Introduction

Evaluating my experience of teaching grammar, I have realised that it has been an area I have paid too little attention to in general.
In this paper, I hope to set out an outline of theoretical and practical ideas for me to follow, with a particular focus at upper intermediate level, when focusing on grammar and when practising it.
I hope to do this by answering the following questions.

What is grammar?
Why do we need it?
Should it be taught?
What happens if we don't pay enough attention to it?
What does learning it involve?
Some points to keep in mind when teaching it.
How should we go about teaching it?

What is grammar?

A typical definition of grammar would be 'the rules by which words change their form and are combined into sentences' or 'a book which teaches these rules' (dictionary definitions) but for the purposes of learning a language these definitions are not enough.
Rob Batstone divides grammar into product: the component parts or rules that make up the language, and process: the ways in which grammar is deployed from moment to moment in communication. (Batstone 1994,5) While of no doubt the rules are important to the learner, simply knowing them is a far cry from being able to formulate or interpret complicated utterances in the rush of real-time communication.
Scott Thornbury even introduces the term 'to grammar' implying that it is a process that we do as we speak and makes the analogy between product and process in terms of something finished like an omelette and the process of making it, saying that it is impossible, if you only see or taste the omelette, to be able to actually make it. (Thornbury 2001,2)
It is this idea of grammar as something which learners have to 'do', which I want to focus on and help my learners improve.

Why do we need grammar?

At the most basic level, we need grammar to show meaning. Through syntactic and morphologic modifications we can give our utterances meaning. For example, 'man bite dog' can be modified syntactically (e.g. through word order) or morphologically (e.g. using past participle) to signify the doer, done to, time and aspect, number and classification and question and negative. We use grammar according to how we want to present the message, down to the subtlest of meanings, for example, the passive to take away the responsibility of the doer.
We need grammar as well though, to signify distance. Batstone mentions social, psychological, hypothetical and temporal distance as areas where we implement grammar to negotiate distance. To take one example of a request for money, ranging from '$20' in the most intimate, immediate situation, to 'I was wondering if it might be possible for you to lend me $20' at the other extreme. (Batstone, 1994,17) Clearly the 2nd utterance would be more difficult to formulate.
Thornbury continues this theme, saying that the further we get away from 'the real, here, now and us' and towards 'the unreal, there, then and them', the more we need to use grammar. (Thornbury 2001,7) From this we can say that, the more context, the more shared knowledge, the less need for grammar, and the bigger the knowledge gap, the more need for grammar.
It also follows that we will rely on lexis and gestures, the closer we are in terms of distance and shared knowledge.
This idea has important teaching implications in that the typical classroom doesn't provide much of a knowledge gap or in other words, much distance. We therefore need to try and increase this gap in terms of using less context, or creating some kind of distance, if we want our learners to have a need to use grammar.

Should grammar be taught?

Stephen Krashen in the 1980s advocated the view that learners need to be exposed to a lot of comprehensible input at a level just above their own for acquisition to take place and drew attention to immersion education in particular, where the children did achieve a level of comprehension equivalent to that of native speakers of the same age. However the children in these schools failed to attain the same levels productively. Why wasn't this exceptional receptive level transferred, through a developing interlanguage, to the same levels productively?
One answer could be that when we listen we use comprehension strategies (for example, paying attention to stressed words and using our schematic knowledge to understand the message) and therefore don't have to rely on linguistic content for comprehension to take place. If this is the way in which we listen, it follows that there is no reason to stretch our interlanguage, and linguistic development need not happen. (Skehan 1994,176)
A similar idea could also be true in speech. Learners use, and are often encouraged to use communication strategies, such as simplification or avoidance and the more these strategies are found to be successful, the less demand there will be to improve the linguistic system.
One more factor in the non development of the linguistic system is the nature of conversation itself, where we operate on a 'least effort principle', we say what we need to in the most efficient way. In normal conversation, being long-winded would be frowned upon (breaking Grice's quantity maxim) and we would only add to the conversation, what we consider to be necessary or unknown. From the nature of conversation, therefore there is little stimulus to push forward a developing inter-language.
From the above, if left to fend on their own without grammar teaching, we would expect a learner to improve their communication strategies and discourse skills and not necessarily to improve their interlanguage or grammar. (Skehan 1994, 180)

What happens if we don't pay enough attention to grammar?

