Teacher Education Course

Communicative Activities in the Classroom

What can go wrong? Poor preparation No eliciting No acceptance of students suggestions to build dialogue Teacher gives back to students while writing on the board No connection with students reality No vocabulary work No modeling No choice No correction No feedback from partner Boring Unclear directions No vanishing technique

When CREATING you exercises for Oral practice think of:

Choice, Information gap, Feedback

When you are HAVING THE PRACTICE in the classroom, remember to let students:

Think, Pair, Share

1) give your students time to think of what they are going to talk about. 2) Remember: t-s / s-s (before pairs) Why? Time for the teacher to correct any imperfections in the skeleton; time to check if students understood your instructions; time for modeling (it saves TTT teacher talking time). 3) It is only after the students have understood what to do and have had time to elaborate what they are going to say that they can share information that is relevant for them. Now, pairs. 4) When you finish the activity, get feedback from your students. (What did they learn from the others?) This way you can check if your students are really communicating or just parroting a meaningless skeleton. * If you have an odd number of students, make a group of 3 and the students will naturally take turns in playing the roles. * Correction during the controlled practices should be on the spot. Stop the activity if everybody is making the same kind of mistake. Clarify it on the board and re-start. Correction for the freer and fluency practices can be delayed till the end of the activity. (Write the mistakes on a transparency while they are talking.) * If you are having trouble creating your oral practices, ask for help. SHARE, COMMUNICATE, get ideas from anybody around. Same thing if you created something that worked well in your class.

Seven English . Espaol