Teach english new edition r

test-teach-test 
where the students are first asked to use language in an activation stage, 
and are then taught how to deal with things they made mistakes with before trying the 
testing part of it again.
Many lessons aren’t quite as clear-cut as this, however. Instead, they are a m ixture of 
procedures and m ini-procedures, a variety of short episodes building up to a whole. Here 
is an example of this kind of 
patchwork 
lesson:
1 Engage —►
Activate: 
students look at a picture of sunbathers and respond to it by 
comm enting on the people and the activity they are taking part in. Maybe they look at each 
other’s holiday photos, etc. Then they act out a dialogue between a doctor and a sunburn 
victim after a day at the beach.
2 Activate: 
students look at a text describing different people (with different skin types) 
and the effects the sun has on their skin (see page 103). They say how they feel about the 
effects of the sun.
3 Study: 
the teacher does vocabulary work on words such as ‘pale’, ‘fair-skinned’, ‘freckles’, 
‘tan’, etc, ensuring that students understand the meaning and the hyphenated com pound 
nature of some of them, and that they are able to say them with the correct pronunciation 
in appropriate contexts.
4 Activate: 
students describe themselves or people they know in the same kind of ways as 
the reading text.
5 Study: 
the teacher focuses the students’ attention on the relative clause construction 
used in the text (e.g. ‘I’m the type of person who always burns’ and ‘I’m the type of person 
who burns easily’). The use of the ‘who’ clause is discussed and students practise sentences, 
saying things like ‘They’re the kind of people who enjoy movies’, etc.
6 Engage: 
the teacher discusses advertisements with the students. W hat are they for? 
W hat different ways do they try to achieve their effect? W hat are the most effective ads 
the students can think of? Perhaps the teacher plays some radio commercials or puts some 
striking visual ads on an overhead projector.
7 Activate: 
the students write a radio commercial for a sunscreen. The teacher lets them
record it, using sound effects and music.
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We can represent a (version of a) patchwork lesson sequence in the following way:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Describing learning and teaching
EAASASEA (etc) patchwork sequence
Such classes are very comm on, especially at intermediate and advanced levels. Not only 
do they probably reflect the way we learn - rather chaotically, not always in a straight line
- but they also provide an appealing balance between study and activation, and between 
language and topic.
Engage, Study and Activate are the basic building blocks for successful language teaching 
and learning. By using them in different and varied sequences, teachers will be doing their 
best to prom ote their students’ success since various theories and procedures which have 
informed debates about language learning are reflected in sequences such as straight arrows, 
boom erang and patchwork lessons.