1. - JUSTIFICATION

1.1 Introduction

Elementary Education is a major formative frame for students. According to Piaget (2007), in

this segment the transition from the pre-logic thought to the construction thought will take place

and the logic-concrete thought will be settle down. This process implies reasoning procedures

that are characterized by flexibility and the facing of new challenges.

The lesson plan for the unit “A Day Out” is contextualized for 5th grade, 3rd cycle in elementary

education. The time frame will be three weeks and has been developed under four principles

that are the foundation for the educational project on the Real Decreto 1513/2006 that aims:

“personal growth of students, active citizenship, successful adult transition and long life

learners”.

That is to say:

1. - Develop education focusing on respect to the fundamental rights and freedom, equality of

opportunities of men and women, and non-discrimination.

2. - Educate the personal responsibility and the individual effort.

3. - Teach on a frame of respect to community life, social respect, cooperation and solidarity

among communities.

4. - To prepare students to be responsible citizen, and to take part on an active economic social

and cultural life with a critical and responsible attitude and with ability to move on the ever

changing communication era. The sequence of activities we present in this unit of study aims to

emphasize values that have their foundation on the respect to the rights and freedom related to

the principles and goals of education framed by LOE 2/2006, as well as guarantying a quality

educational experience.

Our goals:

• Firstly, Spain commitment as a member of the European Union to prepare students to be

active citizens of a growing multilingual and multicultural world.

•On the second place, we would like to help the students to make a commitment for a

responsible participation from schools that enables them to be the citizens of the future. This

implies building, accepting and practicing community rules that match democratic values, and

practicing rights, freedom, responsibilities and duties from the social, cultural and linguistic

standpoint of English language.

•On the third and last place, we are looking for improving the overall quality of education if we

take into account that we are focusing on the curriculum practice derived from LOE 2/2006, and

developed by the Decreto de la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia 286/2007, with

the aim of developing the eight basic competences explained by the law.

The addition to our law of the basic competences defined by the European Union as the

“combination of skills, knowledge and attitudes appropriate for the context” has different goals

that we are trying to address in this unit of study:

- Integrating various types of learning incorporated to the different areas in a globalized form.

- Allowing the students to build on their own learning, immersing them in a variety of content

areas, and to use them in effective ways as required in changing situations and contexts.

- And lastly, focusing the teaching and learning experience, by identifying the content and the evaluation criteria that have a prescriptive character within the curriculum.

Obviously, our students need an expense input that can allow them to express themselves at a

communicative environment in a language other than their native tongue. According to Montané

and Beernaert (2004), this comprehension is more easily reached through structures closer to

people, that is to say, family and school.

Nevertheless we are facing the challenge of developing our curriculum with creativity, starting

from critical analysis from a given text book to redesigning it under a Task-Based Approach and

communicative methodology.

This enables our learning proposal, from the English as a Second Language area stand point, to

be extensive to other curricular areas, in search of efficient teaching and in order to provide with

positive learning experiences of constructive and meaningful character (Ausubel, 2009).

That is to say, content from different areas is not disaggregated, but on the contrary in this unit

of study we will provide with the content about knowledge, procedures, or skills, and attitudes

from the core subjects in a horizontal way, helping to attain our goals and developing the basic

competences, as well as adding to the whole process the remaining areas in collaboration with

the specialist of each of the areas when needed.

Our main goal using this methodology, and relating all content areas is for the students to be

able to use them in effective ways when they need them, and to be able to apply them as a way

of “knowing the how” in a variety of situations and context as stated by Brousseau (1988):

- School/classroom micro-environment

- City/outside/family environment

- Global/Europe/Spain/Regionmacro-environment

Based on Vygotsky(1979)’s theory about cognitive development of children, we consider that all

situations that derive from the daily routines at a classroom make the ideal frame for the

students to learn in a model that allowed participating, fostering independence and responsibility

in the organization of the school life and building their own knowledge.

2. - DIDACTIC APPROACH

Didactic approaches are powerful tools or analyzing and intervention for school reality with great

instruction transforming powers, and include a high level of responsibility in choosing one point

of view over the others.

The teaching model is a powerful tool for analysis and intervention of school reality with great

ability to transform teaching; this comes great responsibility when selecting a perspective over

others.

The second language teaching has undergone many shifts over the last decades. Many

methods have come and gone. We have seen the Traditional Method, the Direct Method, the

Audio-lingual Method, the Total Physical Response (TPR), the Natural Approach, and many

others.

