Abstract

---

This paper deals with micro-teaching. I destine it in priority to the student teachers2 who are preparing to teach English as a Foreign/Second language (TEFL/TESL) in secondary schools in the world and Francophone Africa in general and in Benin in particular. In writing it, I pursue two objectives:
- First, to explain the concept and practice of micro-teaching;
- Secondly, to design some micro-teaching sessions for the benefit of the above mentioned prospective teachers in training.
Micro-teaching is appropriate for interactive learning. In interactive classroom, the students3 act both as the performers, taking up more of the talking-time of the class, and simultaneously as the audience: instead of students always directing their comments to the teacher, as in the traditional classroom, the students speak more to one another. The teacher joins the class as a member of the audience while also facilitating communication. The rationale for this is simple: the students are those who need the practice, not the teacher. The teacher (director of this planned, staged event that we call "class") knows that mastery of language requires frequent practice by the students. I have structured this paper around four Sections.