Practice Activities – M&R

MATERIALS AND RESOURCES IN EFL: PRACTICE ACTIVITIES

Name and Surname: Alexander Becerra

Group: 2017-06

Date: December 3rd , 2017

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 Practice Activities – M&R

INDEX
1.
PRACTICE ACTIVITIES.......................................................................................3
1.1. TASK 1....................................................................................................3
1.2. TASK 2....................................................................................................4
1.3. TASK 3....................................................................................................5
2. CONCLUSIONS...............................................................................................7
3. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES..............................................................8

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 Practice Activities – M&R

1. PRACTICE ACTIVITIES
Do the following exercises below:

1.1. TASK 1
Read chapter 4 and design a communicative task for the following educational
situation below:
You are an English teacher who’s teaching the content of phrasal verbs to your pre-
intermediate to intermediate students.

Objective: By the end of this task, students will be able to use phrasal verbs to talk
about romantic relationship.

A. Read the following story. Then, use your own words to retell it to your partner.
“John liked Anna. One day, he asked her out on a date. Ana was shy. At first, he turned
John down. John asked Anna again, and she said yes. She agreed to go out with him.
They enjoyed spending time together. They got along well. Unfortunately, John cheated
on Anna. She saw him with another girl. Anna was very upset. She decided to break up
with John. They stopped dating. John couldn’t stop thinking about Anna. He couldn’t
get over her. Anna and John grew up and got jobs: Anna worked as a banker, and John
was a news reporter. They lived in the same city but never ran into each other. One
day, Anna turned on the TV and saw John. She decided to call him. Eventually, they got
back together and got married.”

B. Read the text again. Use the context to match the underlined words with their
definitions below.
__________ had a good relationship. __________ go on a date.
__________ rejected, said no to an invitation. __________ met unexpectedly.
__________ end a romantic relationship. __________ secretly dated another person.
__________ became an adult. __________ started a machine.
__________ stop thinking about someone.

C. Work in groups of four and make up a love story. Make sure to include at least
five of the phrasal verbs above.

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 Practice Activities – M&R

1.2. TASK 2
Evaluate your own task by explaining each step proposed for Ellis in Tomlinson
(1998) to evaluate a task:
I. Description of the task:
The task aims for students to analyze the text and become familiarized with it
before working with the target language. Then, the students are to use the context
of the story to deduce the meaning of the phrasal verbs. Finally, using the model,
students are supposed to come up with their own story using the phrasal verbs the
just learned.

II. Planning the evaluation:

Some students come to the front to tell their stories. As they tell the stories, the
teacher takes notes on recurrent mistakes. Finally, the teacher gives feedback.

III. Collecting information:

The teacher circulates to detect difficulties students might be experiencing.
Also, the teacher needs to determine whether the task was challenging enough or
too challenging. Taking notes is important at this stage as it could be used for
feedback later on.

IV. Analysis of information collected:

If something needs to be adjusted or if another step needs to be added to the
task, the teacher must do so. This decision must be made based on the student
response.

V. Conclusions and recommendations:

- it’s important for students to understand the content of the material where the target
language is presented. On account of that, I believe it’s advisable to teach students
how to summarize and paraphrase.
- Also, once students have grasped the main idea of the material, it’s a good idea to
let them discover the meaning of the vocabulary items on their own.
- However, the ultimate goal must always be for the student to produce elaborate
their own examples using the target language. Providing a model is also crucial.

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1.3. TASK 3

Read the comic presented below and answer:

In case you would have to work with mixed-abilities, describe what kind of
activities you would propose for intermediate and advanced level, using the
same comic as an input.

For example, for beginner level:

Read the story in the comics and underline the words you do not know. Then, search
these words in the dictionary and read the text again.

Justify your answers.

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Mixed ability or ‘heterogeneous’ classes are terms used to describe classes made
up of students of different levels of proficiency. These terms are misleading as no two
learners are really alike and ‘homogeneous’ classes do not actually exist (Ur, 1996). All
classes are to some extent made up of learners who differ in many ways. They may
have different strengths, weaknesses and approaches to learning. They may respond
differently to various teaching methods and classroom situations.
Taking that into account, I will design two activities based on the level of the
classes stated as follows:

A. Intermediate:
I would ask my students to summarize the story told in the comic. I’m convinced
that having my students become familiarized with the content of the material where the
new language is presented is very useful and makes them feel more confident. Then, I
would ask them to focus on the comic again and identify the word that repeats in every
frame and I would you that opportunity to introduce the topic of phrasal verbs with “put”.
After that, I would have my students do a matching exercise for them to use the context
of the comic to identify the meaning of each phrasal verb. Next, I would ask them to
work in pairs to come up with examples using the phrasal verbs. Finally, I would divide
the class in two teams and run a competition on the board to determine which group
can provide more correct examples.

B. Advanced:
I would provide them with the comic without text in the speech bubbles. Then, I
would encourage them to come up with the speech in pairs. After that, we would
compare their stories with the actual one, and I would use that opportunity to elicit the
meaning of each phrasal verb. At this point, I would use a Powerpoint presentation to
confirm their guesses about each phrasal verb as some students might be visual
learners. Next, I would ask them to come up with a conversation in pairs and get ready
to act it out at the front.

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2. CONCLUSIONS
- When designing an activity, it’s important to consider that every task must follow a
gradual pace so as to allow students to discover the language on their own.
- The way I see it, it’s fruitful to have the students analyze the material they are
dealing with in order for them to associate the new vocabulary or grammar
contained in it without entirely grasping the meaning of each item at first.
- Production must be the ultimate goal. Asking the students to use the target
language must be the final step of each activity. Personalizing is also a good way to
ensure so as it makes the process more memorable.
- Giving feedback is also crucial as it allows both teachers and students to reflect on
what needs to be improved.
- The design of an activity must be done taking into account, among other things, the
level of the students. As I see it, it is okay to challenge the students, but it’s also
important to assess their current level in order not to overwhelm them or confuse
them.

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3. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

[1] Morgan, J., & Douglas, N. (2017). World Link (Third ed.) (S. Stempleski, Ed.).
Sherrise Roehr.
[2] Ellis. R (1998). The evaluation of communicative tasks. Chapter 9 in Tomlinson,
B. (ed.) (1998) Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
[3] Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.