What do the input sessions involve?
The focus of the sessions include: the language systems (grammar, lexis, pronunciation, functions); classroom techniques (classroom management, presenting lexis to students, ways of providing practice, developing students’ receptive and productive skills; characteristics of the language learner and learning styles; selection and adaptation of materials; errors and correction; designing questions to check students’ knowledge; dealing with students’ queries). All input sessions are conducted by a tutor. All of them involve active trainee participation, in small groups or pairs and there are constant discussions and tasks that lead candidates to process the main points of the sessions. There may be occasional more lecture-style sections but these are short in duration and are interspersed with a great deal of elicitation of ideas from candidates. Here are some comments from our recent (summer 2010) graduates about the input sessions (quoting from end-of-course feedback): “Having never don
