TEST –TEACH- TEST

Test, Teach, Test is a method of structuring your lessons.

Like Presentation, Practice, Production and Task-based Learning,

there are three stages for this methodology.

Test (1)

This first ‘test’ stage should introduce the context, and give the
learners a chance to do a task or activity.

This can be anything where they have to use their English, as it will
give you a chance to observe them. Watch out for errors or omissions
in how they use the language, particularly with the target language
that you’re planning on helping them with. It’s a good idea to jot these
down when you hear them, as you can use them as examples in the
next stage.

If you select the topic and context carefully, you can even steer the
learners towards your intended target language.For example, a
context where the learners have to ‘give advice’ to each other would
hopefully encourage the use of modal verbs (”You could / should /
must” etc).

While this is a bonus, it’s not always possible.

So any activity with an information gap, opinion gap or knowledge gap

would work well.

Of course, you could literally choose a test, but that seems a bit
mean…
 The aim for this section is observing errors that the learners are making
with the target language.

Teach

This stage is the equivalent of the ‘Presentation’ stage from the

‘Presentation, Practice, Production’ model.

You’ve got two options in this stage. If the learners made errors with
the language you thought they would, you can go ahead and ‘teach’
the target language to the learners in this stage.

However, if they made some errors in other language that you feel is
even more important (i.e. it impedes fluency even more than the
language you anticipated teaching), then you can focus on that
instead.

Either way, this means is a focus on form, and accuracy. You could:

 Do delayed error correction with the examples of language from the

last stage (elicit the errors, or peer correction)

 Explicitly tell the learners the target language, form, usage

 Give learners examples (on the board, on worksheets) and ask them to
spot the patterns and work out the usage

 Run through some drills, individual and choral.

 Do gap-fills, cloze activities, or other worksheets

 Or anything else that you’d normally do!

Don’t forget to concept check, to make sure the weaker learners

understand.
 There’s also a great way to differentiate at this point - you can ask
certain learners to focus on certain errors in the next stage. If student
A had a problem with X, ask them to be aware of X during the next
stage. Same with student B who had problems with Y, and student V
who had problems with Z.

The focus for this section is on clarification and accuracy.

Test (2)

Finally, the learners should do another task (or the same one,
repeated) that encourages the use of the target language that they’ve
just been focusing on.

Again, monitor the students and you should (hopefully!) see that their
accuracy and appropriate usage has improved.

The aim for this section is fluency with improved accuracy in the target
language.

Thoughts on Test, Teach, Test

 I’ve found that TTT is good with classes that you don’t know well (or you
don’t know how well they know the target language).

 It’s also great to use with learners that lack confidence, as they can see /
hear their progress in one lesson. Especially if you use the same task for
both ‘test’ stages, it’s very obvious to the students that they’ve
improved.

 The word ‘Test’ can be a bit misleading, as you’re not actually testing the
students, but observing them use it. ‘Task, Teach, Task’ is probably more
appropriate.