Profesorado para la Educación Secundaria en Inglés

Didactics I
1st Written Assignment
COMMUNICATIVE
LANGUAGE TEACHING
TODAY
By Jack Richards

Professor: Boillat, Silvia

Students: Palacio, Agustina / Falcón, Sebastián

Questionnaire:

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1. Do task 3. (Define gramatical and communicative competences. Provide 3
examples)

Task 3

Examine a classroom text, either a speaking texto or a general English course

book. Can you find example4s of exercises that practice gramatical
competence and those that practice communicative competence? Which kinds
of activities prodominate?

We can find examples of both, exercises that practice gramatical competence and
those that practice communicative compentece. Based on what I could examinate
in my highschool English books I can say activities that predominate are the
grammatical ones, but I think it might varies depending on the age of the public is
destinated to.

Grammatical competence: refers to the knowledge we have of a language

thataccounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to
knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g. parts of speech, tenses,
phrases, clauses, sentence patters) and how sentences are formed.

Communicative competence: refers to knowing how to use language for a range of

different purposes and functions, knowing how to vary our use of language
according to the setting and the participants (e.g. when to use formal and informal
speech). Knowing how produce and understand different types of texts and
knowing how to mantain communication using different communication
stratategies.

Example of Grammatical Competence

Source: Champions 3 - Student’s book (page 17)

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 Example of Communicative Competence
Source: Sprecrum 1 – Students’s book (page 42)

2. Define “fluency”. (provide 2 examples of activities that focus on fluency).

Define “accuracy”. (provide 2 examples of activities focus on accuracy).

Fluency: is natural language use occuring when a speaker engages in meaningful

interaction and mantains comprehensible and ongoing communication despite
limitations in their communicative competence.
Accuracy: focuses on creating correct examples of language use.

Accuracy and fluency are necessary to acquire the language correctly. Accuracy
lead us to understand how to make the sentences, while fluency consists in using
those sentences to get a natural speaking and communication.

1st Example of Fluency activity

Source: Champions 3 – Student’s book (page 43)

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 2nd Example of Fluency activity
Source: Flashlight 1 – Student’s book (page 38)

1st Example of Accuracy activity

Source: What’s Up 1 – Student’s book (page 10)

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 2nd Example of Accuracy activity
Source: Flashlight 1 – Student’s book (page 40)

3. What’s the difference between mechanical drills, meaningful practice and

communicative practice? Find a secuence of activities in a communicative
course book in which students move from mechanical to meaningful, to
communicative.

The differences between mechanical practice, meaningful practice and communicative

is that in mechanical practice we have activities that contains a precisely use of
language, there’s just one way to answer while in meaningful practice activities can be
completd with personal information and there’s no just one correct answer and in
communicative competence activities differs from the others because cosists in a
speaking activity instead of written.

In the activities below we can see this sequence, points 3 and 4 belong to the
mechanical practice, because in activity 3 students have to complete with specific
language, and in activity 4 they have to choose the correct answer.
Activity 5 can be regarded as meaningful practice since students can complete with
their own information. Exercise 6 is an example of communicative practice since it
constitutes a speaking activity.

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Example of Secuence Activity (from mechanical to meanifful, to communicative)
Source: Champions 3 – Student’s book (page 47)

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4. Define information-gap activities. Find 2 examples of these activities in course
books.

Information-gap activities: refers to the fact that in real communication, people

normally communicate in order to get information they do not possess.
More authentic communication is likely to occur in the classroom if students go
beyond practice of language forms and use their linguistic and communicative
resources in order to obtain information.

1st example of Information-gap activity

Source: https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-worksheets/grammar/present-continuous-progressive-tense/information-gap-activity/4142

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 2nd Example of Information-gap activity
Source: Starter: Round Up(English Grammar book, page 21)

5. Define Jigsaw activities. Find 1 examaple of these activities in course books.

Jigsaw activities : are based on the information gap principle. The class is divided
into groups and each group has part of the information needed to complete an
activity.
Students must use their language resources to communicate meaningfully to take
part in meaningful communication practice.

Example of jigsaw activity

Source: New Total English – Intermediate (page 115)

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 6. Provide 1 example of:
* A task-completion activity (puzzles, games, map-readinds)
*An information-gathering activity (surveys, interviews)
*A role play (assigned roles and improvise a scene)

1. Task Completion activity

Example of a Task Completion activity

Source:Spotlight 3 – Worbook (page 12,13)

2. Information-gathering activity

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 Example of Information-gathering activity
Source:What’s Up 3 – Student’s Book (page 25)

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3. Role play

Example of Role Play activity

Source: Champions 3 – Student’s Book (page 22)

7. Provide one example of each of the six types of tasks proposed by Jane Willis
(1996).

1. Listing task

Example of listing task

Source: What’s up 3 Student’s book (page 67)

2. Sorting and ordering

Example of sorting and ordering

Source: New Headway – Pre-Intermediate student’s book (page 66)

3. Comparing

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 Example of comparing activity
Source: New Headway – Pre-Intermediate student’s book (page 34)

4. Problem-solving

Example of solving problems

Source: New Headway – Pre-Intermediate student’s book (page 649)

5. Sharing personal experience

Example of sharing personal experience

Source: New Total English – Intermediate (page 135)

6. Creative task

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 Example of creative task
Source: New Headway – Pre-Intermediate student’s book (page 36)

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