1. Thursday, July 21, 10:00 am -1:00 pm Agenda
Introduction: Looking at activities and tasks
Discussion of “CLT Today” p
Activity: Evaluating skills activities
Activity: Creating skills activities

2. “Communicative language teaching today” by Jack C. Richards
Discussion:
“Communicative language teaching today” by Jack C. Richards

3. Accuracy v. fluency
CLT goal is to develop fluency by creating activities that focus on negotiating meaning, using communication strategies, correcting misunderstandings.

4. Activities focusing on fluency
reflect natural use of language
focus on achieving communication
require meaningful use of language
require use of communication strategies
produce language that may not be predictable
try to link language use to context

5. Example fluency task
A group of students carry out a role play in which they have to adopt specified roles and personalities provided for them. The roles involve the drivers, witnesses, and the police at a collision between two cars. The language is entirely improvised by the students, though they are constrained by the situation and characters.

6. Types of practice
Mechanical: controlled practice in which students can succeed without necessarily understanding – e.g. repetition/substitution drills
Meaningful: controlled but students make meaningful choices – e.g. given a map and list of prepositions, students answer “Where is the bookshop?” etc.
Communicative: real communicative context is focus requiring exchange of real information; language not predictable – e.g. students draw map of their neighborhood and answer questions about location of places

7. Exercise sequences in many CLT course books move from mechanical to meaningful to communicative:

8. Example:
Superlative adjectives: start with grammatical explanation and example sentences: The funniest person I know is my friend Bob.
Exercise A: sentence completion
One of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known is
______________.
Exercise B: use superlative forms to write original sentences
Exercise C: group work. Students ask follow up questions about the sentences they wrote in A and B

9. Some types of CLT activities
Information-gap
jig-saw
task completion
information gathering
opinion-sharing
information-transfer
reasoning gap
role-plays

10. CLT activities emphasize
pair and group work
authenticity

11. -- BREAK –
10 minutes

12. Activity evaluation guide
Q: How do activities in textbooks reflect CLT principles?

13. Activity: Evaluating skills activities
Small groups choose several activities from textbooks
Evaluate these activities using the Evaluation Guide
Appoint a secretary to take notes
Report back to the class.

14. Activity: Creating skills activities
Form pairs based on interest/experience teaching a particular age group
Select a language skill focus
Create an original activity targeting that skill
Follow the guidelines on the evaluation guide
Report back to the class.

15. Lunch

16. Thursday, July 21, 2:00 – 4:00 pm Agenda Introduction to microteaching
Microteaching preparation
Microteaching
Feedback
Reflection

17. Microteaching: Introduction

18. Microteaching: Rejoin your partner from the morning session
Discuss how to divide up the activity between you
Each pair will ‘teach’ the activity to a small group
‘Students’ evaluate the activity using the evaluation guide, provide feedback
Rejoin your partner to decide how/if you would change the activity if you taught it again

19. Suggestion for reflection:
Write about your microteaching experience. Would you teach this activity again? Why or why not? If yes, would you change or adapt it? How? Anything else?

20. Homework
(optional) Read “Communicative Language Teaching Today” p and prepare comments and/or questions.
Respond to at least three of your classmates’ skills activities on the website.
Respond to at least three of your team members’ reflections on the team blog page.