Teach english new edition r

Practice and controlled practice
We ask students to practise the language they are studying so that they can try it out and 
get used to saying it or writing it. As they do this, we may well correct them if they make 
mistakes (see pages 97-98) so that they are clear about how it works. This practice helps 
them to internalise how the language is constructed so that when it passes from their 
short­
term memory 
to their 
long-term memory, 
they know how it is put together.
Short-term m em ory is where things are stored only for as long as they are needed. For 
example, we may remember a house num ber because we have been invited to a party, but a 
week later we may have forgotten it because we don’t need it anymore. Long-term memory, 
on the other hand, is for things that we want to ‘keep’. We remember PIN num bers for 
credit cards, our own car licence plates, and passwords for bank accounts or computers 
because we need to use them all the time.
If we want specific language items to be part of our students’ long-term memory, a 
once-only study session will not be enough. We need to ensure that students see new words, 
phrases and gram m ar again and again. 
Repetition 
works, in other words, but this does not 
just mean the repetition that takes place in a controlled practice session when students first 
meet the language. Rather, it suggests that we need to bring the language back over time 
and at spaced intervals so that it gradually becomes part of our students’ language store.
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Chapter 6
Some of this happens quite naturally because language activation stages draw on all the 
students’ knowledge; but if we do not explicitly bring recently learnt language back into 
lessons, there is a danger that, like the party-house num ber, it will not make the transition 
from short- to long-term memory.
Controlled practice
The first stage of controlled practice is repetition and this can be either choral or individual. 
W hen we use