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Date Posted: 08:25:22 06/19/03 Thu
Author: Viviane Coelho Caldeira Ramos
Subject: 7th Task

According to the communicative approach classes should be student- centred, having in mind their needs and interests, having this in mind, a class about car would probably not interest all class, consequently they would not be motivated. That is why the teacher has to be aware of the students lives and interests so that he/she can propose meaningful activities for them. Apart from that, the topic cars, would involve many technical terms on mechanics, making it even harder to conciliate with students reality. On the other hand, if the teacher knows his/hers students well, and knows that they are interested in cars, or even work with them, the subject can be exciting and create a lot of discussion. Knowing who the students are also help the cultural awareness that the teacher has to have. For instance, if one is teaching very low class students , the subject will be dissonant to their cultural and economic reality, what can create embarrassment and damage the class atmosphere.

In his article Ryan preaches that “ Students can benefit more if they know specifically (...) what language they trying to practice and in what context.”, but this does not happen in class plan presented as it does not make clear to the student what he/she is suppose to learn. The teacher only settles very broad goals, for instance “ critical thinking”, but not specific language goals, such as practising the use of expressions such as “ I think that ...” and “ In my opinion...”.

If we follow the framework presented by Ryan, in which he divided the class into warm-up, presentation, controlled practice, free practice and feedback, we can point out some points that can be discussed regarding Wells’ class plan. First of all, as I could understand, the warm up was a brainstorm, related to the factor to be considered while buying a car. This is a nice way to start the subject, although I think that, first of all, he should have stated the goals of the class to the students, so that they could be aware of their own learning. The following step would be the presentation, but this wasn’t made as the teacher asked them to start working on their research. The idea of internet researching is interesting as the students need to learn how to select and understand all the informations that they can find, but this wold take a long time, maybe it would be more productive if they had this task as a homework activity, so that they would have more time to research and, consequently, make a better job. The controlled practice (decision grid) is good as it helps students to organize the material searched. The free practice would be the sharing phase in Wells’ class, but I reckon that it was to much controlled, and apart from that they had no chance to interact with the other students in this phase, as they only had a written work. A nice solution would be a presentation from each student ( or group of students) as if they were the representatives of the car company that are trying to sell the car, by doing that they would be practicing their oral skills and also their personal features (ex: public speaking; capacity of persuasion ). The class plan fails in a key point that is the lack of feedback to the students, what is essential as “learners need a constant stream of feedback big or small that can keep them motivated and learning” ( Ryan). Another problematic point is that the class does not lead with all four skills as the students do not listen to any authentic material.



Bibliography:
RYAN, Stephen B. Ryan . Overcoming Common Problems Related to Communicative Methodology in [ http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ryan-Communicative.html- accessed 17/06/03

WELLS, Karlys. Buy a Car in http://www.lessonplanspage.com/OConsumerEdBuyCar912.htm – accessed 17/06/03

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