Adriana Gmez Quintanar Mariel Guzmn Snchez Jos Jaime Flores Jcome
ENSEANZA APRENDIZAJE DEL INGLS
Report Teaching grammar: The Causative
Introduction
The aim of this report is to describe our choice of topic, target audience and activities for the grammatical point The Causative form. Comments about the different suggestions made in class on which changes could be made in order to improve the lesson are going to be included. More over, considerations on how to teach the same topic to different age groups will be discussed.
Topic
The causative includes many constructions with four words: have, get, let and make. However, there are minimal changes of meaning depending of the form, which may cause confusion among the students if presented all of them at once. Thus, our choice was to teach the basic form with have and get in the following construction:
Have + something + done Get + something + done
These constructions indicate that one person causes one thing or person to do something. Besides, there is an additional emotional meaning that implies embarrassment or regret depending on the situation. It also should be highlighted that one of the differences between have and get is that the former is formal, and the latter is informal thus, more common in spoken language.
These basic forms are considered as an intermediate topic or level B1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL).
Target audience
Among the three options that were given (teenagers, young adults and adults), it was decided to work with young adults. There are two main reasons for this choice.
First of all, a determinant factor was the closeness of age with the people enrolled in B.A. programme. For the purpose of the activity the range of age was considered to be between 18 and 25. Given that this is the authors current context, the approach to this kind of students seemed to be easier to achieve.
Secondly, it is widely believed that young adults have a genuine intrinsic motivation which would mean that they are not being forced to attend English classes. This is the main difference between the chosen group and teenagers, who may not be willing to cooperate or may not be interested in the learning process. As for the adults group, they are difficult to handle in the sense that they might not be open to actively participate in the activities.
Method and Activities
The method that was used to convey the information was the PPP (Presentation, Practice and Production). This was decided to be the best option because it is said to be the most common and easiest to use and adapt since it follows the logical order of progression from theory to practice.
In the first stage, the students were presented the structure accompanied with an example, followed by a brief explanation of the causatives use. This was done with the purpose of raising awareness of the difference between the normal speech and the causative one.
The second stage consisted of various examples of real life in order to familiarise the learners with the new structure. Visual aid was implemented so as they would retain the newly acquired information faster. Differences between the formal construction with have and the informal one with got were also explained.
In the third stage, according to the PPP method focuses on production. For practical purposes, the activities were not implemented during the class due to the lack of time. Therefore, two possible activities were suggested. Both activities were intended to develop the speaking skill through the use of the causative.
The first one consisted of asking the students to imagine they were billionaires. With this in mind, they would use the causative to say what they would want to be done for them.
The second task involved two steps: first, the students were asked to think of what chores or tasks they considered to be the most boring ones. The second step was to create causative sentences based on the previous answers.
Potential changes
Since the reported activity was only a simulation and explanation on how this grammatical point should be taught. There was almost no interaction with the students and the activities stated above were not carried out during the class due to the lack of time. However, some suggestions were made because of that.
Regarding the lack of interaction, the following is suggested. In a real class, the learners would be asked to read aloud the examples and definitions so as to keep their attention focused on the topic. Additionally, they would be asked if they have any doubts throughout the lesson and before the exercises.
It was also pointed out that the last proposed activity could be performed at the beginning of the lesson. This would not correspond anymore to the selected method (PPP). This would mean that the method should be changed to the EEE (Exploration, Explanation and Expression). Yet, this could be considered also for changing the activity for a different target audience, which will be discussed in the following section.
Adaptation for different groups
In the case of teenagers, as stated above the EEE method may work better with them. They should be introduced to the subject by first asking them a question related to the topic (the causative in this case). In this way, they would infer some parts of the grammatical structure at the same time they get acquainted with it.
For the adults group, the ESA method (Engage, Study and Activate) seems to be a useful tool to approach to them. As they need to apply the structures they are learning to real life, this method is suitable for practising the language they already know and apply the new structure in context.