COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES Task 1. Fill in the grid with terms opposite in meaning to the given ones. Work in pairs. Accuracy activities Practice activities Pre-communicative activities Controlled/guided activities Closed activities Non-communicatively oriented activities Task 2. Discuss the diagram below with your colleagues in small groups. Present your understanding of it to the whole class. Non-communicatively oriented activities Communicative drills Pre-communicative activities ! Vivid communicatively oriented activities Communicative activities Task 3. Use the descriptions of the pre-communicative and communicative activities and your own experience to complete the chart. Discuss the chart in small groups. Present your findings to the group-mates. Pre-communicative activity - is an activity in which the learner is a)to produce correct language forms in an acceptable way or b)to produce correct language for specific communicative purpose (e.g. through open or cued dialogues). Communicative activity – is an activity in which the learner is to use the language s/he has at her/his command, in order to communicate specific meanings for specific purposes. Non communicative activity A The purpose of the To prepare Communicative drill B Communicative activity C To enable learners activity is learners for later communication The focus is More on language to communicate intelligibly The learners’ purpose is Criterion of the assessment Whether learners convey meaning in accordance with a communicative task Task 4. What characterizes a communicative activity? The chart below will help you to answer the question. Gap Info gap is created by the activities when the learners are forced to exchange info in order to find a solution. Opinion gap is created by the activity is created by the activity which requires the learners which lets the learners to describe and perhaps share their feelings about defend their views on an experience they have controversial texts or ideas Examples: -Guessing games -Jigsaw tasks -Problem-solving activities Examples: - Ranking exercises - Values clarification - Thinking strategies in common Examples: Discussion games Task 5. You will participate in three activities. Refer them to one of the two groups: 1. Info gap 2. Opinion gap. ACTIVITY 1. Moral dilemma. You are a group of invigilators at an exit school exam. You see a student cheating with notes she has illegally brought into the exam room. You have four possible courses of action: ignore the incident warn the student that if she cheats again she will be reported to the authorities ask the student to leave the exam, tear up her exam paper and mark her as absent report the student to the authorities, in which case she will have to leave the school Reach a consensus on this issue. ACTIVITY 2. Story reconstruction: The hospital case. Students are given different parts of a picture story. They have to reconstruct the whole narrative even though individually they have seen only a small part of it. This is done because each member of the group has seen a different picture; by talking about their pictures together the narrative emerges. Here is a procedure for the technique. Stage 1. The class is divided into 4 large groups: A,B,C,D. Stage 2. Each group is given one of the following pictures and told to study it. Stage 3. After a couple of minutes the teacher takes the pictures back from the groups. Stage 4. The teacher makes new groups with one student from each of the original groups. Stage 5. The students in the new groups have to try and reconstruct the story by discussing what what they saw on each of their pictures. Stage 6. The teacher then gets the different groups to tell their stories. There will be more than one version of the story. The teacher then shows the students all the pictures. From: Hammer J. The Practice of ELT. Longman ACTIVITY 3.Write your answers to Peter’s questions. Peter: Hello! How are you? You:______________________________________________________________ ______ Peter: I was at the seaside last week. What did you do on your last holiday? You:______________________________________________________________ ______ Peter: That sounds interesting. Did you enjoy it? You:______________________________________________________________ ______ Peter: Next holiday I want to go to the mountains. Are there mountains near you? You:______________________________________________________________ ______ Peter: There are some mountains near my home. They are in Scotland. They have a lot of snow in the winter. Do you have snow? You:______________________________________________________________ ______ Peter: I must tell you something. My brother got a new car yesterday. It is fantastic! What’s new in your life? You: __________________________________________________________________ _ Peter: Oh, yes? That’s interesting! Tell me more about it. You_______________________________________________________________ _____ Peter: Listen, I have to go. I can talk to you later. Bye! From: Littlejohn A. & Hicks D. (1996) Cambridge English for Schools. CUP. Task 6. Look at the list of characteristics below. And decide which of them apply to communicative activities. Put a tick. a desire to communicate materials control teacher intervention a communicative purpose a variety of language form not content no communicative desire no materials control no teacher intervention one language item only content not form no communicative purpose Task 7. You are going to analyze a lesson outline from the course book ‘Hotline’ by T. Hatchinson Read about the criteria for evaluating communicative activities in H/O 1 Now draw a table like the one below. Put a tick if you think the activities of the lesson meet the criteria. Put a cross if you think they do not. In some cases you may not be sure, so put a question mark. Criteria 1. 