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Date Posted: 15:50:56 07/25/03 Fri
Author: Lidiane
Subject: Task 12

Material evaluation
Considering the purposes of a communicative approach, its learner directed nature and the functional communicative groups of activities that Littlewood explains in chapter 3 and 4, I intend to analyze an activity taken from Double Take: Language practice by Joanne Collie (Collie: 1997 p. 57; 61).
First, the activity consists on a pair-work task in which one students is asked to access one page and his partner another, but they cannot show each other their pictures. The activity exposes the context: at eight o'clock of the previous night there was a robbery in a block of flats. The picture shows the block and the characters of each flat. In both pictures it shows what people said they were doing at that time; however, as some (or one) of them are not telling the truth, there are some different actions in each student's sheet that show the neighbors who may be lying (the contradictions). Thus, each student is presented to the contradictions that the other does not know. Their aim is to exchange information to complete a list of what people was doing when the crime happened and, consequently, to solve the mystery by analyzing the contradictions.
Second, considering Littlewood's word, this activity is communicative because, first, in terms of purpose, it improves learners motivation to communicate with others, in this case they are motivated by the information gap and the mystery they are challenged to solve. Also, as Littlewood says that "most learners' prior conception of language is as a means of communication rather than as a structural system"(p. 17), this activity fits into this purpose because the pair work is not given the form of language, but the meaning and context, although the activity also works implicitly on form (the past tense continuous). Second, the activity is also based on student's natural learning because they are very much involved in using the language to communicate. Also, this activity creates a context (the mystery and detective job the students will perform) which supports the task itself.
Next, this communicative activity is a learner-directed activity, because although the book give the instructions and the teacher may help the students, "it is the learners themselves who are responsible for conducting the activity" (p.18), as they share information and resolve the problem-solving part that this activity provides. In the case of this "almost" indirect approach, there may be a little interference of the teacher, but she/he can monitor the activity, equip them with language forms or vocabulary they may need, etc.
Finally, according to the author's categories of communicative approach, this "information exchange activity" (as it is named in Double Take) is a functional communicative activity because the aim is to exchange meanings effectively, in this case, what each character did last night while the flat was robbed and then, examine this information to find the robber or robbers. Moreover, the activity does not demand an accurate language, in terms of structure; that is, it does not call the students' attention to the past tense continuous. They only have to use the language they know (as the book is pre-intermediate, it is supposed that they already know the past tense) without any explicit definition of this language structure. Moreover, in Littlewood's definition of four groups of functional activities, this exercise would provide learners to "sharing and process information". The first part of the activity, to complete the list of what these people were doing last night, would be "sharing information with unrestricted cooperation", as the partners have to interact by making question to each other, suggesting, asking for clarification, helping each other, etc. The solving of the mystery, after analyzing all exchanged information about each character, is "processing of information" because the goal of this activity is to "gain access of facts possessed by others" (p. 32). Thus, by "pooling information to solve a problem", the pairs do not merely gather important information about each character, they also discuss and evaluate the contradictions given by this communicative activity in order to find out the robber of the flat.

Reference:
Collie, Joanne. Double Take Language Practice: Listening and Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997. p. 57; 61.
Littlewood, W. Communicative language teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1981. p. 16 - 42.

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