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GENERAL INFORMATION Evaluation activities should be submitted within the date indicated on the academic calendar of the group to which the student belongs to. Access to it is available 3 days beforehand for those students who cannot deliver the evaluation activity on the official delivery date. On the other hand, the date in which access will cease, does not correspond to the official date of delivery for those students who count upon an extension granted by the professor to deliver the evaluation activity on a later date. No evaluation activity will be accepted after the official date of delivery if the student does not count upon this extension. This activity must be done fp_modo_parejas and fulfil the following conditions: 

Length: 6-8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there are any-).

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Font: Arial.

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Size: 11.

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Line height: 1,5.

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Alignment: Justified.

The activity has to be done in this Word document and must still fulfil the rules of presentation and edition, and follow the rubric for quoting and making bibliographical references as detailed in the Study Guide. Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the "Subject Evaluation" document and should not be sent to the teacher’s e-mail. Evaluations activities not following these rules will not be accepted.

EVALUATION MATERIALS 

Assignment template

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Material 1

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Material 2

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT: DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This assignment must be done in pairs and has to fulfil the following conditions:

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Length: between 6 and 8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there are any-). Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman. Font size: 11. Line spacing: 1.5. Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be written in this Word document and has to follow the instructions on quotes and references detailed in the Study Guide. Also, the assignment has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the document: “Subject Evaluation”. Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not allowed.

It is strongly recommended to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the document “Subject Evaluation”.

Assignment instructions:

Take the unit from the course book Bachillerato Made Easy, Richmond Publishing, available in the Evaluation materials section (at the same place where you can find this paper): Materials 1, and the unit ‘Botellón!’ from an English textbook published in the Basque Country (2010) for teenagers: Materials 2. Compare and contrast the way the two units deal with the four skills. You should refer to the following matters: -

The ‘authentic/genuine’ aspects. According to Widdowson (1978:80) distinguishes between genuineness and authenticity where the former is a “characteristics of the text itself and is an absolute quality” and the later the “relationship between the passage and the reader and the appropriate response.”

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The relationship between the skills work and the learning/practice of grammar. Analysing the two units, the direct relation is in the needing to develop reading, writing and speaking. In this part it is necessary to emphasize in the fact that the first material has a specific structure that separate every skill, a clear example of the traditional approach. Meanwhile in the second unit Botellon, tries to resolve what Grellet (2013: 24) pointed “ the need to make exercises correspond to communicative function… integrating reading with the other skills- reading and writing, reading and listening, reading and speaking”. In the light of this idea, this material is based on a project called botellon phenomenon where the learners are developing not only different activities but all the skills too.

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The opportunities for production (oral and written) the units provide.

In the first material, teen links, the oral skill has a separated part from the other skills, at the end and it is so short, compared with the other skills, which is a clear example of what Spada (1990: 37) Says, “the task is insufficiently prepared, or because the content is not appealing or sufficiently personalised”. The instructions are very general and don´t let to the teacher evaluates the process objectively. In the second material, “botellon”, the speaking skill is the tool to evaluate all the content worked in the unit. The learners must use expressions, ideas, and information, also, grammar rules to participate in the debate where they show their acquired knowledge. In other words, this material shows the integrating speaking (2013: 35) “speaking is surely the most flexible of the skills .It can be used as the target skill, that is to say that a task or activity would classify its outcome objective.” Now, referring to the written production we can find that Hedge represent in the category. In teen links unit, the writing skill correspond a study where the learners must produce an essay, following five steps to do it correctly. The purpose is what White and Arndt (1991: 78) point: “Through writing we are able to share ideas, arouse feelings, persuade and convince other people” The way this unit works on this skill, is the one showed in the Figure 4.2.: From A. Raimes, Techniques in Teaching Writing (1983 : 85) ; focusing in the fact that to produce a text is necessary to take in account the syntax, grammar, mechanics, organization, word choice, purpose, audience, the writer´s process and finally, the content. Analysing the second unit Botellon, the writing skill is worked along the unit, I mean, it is not developing separately like in the first material. Learners must complete formats, raining maps, writing searches and comparative charts, in order to develop this ability linking to the speaking and reading skills; with the goal to participate with arguments in the debate activity. It is what Ball (2013: 79) says “The skill of writing may lead us directly into a situation where we need and / or want to communicate by speaking” Concluding, both materials present the differences between written and spoken discourse, enlist by Ur. Which lead us to think that we, as a teachers, must have many considerations to work on in applying oral and written activities.

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The types of production required. First that all, it is important to start recognizing the output fundamental importance in the learning process, such as, Ball pointed (2013: 50) “ to progress in the knowledge of the L2 it is necessary that the input the individual is exposed to is at a slightly more advance level”. In the light of this, it is right to say that the material 1, teen links does not take in account what Swain´s theory made for output. I mean, the unit contains a great variety of activities to apply the grammar, but it does not make the learners recognize some of their linguistic problems; secondly, those activities does not let the learners may serve the language learning process. They just have to answer questions and resolve some task to give an indication to the teacher of responsibility level, but not on their foreign language acquisition. But in the last Swain´s theory aspect, own target language use, the product internalize linguistic knowledge, due to the resolving those exercises, learners, at least, learn the syntaxes structure and how they are used in the reading, listening and oral context. It is the contrary in material 2, botellon, where clearly the activities are focusing in the interaction between the practice and knowledge, where the learner has a possibility to experiment with the structures, producing more data about the target language. For example the activities in which, learners must think about a social phenomenon and then, compare their opinion with their partner´s, enables what many theorists listed (2013. 55), “the acquisition of certain sociolinguistic and discursive features inherent to communication”. To make a reflection in the product of the process to acquire a foreign language, it requires a conscious plan, design and implication in the class. We have to leave the conception that a product is the measurable task to give a report.

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The variety (or otherwise) of the activity types. To summarize, the activity types in the units, this diagram represents deeply the activity types worked in those materials.

Graphic N. 1 Teen links unit. Material 1. Representation of Language Skills in the Classroom.

Graphic N. 2 Botellon unit. Material 2. Representation of Language Skills in the Classroom.

As we can see, the first material is an example of the traditional approach, where the skills are developing separately. Meanwhile the second one is most centred a computational model of second language learning. Ellis (2008: 70) “that emphasizes the importance of the social as well as the cognitive aspects” Which unit do you prefer? Why? Although we are most familiarize with the first material, it is more completed, the second one, because it draws the cognitive perspective on interlanguage, worked by Ellis (2008) Botellon unit instructions ensure the learners development of social expressions, rulebased competences; offering the opportunity to interact with the other learners in the second language; giving the opportunities to mixed the implicit and explicit knowledge and finally, examine free as well as controlled production.(Ellis, ibid) In conclusion, teaching skills in the classroom represents a challenge if the goal is to integrate the cognitivism with interlanguage, where the purpose, the types and the product must be, as well as the departure point as the arriving one.