You may feel perfectly clear in your own mind about what needs clarifying, ai therefore think that you can improvise a clear explanation. But experience shows that teachers' explanations are often not as clear to their students as they are to themselves! Preparing means thinking about the words you will use, the illustrations you will provide; possibly even writing these out.
2. Make sure you have the class's full attention
In ongoing language practice learners' attention may sometimes stray. But if you are explaining something essential, learners must attend. This may be the only chance they have to get some vital information; if they miss bits, they may find themselves in difficulties later. One of the implications of this when giving instructions for a group-work task is that it is advisable to give the instructions before you divide the class into groups or give out materials, not after! Once they are in groups, learners' attention will be naturally directed to each other rather than to you; and if they have written or pictorial material in their hands, the temptation will be to look at it, which may also distract.
3. Present the information more than once
A repetition or paraphrase of the necessary information should be used: learners' attention wanders occasionally, and it is important to give them more than one chance to understand what they have to do. Also, it helps to re-present the information in a different mode: for example, say it and also write it up on the board.
4. Be brief
Learners - in fact, all of us - have only a limited attention span; they cannot listen to you for very long at maximum concentration. Make your explanation as brief as you can, compatible (совместимый) with clarity. This means thinking fairly carefully about what you can, or should, omit, as much as about what you should include! In some situations it may also mean using the learners' mother tongue as a more accessible and cost-effective alternative to the sometimes lengthy and difficult target-language explanation.
5. Illustrate with examples
Very often a careful theoretical explanation only 'comes together' for an audience when made real through an example, or preferably several. You may explain, for instance, the meaning of a word, illustrating your explanation with examples of its use in various contexts, relating these as far as possible to the learners' own lives and experiences. Similarly, when giving instructions for an activity, it often helps to do a ‘dry run’: an actual demonstration of the activity yourself with the full class or with a volunteer student before inviting learners to tackle the task on their own.
6. Get feedback
When you have finished explaining, check with your class that they have understood. It is not enough just to ask ‘Do you understand?’; learners will sometimes say they did even if they in fact did not, out of politeness or unwillingness to lose face, or because they think they know what they have to do, but have in fact completely misunderstood! It is better to ask them to do something that will show their understanding: to paraphrase in their own words, or provide further illustrations of their own.
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