It follows then that if we don't pay attention to grammar, or more specifically, creating opportunities for learners to improve their grammar, they are likely to fossilize, or reach a point where they can cope with the level of communication that is demanded of them by making use of their existing grammatical resources and communication strategies and probably with sufficient fluency to not see the need to develop their linguistic abilities any further.
Skehan (1994) reports on some findings from Schmidt (1983) where a Japanese learner 'Wes' does exactly this but became accepted as a member of his speech community in Hawaii. Wes was quite happy about this and didn't seem to mind his fossilisation, but in my case, with my upper intermediate students here in Spain it could be a different matter. On their needs analyses at the start of the course they did place a high value on improving towards native like perception and production, and yet I can see the same happening. They are very fluent, cope with all listenings competently, and interact well. All due to the way they've been trained (by me in part) to use communication strategies and the amount of fluency practice they've been given. It could also be due to the amount of lexical noticing they've been doing, conforming with the idea that language is stored and produced lexically.

Before going on to some practical solutions, I would like first to look at how linguistic ability improves, or to put it another way when grammar grows.

What does learning grammar involve?

Taking up again the idea of grammar as a process, or of doing it whilst interacting, grammar is something that develops, or grows organically. Scott Thornbury calls it a complex system and makes 4 points about its composition.
1. It is dynamic and non-linear, it doesn't develop step by step but moves as a whole. Likening it to the way a shoal of fish moves.
2. It is adaptive and sensitive to feedback. This time likened to an ant hive adapting their movements due to their environment.
3. It is self-organising. It wants to see and make rules. Similar to the way a child's world and language knowledge develop.
4. Finally, it is emergent. It has the power to make connections from component parts. E.g. it can make the noun phrase 'not all of the three famous Andrews sisters' from individual meetings with e.g. 'both of the men', 'two dogs', 'the Blues Brothers', 'not half' .
(Thornbury 2001, 48-52)

Our goal is therefore to facilitate this emergent, complex system to grow and to do this in the most effective way.
A learner will acquire a structure when he or she is ready for it, by a process that could well involve steps backwards as well as forwards. E.g. the u-shaped curve of acquiring an irregular past tense - eat, ate (the learner uses it as a lexical item), eated (they apply the rule for regular), ated (maybe) and finally, ate (again). (Thornbury 2001,46)
This process is following a pattern of noticing a feature, formulating and applying a rule, experimenting, re-noticing and again experimenting.
Batstone proposes the cycle of noticing, structuring, re-noticing and re-structuring as the pattern that emerging grammar takes (Batstone 1994,42) and suggests that helping learners to do this will facilitate learning.
However, more is needed to make the language fully useable. The learner must practice to be able to use the language they have been (re)noticing and (re)structuring.
As language is stored and used in pre-composed chunks (Lewis 1993,19) it is suggested that this is what fluency is based upon.

It is our ability to use lexical phrases that helps us speak with fluency. This prefabricated speech has both the advantages of more efficient retrieval and of permitting speakers (and hearers) to direct their attention to the larger structure of the discourse, rather than keeping it narrowly focussed on individual words as they are produced.
(Nattinger and DeCarrico, p32, quoted from The Lexical Approach, 1993,19)

This observation has significant implications for the learning of grammar, in that it is not until the language has been proceduralised, i.e. stored as something ready to be instantly produced, that acquisition can be said to have fully taken place. (Batstone 1994,45) Another relevant point which emerges from the above quote is that of using language whilst paying attention to the discourse and other factors of production and comprehension such as articulation and perception together in real-time. This synthesisation is necessary so a learner can get on with the business of interaction without having to worry about processing language at the same time.

