Information collection & exchange

teach my students about writing? How can I help them to write what they want to write, in a way that 
their readers can understand? 
Composing is hard work, even when you are doing it in your own language. First you have to get the 
ideas, then you have to express them in a way that really communicates with your readers. Chapter Six 
offers help in both these areas. You will find pre-writing activities in which your students generate ideas 
for their writing. You will see exercises and feedback techniques which help writers (from beginning to 
advanced levels of proficiency) shape their writing into appropriate forms. 
Your students will probably ask you a lot of questions about grammar, leading you in turn to ask How do I 
teach English grammar (especially when I'm not too sure about grammar questions myself)? 
English grammar is taught in a number of different ways, depending on the general approach to language 
teaching which is used. Chapter Seven looks more closely at three of the general approaches which are 
described in Chapter Two and, using excerpts from three textbooks for beginning students of English, 
shows you how grammar is taught in each of the approaches. The chapter also suggests ways to 
supplement your textbook, since none of these approaches taken by itself is ideal. Two other sections of 
Chapter Seven define some basic grammatical terms and tell you about reference grammars, where you 
can find the answers to knottier grammar questions. 
Another kind of advice you may want concerns lesson planning, or in other words, How can I organize my 
lessons so that my students will know what they are supposed to be learning and so that both they 
and I will know when they have learned it? 
Chapter Eight shows you how to put it all together. It tells you the kinds of information you need for 
setting instructional objectives. It shows you how to implement the objectives in individual lesson plans 
that incorporate review of previous work, presentation, practice, and application of new material, and 
assignments for work done out of class. A sample plan implements these principles in a lesson which 
focuses on listening and speaking skills and teaches a few closely related grammar points. Besides this 
extended discussion of lesson planning in Chapter Seven, there are three or four short plans for reading 
lessons in Chapter Five, and Chapter Six gives some general guidelines for planning lessons in writing. 
There is one major area of teaching which the questions so far have not touched upon. You will need to 
know How do I test my students? 
Chapter Eight gives guidelines for devising tests which you administer yourself in the classroom. It offers 
advice on test items for all four language skills, even listening and speaking. 
One question about testing you may not think of asking is How can I prepare my students for the national