On November 21st 2016 I gave a workshop at the Saitama Municipal Institute of Education to the city’s ALTs. The topic of the workshop was analyzing activities and modifying them to ensure that they are communicative. 

ALTs were asked to consider the criteria that make activities communicative. Following this short discussion the following criteria was presented:

Choice

For an activity to be communicative, students must make choices. In keeping with the goals of Global Studies, these choices should not be simply regarding the language students use. The choices students make will also include who they communicate with and how. For example, an activity is more communicative if a student is given the choice to communicate through speaking, gesture, writing, or even drawing. Who to communicate with and what to communicate are also important. In many Global Studies activities in the elementary school, students are required to communicate something specific, such as a favorite color. Because what is being communicated has been decided, this kind of activity is not as communicative as it could be.

One final example, again from elementary school Global Studies, is the tendency for students to use the game Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who speaks first during an activity. Curriculum developers have pointed to the fact that children like playing this game and that it adds and extra element of fun to the activity. However removing the simple speech act of deciding who will speak first ends up making the activity much less communicative.

Authenticity

The next point raised during this workshop was that communicative activities should be as authentic as possible. In the most direct sense that means the students should be performing tasks that they might actually do in their own lives using authentic materials. However during this workshop the idea of authenticity was that in real communication there is often no resolution. It is important that in activities students are able to not meet the goal. For example, in an activity that asks students to find friends with the same likes, it should be acceptable that some students are unable to find such friends.

Meaningful

For an activity to be communicative, it goes without saying that meaning must be communicated. However, too often activities that teachers plan are not as meaningful as they could be. If an activity asks students to interview each other to find what colors are best liked in the class, the meaning that student can communicate is cut short. The interaction will go something like this:

A: What color do you like?

B: I like blue. How about you?

A: I like red. Bye.

Students expected to do this are only communicating meaning when the words ‘red’ and ‘blue’ are used. The listener knows what will be asked or said, so there is no need to really listen to the question and only a need to listen for the color in the answer. For an activity to be communicate both students must communicate unknown information. That could be as simple as asking an unknown question and getting an real answer.

Identity

Finally, an activity should include the students’ own identities in order to be communicative. Students need the opportunity to communicate their own ideas, but also to define those ideas according to their own personalities. Doing this is easier than it sounds. By teaching students to include support for their ideas, such as reasons and examples, it is possible for them to communicate more about their individual identities.