Elements of Communicative Activities

 

An authentic activity is one which brings the language to life by providing the REAL CONTEXT of language usage through a newspaper article, a radio broadcast, a dictionary, a story, a letter, a recorded conversation between two people, a diary entry, an advertisement, a menu, a travel brochure etc.

　

A communicative activity is one which brings the language to life by providing a REAL BASIS for speaking, and the interactive EXCHANGE of ideas, opinions, and feelings with another person.

　

It is important to stress the aspect of exchange when teaching the four aspects of communication: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking.

　

Confidence Building

　

One of the most difficult parts of learning a foreign language is practicing it.　In order to practice a foreign language, a person needs to have confidence.　 

Be sure to:

  • Encourage the students to speak more
  • When they do speak, compliment them.
  • Allow them to use Japanese ONLY on a limited basis (i.e. if there is no other means of getting their point across)
  • Encourage the use of gestures and facial expressions.
  • Use only constructive criticism.
  • Utilize student-focused lesson plans.
  • Limit teacher talking time to an absolute minimum.

　 　

Memorization

 


Memorization has its good points when used properly.　Memorizing a greeting, however, is not one of them.　When a student hears, "How are you?" the automatic response is . . . You got it!　"Fine, thank you, and you?"　The most amusing aspect of this is that a student may obviously not be "fine".　There are many responses to the question such as: tired, hungry, hot, cold, or even bored.　Just saying the dreaded "Fine, thank you, and you?" response has NOTHING to do with communication.　It's like merely speaking to a tape recorder.

 

Positive uses of Memorization:

·        Memorizing vocabulary words—gradually being able to reach the point where the object, subject, action etc, is linked directly to the English word for it. All too often the object, subject, action, etc is linked to the Japanese word and subsequently linked to the English word. 

           Example:           I see a pencil, I think “pencil”. I don’t see a

                              pencil and think えんぴつ and then think what’s

                              the English word for えんぴつ—pencil.

·        Memorizing grammar structures through examples.

           Example:           I hear, “How are you?”.  I respond, “I’m happy”.

                              I know that I can change “Happy” to any type of

                              emotion to fit the situation.  I don’t hear, “How

                              are you?”, and know my response will always be

                              “I’m fine thank you and you.” 

 

 

Brainstorming/Mind-mapping

 


Brainstorming or Mind-mapping is a quick way of organizing thoughts and ideas. 

  1. Ask the students to think about a topic; for example: visiting London.
  2. Give them a few minutes to write down as many words as they can about the topic in their notebooks.　
  3. Then draw a Spider Diagram* on the board and record all of their ideas.

 

From this, you can tell how much the students already know and use this to inform your teaching and planning.　In addition, this gives the students confidence because they can look at the board and see all the information they were able to come up with on their own, without having been taught in class.

 

* A Spider Diagram is where you write the main topic in the middle of the board and draw a circle around it.  Then you write down all of the ideas students came up with and draw connecting lines to the main topic. 　

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