To sum up:
(re)notice - (re)structure - proceduralise
(Batstone 1994,45)

Some points to keep in mind when teaching grammar.

I would like to briefly refer back to 2 previous points. The first is that of by encouraging learners to use strategies and through the nature of conversation, we are only really providing fluency practice, which is needed for making language fluid and automatic, but through its nature could actually be detrimental to the learners developing interlanguage. In most spoken activities the pressure on the students is high, encouraging learners to rely on lexis instead of grammar to realise interaction.
The second point is related to that of distance or a gap in shared knowledge.
Scott Thornbury uses these 2 principles to create his 2 rules of thumb when designing grammar activities.

1. The greater the distance, the more grammar. (That is to say, where there is a knowledge gap or a social gap, words alone will be insufficient to bridge that gap.)
2. The fewer the processing demands, the more grammar. (That is to say, where there is reduced pressure and more planning time, there is a greater likelihood of 'grammaring' as opposed to 'wording'.)
(Thornbury 2001,21)

Thornbury goes on to point out that combined with these 2 points, learners will need to know how precise they have been and that feedback must be explicit and immediate, giving 4 points to bear in mind in grammaring activities:

· Low context dependence.
· High incentive for precision.
· Low pressure.
· High feedback.
(Thornbury 2001, 21)

How should we go about teaching grammar?

What should we do to encourage the process of (re)noticing, (re)structuring and proceduralisation?
Firstly, the language needs to be made available, a lot of input must be provided and awareness raised to linguistic features to turn it into intake, following the principle that once something has been noticed, it is likely to be noticed again and repeated noticing leads to acquisition.
Thornbury suggests consciousness-raising or grammar interpretation.
Among the characteristics of consciousness-raising (C.R.) there is:
· The attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature for focused attention.
· The provision of data which illustrates the target feature, as far as possible from texts which have already been processed for meaning.
· The requirement that learners utilise intellectual effort to understand the targeted feature. Learners are encouraged to hypothesise and test these hypotheses.
(Willis and Willis 1996,64)

A feature of C.R. exemplified by Thornbury is that form should matter to meaning in solving the task, for example, using answer phone messages from his friends who are either still on holiday or already home students are forced to pay attention to the use of either past simple or present perfect to decide which. For this and more of this type of exercise see appendix 1.
C.R. activities of this type 'are designed to raise learners' awareness regarding specific grammatical items in order to promote the 'restructuring' of their mental grammar'
(Thornbury 2001,100)

This type of activity is valid at all levels. At upper intermediate level it can be particularly useful for raising awareness to the finer points of grammar and lexical grammar that are quite likely to go unnoticed as the students are happy that they understand without taking the chance to develop further by paying attention to the language.
Three types of activity which work well for this purpose are retranslation, reformulation and dictogloss or grammar dictation where high feedback is provided in the comparison of the students' version and the 'ideal' version. For examples of this type, see appendix 2.

Finally, students need to produce the language to help them proceduralise it. When designing tasks for this purpose we need to refer back to the ideas raised about processing demands and distance.

Some ways to increase distance are:
· reduce the students shared knowledge, e.g. giving them different pictures to tell a story together without showing each other the pictures.
· Increase formality, e.g. getting them to write a formal report of the task they have done.
· Bend their schema, e.g. writing something in the style of a newspaper report, where the chronological order and written order do not coincide, or just change things away from the usual way of their happening.
For examples of this type see appendix 3.

