Abstract

GUILLEN JIMENEZ, Luis Diego. How to transform traditional book exercises into communicative experiences?. Comunicación [online]. 2017, vol.26, n.1, pp.32-41. ISSN 1659-3820.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18845/rc.v26i1-17.3321.

How to transform traditional book exercises into communicative experiences?

Modern perspectives in second language teaching seek for a system in which communication is more important than metalinguistic knowledge (Cirocki & Widodo, 2012). Through years, research on communicative approaches had pointed out that teaching based on competencies and communicative skills is much more effective for second or foreign language acquisition than traditional methods (Nunan 1989, 2004; Lee, 2000; Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Ellis, 2003, Hernández, 2006). Despite this, many text books used by teachers offer few exercises and activities with this approach. This forces educators to spend time and effort in the search for or design of alternative materials to the textbook, while this is poorly used. This article puts forth a creative process to adapt textbook exercises into communicative tasks (Ellis, 2009). In order to do so, some Task Based principles (Ellis, 2003; Willis & Willis, 2012) are presented along with a concrete example of the method applied to a simple traditional exercise. Since this is a creative practice (Xerri & Vassallo, 2016), it is not the aim to present taxonomies of tasks, but the steps in the transformation process that come from the author’s experience and the principles of Task Based Instruction.

Keywords : Task based learning; communicative approach; second language learning; foreign language; methodology; creativity.

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