As with any subject, people learn faster when concentration is high and we’re actively interested in learning. Being interested and relaxed helps too. In intensely verbal courses the teachers are most effective when they act as a facilitator. Their prime task is to grab attention, help make sure that the activities are interesting and provide background information, which helps students to actively participate in the lesson and plan and implement effective, complementary home study programs. The student is responsible for keeping himself or herself “Under Pressure” in the ways mentioned above. Of course this requires that students understand the types of pressure they should take upon themselves and when to back off. Imposed pressure is different in quality to self-imposed pressure, and it is the latter which is appropriate for adult learners, and children too, I suspect.
In the typical actively verbal language class, understanding of the processes needed for effective language acquisition is necessarily inferred by the students. Communicating clearly with everyone in the class is difficult enough, so talking about why an activity is useful is quite likely to confuse and bemuse rather than enlighten students in a language course. For this reason transparent, open-ended activities with clear task goals form the foundation of any intensely verbal course. In other words, short demonstrations are followed by pair and group work doing the demonstrated activity and it is up to the students to make sure they involve themselves while the teacher is trying to target the activities so they are appropriate, allowing the students to discover for themselves ways in which the activity helps achieve their language target. Making activities appropriate is the key, meaning that students should be able to quickly realize that they can vary and extend what they are doing — that the example is a starting point, not a prescriptive pattern but a working start point which points them in a direction of exploration.
1.What do you think the author has most probably talked about previously, according to the passage?
2.When teachers are mentioned to act as a facilitator, they should be acting （ ）.
3.Which of the following statements do you think that the writer will agree to?
4.Which of the following statements is true according to the writer of this passage?
5.What does the word “transparent” (Para. 2, line 4) mean?
