Delphi module

4.3.10
Commentaries

Commentary 4.3.1

Beneficial feature	How?	SLA conditions
confidence to try out language	students work in private in pairs / groups; no error correction	M
spontaneous interaction	no prior language preparation; students must work together in real time to complete task b) and h) have been transposed	U
opportunity to learn from others	to participate, students must listen to peers and may notice how others express similar meanings; corrective feedback to each other encouraged	E
negotiating turn-taking, initiating	not teacher led; group members are equal participants	U, E
purposeful, co-operative language use	teacher expects language to be used to achieve task goal, not for display; students build meaning / solve task together in pairs / groups	U
complete and extended interaction to develop discourse skills	doing a task means engaging in a complete interaction from start to finish, not just isolated fragments of language	U
development of communication strategies	students need to understand each other and make themselves understood in order to do the task	E, U
builds confidence in ability to function in target language	repeatedly successful task completion boosts confidence b) and h) have been transposed	M
Others:(add your own)

Commentary 4.3.2

One student has a set of four coloured geometric shapes originally cut from a square. The other has a diagram of how to reconstitute the square. Student B explains to student A how to arrange the shapes to make the square.	This is a one-way information gap. Apart from occasional checking on the part of student A ('You mean here? Like this?'), the whole task could be completed with only student B speaking. It is therefore unlikely to produce many conversational adjustments.
Each pair / group of students has a set of four coloured geometric shapes that fit together to make a square, but no key showing how to do this. They must take turns to move one piece at a time to try to make the square.	This is a joint, convergent problem-solving task with an instruction built in to encourage turn-taking both in terms of the conversation and in making the square (although if you try this and students get engaged by it they are likely to soon forget the turn-taking rule and interrupt and override each other in their eagerness to suggest a solution). It has a single outcome - the construction of the square - and may therefore produce plenty of conversational adjustments. However, it could equally well be done by each moving a piece in turn, with minimal language ('OK, no, no', 'Yes, yes, OK').
Student A has a drawing of a partly furnished room. Student B has a drawing of the same room, also partly furnished, but only some of the furniture is the same as in version A. Students exchange information on the nature and location of furniture to each produce drawings of a fully furnished room. On completion they compare drawings.	This is a classic two-way information gap activity, but I wonder whether it is actually two slightly different one-way information gaps done simultaneously! In theory, one student could simply describe their room while B draws items, and then they could change roles. However, if it is designed to be sufficiently challenging then there will be quite a lot of checking and negotiating of meaning occurring. (Personally I always have doubts about asking students to tell each other information when they have a picture in front of them that they could just show their partner. It all seems a bit pointless!)
The class is divided into pairs, and students decide to be 'A' or 'B'. All 'As' close their eyes for 30 seconds while 'Bs' look at, and try to memorize, a simple picture shown on an overhead transparency, eg a cartoon drawing of a woman's head. 'Bs' then close their eyes while 'As' memorize a picture, eg a cartoon drawing of a man's head. With neither picture visible, 'As' and 'Bs' have two minutes to find ten differences between the pictures they saw.	This is also a two-way information gap, but here the students must really use language to exchange information since there is no picture to show. The combined memory and time challenges and the specific target of ten items help to motivate students as they compete against other pairs to get the full score. In theory this should produce lots of conversational adjustments, which it does, but using very basic and often single word utterances, eg: A Mine was a woman B Mine was a man A OK, that's one. A Umm, black hair B Mine was blonde - that's two. And blue eyes A Oh - umm - I think they were blue too B OK. Earrings? A, No, no earrings. How many is that? Three? B Yes, three. etc So although there may be plenty of turn-taking, it may not be pushing output much unless students are at quite low levels.
Performance of a sketch designed by the students themselves	This may promote lots of language use during preparation and be an excellent listening task for other students but for the performers is likely to be rehearsed, and even memorized and therefore not spontaneous. If anything, it is the design and writing of the sketch that is the true core of task (since the group preparation of a single script or 'screenplay' is convergent,) but without a performance this preparation would be pointless. In other words, both stages are necessary.
Find three items that you and your partner both always carry on you, eg money. Find two more that you always carry but your partner does not, and vice versa.	This is a convergent task, but like the 'find the differences' tasks described above, it could be completed using a minimum of language by simply naming objects and responding with 'yes' or 'no' until the five are found. However, since it is much more personal in nature it is more likely to provoke genuine reactions along the lines of like 'A torch! Whatever do you carry that around for?' Followed by an explanation from the partner. To encourage this type of reaction and explanation, I would add a stage two to the task for all but the most elementary students, asking them to say why they always carry their five objects.
Tell a classmate about something funny / strange / embarrassing that happened to you as a child.	This is a divergent task, as everyone's story will be different. If the students are used to doing tasks and being able to talk freely, there may be some conversational work as the listener interrupts to ask for clarifications or to react to points in the story. Tasks that involve a real or personal element such as this often engage students more than made up games, and in this way encourage more spontaneous conversation.