Some ways to reduce processing demands we are:

· Repeat a task. Martin Bygate demonstrates some excellent improvements in accuracy, range, complexity, repertoire and lexical selection and collocation when learners do this. (Bygate, in Challenge and Change 1996, 142)

· Give preparation time before a task. Pauline Foster demonstrates surprising improvements in fluency, syntactic and lexical variety, complexity and accuracy. (Foster, in Challenge and Change 1996,134)
· Change the medium from spoken to written, or mirror an internet chat room in a slow motion conversation. (Thornbury 2001,25)

Bibliography

Scott Thornbury, Uncovering Grammar, Heinemann, 2001
Scott Thornbury, Reformulation and Reconstruction: Tasks that Promote 'Noticing', ELT Journal Volume 51/4 October 1997, Oxford University Press 1997
Rob Batstone, Grammar, Oxford University Press, 1994
Rob Batstone, Key Concepts in ELT - Noticing, ELT Journal Volume 50/3 July 1996, Oxford University Press 1996
Peter Skehan, Second Language Acquisition Strategies, Interlanguage Development and Task Based Learning, in Grammar and the Language Teacher, edited by Martin Bygate, Alan Tonkyn and Eddie Williams, Prentice Hall, 1994
Michael Lewis, The Lexical Approach, Language Teaching Publications, 1993
Martin Bygate, Effects of Task Repetition: Appraising The Developing Language of Learners, in Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, edited by Jane Willis and Dave Willis, Heinemann, 1996
Pauline Foster, Doing The Task Better, How Planning Time Influences Students' Performance, in Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, edited by Jane Willis and Dave Willis, Heinemann, 1996
Dave Willis and Jane Willis, Consciousness-raising Activities, in Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, edited by Jane Willis and Dave Willis, Heinemann, 1996
David Nunan, Language Teaching Methodology, Prentice Hall, 1991
David Nunan, Teaching Grammar in Context, ELT Journal Volume 52/2 April 1998, Oxford University Press, 1998
Helen Johnson, Defossilizing, ELT Journal Volume 46/2 April 1992, Oxford University Press, 1992
Martin Bygate, Alan Tonkyn and Eddie Williams (editors), Grammar and the Language Teacher, Prentice Hall, 1994
Jane Willis and Dave Willis (editors), Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, Heinemann, 1996

Biodata

Preliminary Information

Level: Upper Intermediate

Time: 1 hr

Timetable fit:
This lesson comes about 5 months into a general English extensive course. The group meets twice a week for one and a half hours, so we have been together for about 65 hours. The course book we are using is Cutting Edge Upper Intermediate and we are now in unit 8. It is a supplementary lesson, connected with and adding to units 7 and 3 where the focuses were annual events and past tenses respectively. In unit 7 the only focus on 'used to' and 'would' was a couple of exercises in the work book, which will be done for revision of this lesson at a later date. It also connects with the topic of verb forms (unit 8) and modal verbs in the past and present (unit 9). It's main purpose, though is to extend the students' linguistic precision when talking about their lives, a topic which is relevant throughout the course as the students' (and teacher's) personal experience has been one of the main ideas, central to the classes. It will be followed up at home with written homework from the content of the lesson and relevant exercises from the students' work book and in class with a further spoken fluency exercise and a reflection exercise a week later. As Scott Thornbury (Uncovering Grammar, 41) suggests maybe production activities should be delayed as 'Learning is remembering you have understood something'.

Rationale:
Throughout the course, we have been focusing on communication, due to a noticeable difference in the students' level, enabling the weaker students to feel part of the group, breaking down barriers of shyness and feelings of inferiority.
This may have been to the detriment of some of the better students' developing interlanguage. By encouraging strategies for communication in listening, speaking and reading, I may not have been pushing the students to try out, hypothesise and structure and re-structure their language.
I feel that I have been trying too hard to get the students to simply communicate, and through their success they have not felt enough the need to develop and refine the grammar they are using to get their message across. While we have made considerable progress lexically, the students' vocabulary and ability to notice and use collocations has improved considerably, and they are all much more fluent than at the start of the course, the students need to improve their use of grammar as a process when speaking, particularly in the finer points of grammar.
The methodology behind this lesson is aimed at redressing this balance, by making focusing on form important to meaning, not putting too much pressure on students when producing the language (by giving enough preparation time), by helping students notice the target language in a naturally occurring context and that its use does have an effect on meaning and by repeating the production tasks (or similar ones) in later lessons so as to revise the structures or help students 'remember they have understood something'.
So far in the course we have looked at the larger area of tenses, past, present and future and more recently we have begun to look at more intricate points, specific verb structures, clauses and word order in them and soon will move on to modality, realised verbally and lexically and then hypothetical language.
The chosen language, that of 'used to' and 'would' for past reference is a similar area where the students can realise their meaning in communication more exactly and efficiently. It is something that has not been represented in any significant way in the course book and is also something I have noticed to be lacking in these particular students and in general in my students up to proficiency level. To highlight this point, I recently taught this language point to a 'First Certificate' group and was unpleasantly surprised to find that half the group claimed never to have met 'would' as used to talk about a past habit before.

