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Date Posted: 06:34:25 07/25/03 Fri
Author: André Luiz Elias
Subject: Task # 12

Examine one textbook and choose a good communicative activity. Describe it and then classify that activity according to the types presented by Littlewood.

The book I decided to examine is English File book 2. I have chosen such a book, because I have experienced it in both sides, namely, as a student and as a teacher, and then I thought it would be useful to analyse it having in mind both experiences.
The activity is located on pages 78/79 of the student book and as Danilo Cristófaro has already said “the activity is not clearly explained in the book”. Maybe it is a characteristic of the book, I don’t know. I will describe and analyse the activity the way it is presented in the book (that it was the same way the teacher I had worked with it in classroom) and after that I’ll analyse it according to the way I (as teacher) worked with it in classroom, because as Littlewood pointed out “ the level of difficulty [and the way it is presented] can be adjusted within each activity-type.” (p. 38/39)

Students are asked to read a text (titled “Shopping: a pain or a pleasure?”) containing four opinions about what people think about shopping. After reading the text and working on the some vocabulary (students are supposed to match some specific phrases to given definitions) students sit in pairs and discuss some questions like “Do you enjoy shopping? Why or why not?”, “Do you prefer shopping alone or with someone? Who?”, etc.

According to Littlewood, this sort of activity – Functional Activity – is the one described as “Processing Information” once “there is no need to share information, the stimulus for comunication comes from the need to discuss and evaluate facts” (p. 36), and students are supposed to support their ideas. As Litllewood pointed out, the language used for this activity is less predictable, and even though students worked with some specific vocabulary, and some specific forms (gerunds), there is no control on the language they use in order to sustain their ideas.

I myself like most those activities in which, even having “controled language practice”, there’s an aspect of “challenging” or “game-like”. This way, I changed the way the activity is presented in the book (I tried to fit the activity to the level and stile of my classroom). I made copies of the four opinios about shopping and of questions suggested in the book. I divided the class into small groups and gave to one half of the group the opinions and to another half the questions. They were supposed to play “the journalist”: one student asked the questions and the other, pretending being the subject in the text, answered it.

I decided doing this way because the level of this classroom was not so good, then, maybe, a kind of “open” discussion would not succeed. I would say that in terms of what Littlewood has stated, the activity (the way I provided) would be in between the only “sharing information” and “sahring and processing information”, for some questions needed a sort of evaluation and inference (from the reading) to be answered. I as a teacher expect them to be, at least, able to in their own words, retell the opinions, and I thought that without the direct input (the text itself) it would be hard for them.

In a sense, the activity work on “functional” and “social interaction” matter. In the way it was worked by the teacher I had, I’d say that it had more explicit “social interaction” aspect than the way I presented it to students.


References:

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

Seligson, Paul et al. (1997) English File. Students book 2. Oxford: OUP. p.78-79

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