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Date Posted: 10:21:16 08/01/03 Fri
Author: André Luiz Elias
Subject: Task #13

The activity I’m going to suggest here is to be designed at least among two classes and can be developed in big ones. It will work better with upper-intermediate to advanced students. The activity is to be done during the whole semester and would be evaluated as a final presentation. There are steps of development and I’ll evaluate them according to the principles stated by Littlewood.

Students are supposed to divide themselves into groups of four or five. These groups should work together during the whole semester. They have to choose a country and then they start “opening” a Travel Agency. They should develop material such as folders, guides, etc and get to know as much as possible about the country they are working on. (Remember that it is better designed between at least two classes – the two teachers should discuss on the countries students have chosen and how the development of the work is).

By the end of the semester, students are supposed to present their job, and to do that, students from one class go to the other class and pretend they are clients and that they want to travel abroad. As the job by both classes was done simultaneously, students who are the “clients” were told to ask as many question as possible about the country they want to visit. They are encouraged to negotiate prices, better hotels and so on.

This semester this activity was designed with two classes from TURISMOLOGY, and the results were great. Students really engaged themselves in trying to convince their clients to by their package. They brought videos from the country, typical food and some gifts from the countries, etc. It was really amazing.

According to Littlewood “functional communication activities place learners in a situation where they need to use language for a well defined communicative purpose”. In general, one can say that such an activity does provide a situation for them to use the language purposely.
The final presentation can be classified (according to Littlewood), as “Sharing and Processing information”, because students are supposed to negotiate a better place, price, and so on. Information the client has is used to persuade the “travel agent” to give him/her the discount.

During the preparation of the activity, depending on the way the teacher develops it, can be classified differently. The teacher can asked them to relate the studied “forms” to same specific function to be used during the interaction in the final presentation.

Such an activity should be well planned to avoid the feeling of “sparing time”. Students should see the importance of the activity and really engage in working on it.

References:

Littlewood, William. (1981) Communicative activities: some general considerations. In: Communicative Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP. p. 16-42

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