Do pair and group activities increase the use of the target language by

students?A focus on Spanish as a tool

for making meaningful communication.

Michelle Tuivaiti 2005

WHY?To provide opportunities for student

output in the target language. (Ellis,Erlam & Sakui – Principle 7)

To give learners control of a language learning situation which offers opportunity for negotiation of input and output.

(Hunia, F. 1988)

Opportunity to critique and improve my foreign language teaching practice.

CONTEXT

Glen Eden Intermediate School Target language (TL) – Spanish Target group – Three Year 7 boys and a Year

8 girl. All students participating had been learning Spanish since February 2005.

Students have a Spanish lesson once every 6 days.

Duration of the lessons implemented and observed ranged from 45 minutes to an hour.

METHOD

Observation made of a whole class lesson.

Feedback on lesson given to classroom teacher.

Implementation of pair and group activities in the class.

Observations made of the target group during pair and group activities.

Feedback on the target group’s use of the TL was given to classroom teacher.

FEEDBACK – 1ST LESSON WHOLE CLASS

Content focused on learning numbers from 1-10 in TL. Revision of greetings and farewells in TL.

Spanish was spoken a lot by teacher and the students showed that they understood.

Target group were not yet using Spanish themselves to negotiate meaning or to interact in meaningful ways.

Students who were using TL were limited to one or two word utterances.

PAIR ACTIVITY - TRIMONO PUZZLES

Students were to solve a trimono puzzle based on TL numbers, greetings and farewells.

Students were given additional TL vocabulary, based on turn taking – ‘si (yes), no, mi toca (my turn), tu toca (your turn).

GROUP ACTIVITY

Las edades de mi familia’

An adaptation of the activity ‘Le eta di una famiglia’ that Silvia had shown us in Italian.

PAIR ACTIVITY - READING CARDS

Reading cards followed the format introduced in the article by Fran Hunia. (1988) ‘Promoting Maori Language Through Reading & Interactive Tasks’.

Used emergent reading books (Farolitos Series).

All input was through peer interaction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING

1. To further increase the use of the TL during group and paired activities, teacher needs to add to the students repertoire of useful expressions.

2. Teacher is not the only source of language input in the classroom. Use of interactive activities and reading cards, no direct teaching need be involved.

3. Use of reading cards and text in TL as part of the mainstream reading programme.

4. Use of reading cards with less English this would force children to ask (in TL) for help, for translation, for checking.

REFERENCES

Ellis, R. (2000). What makes for successful second language learning. Auckland, NZ: The New Zealand Language Teacher.

Ellis, R., Erlam, R., & Sakui, K. (). Principles of effective instructed language learning. NZ: Ministry of Education.

Hunia, F. (1988). Promoting Maori Language through reading and interactive tasks. Wellington, NZ: College of Education.