Following Richards and Rodgers (2001) for many decades the predominant method of language

instruction was the grammar-translation method, which consisted of textbooks with list of

vocabulary and rule explanations to memorize and students engaged in translation activities

and little oral proficiency.

The demand for oral proficiency led new technique of teaching, such as Direct Method where

the followers believed that languages should be taught in a natural way, but it suffered great

criticism about the strict requirements to practice to its principles and the need for native

teachers.

This method was replaced by the Audiolingual Methods in the 60s. The underlying assumption

of this philosophy was that L2 learning is basically a mechanical process of habit formation. In

practice, these meant students were presented with language patterns and dialogues, which

they had to mimic and memorize.

In the 80s a set of alternative approaches and methods appeared such as the Total Physical

Response (TPR). Asher (1969) originally developed as a method to teach language by

combining action and speech, is still widely used.

However, these methods do not conform to our view on the L2 teaching-learning process.

To be consistent with our teaching proposal is unthinkable authoritarian work environment or

confinement, as well as memorization and repetition since the aim is to convey the importance

of participation, to interact with peers, teacher and environment of the responsibility, collective

decision making, etc.., as essential for effective learning.

Por otro lado, un marco de libertad y cooperación que permite expresar las ideas, confrontarlas entre sí y comprobarlas colectivamente en lengua inglesa, es plenamente compatible y adecuado con una concepción constructivista del conocimiento que buscamos, especialmente porque consideramos al alumno como parte activa del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje.

Debemos tener en cuenta que las competencias, los contenidos, procedimientos de aprendizaje y actitudes que se presentan en esta unidad didáctica, no se aprenden espontáneamente, requieren una determinada metodología con la intencionalidad explícita de enseñar las estrategias básicas de comunicación, que se pondrán en acción al plantear al alumnado nuestra propuesta de “A Day Out”.

Esto nos lleva a la concepción de esta unidad didáctica desde Communicative approach-task based approach.

El fundamento del método es la consideración de la lengua como instrumento de comunicación y, por tanto, una consideración del aprendizaje que se asemeja al paradigma de «aprender para comunicarse», es decir, tiene un claro carácter funcional. Esto es, los materiales didácticos, los textos, las grabaciones y otros materiales que utilizamos pretenden reproducir actividades comunicativas como las que tienen lugar fuera del aula de clase.

Siguiendo a Crespillo (2011) el método de Enfoque por Tareas (Task-Based Approach), surgido del Enfoque Comunicativo, busca cada vez más a perfeccionar a este último. Esto supone, en cierto modo, la superación definitiva de todos aquellos métodos centrados en la

gramática, arrinconando la ‘competencia lingüística’ para conceder un valor total y completo al concepto ‘competencia comunicativa’.

Bajo el punto de vista de Crespillo (2014) en este paradigma lo importante no es la sintaxis, ni las reglas, ni la norma, ni la gramática, pues no se valora como  «mejor» o «peor» los métodos funcionales que los formales. Todo lo contrario a esto, dicho método persigue y realza el uso real de la lengua en situaciones concretas.

Los alumnos llevan a cabo prácticas lingüísticas comunicativas, actividades de uso lingüístico pero el principio dominante es que «la lengua se aprende por el uso» y las tareas deben estar centradas en los intereses particulares de los alumnos, de modo que se pone el énfasis en el contenido de los mensajes personales que verdaderamente interesan a quien aprende una lengua.

Topic and final task. FINAL TASK

Analyse the final task of the textbook and describe whether it is appropriate for the Unit

according to the Task-Based Approach.

The final task of the textbook is formed by two activities. The first one consists on rewrite and

practice a new dialogue following the instructions of the teacher and the example there and the

second one consists on writing a portfolio following the structure of the “Activity Book”.

We are going to try and analyse, little by little these activities, to know whether they are

appropriate or not for the acquisition of the English Language according to the “Task-Based

Approach”.

To begin with, we will consider if the situation of learning is appropriated to the theory of

Ausubel (2009), who affirmed that to acquire any kind of knowledge, the learning must always

be meaningful. In our case, the learner comprehends the task but he/she is presented the

contents in a much closed way. The worst part is that the learner does not build any

knowledge, because everything is already done. They do not have the opportunity to find,

investigate or create new contents to the ones they already have so that they do not build

knowledge at all (Vygotsky, 1979). What we really find in this textbook is a situation of

repetitive and memorising activities, that are explained for not to pay attention to the previous

ideas of the students, the adequacy of the contents and the process of interaction between the

new knowledge and the rest of the knowledge.

