Textbook Enhancements

8/12/2019 Textbook Enhancements

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Providing Opportunities for Using Language

It is important to remember that grammar should be derived from context and not the other

way around. So then, opportunities for production should not be derived from grammar, but rather an

opportunity to express something using the needed grammar. That is, production activities should

always be meaningful, contextual, and enjoyable to the student.

Meaning-bearing Activities

Traditionally, activities in textbooks have centered on drilling methods to form good habits. The

problem with many of these activities was that there was no need for meaning to complete the

activities. Some, if not many, included a translation part of the activity. Simply translating a sentence

does not make it meaningful. The meaningfulness of an activity is predicated on its inability to be

complete without understanding meaning. When creating or altering activities to make them meaning-

bearing, teachers should keep in mind that meaning is paramount. If the student is overwhelmed trying

to understand the text, there will be less resources available to the student to process the form in focus.

A good example of this is seen in Lee (1998).

Contextual Activities

Although an activity may be meaning-bearing, it may not be contextual. Contextual activities

not only use the target form with target vocabulary and structures but also make it purposeful. These

activities are somehow related to something that is done by people in the target language. Luckily, this

is something that is easy to solve with many activities. Simply providing a scenario or use of the

language to perform an action outside of the activity usually will make an activity not only meaningful

but contextual as well.


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Enhancement #8: Additional Activity for Formal Commands

In the textbook the first activity provided does not require students to understand what is being

said (i.e., it is not meaningful) but rather only requires that they choose the correct form of a formal

command. The instructions provide enough information that a student could simply look over each

choice pair and decide which the correct form is without actually reading and understanding the

commands they are giving. Additionally, I would like to add some interactivity to this section as this

topic is not only undesirable for this age group (chores) but also rather dry.

Teacher Instructions: Set out on a table some items dealing with chores (an empty spray bottle, broom,

duster, trash bag, and images of things that may be too big). Then call a few pairs of students up at atime allowing them to compete to see who can do the chore first with the object. Sta rt by using theformal command only of cognates and/or high frequency. This allows students to hear the target formwithout needing to focus too much on vocabulary they may not be too familiar with. As you progressadd new, more difficult forms (-car, -gar, -zar, or the plural formal command forms). Then, after youfinish ask a student to give commands to other students seeing if they can do it correctly. You canmonitor what they are able to understand by what they do. Additional ideas could be to have studentshave school supplies on their own desk so that everyone is doing the commands and to have themcompete in Simon says at the end.

This should be done just before an explicit presentation of the grammar to see what students can gleanfrom their own attention. You may even have students attempt a cloze activity afterwards that allowsthem to choose from various forms and to select pictures that correspond to the command given.


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References

Doughty, C. & Varela, E. (1998). Communicative focus on form. Focus on Form in Classroom SecondLanguage Acquisition. 115-138.

Doughty, C. & Williams, J. (1998). Pedagogical choice in focus on form. Focus on Form in ClassroomSecond Language Acquisition. 197-261.

Lee, J. F. (1998). The relationship of Verb Morphology to Second Language Reading Comprehension andInput Processing. The Modern Language Journal, 82(i), 33-48.

Lee, J. F. & VanPatten, B. (2003). Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. New York, NY:McGraw-Hill.

Ortega, L. & Mochizuki, N. (2008). Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level foreign

language classrooms: A study of guided planning and relativization. Language TeachingResearch. 12(1), 11-37.

Shrum, J.L. & Glisan, E.W. (2010). Teachers Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction. Boston,MA: Cengage.

Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. (2006). Lawrence, KS: Allen Press, Inc.

White, J. (1998). Getting the learners attention: A typographical input enha ncement study. Focus onForm in Classroom Second Language Acquisition. 85-106.

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Textbook Enhancements