We will begin this lesson by predicting and then me telling the students about the differences in my everyday life between living in Ukraine and in Spain as a way to interest the students, give them an example to work from and setting up the context, i.e. when something was different in a past period in life.
The students will then prepare their own version based on their real experiences but the actual telling or doing of the task will be delayed to a later stage to allow a chance to provide input of the target language. Thus, creating a need for the target language as opposed to just presenting it and practising it with no need having been created as in a PPP approach or putting in the input when it is already too late, i.e. after the production stage as in Test Teach Test or the Deep End Strategy.
A second prediction and listening stage (this time from a tape of a colleague who lived in Zimbabwe) will then serve as a vehicle to introduce the target language through a noticing and analysis activity after the text has been first processed for meaning.
Once the meaning of the target language has been made salient, we will briefly focus on its perception and pronunciation through a teacher led dictation and drill before going on to some practice activities. Firstly, in a gap-fill exercise where the form is vital to the meaning of the sentences and secondly, in a jigsawed mini-task where the students have to prepare and then pass on some information using the target language as a deciding factor in the making of a decision based on their shared information.
Finally, the content, prepared near the beginning of the lesson will be used in the final task of talking students about themselves, comparing life now with a time in the past. This is aimed at providing some sort of freer practice where the target structures are likely to occur and also to serve as the basis for the students' homework which will be writing a summary of what their partners have told them.

Class Profile:
The group is an open group in the general English school. Their level is upper-intermediate, however as always there is a significant difference in levels within the group, different students being better and worse in the various skills and in language and learning ability.
Their reasons for, goals in and experience in learning are also diverse, the group comprising of school and university students and working people, either paying for themselves or their company paying.
Their reasons for learning range from work / self to living in an English speaking country.
Their learning history is, of course, significantly diverse, however after being together now for over 5 months we have a good, supportive environment and students do want to learn.
One worrying point though is their tendency to miss classes, usually about 8 turn up. I understand that they are working and have other commitments and they do generally tell me if they will be missing for a few lessons due to a business trip or something predictable.

Blanca is generally good all round, her spoken English is quite slow and deliberate and her listening is a bit lacking however she has a good attitude to learning, and will try her best. She still has some problems keeping up with some activities in class and I sometimes have to explain to her what she should be doing again.
Anna (1) was at first one of the weakest in the group in terms of her overall level, but she methodically applies herself and has improved more than everyone else, particularly her grammatical knowledge. She now, takes part well in class in all activities.
Anna(2) has little problem in any skills work, her grammar and vocabulary are weaker though. Unfortunately, due to work, she attended poorly in December and January and fell behind a bit. Recently, however, she has been to every lesson and is quickly catching up.
Valle struggles a little bit with grammar and her listening and speaking skills are quite poor, however she copes well, making use of what she knows. She missed a lot of classes in January and February due to an injury but really surprised me when she came back, having kept up at home with her English and using her time off work to really study.
Patricia is very strong and outspoken. She participates fully in all activities and is happy to help other students in the class. Her English in general is very good in all areas.
Maria did 2 intensive courses last summer, is also doing a conversation course, and has increased her level very noticeably. She attends well and works well in class and at home and has a very sound grounding in English on which to build.
Carmen is the youngest in the group, still at school, but is very mature and makes the classes more lively. Her English is good in all areas but particularly in speaking and listening.
Joaquin is probably the best student all round, speaking quite fluently and understanding very well and helping others with explanations of grammar and vocabulary.
Carlos is Maria's brother and has followed the same route as her, however while his sister has attended well, he has not and relies on his existing knowledge to progress. His vocabulary is now slightly lacking but he employs coping strategies well.
Maru is be fine all round, though a little bit shy. She has shown herself to be very good receptively and productively and is very serious about her English. She has only been in the group since January but now seems happily settled in.
Veronica has been in the class since the middle of February, but seems fine, showing her spoken level of English to be very adequate and like Maru adapting well to the group.
The most recent edition to the group came at the end of February in the form of Marguerita, she is Italian and therefore brings a spark of interest for us all. Her English is very good, especially in terms of her language knowledge and wide vocabulary. Her skills work is also fine and doesn't seem afraid to express her opinion in front of her classmates.

