2008-09 AM Teaching for Communicative Competence

English Didactics
Educational Terminology
Online Resources for ELT
Online Journals for Foreign Language Teaching
Literary Research for Didactics
Secondary Literature for ELT

• Lecturer: Wolfgang Gehring
• Language tutor: Lindsay
• Time: Thursdays, 10-12am
• Venue: A6 0-001

• Requirements for AM 7
• Suggestions for graded action items (3KP)

  All written work should be handed in by March 15, 2009. 

October 23, 2008 - Week 2

What makes lesson plans communicative? We'll try to find criteria for communicative lesson planning based on lesson plans from platforms for teachers. Your task: How would you introduce words that have to do with animals in a communicative way? Write your own lesson plan.

- Activity 1: Describe your competence (sample: writing): linguistic development, communicative development, content/topic development

• simple sentences, informing family, school
• simple text + describing familiar thematic contexts and speech acts
• similar areas of interest

- Activity 2: Outline a lesson plan focusing on introducing words relating to animals and the zoo.

- Activity 3: Outline the concept of communicative competence with the help of a mind map (use a transparency).

November 13, 2008

• Elicit theoretical fields for the evaluation of lesson plans

• Analyze the "opinion" lesson plan (in Stud-ip under "Dateien" 06.11.) by applying the collected

criteria from week four.

1. authenticity of speech acts
2. authenticity of language use
3. authenticity of activities
4. contextualization of the lesson
5. appropriateness of language use
6. communicative level of activities for weaker/stronger learners
7. opportunities for free language use and hypothesis testing
8. variety of forms of interaction
9. cooperative forms and communication
10. proportion of learner-centredness/teacher-centredness
11. proportion of closed, half-closed, and open activities
12. sociolingustic references in the lesson plan

• Please outline alternatives

1. Introduction (contextualization)
2. Development/Practise (Erarbeitung)
3. Application/Production (Anwendung/Transfer)
4. Follow-up activities

November 20, 2008

• Lemmata - short texts within group work on:

1. authenticity (see: Defining Authenticity)
2. learner-centeredness
3. hypothesis building
4. contextualization
5. cooperative learning (see: Cooperative Learning and the Second Language Classroom by Allison Chafe)

• Collect questions one might ask about grammar teaching.

• Task-based grammar teaching: Does it work? (See download in stud-ip)

  Please send me your short texts per email --Lindsay 14:25, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

November 27, 2008

1. Go through Red Line units 4 and 5 (see download 6.11) and find steps, activities, etc that could be labelled authentic, learner-centered, etc. Think also of other didactic termonology such as comprehensible input, etc.
2. Be prepared to facilitate either Richards (1-3) or Swain (4-5).