1. TYPE OF INTERACTION AMONG STUDENTS

Once we have seen the type of learning that the textbook applies with the final task in the unit

6, we are going to analyse the type of interaction among students. Taking into account Krashen

´s point of view in 1982, the interaction and the production of the students are very important

and the information they get in the activities is essential. When a child is trying to express in a

second or foreign language to be understood, maybe be among students or with the teacher, is

actively working with the comprehended input and making experiments. Swain (1985),

however, extends the theory and affirms that the comprehensible input in the L2 is essential

and very important for the acquisition of the L2.

Nevertheless, there is no relevant interaction in these activities that helps to create the

necessity to comprehend, produce and get a real feedback for the child to solve the possible

problems with the formal aspects of the English Language. They are unidirectional tasks

because the student has all the information that he needs, that is to say, we do not pay

attention to create a discourse in the classroom to build some positive situations or conditions

of learning.

2. USE OF SKILLS INVOLVED IN THE TASK

On the other hand, it would be convenient to have in mind that the term micro-skill associated

to behaviourist theories, which understood the process of learning like a process of building of

habits and customs. They valued more the “savoir faire” (know how to do it) than the “savoir”

(know). That is why; some think that the second language learning, at least in the sense of the

phonetically part of the learning, is not really an intellectual task like it would be to learn maths.

But, to acquire a second language does not mean to substitute some words by some different

ones. It means something more complex to explain: to maintain a basic dialogue with a native

speaker, to be able to find a place in an unknown city with the instructions of a native speaker,

to be able to write a diary of one’s life in the second language, etc.

To learn a different language from your mother tongue means to acquire a cognitive and

complex skill that is composed by micro-skills, not only of the linguistic type (discriminate

sounds in the speaking chain, comprehend the different parts of the discourse, recognise the

accent) but also the ones referred to the social context of the language itself like the referents,

the participants, the roles that they play,…etc. (Hymes, 1971).

From a didactic point of view, the abilities are divided in receptive or interpretative ones (listen

and read) and productive or expressive ones (speak and write). In the case of the activity we

have to analyse, the skills that we work are always read and write but never speak or listen. The

active skills are practically nonsense there, but they would always be there.

3. WHETHER THERE IS A GUIDE TO DO THE FINAL ACTIVITY

As we already know, the practice is an essential ingredient for the progress in the acquisition of

a second language. However, to write a dialogue and a portfolio following a group of given

instructions by the teacher do not permit the students to be in contact with the second

language to be competent.

In this context it suits to analyse the level of control that the teacher exercises in the class, the

materials the teacher uses, the adequacy for the level and age of the pupils and other aspects

related to this final task.

This task we analyse follows a traditional methodology based on the methods of structural

component and based where the education is realized and on the imitation and the

memorization of structures. What we would like to get is an opened and self-sufficient

education where the contents and forms are explained to the students in a very natural way.

4. LEVEL OF AUTONOMY ON THE PART OF THE CHILDREN TO USE THE L2 and 5. LEVEL OF

CONTROL BY THE TEACHER: MATERIALS.

Paying attention to the level of autonomy on the part of the children to use the L2, we have to

know that the students need to get an spontaneous access to the communication in the L2, to

be able to get as much as information as possible about the structures and the way of using the

target language. Only in that way is how the students get to know and verify if the hypothesis

that they have formed are real or not. They can check by themselves if they are understood

speaking or writing in the target language and if they are able to understand others reading or

listening to them.

However, in the textbook we analyse, the students are not able to practice their knowledge of

the L2 and they are forced to use only the linguistic resources of the book without any type of

freedom. The students have no autonomy to produce any kind of dialogue, activity or sentence;

everything is guided, organized and controlled by the teacher. The teacher is also who controls

the activity, the timing, the materials and the students do not really know what they are doing,

for what purpose and what the final task is in itself.

The motivation, in the way the textbook is organized, does not exist because the students do

not know what they are doing, they do not control the activity (only the teacher), they are not

autonomous, they are not able to create anything, everything is already prepared and done.

They do not to use their imagination to investigate or create new dialogues, activities, texts or

maybe plays.

Besides, the final task does not answer to different types of learning, nor variety of levels in the

L2, nor previous knowledge to their likes, hobbies or interests nor it gives a positive experience

of learning…

To justify the work in groups, we think it is important to learn a second language, it is obligatory

to name the Donato´s (1994) works because he suggested paying attention to the cognitive

progress that was highly improved when the relationship between students was present in the

daily school life in the second language classroom.

