Teach english new edition r

cue-response 
session 
to encourage controlled practice of the new language. Suppose, for example, that we have 
taught a group of beginner students a series of vocabulary items such as ‘nurse’, ‘fireman’, 
‘doctor’, ‘teacher’, ‘policeman’, etc, and that we have pictures of these people on cards. We 
can use these cards as a cue, which we hope will then elicit the appropriate 
response, 
e.g.
te a c h e r 
(holds up picture of a policeman):
Sam ?
s tu d e n t 
l
(Sam):
Policem an.
te a c h e r: 
Good, 
(holds up picture of a nurse)
Kim ?
s tu d e n t 2 
(Kim):
Nurse.
te a c h e r: 
Good.
86

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Teaching the language system
Cues can also be verbal (e.g. ‘Question ... Flight 36’ to get the response ‘W hat time does 
Flight 36 leave?’) or non-verbal (e.g. the teacher shrugs their shoulders to elicit ‘I don’t 
know’).
Cue-response drills are an efficient way of getting the students to say the new language 
in a way that can be invigorating and challenging. If we think students need more controlled 
practice of this type, we can put them in pairs and ask them to continue saying the new 
words and phrases to each other. Perhaps they can take turns mim ing one of the professions 
or showing/drawing pictures of policemen, nurses, etc so that they are, in effect, conducting 
cue-response drills of their own.
Freer practice
Sometimes we may decide that students do not need very m uch controlled practice of 
the new language. This is often the case at higher levels where not only will they probably 
have understood our explanations of meaning and language construction, but they may be 
slightly familiar with the language anyway. In such situations we m ight just say something 
like ‘OK, can anyone tell me what would have happened if they’d overslept this morning?’ 
to provoke examples of the third conditional (see page 74). As students use personalised 
sentences in this way, we can point out any mistakes they m ight be making and encourage 
correct pronunciation.
If, when we try to bypass controlled practice in this way, we find that students are 
having more problems than we thought, we m ight have to return to our explanations of 
meaning and construction and then organise controlled practice after all. But hopefully 
this will not happen, and our students will be able to try using the language in this more 
relaxed and less formal setting.
Freer practice - especially where personalisation is concerned (see page 53) - is a kind of 
transition stage between language study and activation. It is still concerned with the correct 
construction of language and so it is part of study; it is also concerned with language use 
and so it is moving towards activation.
The decision about whether or not students need explanation or controlled practice will 
depend, as we have suggested, on whether we think they are already familiar with the new 
language or not. It would, after all, be inappropriate to force students to concentrate on 
studying language they were already perfectly capable of using. O ur decision about how to 
proceed should, therefore, be based on what the students know already, and we will need 
to adapt our plan immediately if we find that the m ajority of them are more aware o f the 
‘new’ language than we thought they were.