Commentary 4.3.3
As Willis (1996:90) points out, you would certainly not want to play a recording of a task to the students if it revealed the answer to the problem or puzzle they were about to work on, but in the case of open tasks, such as comparing personal experiences, playing the task in advance can be very helpful in demonstrating to students what they are expected to do. They may even pick up ideas of what they can say themselves, or be reminded of useful words and phrases.

Commentary 4.3.4
Although this is a closed task, you could play this recording almost to the end (to the point where C says 'Right, you've had your minute' since B and J do not actually work out the solution! I did not try this in my lesson, but if I use the material again, I may well briefly describe the task instructions, then show the watch package to the class and ask students to listen to two people trying to do the task. The students' task while listening this first time could simply be to say whether B and J found the answer or not. I suspect that during the listening many students will have been mentally working out their own answers, so I would be prepared at the end to stop them shouting out what they thought was the correct answer, but just to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the question set before listening. At this point, when many students think they have a good idea and are dying to tell someone, immediate motivation is very high and this is an ideal time to start the task immediately, so I would say, 'Don't tell me, tell your group!' and give them a minute or so to compare ideas before reporting back to the whole class. This is a good rehearsal for when they try the other mystery objects. In different circumstances, perhaps for a more complicated task, you may want to play the tape more than once at this preliminary stage, but remember to always give the students something to do while listening, eg, tick which of the following B and J suggest the object might be:
candle holder;
light;
money box;
storage container;
drinking glass;
something for cooking in;
food container;
something for a picnic;
toy;
battery holder.

Commentary 4.3.5
In this case, playing the recording before students did the task would give away the answer, so I would not recommend doing this. I would let students try all four tasks (even giving each group two minutes with each object means that this stage takes a maximum of ten minutes to complete). Next I would ask each group to prepare a short report on one or two of the objects - perhaps the ones they found the most difficult to guess - and then report back to the class. (There will be more on the post-task report stage in activity cycle 4). I would only then play the recording, since by this stage the students will have had ample opportunities to become familiar with the material, and in this case, leaving the recording until all four objects have been discussed also sets up a good reason to listen to the tape (see my comment on the next question).

Commentary 4.3.6
Assuming that students have done all four mystery object tasks themselves, the simplest task to encourage listening for gist and to build confidence during the first playing would be ask students to identify which object was being discussed. They could also listen to judge how well J and B did in their guesswork: Did they get the answer? How many marks out of ten would you give for their answer? (They correctly guess that the item is a type of clothes peg, but not that it is a storm-proof clothes peg.) I would then replay the tape at least once more (probably several times, at least in part), with more specific listening tasks to complete. For example, you could ask students to listen for all the words or phrases that describe how the parts of the object move, or can be moved. Play them an example and demonstrate with the object ' ... if you press the end ... it moves up and down'. Play the tape all the way through, then play a third time with frequent pauses and micro-replays to let them catch the words, say them back to you and practise saying them. Students will almost certainly ask you to write difficult phrases up on the board for them. This provides a natural transition into language focus work using the transcript of the recording as data (more on this in activity cycle 5).