First she taped drawings representing drinks on the bb (on yellow paper) and food drawings on pink paper, saying the name of it as she put it up.

Then, underneath each one she put its word, sometimes engaging us by asking us to guess a little e.g. by saying the word before showing us what picture it belongs to. She also was speaking (almost) entirely in Afrikaans as she explained the words. She’d even ask a question in Afrikaans related to a word and ask for an answer in English. By pointing and pronouncing she showed us two different pronunciations of the same letter. Lots of repeating and noise as she pointed and asked for feedback. Very active.

She had a total of nine items of food up there: three were foods, six were drinks.

Then she, one by one, she took down three of the words for good, and took each down just before she asked about it. But we could still look ahead to get ready for the next one.

Then she assembled a subgroup of three in front of the class. On blue index cards she had put the same images as she had on the bb. Three of nine was still missing their Afrikaans name.

On the backboard she rwrote some key words that they’d need for the came: Yes (ja), No (nee), (Do you have?) Het jy…? and Go Fish (gaan visvang). She explained the directions in Afrikaans, and then in English. W’s are pronounced “v” and V’s are pronounced “f.”

A pair made a book (rather than four). As people talked, using cues from the bb, she would repeat the pronunciation properly.

They played one time for each person, and then she handed each group of three a “deck” and we all played at once.

She went around and listened as we played, offering her services as a pronunciation-corrector as needed.

Then she took all the names away from the blackboard drawings and slowly, then more quickly, pointed to an item and asked us to name it.

Then she did sentence strips related to ordering in a restaurant, and included formal and informal versions of a few of the words. We pronounced them, she translated them, and then we sequenced them.

Then we did the restaurant role-play.

Was there a purpose for communication?

The exercises focused, gradually, on giving us tools to be able to order in an Afrikaans restaurant. We began by naming objects (food) with only implicit grammar (as she spoke without translation). We then practiced the names of the foods through a Go Fish and other exercises. Then she gave us sentence strips that we could combine into a restaurant-ordering dialog. We practiced pronouncing those and she offered help as needed. Finally she gave us a menu (with different food items than those we had practiced), and had one of us play waiter and two diners, using the sentence strips and menus and source. She also gave us a little background on the restaurant and Afrikaans food.

Information gap (was there a need to find out information)?

We had to find out the names of the foods, and the meaning of the words on the board and the paper, in order to make sense out of the rest of the exercise. We had plenty of verbal and other support throughout, and low affective filter.

Were there authentic materials?

The materials were replicas of authentic materials: food items, menus. There were nine food items on the board, but each consisted of two or more words, so our actual input was close to 20 words. She had sentence strips representing the ordering dialog, which we ordered before trying our role-playing. She also included the formal and informal version of one or two of the items (e.g. greetings).

Now, for the template stuff…

Subject Matter

• Relationship between function and form
• Real-world contexts
• Focus on all components of communicative competence (grammatical, functional, discourse, sociolinguistic, strategic
• Meaning is paramount
• Started in late 60s
• Came out of counseling/learning theory

Language

• Judicious use of native language allowed
• Translation may be used
• Created from trial and error; creative, original production
• Emphasis on functional and communicative proficiency more than mere mastery of structures
• Two types of meaning: notional categories (concepts e.g. time and space) and communicative function (e.g. requests)
• Seven functions of language, all explored: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative, representational

Culture

• Informal, interactive
• Teacher as guide but not ruler

[in general can refer to such factors as how we sit or talk to teacher]

Learners

• Active participant in their own learning process
• Cooperative & collaborative
• Inspired by intrinsic motivation
• Tend to be immigrants traditionally
• Negotiator between self, learning process and the object of learning
• Should contribute as much as s/he gains

Learning

• Heuristic (hands-on)
• Experiential & task-based
• Involves meaningful tasks & real-life situations (or simulations)
• Interactive
• Problem-solving
• Involving interactions and transactions
• Five core characteristics of communicative methodology:
• Appropriateness for a situation and participant
• Message focus that creates real meanings
• Psycholinguistic processing the engage learners’ brains
• Risk-taking that encourages guessing and learning from errors
• Free practice in which skills are practiced holistically rather than individually

Teacher

• Facilitator
• Guide
• Coach
• Independent participant
• Organizer of resources
• A resource him/herself
• Researcher and learner
• Analyst
• Counselor
• Process manager

Teaching

• Fluency & accuracy
• Form & function
• Comprehensible input
• Autonomy & strategic involvement
• Spontaneous
• Contextualization and communication
• Controlled exercises
• Syllabus theory: these are the communicative syllabus types:
  1. Structures plus functions
  2. Functional spiral around a structural core
  3. Structural, functional, instrumental
  4. Functional
  5. Notional
  6. Interactional
  7. Task-based
  8. Learner-generated

Educational Outcomes

• Communicative competence
• Fluency over accuracy (but accuracy important)
• Can be used with all four skills
• Skill development
• Objectives involve these levels: content, instrumental, interpersonal, learning needs, and extra-linguistic goals.
• Achieving communicative objectives of information sharing, negotiation of meaning, interaction
• Learners learn a language through using it to communicate
• Authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities
• Fluency is an important dimension of communication
• Communication involves the integration of different language skills
• Learning is a process of creative construction and involves trial and error
• Learner engagement, working in pairs, and outcome are among the essential foci of CLT

Context

• All ages & abilities
• Includes realia
• Presentations
• Oral practice & recognition & production
• Q&A
• Learner discovery of generalizations
• Classroom activities based on these premises:

Language is a system for the expression of meaning

The primary function of language is to allow interaction and communication

The structure of language reflects if functional and communicative uses

• The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse.