GENERAL INFORMATION

Evaluation activities should be submitted within the date indicated on the

academic calendar of the group to which the student belongs to. Access to it is
available 3 days beforehand for those students who cannot deliver the evaluation
activity on the official delivery date. On the other hand, the date in which access
will cease, does not correspond to the official date of delivery for those students
who count upon an extension granted by the professor to deliver the evaluation
activity on a later date. No evaluation activity will be accepted after the official date
of delivery if the student does not count upon this extension.

This activity must be done fp_modo_parejas and fulfil the following conditions:

Length: 6-8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices if there

are any-).

Font: Arial.

Size: 11.

Line height: 1,5.

Alignment: Justified.

The activity has to be done in this Word document and must still fulfil the rules of
presentation and edition, and follow the rubric for quoting and making
bibliographical references as detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the "Subject

Evaluation" document and should not be sent to the teachers e-mail.

Evaluations activities not following these rules will not be accepted.

EVALUATION MATERIALS

Assignment template
 Material 1

Material 2

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
DEVELOPING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This assignment must be done in pairs and has to fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: between 6 and 8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices if there
are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Font size: 11.
- Line spacing: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be written in this Word document and has to follow the
instructions on quotes and references detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, the assignment has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the
document: Subject Evaluation. Sending it to the tutors e-mail is not allowed.

It is strongly recommended to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in

the document Subject Evaluation.
Assignment instructions:

Take the unit from the course book Bachillerato Made Easy, Richmond Publishing,
available in the Evaluation materials section (at the same place where you can find
this paper): Materials 1, and the unit Botelln! from an English textbook published
in the Basque Country (2010) for teenagers: Materials 2. Compare and contrast the
way the two units deal with the four skills. You should refer to the following matters:

- The authentic/genuine aspects.

According to Widdowson (1978:80) distinguishes between genuineness and
authenticity where the former is a characteristics of the text itself and is an absolute
quality and the later the relationship between the passage and the reader and the
appropriate response.

- The relationship between the skills work and the learning/practice of grammar.

Analysing the two units, the direct relation is in the needing to develop reading, writing
and speaking. In this part it is necessary to emphasize in the fact that the first material
has a specific structure that separate every skill, a clear example of the traditional
approach.

Meanwhile in the second unit Botellon, tries to resolve what Grellet (2013: 24) pointed
the need to make exercises correspond to communicative function integrating
reading with the other skills- reading and writing, reading and listening, reading and
speaking. In the light of this idea, this material is based on a project called botellon
phenomenon where the learners are developing not only different activities but all the
skills too.

- The opportunities for production (oral and written) the units provide.
In the first material, teen links, the oral skill has a separated part from the other skills,
at the end and it is so short, compared with the other skills, which is a clear example of
what Spada (1990: 37) Says, the task is insufficiently prepared, or because the
content is not appealing or sufficiently personalised. The instructions are very general
and dont let to the teacher evaluates the process objectively.

In the second material, botellon, the speaking skill is the tool to evaluate all the
content worked in the unit. The learners must use expressions, ideas, and information,
also, grammar rules to participate in the debate where they show their acquired
knowledge. In other words, this material shows the integrating speaking (2013: 35)
speaking is surely the most flexible of the skills .It can be used as the target skill, that
is to say that a task or activity would classify its outcome objective.

Now, referring to the written production we can find that Hedge represent in the
category. In teen links unit, the writing skill correspond a study where the learners must
produce an essay, following five steps to do it correctly. The purpose is what White and
Arndt (1991: 78) point: Through writing we are able to share ideas, arouse feelings,
persuade and convince other people

The way this unit works on this skill, is the one showed in the Figure 4.2.: From A.
Raimes, Techniques in Teaching Writing (1983 : 85) ; focusing in the fact that to
produce a text is necessary to take in account the syntax, grammar, mechanics,
organization, word choice, purpose, audience, the writers process and finally, the
content.

Analysing the second unit Botellon, the writing skill is worked along the unit, I mean, it
is not developing separately like in the first material. Learners must complete formats,
raining maps, writing searches and comparative charts, in order to develop this ability
linking to the speaking and reading skills; with the goal to participate with arguments in
the debate activity. It is what Ball (2013: 79) says The skill of writing may lead us
directly into a situation where we need and / or want to communicate by speaking

Concluding, both materials present the differences between written and spoken
discourse, enlist by Ur. Which lead us to think that we, as a teachers, must have many
considerations to work on in applying oral and written activities.
- The types of production required.

First that all, it is important to start recognizing the output fundamental importance in
the learning process, such as, Ball pointed (2013: 50) to progress in the knowledge of
the L2 it is necessary that the input the individual is exposed to is at a slightly more
advance level.

In the light of this, it is right to say that the material 1, teen links does not take in
account what Swains theory made for output. I mean, the unit contains a great variety
of activities to apply the grammar, but it does not make the learners recognize some of
their linguistic problems; secondly, those activities does not let the learners may serve
the language learning process. They just have to answer questions and resolve some
task to give an indication to the teacher of responsibility level, but not on their foreign
language acquisition. But in the last Swains theory aspect, own target language use,
the product internalize linguistic knowledge, due to the resolving those exercises,
learners, at least, learn the syntaxes structure and how they are used in the reading,
listening and oral context.

It is the contrary in material 2, botellon, where clearly the activities are focusing in the
interaction between the practice and knowledge, where the learner has a possibility to
experiment with the structures, producing more data about the target language. For
example the activities in which, learners must think about a social phenomenon and
then, compare their opinion with their partners, enables what many theorists listed
(2013. 55), the acquisition of certain sociolinguistic and discursive features inherent to
communication.

To make a reflection in the product of the process to acquire a foreign language, it

requires a conscious plan, design and implication in the class. We have to leave the
conception that a product is the measurable task to give a report.

- The variety (or otherwise) of the activity types.

To summarize, the activity types in the units, this diagram represents deeply the activity
types worked in those materials.
Graphic N. 1 Teen links unit. Material 1. Representation of Language Skills in the Classroom.

Graphic N. 2 Botellon unit. Material 2. Representation of Language Skills in the Classroom.

 As we can see, the first material is an example of the traditional approach, where the
skills are developing separately. Meanwhile the second one is most centred a
computational model of second language learning. Ellis (2008: 70) that emphasizes
the importance of the social as well as the cognitive aspects

Which unit do you prefer? Why?

Although we are most familiarize with the first material, it is more completed, the second
one, because it draws the cognitive perspective on interlanguage, worked by Ellis (2008)

Botellon unit instructions ensure the learners development of social expressions, rule-
based competences; offering the opportunity to interact with the other learners in the
second language; giving the opportunities to mixed the implicit and explicit knowledge and
finally, examine free as well as controlled production.(Ellis, ibid)

In conclusion, teaching skills in the classroom represents a challenge if the goal is to

integrate the cognitivism with interlanguage, where the purpose, the types and the product
must be, as well as the departure point as the arriving one.