Language Teaching

In Education, the meaning of “practice” is to carry out learner’s activity through procedures called exercises’ or activities’ (Ur, 1996). To become successful in language teaching, it is important to focus on practice of classroom effectiveness such as improvement in listening, speaking, reading or writing fluency or the memorization of vocabulary. There are some useful language practice activities suggested by Ur (1996):

Selecting samples

Language practices that can help learners to remember such as automatize or increase improvement in learning .

Analysis

Teacher may think about “What made the chosen activities effective?”

Discussion

For contents express by the students; compare the differences, suggesting ideas and expressing the ideas. 

There are some characteristics of effective language practice:

Validity

For example, to improve and rehearse the items of the pronunciation drills and vocabulary practice.

Pre-learning

Preliminary grasp of the language they are required; to practise through practice activity until they achieve the successful responses and sure to undertake further effective practice of the target language material.

Success-Orientation

It is important to emphasise the success in practice or doing the tasks by repeating the successful performances and reinforcing students’ self-image as successful language learners. Such activities are to be encouraged so as to enable the students taking up further challenges.

Heterogeneity

When dealing with different levels of students within a class, heterogeneity is particularly important, for example, Ur (1996) suggested instead of using “Jenny is a baby. Jenny (can/can’t) ride a bicycle.” use “Jenny is a baby. Jenny can hold a toy and can smile, but she can’t ride a bicycle. What else can, or can’t, Jenny do?” for heterogeneity class.

Teacher assistance

Do not give the tasks and then sit back relax, use the time to check and assist the students with the tasks. Students will use your assistance as guidance and enable them to think, making answers through the given hints and guiding questions and confirming their own intentions. Also, moving around the room to make yourself available to answer any question. This way, you give students a hint that you are determined wanting them to succeed as a language learner through your attitude and function.

Interest

It is important to keep the attention of the student. Conduct an interesting language lesson and avoiding repeating of the practice, in case boredom overtakes the learning. Giving students an interesting topic, a game-like fun’ tasks, attention-catching materials, appeal to learners’ feeling or a challenge to their intellect (Ur, 1996).