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Date Posted: 17:50:17 06/20/03 Fri
Author: alexandra accoroni gonçalves
Subject: task 7

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras
Communicative Approach (online)
Professor Vera menezes
Alexandra Accoroni Gonçalves



Before analyzing Well's lesson plan, I would like to point out some aspects of Ryan's text. First, we have to think these problems he talks about happen in a Japanese ESL classroom, different culture and context of ours here in Brazil. Some of the problems he points out seem to be very superficial, even meaningless, to me. I agree with Ryan when he says that students need an adequate feedback from the teacher to know how they are progressing in the course. As a student, I felt lost sometimes because of this. But I completely disagree with him about the "clarify goals" topic. It would be very good for the students to know previously what they would learn in an especific class. Yes, I think the teacher could write on the board the subject of study daily but not give it in a previous class for the students to be prepared for next class. What about the situations in life? Does anyone give us the subject we are supposed to talk about in real life? Suppose I am a student and I decide to go abroad. Oh, my!!!! I don't have a previous subject to talk about so I can never leave the hotel because I can't prepare myself about what I'm going to speak in the middle of the street!!!!! Real life, real use of language. We NEED the surprise factor too!!! We need to know how to improvise!!! Or we will never be able to communicate!!!!
About the consistency in teaching style... Well, maybe in Japanese culture students can't differenciate when a teacher is strict about attendance and punctuality and also friendly with students in order to stimulate them to learn and use the language which they are studying. Are they robots? Don't they recognize human reactions and situations?
and to finish my opinion on Ryan's text, there's this cultural awareness. Maybe this problem occurs in Japanese classroom because there's an American teaching Japanese students or maybe a Japanese teaching American students. If you teach ESL in your own country I think you are more than awared about the culture and behaviour of your students. I think you have to know what to expect. I think this problem just exists if you go teach somewhere else in the world. And then it's your obligation to investigate and study deeply the habits and culture where you are teaching.

Let's go to Well's lesson plan.Let me start saying that this lesson plan was made for intermediate to advanced students. Can a beginner or false beginner be able to acomplish all the tasks? They don't have enough vocabulary to read, write, listen or speak in English and not even enough knowledge about the grammar structures. So let's considere this an up-intermediate level classroom, where students have enough knowledge to do such project. Sometimes it's very interesting to start a class with a brainstorm about a subject that the students don't even imagine they are going to study that day. Some interesting stuff come up and students usually get surprised to see how much they know, without knowing that they know. I liked the project title, something very useful and a real life situation. Anyone can decide to buy your own car. "Description: a project requiring research, CRITICAL thinking and COMPLEX desicion-making about an expensive item". It must be an advanced level classroom!!!! Critical thinking, complex desicion making? How can a beginner do such thing??? If it is really an upper level, I liked the project. I would ask students to work in teams bacause i think it's better than working alone. Maybe the teacher could join the best students with some who weren't very good or confident. So this way, one helps the other. Researching the subcathegories at the internet is very good. A good tool that helps students learn more about the language. The teacher could interact a little more with the students guiding them through the research, giving ideas or simply talking about the subject. The decision-making phase is vague. I think the teacher (it's a communicative approach classroom) should ask the students about their personal experiences. Have they bought their own car before? someone they know? What were the main criterias to choose one vehicle for another? I think it would give the opportunity to the students to talk about something they really know. Did they like the vehicle they bought? Why or why not? And then we would have a real communicative class. I like the choise of the subject but I think Well's lesson plan doesn't give much space for practicing the language in classroom. Or maybe the objective of his lesson wasn't to practice speaking skills but reading and writing skills.

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