July 9, 2004, by Teaching at Nottingham

Beginning a session with an exercise

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Do Coyle: “OK. Could you, first of all, look inside your pack and find the vocabulary list.

“Now as future language teachers you’re all going to be dealing with vocabulary. So what I’d like you to do first of all is to take the vocabulary list, I’m going to give you 3 minutes precisely to look at it and to learn it, in silence, now.

“I always like to start sessions with something that is going to arrest people’s attention and to motivate them to do more.

“And so I had a big decision to make whether to start off with a song, or whether to start off with the vocabulary test, and in the end I thought the vocabulary test was more linked to what we were doing.
What I wanted to do there was just simply, partially to enable them to remember what it’s like under test conditions, but also at the same time in the comfort of knowing it was a simulation and nothing more.
But it’s about how you get your messages through. So, I think from that perspective, having an arresting beginning is fairly important.”

Do Coyle
School of Education

Do is teaching PGCE students in the Dearing building on Jubilee campus. The students are learning to become qualified language teachers. Produced July 2004.

This video was originally published as part of PESL’s Teaching at Nottingham collection.

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