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Date Posted: 13:53:00 08/01/03 Fri
Author: Ronaldo G.M. Rosa
Subject: Task 13

THIRTEENTH CLASS July 28th to August 1st

Material Development

YOUR TASK IS:

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.

Create a good communication activity and describe it to your classmates. Say which type it is, according to Littlewood.



TASK 13


This is an activity addressed to students of an intermediate level. It is simple, not involving many "game-elements", but it deals with popular subjects, involves speaking, listening, writing and reading, and propiciates an opportunity for the learners to practise their communicative habilities.

The students are divided into two groups. The learners of one group receive a sheet of paper containing the biography of the ex-beatle John Lennon. The other receives the biography of Jamaican singer and composer Bob Marley. The students listen to songs of the two musicians and read their biographies.

Each student writes the answers to questions about his/her artist-subject, as: "Where was he born?" "When did he live?", "Which kind of music did he make?", "Which artists did he work with?", "Cite some of his most famous songs", "Which kinds of work did he do besides his musician career?".
Besides this, they should find and identify in the text examples of some topics of grammar studied recently in class.

Then, the learners make pairs: one student from a group with a partner from the other group. So they compare their answers, ask to each other questions about the musician's biography of his/her partner, and swap information.

Following, some more questions are introduced for the students to ask one to another, about the two artists: "What do Lennon and Marley have in common?", "What are their differences?", "Are there other artists with characteristics similar to theirs? Who, and which?", "Do you know an artist from your country who presents anything in common with them?", and so on.

From this point, unpredictable conversation can occur, and aditional activities may be developed.


According to Littlewood's criteria, this activity can be classified as "functional communicative activity", since it deals with the "ability to find language which will convey an intended meaning effectively in a specific situation" (Littlewood 1981:20). Also, it is a kind of "sharing and proccessing information" activity, described by Littlewood (1981:32-36). Learners gain access to information possessed by others, share it, and the range of communicative functions is widened in an activity that involves an unpredictablity of interaction.



Bibliography and references

LITTLEWOOD, William. Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1981. p. 16 to 42.


Ronaldo G. Machado Rosa
Belo Horizonte, July 2003

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