UNIT 17

PRACTICE ACTIVITIES AND TASKS FOR LANGUAGE AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT

In this topic I learnt that activities and tasks are designed to give learners opportunities to practice and increase their knowledge in the use of language. Also, activities are designed according the subskills of reading, listening, writing and speaking together grammatical structures. First, in order to teach reading skill, teacher can apply jigsaw reading, reading puzzle, using newspaper, predicting from words and pictures and so on in order to support students’ knowledge. For instance, jigsaw reading let each student to read a short text, then each student needs to tell other students about his/her part of the text, so at the end all students will have all information. Another example, for teaching speaking skill the teacher can apply telling stories, famous people, balloon debates and information-gap activities, drills (individual, or choral. In information-gap activities two speakers have different bits information, and they can only complete the whole picture by sharing that information, there is a gap between them. The following activities are helpful in getting students to practice speaking. Another example, for teaching listening teacher can apply listening for specific detail, jigsaw listening, message-taking, monologues, poetry and so on. These activities provide ample opportunities for hearing speakers of different language varieties. To sum up, each of these activities has a different purpose and uses, and it can be controlled, free and freer activities. It’s controlled because teacher gives students to practice activities and use language accurately; it focuses on the form of language. On the other hand, free activities allow students to use whatever language they wish in order to complete the task; it focuses on fluency. For example, writing e-mails or stories. Also, in this activity teacher may not able to predict what language students will use.  While, freer activities means between restricted practice and less controlled activity in which teacher predict what language the student will need to use like surveys or role-plays. As future teacher, I will apply the activities mentioned before according the productive and receptive skills in order to offer a wide range of tips for improving learners’ need and skills. Using several kinds of activities in our lessons add variety and lessons are more interesting and motivating.  

Extra information:

E Hinkel - Tesol Quarterly, 2006 - Wiley Online LibraryE Hinkel: 

http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume5/ej20/ej20r4/7/ 

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