Delta Module One: Syllabus area 5
Knowledge of resources, materials and reference sources for
language learning
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Your knowledge of this area is specifically tested in one task in the examination – Paper 2, Task 2. Task 3 in Paper 1 asks you to look carefully at some materials and suggest what learners would need to be able to do successfully to complete a task or two so that is also relevant. |
Tasks | Examples |
Paper2, Task 2 In this task you are given an extract from a coursebook. Your mission is: to work out what the purpose of the activities and stages in the material are and how they combine and then to figure out what the author(s) believe. In other words, what the assumptions about language and learning are that underlie the design of the material |
Clearly, question setters have lots of data to draw on for
this task. You need to make sure you have looked at a
wide range of published materials and practised applying the
concepts we have covered so far in this section. There's little point in selecting one bit of material to prepare here, because the range of possibilities is so wide, so this is a selection of possible types of material and tasks. Read the descriptions of the tasks on the left and then make some notes about:
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Extract 1 | |
Task 1: Picture of two people in a coffee shop. The woman looks angry. The tape script contains language such as "This really isn't good enough!" "I've been waiting ages!" "I'm sorry, I've had a terrible time getting here." "I've had lots of problems at work and couldn't leave on time today." The instruction is to listen to the dialogue and answer four questions: What is Mary’s problem? How does she state it? What is John’s excuse? How does he sound? Task 2: Isolated examples of the text are played and the learners must listen and repeat, paying special attention to tense and tone. |
Task 1:
Purpose: Listening practice to identify specific data (scan listening). Intensive listening to locate particular realisations of expressing anger and expressing excuses. Choice of tense is present perfect, used to express current relevance and learners are being encouraged to notice its use specifically in both simple and progressive aspects. Combination: Combines with the next task in giving the learners a model to analyse and practice before trying out the language for themselves. Assumptions: The graphic will activate schema about meeting places (a café) and the expression on the woman’s face will alert them to her attitude. The graphic also supplies data about the kinds of people in the dialogue. This is all in line with Situational Language Teaching and the assumption is that language is always produced for a purpose. Language is best presented in a way which shows its communicative function and the attitude of the speakers. Task 2: Purpose: The learners gain practice in forming perfect aspect tenses, intonation and general pronunciation of the targets. They are alerted to two communicative functions (as above) which occur as an adjacency pair. Combination (as above for task 1 and below for Task 3) Assumptions: Oral practice reinforces and aids memorisation – imitation theory and behaviorist approach to habit formation and memorisation. Learners need to gain confidence and the ability acceptably to pronounce items before being asked to produce them. |
Task 3: The next task consists of role cards setting out a parallel situation with one person angry and the other making excuses. The reason for anger and the type of excuse are on the cards. Students do this orally in pairs. |
Task 3:
Purposes: Learners gain practice in the target structures and functions. Learners can focus on the language without having to imagine a situation or reason etc. Combination: Task 2 has prepared the learners for the language they need and Task 1 has set the scene and the attitudes of the speakers. Assumptions: Learners can transfer a model to their own production. Role play in a safe situation with little need for innovative use of language is effective in helping learners to gain confidence. Learners can transfer carefully practised pronunciation to a new task. |
Extract 2 | |
Task 1: Students are presented with a postcard (as above) and asked to read it and answer: Where is the writer? What is she doing? Who is she writing to? |
Task 1
Purpose: Reading for gist and speculating about the writer and the audience. Combination: Leads into the collocation noticing task (Task 2) and provides a genre model for Task 3. Assumptions: Graphics help activate schemata and allow learners to use top-down processing even if some words are unknown. New lexis needs to be presented in context and with co-text and its positive connotations made clear by situation. The topic matter will appeal because it's familiar and common. |
Task two: Learners are asked on a worksheet to make a list in two columns: Column 1: adjectives Column 2: nouns. They do this in pairs, looking up any unknown words in the dictionary or asking for help. For example: |
Task 1:
Purposes: To practise recognising word class. To encourage noticing of collocation. To practise dictionary skills (identifying meaning and word class). Combination: Extends the gist reading (Task 1) to reading for detail. Leads into Task 3 by providing a genre example for analysis and modelling. Assumptions: That autonomy is a good thing and can be encouraged by dictionary use. That adjective-noun collocations can be learned by chunking (a lexical approach). That collocation skills lead to communicative effectiveness. That a collaborative analysis task will foster communicative skills and aid noticing and memorisation. That a genre approach (analyse before production) is effective in teaching writing skills. |
Task 3: Learners are given a blank postcard and a range of pictures of holiday destinations. They are asked to:
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Task 3:
Purposes: To encourage the use of appropriate, positive adjective-noun collocations. To follow a model to produce a short piece of writing. Combination: Follows on from Tasks 1 and 2 logically and consolidates the staging of the model (place, weather, activities) as well as the adjective-noun combinations. Assumptions: Writing needs to be assisted by clear knowledge of the audience. That writing is assisted by previous analysis of a model of the genre. A product approach is suitable because this kind of text is not usually subject to brainstorming, drafting and polishing (a process approach). That learners will benefit from putting the collocations into their own texts. That working alone is appropriate to a writing task and is authentic skills use. That learners will be engaged by the topic. |
Notice that in all these examples, there is explicit and
consistent reference to purposes,
combinations and assumptions. If you
do that, you won't miss out on answering the task in full.
You may have thought of other issues, of course. Good if you
did.
Some more ideas to prepare for this area of the syllabus: |
- Riffle through a few popular (and up to date) coursebooks, stopping at random and then, mentally at least, apply the three areas to what you find: purposes, combinations and authors' assumptions.
- Refer to the Teacher's Book for the tasks you have found and see if the suggested procedures match the ideas you have formed.
- Refer to the introduction to the Teacher's Book. Few materials writers can resist the temptation to set out their own prejudices about what language is and how it is best taught and learned. Compare what they say there with the reality of the material they have constructed and the assumptions you identified.
- If you have not already done so, go through the Delta guide to Paper 2 focusing specifically on Task 2. There is some more exemplification there.
- When you are ready, do the Mock Examinations for Delta
Module One.
Do NOT do this until you have worked through all the materials in this course or you will be putting the cart before the horse and wasting the mock examinations before you are ready to benefit from them.
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