dialogue between a shop assistant and a customer. The teacher asks the students to tell her what language they heard.	Contextualization, focus on form, focus on meaning, text as input, eliciting
The students read a short advertisement advertising a new car. The teacher has underlined all the superlatives in the text. She then asks the students to look at the underlined words and work out when the –est form is used.	Contextualization, guided discovery, focus on meaning, focus on form, text as input
The teacher shows the students four drawing of what she did at the weekend and tells the students what she did. She then asks the students to draw four pictures showing what they did last weekend. Next she asks them to talk about their pictures, helping them to use the correct form of the past tense.	Contextualization, using aids, noticing, focus on meaning
The teacher shows students a series of pictures showing the development of a butterfly. As she shows them, she tells the students what is happening to the butterfly and asks them to repeat the sentences after her.	Contextualization, noticing, focus on meaning, focus on form, modelling

Reference:

Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., & Williams, M. (2012). The TKT Teaching Knowledge Test Course Modules 1,2 and 3 (Vol. Second edition). United Kingdom: Cambridge English.