CELTA

About Lead-ins
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Objectives:

 Engage students
 Activate schemata
 Set the context for the lesson
 Have Ss generate ideas about the topic of the lesson

Basic Characteristics:

 It is a short stage (about 5 minutes in a 45-minute lesson/no more than 10 minutes in a 60-minute lesson).
 It should be as much student-centered as possible.
 It should count on an element of production (students offering ideas about a topic).
 Student-generated ideas can be boarded as a way to validate their participation.
 Teachers should avoid using the target language in the lead-in.

Questions you may want to ask when preparing a lead-in stage of a lesson:

1. Will this topic interest the learners?

2. How will I try to engage the students in the topic?
3. Are the students working alone, in pairs or together as a whole class?
4. How much will my Ss be able to offer in terms of ideas? Am I planning above/below their level?
5. How much will I speak and how much will Ss speak? (teacher-centeredness vs student-centeredness)
6. What will I do while Ss are participating in pairs/groups?
7. How am I going to give Ss feedback on their suggestions?

Types of Lead-in

What not to do:

 offer a lead-in in a context that is completely different from the general context of the lesson.
 include some reading of the text itself (main body or headlines) in it when teaching a receptive skills lesson
 spend most of the lead-in speaking (teacher-centeredness)
 include strategies that make the lead-in too long