Due to our interactive and cooperative final objective for the ideal task, we would like to make

the student be more conscious of his own learning, more positive, he learns to be properly

organized, independent and autonomous. What we would like to get in our final task is that

most of the concepts of the modern theories of teaching, taking into account the building and

cooperative learning theories will be developed in a natural and real way.

To justify our theme, we must say that when we use a second language to understand and learn

any subject, many processes are activated in the L2. The normal process happens in the

learning of the mother tongue and it is in that way how we think the children have to learn the

second language in the classroom to acquire the ability to express and be understood in the

target language. Motivation plays a very important role here because children will use the

target language in a more useful way if they are talking about their likes, hobbies or interests or

maybe about things that are related to their environment.

We will always try to focus our students´ attention in their interests, hobbies or likes to be sure

they are going to use the target language in an incidental way to get a deeper and efficient

learning difficult to forget. It is clear that if the contents are near to the students, if they are in

contact with them, if they are interesting and authentic (like in the real world), the students will

be more implicated and motivated.

Our final task will be something real, near and authentic that students can tell their friends,

make a small trip around with an English pen friend or simply tell their parents what they have

learnt in the English language classroom.

The positive feedback, the interests, the attitude of the students or the self confidence in

themselves, taking into account the social and affective factors, are as important like the

cognitive ones that we always pay attention to.

It is also very important to take into account the errors the children have while learning the

second language, the interlingua, the phase in which we learn a different language that is

compulsory to reach and analyse.

6. AUTHENTICITY OF THE LANGUAGE THAT CHILDREN HAVE TO USE.

The authenticity of the language used in the text and activity book is very poor because the

vocabulary that it is used is not appropriate for the students´ age, interests and needs. They are

learnt some vocabulary that they are not going to use ever out of the classroom, they do not

need to know those structures and vocabulary that is studied in that unit that we analyse.

They are always memorising, verbalising and repeating the structures and vocabulary without

sense and they do not really learn anything because they are not going to use those pieces of

language anywhere outside the classroom.

7. APPROPIATENESS OF LANGUAGE ACCORDING TO AGE, INTERESTS, ETC.

The language used is not appropriate for the students because they are not going to use any

structure nor words related to the theme in itself, they are using that type of language in the

classroom because of the unit “A day out” learnt and they do not use those structures in their

personal environment, daily life or houses with their families.

Describe your final task (what students have to do and why). Take into account that the final

task should include written and oral tasks.

The most important thing of our didactic unit is that we have based our work in the Task-based-

approach. This type of procedure helps us to centre our contents and objectives on a point of

reference to grow up all the tasks of the topic in our didactic unit. We are going to try and

explain what students have to do and why.

The unit 6 of the Textbook is titled “A day out”. It is true that it centres the topic of the unit in

the spare time of our children, making exercises using the positive characteristics working with

a motivating theme for all the students. Nevertheless, we think that the topic of the didactic

unit is so broad that the students are not really interested or motivated. Paying attention to

Sancho´s opinion, if you want a person to learn something, the most important thing is that the

topic creates interest and motivation in that person, experience and motivation are essential in

the teaching-learning process. That is why we would like to create a didactic unit with a title

nearer to the student “Cartagena, our city”.

We would like to get the student nearer to the environment we are able to visit and touch that

is, the place where they have grown up, where they live, where they go to school, where they

play with their friends…etc. We find this theme very interesting for our students because the

key to develop the contents of our didactic unit is that they are motivated and interested in the

previous experiences in the town of Cartagena. We will make that the students practice their

English language in natural situations, for example, visiting the Roman Theatre and showing the

Roman ruins to an English friend of an exchange programme maybe. With all those situations,

we should try and get that the students make an incidental learning without realising they are

learning, because we centre the students´ attention on a different point that we are teaching. It

is clear that if the students are learning something which is near them, something that they can

visit, touch and see in real situations, they are more efficient to get the input correctly.

Taking into account the new materials that we can work with in our didactic unit, they must be

extremely meaningful to be able to relate them to the main points of our didactic unit and the

relevant ideas that we would like to transfer.

Besides the principal topic of the didactic unit of the book given, we have radically changed the

topic of the unit, to be able to solve the problems found and to reach the maximum in the

learning process of our students.

