task design project

Task design Proyect

Grade: 10A

Teacher: Lina C. Home

RATIONALE

English is considered as one of the most spoken language around the world. Learning and communicative using this language let students have access to other cultures and also to share their own one. That is why; I need to support my students’ learning process planning and implementing tasks. But what a task means?

According to Breen (1987) Cited in Nunan, a task “refers to a range of workplans which have to overall purpose of facilitating language learning from the simple and brief exercise type, to more complex and lenghthy activities such as group problem – solving or situations and decision making”. Since I have been working with these girls I notice that they have reading and speaking difficulties and I made sure about it when I applied a survey in which they admit that they need to improve those abilities. Hence, I planned a task to help students to get better in these skills first reading some news from internet or local newspapers and then reporting in class every Friday.

Objectives:

·         To implement a communicative task in order to work out students’ learning difficulties.

·         To improve reading comprehension and speaking abilities through news in 10C graders.

·         To get confidence when students report news in front of the class.

Profile of the students

There are 32 girls who belong to tenth C grade in a private School. They are between 15 and 17 years old. Most of them have studied English since early years I mean from preschool level and only 2 girls have been studying this language for 2 years.

When they answered the question about what was the motivation to learn English, they expressed that they know English was very important to start local and international university programs; to learn because they like this language; to communicate when they travel around the world, to understand what they read or listen. But there were two students who claimed that English was mandatory only for academic purposes.

Instruction for the task

I took into account the David Nunan template in the design of communicative tasks.

BEING UP TO DATED WITH NEWS
GOAL		·         To implement a communicative task in order to work out students’ learning difficulties. ·         To improve reading comprehension and speaking abilities through news in 10A graders. ·         To get confidence when students report news in front of the class.
INPUT		Piece of news taken from: www.colombianews.com; www.nytimes.com; www.washington.com; www.guardian.co.uk; www.miamiherald.com. I also design a template to let student organize their ideas and also their reporting.
ACTIVITY		·         I give the students the websites to read the news and they are free to choose the source and the field (sport, politic, entertainment, education) they like. ·         Then they fill in the template to repot the new (see appendix A) ·         Finally, they report the news in front of the class using the chart.
ROLES	Teacher	I am a facilitator because I help and guide my students in their doubts, contribution and give some pieces of advice to keeping mind to do well in the task.
	Learner	Their role are readers and speakers; they are in charge of reading the news and they prepare their reporting. They are the center in the class.
SETTING		Individual: firstly, the work is individual due to they choose the news and then write down the information required in the template. Group working: secondly, they report the news and they have about 3 minutes to express what they read.

Summary

This task was good because students gain confidence to express not only what they read but also what they think. They and I, we are know that the time is a real enemy because the group is large and we have to work in other assignments. I noticed they improve their pronunciation at least I knew they looked up the words in the dictionary and also in internet to listen their pronunciation.

APPENDIX A

Sample 1

SOURCE	El tiempo newspaper
HEADLINE	President Santos repeated his support to the reelection of mayors and governors
EVENTS	·         Santos repeated his support to the project of laws that looking for the reelection of mayors and governors. ·         He said that he compromised himself in the campaign cause is a motive of satisfaction for him to support this project as a step of justice and of convience for the Colombia state. ·         Santo said that there was in the congress inside of parties people didn’t like or like the idea. ·         He said that he wanted the project will develop next year.
PERCEPTION	I disagree with the project of law because in the diversity in the politics Colombia will be better than today.

Sample 2

SOURCE	www.nytimes.com
HEADLINE	Cleaner cars
EVENTS	·         President Obama announced last year the first big increase in fuel economy standards in three decades, plus a new requirement reducing tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. ·         The most important environment achievement of Mr. Obama is boosting fleetwide fuel efficiency by 34,1 miles per gallon by 2016. ·         Further improvements in fuel efficiency are essential for reducing our dependence on foreign oil and addressing global warming.
PERCEPTION	I think that president Obama is so intelligent because he wants that his country can be independent of foreign oil and help to environment to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide the main greenhouse gas.