Филологические науки 1.Методика  преподавания языка и литературы

Л.С. Кошова

Дніпропетровський національний університет імені Олеся Гончара

The classroom activity in ELT methodology

A situation in which people are busy doing different things in order to achieve a particular aim is called activity. Speech activity is a purposeful interaction of people via language. As any other activity, it has a motive or reason for the interlocutors to communicate. When we have something to say, want to get/receive information or convey our thoughts, we start communicating with other people. When we are interested in other peoples’ ideas or information, we read or listen to them. Without any particular reason speech activity does not exist.

In FLT methodology there are two terms task and activity, which are very often used interchangeably. Though activity is the most general term for the units of which a lesson consists of, task (according to G. Crookes, C. Chandon) is a less-controlled activity, which produces realistic use of foreign language. According to Nunan, task or activity is the smallest unit of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language. It is important in this respect to cover the theory of activity done by Jim Scrivener, who distinguishes five steps of activity procedure:

· lead-in or pre-activity introduction; used to raise motivation or interest, or perhaps to focus on language items.

· set up the activity– first step of activity; clear instructions, sometimes demonstrations or examples are done.

· run the activity – activity itself; when the material is well-prepared and the instructions clear, students can work on the task without too much interference.

· close the activity – final step of activity which may be at the same time the first step of another one;

· post activity – follow up stage, where some kind of feedback should be given.

If lesson is seen as a set of activities, then activity procedure evidently follows the steps of lesson procedure. A great variety of activities can be proposed in the English lesson. One of the classifications is done by G. Crookes and C. Chandon, where activities are differentiated according to the level of teacher control and are labeled as controlled (manipulated), semi-controlled and free (communicative).

Speech activities can also be classified according to the mode of interaction as individual and cooperative. Simultaneous autonomous fulfillment of some language exercises and tasks in listening, reading, writing; individual students' replies; working in chain at the lesson can be called individual activities. Different variants of cooperative interaction – pair work (open/closed pairs); group work; whole class interaction (mingle activity/choir work) – are called cooperative activities.

Activities should be arranged in such a way that an easy activity must be followed by a more difficult one; a very active one with a quieter one, etc. The activities should be ordered logically – from more controlled to freer. Teacher should think over the character of activity proposed and his/her own role in managing it. Each lesson stage after some set of activities should be supported by an appropriate feedback.

e.g. Topic: GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF the USA

Warmer (revision): Competition "How many words do you know?" Write as many English words and word-combinations for the topic in 5 minutes. Compare your lists with the person sitting next to you; correct the mistakes and count the words. Which list will be the longest one?

Topic: WRITING LETTERS.

Warmer: (pre-teach) Game "Jigsaw sentences". Teacher gives a set of jigsaw sentences to each pair or group of students and asks them to make up and read three sensible sentences. The sentences are related to the topic of the lesson.

Warmers or warming up activities, ice-breakers, brainstorming, regrouping activities, information gap, jigsaw, problem-solving and decision-making, opinion exchange, games, role-play and simulations, drama, projects, interviews, making surveys are typical activities for interactive classroom which motivate learners to participate using the target language. The majority of them are communicative or free.

Special attention should be given to the characteristic of communicative/free activities as they are the goal in communicative classroom. As any speech activity, communicative activity is purposeful. Teacher should create a communicative purpose motivating learners to fulfill a stated communicative task. That will create a desire to communicate, without which communication will fail. Free, communicative activity focuses on content, first and foremost, not on form, as the priority is given to fluency of speech, its appropriacy to the situation, but not grammatical accuracy. Students are free to express themselves, thus a variety of language is used. Such kinds of activities encourage students to communicate without teacher intervention or material control as in real life.

The biggest challenge for teacher during a lesson is converting exercises written in a textbook into classroom activities, to state communicative task which is a must for communicative classroom

To break the monotony of the task (e.g. Fill in the words from the list or Underline the correct word then explain your choice) teacher should organize interactive communication. For example, class is divided into 2 groups. The leader from each group is given a list of words/word-combinations/half-sentences. They are different but interconnected (e.g. if group 1 has a beginning of a sentence/idiom/fixed phrase in the list, then group 2 possesses its end). The leaders dictate the lists to their groups (checking spelling against the key may follow). Then comes pair work when a student from group 1 interacts with a student from group 2 and they do matching activity.

Exercises borrowed from coursebooks are converted into classroom activities for the sake of maintaining learners' motivation and promoting success in task. Such conversion needs some organizational efforts on the teacher's part, which are worth doing. Successful learning activities are built on the interests that students bring to the classroom or create that interest as part of their design.