Paying attention the way we want to change and/or improve the final task of the didactic unit,

we must say that:

They work on writing exercises in the 80% of the activities;

They do not really know the objectives they have to reach;

The learning process is repetitive and memorising;

They do not work with the interests, likes or hobbies of the student so they are not

motivated;

They do not need to talk to each other or produce new dialogues while they work the

activities;

The final task does not create a final positive experience for the student;

The activities do not promote the communication among them;

The students´ creativity is null;

The vocabulary they use is not really useful, they are not going to practice or need that

vocabulary in any real situation in their lives;

In terms of the ways our final task is different from the final task of the textbook, we should say

that the final task we would like to propose our students will have the following characteristics:

They will work on different exercises practicing all the four skills in learning a language:

speaking, listening, writing and reading. Always paying attention to the communication

skill activities maybe in pairs or groups to make collaborative and cooperative work.

They will really know the objectives they have to reach in each activity of the didactic

unit;

The learning process will be participative, collaborative and motivating practicing

together with the other subjects of the course like Artistic or Science (in this case

Geography);

They will work with the interests, likes or hobbies of the student so they will be

motivated and anxious to learn;

They will have to talk to each other or produce new dialogues while they work all the

activities;

The final task will help to create a final positive experience for the student;

The activities really promote interactive and real communication among the students;

The students´ creativity is broad;

The vocabulary they use is really useful; they will use those new words or structures we

have learnt in any other situations in real life.

They will have a motivating topic according to their age and personal interests;

The contents will become more important than the language itself, so the students will

talk without noticing;

We will try to associate words, functions, structures and situations with the particular

topic of our final task;

We will provide them more and different vocabulary than the textbook gives;

Our final task will include three tasks in one and we are going to try and describe them in

the following paragraphs:

1. Creation of a touristy pamphlet in groups of 4 or 5 people: it must contain a map

of the town of Cartagena and a route to show the 5 most important places in

their town centre or the surroundings like the famous beaches in Cartagena.

They must choose the 5 most important places of their town to show anyone

who comes to Cartagena for the very first time including a brief description of all

5.

2. Once they have created the pamphlet, the group will have to make a brief

exposition to the rest of the classroom with the help of the teacher in a

bidirectional way. The rest of the students will be able to make questions to the

group and can have a pamphlet for each one.

3. Finally and in an individual way, each student of the group will have to write a

composition about the place they have visited; what they have liked most or

worst of the selected five and a brief explanation of the rest of the places in their

pamphlet.

In this global final task, what we would like to reach in terms of objectives is the following:

Be able to work in a collaborative way;

Be able to learn new vocabulary: jobs, places, giving directions,

timetables, touristy aims, etc.

Be able to use different grammatical structures using present or past

tenses of known or unknown verbs: present simple and past simple;

Be able to explain and know better the place where they have grown up

or live;

Be able to communicate in real life situations: look for a place to go or

explain how to go somewhere;

Be able to describe objects and places of their environment;

Be able to use and practice with connectors: first of all, in one hand, in

the other hand, nevertheless, from my point of view, in our opinion, etc.

To justify the changes we have made in the final task, we would like to centre our attention on

the importance of the group work in learning and acquiring a second language that showed

Donato (1994) in his works: he thought that the cognitive process is more successful if the

students interact between each other.

In our opinion, the final task that we propose is interactive and cooperative so that the student

is more independent, organized and autonomous in the works he makes.

The most important characteristic of our final task is the work our students make will not be

memorising vocabulary or repeating given structures, they will always be motivated to do their

work in an autonomous and independent way. The positive thing is that they play with the real

situations and useful vocabulary they are going to use in their near environment showing the

town to a foreigner, that is to say, in a concrete situation.

The key is that we work in a real situation and we can develop real conversations creating a

motivational climate, satisfaction feelings and creativity with a help of imagination. We pretend

that the students develop concrete abilities to communicate in the English language and learn

more vocabulary and structures to use in the real life, in that way the learning process will be

meaningful and the children will not have to reproduce all the activities of the textbook.

The contents of our final task that are going to make possible the achievement of the objectives

mentioned before are, according to the type, the following in the above list:

Attitudinal contents

Interactive situations, collaborative activities, cooperative work

Instrumental contents

Pamphlet, map of Cartagena, touristy guide,...etc.

Sociocultural contents

Type of culture in Cartagena, type of people who lives here, etc.

Learning to learn contents

Independence, autonomy and initiative to work and talk.

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