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Date Posted: 11:29:38 06/20/03 Fri
Author: Lidiane
Subject: Task 7

Analysis of a lesson plan through Ryan's "Overcoming Common Problems Related to Communicative Methodology"
The lesson is a task-based-project, that is, it is goal-oriented and requires interaction of pairs or groups to achieve an its purpose demanded by the teacher, in this case, to take a complex decision about an expensive consumer item, the car. I intend to analyse this project through Stephen Ryan's essay, "Overcoming Common Problems related to Communicative Methodology", basically on the six types of problems in class planning that he identified in CLT classes. We can see that this project may present some problems that Ryan named out as potential pitfalls; however, it considers important areas of communicative approach that he seems to defend.
In terms of goal clarification, the project fails in clarifying its goals in terms of language structure. It does not raise learners' awareness of language system, which Ryan believes that can benefit learners. He claims that learners may be kept motivated and interested if they are aware of what language they are trying to practice and in what context. Although the context is highlighted, in the plan of this project, there is not any explicit setting of the type of language structure students are going to use.
I also identified some problems consisting teacher's role. I do not mean that teacher has to be the center of this class, especially because it is totally learners-oriented, but he/she is very much seen as mediator, and seems not to direct learners so that they achieve more effectively their goals. In this point, he/she does not seem to give any help to the students during most part of the process. In my opinion, the teacher could, for instance, help them with vocabulary besides merely doing the brainstorm, and even provide relevant vocabulary in a pre-activity. This pre-activity does not have to be a grammar one, but any communicative activity that may introduce the topic and give students' some background knowledge about how to buy a car. Ryan, when talking about routine of lesson, framed a lesson into some steps, in this case, I believe that this project need a warm up, or a presentation of language, which I suggested in a pre-activity.
Ryan also suggests in lesson framework that activities could shift from more controlled freer ones. I do not see this at the beginning of this project: there is not much control in language structure and teacher's orientation to achieve most of the goals meant in this project. However, interestingly, the results aimed are very much free, because students have to produce summaries, analysis of their research and publication according to their own decision, as there is a decision make phase to select it. Moreover, students do extensively collaborative work, an effective point that is not much mentioned by Ryan's essay, which overcomes the weaker points in the project: by sharing lots of information gathered in the tasks with each other through publication and listing of findings, students may practice a lot the language structure (although not explicit as Ryan recommends) and vocabulary they learned.
Another positive point that is even mentioned by Ryan is the feedback. Although feedback is not traditional neither a "real time" one, it is present in this project as a collaborative feedback. When students are editing their summaries of the research findings, or telling their classmates how they used the knowledge gained from their consultation with a classmate "expert" and all the activities made before the publication, they are, in way, having a feedback of the meaningful language they acquired previously.
Concluding, I would say that there are some problems at the beginning of this project that Ryan calls our attention to, specially concerning learners' noticing and language awareness. It also lacks some clarification of objective in terms of structure and teacher's orientation to achieve these objectives. However, these problems found in "radical communicative approach" lesson planning can be overcome by the suggestions Ryan gives, especially concerning the use of different methodologies and approaches in class. On the other hand, the activity supplies learners' exposition to authentic language and context besides collaborative work. All these factors make students share extensively what they learn, which promote implicit learning of language structure, meaningful language and collaborative feedback.
Reference:
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ryan-Communicative.html
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/OConsumerEdBuyCar912.htm

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