Focused definition11/13/2022 asking learners to find out what are the three most common plans in their class, or asking learners to decide on which person in their group is going to have the most interesting Friday? The laziest Friday? The most unusual Friday? The busiest Friday? etc. If they can achieve the goal, they have been successful in their communication (even if their English is not perfect!) Nick’s lesson could easily be turned into a Task-based lesson by setting an explicit goal, e.g. A task is a goal-oriented activity – the goal gives learners a reason to communicate and find out things, in order to solve a problem, to find things in common or to hold a survey. Nick’s lesson is similar to Task-based learning, (TBL) which leads from focus on MEANING to a focus on language itself and specific FORMs. (And note here, that if learners are not sure of their plans, they might need to express uncertainty, using words like might or perhaps.) The learners may well express their meanings just using words and phrases they know, and inevitably will be making mistakes, but if their meaning is clear, they have succeeded in communicating in English and should be praised! In Nick’s lesson, later stages 4-7 PRESENTATION and PRACTICE are more closely form-focussed, but the input is all taken from the learner’s earlier contributions with an added memory challenge to make it fun, and to make the learners really listen to the meanings of the corrected sentences. So Nick’s stages 1-3 are all meaning- focused and these will help the learners get used to taking part in normal English interactions. Stage 1 was the teaching - telling the class about their plans for next Friday (meaning focused – learners always like hearing about the teacher’s own lives and will be trying to understand), stage 2 was learners telling each other their plans (meaning-focused), followed by stage 3 - teacher chatting about the learners’ plans using natural conversational language containing a variety of language patterns. He started with the 3rd P, Production, but using truly meaning-focused interactions. My second question for you is – how much time does the average learner get in each lesson for individual meaning-focused language use? to speak freely in class, (not just to practise one structure), to interact with each other in English, maybe with the teacher, or in pairs? to put to use whatever language they can remember in order to find out things about each other, to play a guessing game ? To ask questions as well as answer, to compare what they did or are planning to do at the week-end, to tell stories about their own lives? Can you work it out? How many minutes in a week? A term? Nick suggested re-ordering a PPP lesson on future plans. The phrase ‘D’you know what I mean?’ is one of the commonest phrases in spoken English! Every day communication is meaning-focused, we use whatever words and phrases best express our meanings - our focus is on getting someone else to understand what we mean. In fact we don’t need to speak in sentences, we speak in meaning units. When using language in real-life, we do not just speak in sentences containing similar grammar structures. #Focused definition freeAnd this is useful practice, but here is my first question: is this type of Production free enough to help learners communicate in everyday situations where they want to use English to express their own meanings? To talk or chat to people who don’t speak their language? Learners can often do this quite well in controlled conditions while thinking about the new structure they have just been taught. When, in the Production stage, learners use the new structures to make their own personal sentences, these may be true, but the focus is still primarily on the form. In a PPP lesson, Presentation and Practice of a grammatical structure are form-focused activities yes, the meaning can be made clear, but the main focus is on saying and writing the new forms correctly. In this blog post, I am going to make a distinction between form-focused and meaning-focused activities, introduce the concept of Task-based Learning and ask you some questions. The enthusiasm of the learners shines through! I’ve also enjoyed reading the blogs and comments on using PPP for teaching grammar. I have really enjoyed watching the Stories Alive Project, both the clips of learners’ performances of the stories and the videos of teachers demonstrating activities you can do to prepare for story-telling. Jane has been a supporter of the Hands Up Project for a long time and is on the advisory panel - offering us support in bringing task based learning into the work that we do. This week we have something rather special - a guest post from Jane Willis.
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