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Date Posted: 14:42:28 07/25/03 Fri
Author: Patrícia de Almeida Neri
Subject: Task 12

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. According to Littlewood (1981:22), “the principle underlying functional communication activities is that the teacher structures the situation so that learners have to overcome an information gap or solve a problem”. Thus, I chose an activity which students are supposed to solve a problem. It can be classified as the forth group mentioned by Littlewood: Processing information.
This activity was taken from Double Take # 3 - Listening and Speaking by Joanne Collie, page 19. In this activity, students have to plan a trip and negotiate choices in groups of four. First, they have to imagine a camping trip for their group, considering “some of the tasks (co-ordinator or a teamworker) that need to be done to prepare the holiday.” They have a photo with suggestions of objects that they would take and questions to guide their discussion, such as where they are going, how they are going to get there, what information they need about the area, what equipment and food they will need to take. When they finish the discussion, they have to report to another group or to the class. In this way, I considered this activity as “Processing information”, because it has the characteristics described by Littlewood (1981:36) “learners now have access to all the relevant facts. The stimulus for communication comes from the need to discuss and evaluate these facts, in pairs or groups, in order to solve a problem or reach a decision”. In this activity students have to “analyse information, but also argue, justify and
persuade, in order to reach a common decision”, in this case to organize the camping trip. Besides the interaction can provide an interpersonal discussion and there isn’t a “single correct answer”. In conclusion, while they are learning and trying to communicate, students are also becoming “more creative with the language they have acquired”.

Bibliography
Littlewood, W. Communicative language teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press,
1981. p. 16 to 42

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