Main Aims:
To raise awareness of 'would' and 'used to' signify repeated actions and habits in the past, 'used to' for states and past simple for 'one off' events.
To provide receptive (aural and written) and productive (spoken) practice of above forms.
To highlight the difference between 'used to' in the past and the present.

Subsidiary Aims:
To practice listening for checking predictions and for overall understanding.
To practice perception and production of target language in connected speech, with attention to weak forms.
To provide personalised spoken practice in the context of past habits and repeated actions.

Assumptions:
Students will be interested in the topics of their teacher's previous stages in life, their own lives, and the life of a colleague in an interesting environment (Zimbabwe).
Students will have previously met the target language structures but haven't really assimilated them into their productive interlanguage.
Students will perceive the difference between their own interlanguage and the target language as a gap worth bridging.
A guided discovery approach, involving noticing and grammar interpretation activities should make the target language salient and through recognising a need for the language through its possible difference in meaning with the past simple eventually aid acquisition.
The repetition of the speaking task should facilitate more attention to the language used as the content will have been dealt with the first time around and changing the speaker's partner should provide some motivation to repeat the task.
Giving preparation time before a spoken task should reduce the pressure on the speakers allowing them to pay more attention to the actual language.

Anticipated Problems and Solutions:
· The students may have difficulty in thinking of a time in life when life was different. - Providing the students with a variety of ideas (university, a different city, different school, life with or without their present partner etc.) should help them come up with something.
· Again students might have difficulty imagining life in different countries like Ukraine and Zimbabwe. - Providing prompts (food, social life, difficulties, prices etc.) should help.
· Students may have difficulty noticing the target language in spoken form. - Looking later with the tape-script should solve the problem.
· Students may have problems with the idea that 'used to' is only used in the past in English and that 'I'm used to doing something' in English, has a different meaning as in Spanish the same verb 'soler' is used in both past and present. - Pointing out this difference and keeping the context of the lesson in the past should help.
· Students could have problems catching the contracted forms in fast connected speech. - Providing a written version of the pronunciation exercise after listening should help students and also highlight the fact that it is a difficult area and context can help when perception fails.
· Students may be tempted to use numbers when discussing the teacher's previous life. - Providing a small amount of time for planning, highlighting that this would be unnatural and banning the use of numbers should solve this problem.

Aids and Materials:
The board.
The students' knowledge and experience.
The teacher's experience.
A cassette recorder.
A recording of a colleague's experience of living in Zimbabwe.
The tape-script.
Self-made exercises for noticing and analysing the target language in the tape-script.
Self-made interpretation exercise based on teacher's and his brother's exam results.
Self-made information sheet on teacher's previous experiences in different countries.

Stages of the Lesson

1. Warmer - To introduce the topic and begin the lesson.

Pairs - 3 mins

Students try and predict what used to be different when I lived in Ukraine.
T writes on board - money, food, sport, times, night-life.

