Planning an activity

Here are three steps that can help you agree on a learning contract between
teacher and student.
The first stage involves planning and exploration. The first stage involves
planning and exploration. The activity is offered and can be discussed in terms of:
do we understand what it involves; have we got the necessary linguistic tools
available; what are the criteria for successful completion of the task; etc.
The second stage: Once the group is happy with the task it has been set, the
signal is given for them to do the activity. The role of the teacher then is to
observe, give help 'if and when required, and keep an eye on the clock
The third and last stage consists of evaluation.

Chapter 5
Many individuals prefer to adopt cohesive belief systems that give answers to
life's biggest challenges than to go through the trouble of additional investigation.
Mythology satisfies their requirements.
EFL materials are experiencing a significant transformation. The fact that English is
frequently used as a lingua franca in cross-cultural interactions has significant
implications for the classroom. And many of the students in this classroom are
clearly second or third generation immigrants, which has a variety of implications
for student-teacher relationships. Textbook authors are under a lot of pressure to
keep up with new findings and advancements in the field of language acquisition
and instruction.
Many of the ideas discussed in previous chapters have found expression in
learning activities over the last 25 years or so. There are a number of criteria that
language learning materials used in multicultural classrooms should reflect based
on this discussion.

• due attention must be given to developing linguistic, pragmatic and discourse

competence', se "deciaruuve NIunIige In order to achieve this efficiently:
- the relationship between grammar and meaning in communication should be
emphatically present;
 - the study of vocabulary should allow for the development of the 'context of
meaning'.
• The main goal of all classroom EFL activities is to develop'strategic competence.'
- texts should be 'authentic' in the senses of: reflecting actual native speaker
usage and being relevant to the learner;
- text materials should reflect the actual, multicultural composition of countries
where English is used as the native language;
- learning activities should be oriented towards authentic communication;
- learning activities should allow for reflection on quality.

• 'socio-cultural and world knowledge' underlie and feed strategic competence.

This leads to the condition that:
- text materials should respect cultural differences, both in native speaker usage
and in lingun franca settings;
- learning tasks should be interesting, varied, relevant and challenging to the
learner;
- learning tasks should allow for different learing styles.

• metalinguistic, metacultural and metacommunicative knowledge' are essential

to the continued growth of strategic competence. This development can only take
place within the individual learner, hence:
- the development of learner autonomy should be a central issue, both in the
textbook materials and in the EFL classroom.