ICQs That Work: Giving Instructions Learners Actually Follow
5-Minute English Lab · CELTA Methodology
🎓 ICQs That Work: Giving Instructions Learners Actually Follow
⏱ 5 minutes · CELTA Technique · Classroom Management
💬 From my own experience: My first solo teaching hour at The ELT Hub in Landerneau: I gave a pair-work instruction and half the class worked individually, half discussed in groups of four. I had not checked the instructions. The five minutes I lost recovering the task cost me the production stage. ICQs are cheap insurance.
🎯 By the end of this 5 minutes, you can:
deliver clear, staged instructions and use ICQs to verify task understanding before learners begin.
Language Focus:
STAGE instructions (one at a time)ICQ before the taskDemonstrate before you instructNo more than 3 instruction stepsWhat are you doing? / Are you working alone or with a partner?
📖 Quick Explanation
An Instruction Checking Question (ICQ) is a short question asked after you give an instruction — and before learners start — to check they understood the task, not the language.
The 4-step instruction sequence:
- Demonstrate (show, don’t just tell — model the task yourself or with a strong student)
- Give the instruction — one step at a time, simple language, no more than 3 steps
- ICQ — check the most likely points of confusion
- Set a time limit (“You have 3 minutes.”)
What to ICQ: Working alone or together? Reading or writing? Speaking or listening? How long? How many items?
What NOT to ICQ: The content of the task itself (‘What is the topic?’ — that’s a CCQ). ICQs are about logistics, not meaning.
Instruction: ‘Read the text and answer the three questions at the bottom. You have four minutes. Work individually.’
ICQs: ‘Are you working alone or with a partner? How many questions are you answering? How long do you have?’
✏️ Practice
Task 1: ICQ or CCQ?
Decide if each question is an ICQ (checking instructions) or CCQ (checking meaning):
1. ‘Are you writing or speaking?’ · 2. ‘Does deadline mean you have time or no time left?’ · 3. ‘How many sentences are you writing?’ · 4. ‘Did this happen before or after the other event?’
💡 Show answer
Task 2: Write ICQs for this instruction
‘In pairs, take turns to describe your picture while your partner draws it. Don’t show your picture to your partner. You have five minutes.’
Write 3 ICQs for this task.
💡 Show answer
Task 3: Fix the instruction
This instruction has 3 problems. Find them:
‘OK, so now what I want you to do is read the text — it’s quite long but don’t worry about every word — and then answer the questions at the bottom, working together with a partner, if you have one, and try to finish before we have to move on.’
💡 Show answer
🗣 Use It Now
✅ Quick Self-Check