2. 3. Activities 4. 5. 6. 7. 1. Communicative purpose 2. Communicative desire 3. Content not form 4. Variety of language 5. No teacher intervention 6. No materials control When you have finished filling in the table, rank the seven teaching activities according to how communicative you think each activity is . Most communicative Least communicative SUMMING UP H/O 1 Criteria for evaluating how communicative classroom activities are: 1. Communicative purpose: The activity must involve the students in performing a real communicative purpose rather than just practising language for its own sake. In order for this to occur there must be some kind of ‘gap’ (information or opinion) which the students seek to bridge when they are communicating. 2. Communicative desire: the activity must create a desire to communicate in the students. That is, even though speaking is forced on the students, they must feel a real need to communicate. 3. Content not form: When the students are doing the activity, they must be concentrating on What they are saying not How they say it. They must have some ‘message’ that they want to communicate. 4. Variety of language: The activity must involve the students in using a variety of language, not just one specific language form. The students should feel free to improvise, using whatever resources they choose. 5. No teacher intervention: The activity must be designed to be done by the students working by themselves rather than with the teacher. The activity should not involve the teacher correcting or evaluating how the students do the activity, although it could involve some evaluation of the final ‘product’ of the activity when the activity is over. This assessment should be based on whether the students have achieved their communicative purpose, not whether the language they used was correct. 6. No materials control: The activity should not be designed to control what language the students should use. The choice about what language to use should rest with the students. Home assignment You are going to read an abridged chapter devoted to different approaches to language teaching from the book Making It Happen. Interaction in the Second Language Classroom. by Patricia A. Richard-Amato. Nine sentences have been removed from this article. choose from the sentences A-J the one which fits each gap(1-9). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. From Grammatical to Communicative Approaches 1. Until recently many teachers have felt that language teaching is facilitated by focusing on grammar as content and by exposing the student to input in the target language that concentrates on one aspect of the grammar system at a time present tense before past, comparative before superlative, first person singular before first person singular, and so forth. The approaches used have included grammar-translation, method. G. audiolingualism, cognitive approaches, and the direct Many variations exist, however that are not noted in this brief analysis. 2. Grammar-translation was the most popular method of foreign language teaching in Europe and America in the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Versions of it still exist today in many countries around the world. Its goal was to produce students who could read and write in the target language by teaching them rules and applications. A typical grammar-translation lesson began with a reading (to be translated into the first language) followed by the rule it illustrated. New words were presented in a list along with definitions in the first language. The topics may have involved a trip to the library, a shopping expedition, a brief historical sketch of an area, or the like.______. Little attempt was made to communicate orally in the target language. Directions and explanations were always given in the first language. 3. Audiolingualism was the new "scientific" oral method that was developed to replace or enhance grammar-translation. It was introduced as a component of the "Army-Method" used during World War II. It was recognized as the "audiolingual method" when it began to gain favor in teaching English as a foreign language in the 1950s. Through the use of this method, structures of the target language were carefully ordered and dialogues were repeated in an attempt to develop correct speaking. Sentences in the substitution, mim-mem (mimic and memorize), and other drills were often related only syntactically ("I go to the store", "You go to the store", "He goes to the store"), and they usually had nothing to do with anything actually happening. Rules were presented but often not formally explained._______. However, in most of the applications, there was very little use of creative language, and a great deal of attention was paid to correct pronunciation. 