TECHNIQUES OF ELICITING
1.
2.
Teacher should vary his or her questioning technique
according to the difficulty of the question, letting good
students answer difficult questions and directing easier
questions at weaker students. In this way the whole
class will be involved.
A good elicitation consists of some kind of stimulus
that would automatically produce the desired language
item(s) from a native speaker. This stimulus can take
many forms :
 A picture
 A board drawing
 An OHP transparency
 A short piece of recorded material
 A gapped sentence on the board
 Actions, gestures or mimes
 Verbal explanation of a situation
 A combination of any of these methods.
3.
4.
5.
The creation of a really suitable stimulus (esp. for
elicitation of structure) will be almost impossible if the
teacher has not really worked out the meaning (concept )
of the language point in question.
Elicitations are best kept simple, with as little teacher talk
as possible. Beware of using unfamiliar vocabulary at this
stage of the lesson.
Don’t “give the game away”. For example : pointing at
a picture and asking “What’s he doing?” is NOT an
elicitation of Present Continous! Any reasonably intelligent
student could respond correctly to such a question, but
would she necessarily really understand the meaning of
what was being said ?
6.
Not too fast. Even though the elicitation phase is
7.
On the other hand, not too slow. If the language
usually very short ( 2-5 minutes ), don’t rush things too
much :

The teacher should pause after asking each
question, to give students time to think and dig a
little giving extra clues where appropriate.

Also, if the first response you get is exactly what
you’re looking for, don’t immediately say “very
good!” and use this response to start the
presentation because you haven’t found out how
much other students know.

Check to see what a few other students think, then,
you can use the correct response as a starting point
for your presentation.
point is new, most students won’t get it right in the
elicitation phase. Don’t wait for them to produce
language that they have never been taught before.
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Elicitation is a necessary but very difficult
“art” requiring great skill and flexibility on the
part of the teacher.
Finding the right balance of number (6) and
(7) is probably the most demanding thing of all.
Clarity of thought and sensitivity towards
the students’ reactions are the two most
important qualities required for this difficult task.