Learners simply respond to instructions by performing physical actions, such as pointing at things, handing each other objects, standing, walking, sitting down, writing and drawing. At higher levels, the focus is still on providing comprehensible input, in the form of listening or reading tasks, where learners order pictures, fill in grids, follow maps, and so on.
These can be combined with communicative speaking tasks, such as ‘describe-and-draw’ or ‘spot-the-difference’, where learners work in pairs to exchange information about pictures. The important thing is that there is no grammar ‘agenda’ as such: the learners perform the tasks to the best of their ability.
The teacher shows a set of pictures of, say, food and drink, repeating the word that goes with each with one; the students simply watch and listen.
The pictures are displayed around the room, and the students are asked to point at the appropriate picture when the teacher names it.
The students listen to a tape of a person (or the teacher) describing what they habitually eat at different meals; the students tick the items they hear on a worksheet.
The students are then given a gapped transcript of the previous listening activity, and they fill in the gaps from memory, before listening again to check.
The students, in pairs, take turns to read aloud the transcript to one another.
The students, still in their pairs, tell each other what they typically eat, using the transcript as a model.
They repeat the task with another partner, this time without referring to the model