● Validity: The activity should activate learners primarily in the skill or material it purports to practice;
●Effectiveness: we consolidate learning by practice successfully;
● Interest: the practice must lead to learner attention, high motivation and ultimately effective learning. It can be rooted in some “aspects of the activity: an interesting topic, the need to convey meaningful information, a game-like ‘fun’ task, attention-catching material, appeal to learners’ feelings or a challenge to their intellect” ;
● Engagement: “the more language the learners actually engage with during the activity, the more practice in it they will get” ;
● Teacher assistance: “The main function of the teacher, having proposed the activity and given clear instructions, is to help the learners do it successfully” . T should do his best to assist Ss, and increase their chances of success and the effectiveness of the practice activity as a whole.
At least seven approaches to communicative exercise design can be identified in the literature: giving and following instructions, information transfer, information gap, the jigsaw principle, problem solving, informal talk tasks, and role-play and drama techniques.
This is a simple but valuable communicative activity. The use of the language is task-oriented, and learners experience the language at work, e.g.
◇ Stand up!
◇ Open your books.
◇ Touch your nose.
◇ Put your hands on your head!
◇ A central characteristic of communicative language teaching is that it focused attention on the ability to understand and convey information content (Johnson 1982: 164)
◇ One must have a sufficient command of the L2 to read & interpret the letter.
◇ It helps direct the reader’s attention to important items of information, thus facilitation the reading process.
◇ e.g. The information in a letter of application to a club has to be transferred to an official form.
If A talks to B, A must assume that B does not already know in advance what A is going to say; otherwise there would be no point in talking.
(e.g. Go for it 8A Unit 4 Pp 21/82/83)
A further development of the information gap principle, instructions or separate bits of information are given to two, three, or more groups of Ss.
Co-operation, group work
Task
Group 1’s card |
Find these words (1) You do it when you are tired. (2) You cannot… milk or tea, but you can… apples, bread, cake and chocolates (3) You do it on horses and bicycles. (4) When two cars crash into each other, they have an… Make a word from the first letters of these words. Hint for the group word: a period of time
|
| Group 2’s card |
| Find these words (1) A big animal with grey skin and a trunk. (2) He delivers letters. (3) A kind of fruit, not an apple. (4) If you do not dislike something, you… it. (5) The time from noon till evening.
Make a word from the first letters of these words. Hint for the group word: a kind of fruit |
| Group 3’s card |
| Find these words (1) Jingle Bells, Clementine and Old MacDonald are (2) You need a fork, a … and a spoon for eating. (3) The first word in a letter. (4) Number between ten and twelve. Make a word from the first letters of these words. Hint for the group word: a piece of furniture |
| Group 4’s card |
| Find these words (1) Not young but… (2) A hot drink, sometimes made from bags. (3) They were in North America before the Europeans came. (4) You are called by it. Make a word from the first letters of these words. Hint for the group word: a preposition |
| Group 5’s card |
| Find these words (1) When you ask a question you usually get an… (2) In the sky at night, big and bright. (3) You write with it. (4) Last word in a letter to a good friend. Make a word from the first letters of these words. Hint for the group word: it gives you light |
| Key 1. yawn, eat, ride, accident → year 2. elephant, postman, pear, like, afternoon → apple 3. songs, knife, dear, eleven → desk 4. old, tea, Indian, name → into 5. answer, moon, pen, love → lamp 6. over 7. hand （邹为诚， 2008：118-20） → holiday |
Some activities are designed to present Ss with problems, riddles, or puzzles which arouse their curiosity, e.g.
Planning a picnic
Group-work: discuss:
-where to go
-when to go
-how to go
-what to take
-what to do
Those tasks emphasize on getting meaning across, on the what of communication rather than the how.
In many cases, these techniques approximate real-life language use to a remarkable degree.
