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Date Posted: 11:23:28 07/25/03 Fri
Author: Flávia da Cruz Moreira
Subject: Task 12

Task 12th

According to Littlewood (1981:39), functional communication activities place learners in a situation where they need to use language for a well defined communicative purpose.
Examine one textbook and choose a good communicative activity. Describe it and then classify that activity according to the types presented by Littlewood.

The activity I chose was in the textbook File: Upper-intermediate, by Madeline Mchugh, and it is called: “Issues of race – Jigsaw quiz”. In this activity the students should work in pairs. It is given 7 statement concerning races around the world and the students should choose if it is true or false. After each answer, the students will be direct to the next statement: if they think the statement is true they will go the one statement, if they think the statement is false they will to a different one . If they get all answers right, they will read each statement only once, eventually arriving back at the first question. For example, the first statement is : “All countries in the European Union have specific laws against racial discrimination, covering employment, housing, education, physical and verbal abuse, etc”. After discussing, the students should choose if it is true or false. If they think is true they go to statement 6, if they think is false they go to statement 4.
In the end of the book there are the correct route through the jigsaw, and the true statement to the false ones.
According to Littlewood classification we may say that this activity is a Functional Communication Activity, since the pupils has a problem to solve, and the aim of the activity is not on the use of the grammatical correct English but the exchange of information, and the construction of meaning in order to achieve their purpose.
Inside the Functional Communicative type we may define another category to this activity according to the use of language: Sharing and Processing Information. In this type, students not only share information, but also discuss or evaluate this information in order to solve a problem. In the activity “Issues of race” they have to share information and ideas about the subjects presented, as well as they have to decide if it is true or not and why. They also have to be able to interrupt or disagree from his partner.

Reference:

LITTLEWOOD, W. Communicative language teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1981.p.16-42.

MCHUGH, Madeline. File Upper-Intermediate. London:Richmond Publishing, 1996. p.24.

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