2. Listening - To practice listening and check predictions.

Whole class - 5 mins

T tells students about how life was different for him, sts check predictions and ask questions as they want.

3. Preparation for speaking - To give students time to prepare content and language of what they want to say.

Individually - 4 mins

Sts think of a time when their life was different (T suggests ideas) and spend a couple of minutes preparing what they want to say about how life was different. (again list of headings on board)
T then explains that this speaking task will be delayed till the end of the lesson as we are going to look at some areas of language to talk about usual things in the past 1st.

4. Listening - To practice listening to check predictions.

Whole group / pairs - 9 mins

T sets the scene and asks students to make predictions about a colleagues typical Sunday living in Zimbabwe. 'What does he usually do?', 'What does he enjoy most?' and 'What doesn't he like?'. Sts listen to check their predictions and compare answers in pairs.

5. Discussion - To provide opportunity for a personal reaction to the listening.

Pairs - 4 mins

T asks sts if they would enjoy Michael's life in Zimbabwe. Why (not)? Sts discuss in pairs.

6. 2nd Listening - To focus on the structures used and their significance.

Whole group / pairs - 6 mins

T asks the students if the typical Sunday is in the past or present, what is usual and what is unusual and what structures can tell them this? Sts listen and then compare in pairs before whole class feedback.

7. Analysis - To focus on the structures used and their meaning and form.

Pairs / whole class - 11 mins

Sts use the tape/script and answer questions to clarify the meaning of the structures present (used to and would, for past reference) and complete a table, concentrating on their form in positive, negative and interrogative forms.

8. Spoken perception and oral practice - To focus on the pronunciation of the targeted structures in fast connected speech.

Whole class - 6 mins

T dictates some sentences at natural speed, which sts transcribe, followed by paired and whole class drills. 'In Ukraine I'd go cross-country skiing in the winter.', 'We used to go to more late night clubs than we do in Madrid.', 'I wouldn't spend half as much on food in Ukraine as I do in Madrid.', 'I didn't use to eat as many fresh vegetables in Ukraine.'

9. Written controlled practice - To provide practice in inferring the need for 'used to', 'would' and the past simple in a controlled, written context.

Individually / pairs - 4 mins

Sts complete a gap-fill exercise focused on the meaning of 'used to' and 'would' in the context of his experience compared to his brother's.

10. Preparation for spoken practice - To give students a chance to prepare their language

Pairs - 4 mins

T tells sts that he is trying to decide where to go back to if he ever leaves
Madrid, but can't make a decision about which place he liked living in best and
asks sts to help him decide. Sts in pairs are given 3 separate information sheets
to use to help decide. In the subsequent speaking they will not be allowed to
use numbers.


11. Spoken interpretation practice - To provide spoken practice of the target language in which attention to form is vital in doing the task.

Groups of 3 - 6 mins

Sts share their information and come to a decision about which place was the best to live in.

12. Preparation for spoken free practice and setting homework - To provide freer spoken practice.

Whole class / individually - 4 mins

T explains task ,and that writing a summary of it (beginning with e.g. 'Anna was a (adjective) girl.') will be for homework, in which sts will do the task prepared in stage 3 and give them a minute to think about what they will say.

13. Spoken free practice - To facilitate 'proceduralisation' of the target structures.

Pairs - 6 mins

In pairs students repeat the task from stage 4.

14. Reflection - To give students time and opportunity to review and reflect on what they've done in the lesson.

Pairs - 3 mins

From the menu on the board, sts review the lesson, followed by brief class feedback.

15. Speaking - To practice speaking and prepare the content for later speaking.

Pairs - 6 mins

Students in pairs tell each other how their life was different. T sets listening task of 'What's the biggest change in your partner?' Followed by brief class feedback.

16. Reflection - To allow students to think of the language they used in the previous task.

Individually / pairs 2 mins

T writes on board 'How well did you speak?' and 'What tenses did you use?'
Sts 1st in pairs answer the questions, then discuss with their partners.

Materials

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