4. Cognitive approaches, most evident since the 1960s, are often referred to rather vaguely in the literature as "cognitive-code" methodology. Those claiming to advocate a cognitive approach believed, for the most part, that sub-skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing such as sound discrimination, pronunciation of specific elements, forming capital and small letters and so on needed to be mastered before the student could participate in real communicative activities._______. Lessons were usually highly structured through a deductive process and "the rule of the day" was practiced. Although creative language was at higher levels during the practice, students generally had to produce correctly right from the first. 5. The Direct Method was derived from as earlier version called the "Natural Method", which was developed in the mid-nineteenth century. It was natural in the sense that it made an effort to "immerse" students in the target language. Teacher monologues, formal questions and answers, and direct repetitions in the input were frequent. The method fell short in being optimal in that the topic for discussion was often the grammar itself. The students tried inductively to discover the rules of the language ________. However, most students needed something more relevant to keep their interests. 6. Although these methods varied from one another, they all generally adhered to the same principle: grammar is the foundation upon which language should be taught. Second language teachers who agreed with cognitive approaches believed that comprehensible input involved teaching sentences that were neither temporally sequenced nor logically motivated.________. 7. It was N. Chomsky whose basic linguistic model distinguished two aspects of language competence (the underlying knowledge of the grammatical system) and performance (the use of that knowledge to communicate). He also proposed the notion of a "language organ" which he calls the Language Acquisition Device.______. The findings of psycholinguists proved that human mind is more than just a blank state but contains highly complex structures which come into operation through an interactional process. So, patterned drill, with its endless, often mindless repetition, and memorization of non-realistic dialog might be replaced by a more natural kind of activity. The target language should be allowed to grow and develop within the learner during and by means of interaction. 8. In the 1970s most researches of second language teaching agreed with competence/performance distinction.________. D. Wilkins was particularly concerned with helping the student meet specific communication needs through the input. such input for the student would be organized into a set of notional categories: semantic-grammatical categories (time, quantity, space, case) and categories of communicative function (modality, argument, personal emotions, emotional relations, interpersonal relations0. Syllabi based on a notional approach often include such topics as accepting/rejecting invitations, requesting information, and expressing needs or emotions of various kinds. 9. Still, H. G. Widdowson warns us that although some linguists might boast of ensuring communicative competence through the use of a notional syllabus, such an approach does not necessarily mean such competence will be the result. He emphasizes language "use" (communication) as opposed to "usage"(analysis of language). Activities based on a notional approach do not always involve real communication situation than repetitive dialogs or "structures for the day" did. What kind of activities then would be meaningful and comprehensible? It is not so much the organizational principles that make the communicative approach effective. Nor is it the content itself.________. In communicative methodology, content ceases to become some external control over learning-teaching procedures. choosing directions becomes a part of the curriculum itself, and involves negotiation between learner and learners, learners and teachers, and learners and text. A He opposed the idea that the mind is simply a tabula rasa. B Generally speaking, it was felt that phonemes needed to be learned Generally speaking, it was felt that phonemes needed to be learned before words, words before phrases and sentences, simple sentences before more complicated ones, and so on. C In addition, their ideas have been influential in the development of approaches that involve students in meaningful experiences in the new language. D Lessons were grammatically sequenced and students were expected to produce errorless translations from the beginning. E For example, even grammar may be considered a stimulating topic for communication by some students and their teachers. F Those interested in grammar as a topic of conversation may have found such lessons stimulating. G The most characteristic features of these approaches are presented below. H Rather their main reason for existence seemed to be to demonstrate the use of some grammatical structure or other in an effort to aid the development of linguistic competence. I Listening and speaking skills took precedence over reading and writing skills. J But they felt that competence should not only include grammatical sectors but psycholinguistic, socio-cultural, and de facto sectors as well.
