Thursday, July 21, 10:00 am -1:00 pm

Agenda

1. Introduction: Looking at activities and tasks

2. Discussion of “CLT Today” p. 14-22

3. Activity: Evaluating skills activities

4. Activity: Creating skills activities

Discussion:

“Communicative language teaching today” by Jack C. Richards

Accuracy v. fluency

CLT goal is to develop fluency by creating activities that focus on negotiating meaning, using communication strategies, correcting misunderstandings.

Activities focusing on fluency

reflect natural use of language

focus on achieving communication

require meaningful use of language

require use of communication strategies

produce language that may not be predictable

try to link language use to context

Example fluency task

A group of students carry out a role play in which they have to adopt specified roles and personalities provided for them. The roles involve the drivers, witnesses, and the police at a collision between two cars. The language is entirely improvised by the students, though they are constrained by the situation and characters.

Types of practice

• Mechanical: controlled practice in which students can succeed without necessarily understanding – e.g. repetition/substitution drills

• Meaningful: controlled but students make meaningful choices – e.g. given a map and list of prepositions, students answer “Where is the bookshop?” etc.

• Communicative: real communicative context is focus requiring exchange of real information; language not predictable – e.g. students draw map of their neighborhood and answer questions about location of places

Exercise sequences in many CLT course books move from mechanical to meaningful to communicative:

Example:

Superlative adjectives: start with grammatical explanation and example sentences: The funniest person I know is my friend Bob.

• Exercise A: sentence completion One of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known is ______________. • Exercise B: use superlative forms to write original sentences

• Exercise C: group work. Students ask follow up questions about the sentences they wrote in A and B

Some types of CLT activities

• Information-gap• jig-saw• task completion• information gathering• opinion-sharing• information-transfer• reasoning gap• role-plays

CLT activities emphasize

• pair and group work

• authenticity

-- BREAK –10 minutes

Activity evaluation guide

Q: How do activities in textbooks reflect CLT principles?

Activity: Evaluating skills activities

1. Small groups choose several activities from textbooks

2. Evaluate these activities using the Evaluation Guide

3. Appoint a secretary to take notes4. Report back to the class.

Activity: Creating skills activities

1. Form pairs based on interest/experience teaching a particular age group

2. Select a language skill focus3. Create an original activity targeting that skill4. Follow the guidelines on the evaluation guide5. Report back to the class.

Lunch

Thursday, July 21, 2:00 – 4:00 pm

Agenda

1. Introduction to microteaching

2. Microteaching preparation

3. Microteaching

4. Feedback

5. Reflection

Microteaching: Introduction

Microteaching:

Rejoin your partner from the morning sessionDiscuss how to divide up the activity between

youEach pair will ‘teach’ the activity to a small group‘Students’ evaluate the activity using the

evaluation guide, provide feedbackRejoin your partner to decide how/if you would

change the activity if you taught it again

Suggestion for reflection:

Write about your microteaching experience. Would you teach this activity again? Why or why not? If yes, would you change or adapt it? How? Anything else?

Homework

• (optional) Read “Communicative Language Teaching Today” p. 28-36 and prepare comments and/or questions.

• Respond to at least three of your classmates’ skills activities on the website.

• Respond to at least three of your team members’ reflections on the team blog page.