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Date Posted: 17:24:44 07/30/03 Wed
Author: Lidiane Luiza da Cunha
Subject: New task 13

>Although your activity is an interesting one, I do not agree it is the kind of problem solving as described by Littlewood. I think it is a reading and writing activity, but it is not a kind of activity which makes students speak as in a natural conversation. Besides that, we do not know if all the students are interested in reading poetry or in writing a poem.

Concerning what Vera has said about my activity, I decided to design another one in which the problem solving would make students speak as in a more natural conversation, that is, a problem in a situation more like real life, to use meaningful language with the functional purpose Littlewood describes. I hope this one has more to do with Littlewood's description of functional communicative activities.
Lidiane

Task 13:
This activity is called how to make a party. It is designed to intermediate students.
The teacher makes a list of types of famous parties celebrated in countries in which people speak English. Parties that celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving Day, St. Valentine Day may be used. The teacher brings to class books or information (taken from books, magazines or Internet) describing how this parties are celebrated, what people usually do, what they use to prepare the environment of the parties, etc.
Students are asked to be in groups of 5 or 6. Then, the teacher chooses one party to each group, but each group has access only to the name of their party.
1. If students want, the teacher may allow them to take a look at the information of the parties she brought to class. But each group may only check their selected party.
2. Problem: Students next are asked to discuss what they would use to prepare their parties and how they would do that. The teacher may recommend them to think about food, drinks, decoration, activities, and clothes they would need for that. They may make lists, diagrams, or recipes of things they would buy, cook and create for their parties.
For this discussion, teacher does not interfere much, but she/he may provide a context for certain functions and structures that need to be practiced such as the use of important verbs to express intentions, necessities and plan as in "We need to...", "We have to...", We are going to...", "We should...", etc.
3. Each group is asked to talk to their classmates about the activities, food, and all the other preparations they discussed, but they cannot mention the name of the party. Also, the groups have to explain what people often do in the parties. The other students listen to that, make other questions such as "What kind of clothes do you use for that party?", "How do people behave in the party? Do they dance? Do they play?", "What do they eat?", etc, till they guess by these details what kind of parties they have. For instance, one student may ask what people usually wear in a certain party and by the answer "Costumes of monsters, famous people, etc", the students can infer that this may be a Halloween party or, if another students asks "What do they eat?" and the answer is turkey, they can find out this is a Thanksgiving Day celebration.
4. If the teacher wants to motivate students, after they learn more about each party and how it is celebrated in English spoken countries such as England or the U.S.A, she/he may ask them to choose one they liked most. Then, they may prepare some food, clothes, activities and class environment for next class, in which they can have a party and try to talk only in English.

Analyzing this activity, students share and process cultural information about these celebrations in order to solve a problem: how to prepare a party. Next, all students interact with each other for solving the information gap, which is to match the preparation, food, clothes, etc with the type of party celebrated, which only the group presenting has access to. This activity could be classified in Littlewood's functional communicative activities in two groups. First, in steps 1 and 2, the students are "processing the information", because they have access to relevant information about these parties in the magazines, books or texts taken from Internet that teacher gives them. Using this data they have a problem-solving situation: to prepare a specific party. For this functional group of activities, Littlewood says they can be situations that may encounter outside classroom so that language has its natural function: they may need to prepare a party like that in real life using their second/foreign language. Next, in step 3, the activity can be classified in the group of "sharing information with unrestricted cooperation" since the group which has access to the name of the party cooperates by explaining what they have discussed and even what the other students may ask till their classmates discover the secret. The final moment can be also seen as a problem to solve, in this case, processing the information they have seen in class about parties aiming the preparation of the party they chose.
Reference:
Littlewood, W. Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. p. 16 - 42.

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