7.0 Activities - some examples

In the following examples are given to illustrate activities included in the various modules. As pointed out above, this part of the project is still experimental and developing out of the experiments in classrooms. Our aim is to offer a range of activities and ideas for teacher trainers and school teachers to use in their own curriculum development and course design.

Module 1:

Activity: Learner language profiles and identities

Students are given a silhouette of a human being drawn on a piece of paper and colour it in to represent the languages they speak/understand and in which parts of the body they feel their languages reside.

AND/OR pieces of paper with the names of different languages known/expected to be present in the students are placed in different parts of a room and students are asked to stand next to or between the languages they feel they 'belong' to and then explain their choice of location.

Activity: An experiment in Intercomprehension

(It is presumed that the students do not know Spanish, i.e. they have not learnt Spanish at school or studied it at university)

Un hombre estuvo ingresado durante 28 años en diversos manicomios de Esados Unidos o, mejor dicho en hospitales psiquiátricos. En el primer manicomio donde ingresó, en 1951, lo declararon disminuido mental, dado que no sabía siquiera hablar y se limitaba a producir sonidos extraños que no tenían nada que ver con el lenguaje humano. A lo largo de los años y de los sucesivos hospitales a donde lo trasladaban, los medicos lo juzgaron "muy poco comunicativo", "muy retrasado" como un "individuo con un lenguaje incoherente".

1. Make a brief summary of the text.
2. Identify the elements which helped you to interpret the text.
3. List the strategies used. Take into consideration all your knowledge and experience, both linguistic clues and whatever you know about modern societies which helped you to guess the meaning of the text.

Follow-up activity: What is Intercomprehension?

1. Make a list of key-words/concepts that you associate with Intercomprehension.
2. Attempt to define Intercomprehension.
3. Identify skills and capacities that support Intercomprehension.

Module 2:

Activity: Decoding of text

1. Answer the questions below.
2. Then explain why you were able to answer them.
3. And finally: analyze the text in terms of structures and vocabulary.

• What were Gimp and Moopy?
• Why did Moopy poat one of Gimp's frapers?
• Why did Gimp sworch Moopy?

Follow-up activity:

Discuss the arbitrariness of the sign and the need for consensus on the meanings of arbitrary signs, cf. the various alphabets.

Activity: Jumbled-up poem

Here is a poem with twelve lines. All the lines have been jumbled up. Try to reorder them into a complete poem. The title of the poem is "maggie and milly and mollie and may" and the poet is e. e. cummings ( from Lazar 1993 : 94)

Which devices did you make use of to reorder the poem?

Could this task be easier for you as a Norwegian than for someone who has no concept of "beach" or "sea" - for example someone from central Europe who has never seen the sea?

Modules 3 and 7

Activity: Identification of some European languages

Which of the languages below can you identify?

Which clues will you make use of?

Activity: The cultural dimension in the curriculum

Study "The cultural dimension in the curriculum" by Michael Byram and Karen Risager (1999), an extract from discussions with Danish and English teachers of foreign languages and their beliefs about why they teach languages - as a stimulus for discussion.

Activity: Textbook analysis

Take a textbook for teaching a language you do not know or know very little and 'read' the textbook to see what you can find out about the countr/ies portrayed there - putting aside everything you already know about the country. Ask yourself what kind of families live in this textbook country, what kind of leisure or work they have, how they meet and greet each other and any other habits, customs and cultural behaviours and beliefs you can get from the text (and only from the text - put aside your stereotypes!).

Module 6

Activity: Happy Families

The following table of English, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish words can be used to prepare cards in order to play Happy Families:

Each card should include the other three words as well, for example

Module 7

Activity: Identification of some European languages
See Module 3

Activity: My Languages Portfolio

From the site of My Languages Portfolio

http://www.nacell.org.uk/resources/pub_cilt/marchPupils Language Portfolio.pdf

some of the entries could be used, for example:

I have friends who come from these countries and speak these languages
..........................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................

In the future I would like to go to
..........................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................

and I would like to learn these language(s)
..........................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................

The form provided on the above site can easily be adapted to suit your needs.

Previous - 6.0 The modules

Report-index