This week's episode: Tasks v. Activities...
What did you think?
What is your number one takeaway from the episode? Is there anything that you feel like you want to change?
What is your number one takeaway from the episode? Is there anything that you feel like you want to change?
My two number ones (can you have that?) I always love his definition of communication because I know from experiencing it so frequently that people leave out the INTERPRETATION as part of communication.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the mention of tasks being those that don't have a language purpose. That was the perfect wording and contrasts to his chapter on Tasks v. Activities in While we're on the topic...The interesting thing is that tasks often DO have a language purpose. The question is, how good are you at hiding it and using them to teach or share about others.
Ok one more...I DID love the affirmation that we ARE using authentic texts to teach something and not to teach language. In so many of the themes, as a teacher I'm learning. I have spent countless hours researching things that I learned from an authentic text and I love that. It's like Field of Dreams: If you build it they will come. If you let the linguistics of language learning go, kids will learn the linguistics of language, similarly to the L1.
Yes, Carolyn....I wanted to chat about that. Bill stresses so heavily in this episode that the purpose of tasks is NOT practicing language. But, I know that in our Structured Input tasks, for example, we have a specific language goal in mind that we're hoping they'll implicitly pick up on. The podcast made me feel like even that is really not appropriate. That as soon as we're sneaking in language practice, they'll sniff it out, and the authenticity of the task for communication is reduced.
DeleteI listened to this last week but still find myself thinking about the info this week - that's how I know I am being "stretched" a bit! I appreciated his explanation of a task vs an activity, as I was not aware of the difference. Tasks focus the learner on using the language to communicate, not practicing the language (as activities do). At the end of a task, a learner should be able to answer questions about him/herself, be able to express new information, or create something.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I struggle with is that all of his examples and research seem to be based on university students and classrooms as opposed to middle school classrooms with 38 wiggly 7th and 8th graders. He mentioned that turning to a partner and asking about the weekend is an activity - just language practice with no real language purpose. I disagree with that - I think it depends on the age of your students. For university students, I agree, it is very much practice, however, for middle schoolers, that is a much higher interest topic where students love to share about what they did, which then creates off-shoots into other conversations about movies, favorite beaches etc. Middle school students enjoy recording their weekend results on the board so we have "data" to compare and discuss.
Susan Manly
I agree Susan. I think it really depends on your population. I think this is really the most difficult aspect of developing creative tasks...figuring out what will be compelling and engaging to the students. That part can be exhausting, but it can make or break the success of your plans. Part of Stephen Krashen's work is the Compelling Input Hypothesis: Compelling means that the input is so interesting you forget that it is in another language. I see why this is so important because their brains will soak up the language like sponges if they care about what they are hearing/reading. But, with this generation, we are competing with their smart phones all the time. So many times I've walked into my day excited about what I was planning to present, only to have it flop because they weren't compelled to engage.
DeleteHi ladies,
ReplyDeleteGreat thoughts...that's what I love about Talkin' L2...so thought provoking.
Susan, regarding the turn to a partner and talk about the weekend not having language purpose...I don't think that's a bad thing! It doesn't have a language purpose if you're not focusing on correct use of the past tense, and rather, are focusing on communication. So, in the context of what BVP said, if I remember it correctly, I DO agree, HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that it isn't valuable.
If we write things on the board like:
Yo fui...
Yo hice...
blah blah blah and we control the language, then it's language practice. If your data that they are creating, on the other hand focuses, on them communicating as to what they did, and make comparisons or tallies or "Top 10 Most Popular Activities on the weekend" that focus more on similarities and differences, rather than correct use of the past tense(s), then it moves from language practice to having communicative purpose.
Always promising, at least for young high schoolers:
Tik Tok
Snapchat
Instagram
"challenges" (there's always something - most recent - the skullbreaker challenge. Don't look it up. It will make your skin crawl) like the cinnamon challenge or the Kardashian lip challenge
Fortnite / Minecraft or other lame games
Singers, especially those that are super popular or have some trending aspect
Actors
New series or movies (which would you watch, which would you not watch) with their carteles de cine en español.
The problem that I've found is that most people want to have a language focus, so Who's a better superhero, Thor or Capitán América doesn't really fit with grammar...so the question is, does it matter? Sometimes it's a matter of rethinking what you're talking about:
Who's a better superhero (comparatives / superlatives)
Who did it (preterite)
Who is (ser)
...etc to decide who is the better of the two. Either way, the grammar isn't as important as the communication, the confidence to communicate and the input, according to BVP