What is ‘Test-Teach-Test’?

Here’s how to use it in your language lesson.

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.