Professional Practice I - Week 7 - Methodological Design

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 7 of the Professional Practice I of the BA in English Teaching at ULACIT term IIIC 2022. In today's class we will continue looking at qualitative data collection techniques and enhance your study of TBLT by considering different task types. 

Today's Goals:

• Review best practices regarding common qualitative data collection techniques.
• Experiment with classroom observation, notetaking, and analysis.
• Analyze sample communicative task types and design one of your own.

Guiding Questions:

• What techniques can I use to collect qualitative data for my research project?
• What skills are needed to carry out effective classroom observation?
• What are the features of a communicative task?

Warm Up: My Criteria

For our warm up activity you will propose your own criteria for a lazy rainy day, a great vacation, a perfect pizza, or any other non-academic product or experience. Be ready to share your essential criteria with the class. Consier the example below.

Now click the group link  and complete the task.

• 1st Group Link: CLICK HERE
• 2nd Group Link: CLICK HERE

Task 1: Weekly Check-In

It's week seven! What have you been up to since our last meeting?

• How were your site visits this week?

• Tell us about your teaching, assisting, and observing?

• What can you say about your groups?

• Characteristics
• Strengths / Challenges
• Curriculum

• What more have you thought about your research topic/problem? 

• What research have you been able to complete as part of your literature review / theoretical framework?

• What are your responsibilities for next week?

Task 2: Concept Review

Let's quickly review our topics from last week by discussing these questions:

• What is the primary qualitative data collection instrument?
• What kinds of qualitative data will I need to answer my research questions?
• What are some recommendations to ensure you get good data?
• What is the difference between seeing and observing?
• What are some tips for carrying out interviews?

• Group Link: CLICK HERE
• Sample Observation Protocol: CLICK HERE
• Sample Interview Protocol: CLICK HERE

Task 3: Qualitative Data Collection

This week we will continue talking about data collection using observation and interviews. Click the group link and follow your teacher's instructions. 

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

• Interview Protocols: CLICK HERE

• Now let's try doing some observation practice together. We will watch the first 10 minutes of a class observation of a group of 4th grade students in an English Language Arts class in the United States in which they are learning how to identify the main idea of a text. Keep in mind that this is a class for native English speakers.

• Ericka's Observation: CLICK HERE
• Natalia's Observation: CLICK HERE
• Selena's Observation: CLICK HERE
• Mark's Observation: CLICK HERE

• Observation Processing: Let's take some time to discuss what we observed.
• Let's recall the events that occured in the lesson. What happened first? Then what? What was the last thing we observed?
• What stood out to me about this observation? What is the aspect? Why does it stand out?
• To what degree did this observation help me address my observation questions or intentions?
• What do I still need to learn? What else am I interested in learning about after having this experience?

• What was challenging about doing this observation?
• What can I say about the difference between description and interpretation?
• A description can be interpreted in multiple ways. This is a challenge and an opportunity for research. Why?
• How do I think I can use observations to address my research questions?

Task 4: Draft 2

Draft 2 is coming up on November 10th! Let's take a moment to review the requirements of that assignment. 

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Teacher Development Workshop

TBLT - Task Design

Task 5: What's in a Task?

Last week you participated in a Building Blocks workshop on the topic of lesson planning using task based language teaching. Today we are going to go into more detail about the topic of tasks, how we can classify them, and see plenty of examples. 

Warm Up: Hell's Kitchen

Work with your partners to complete the task and assign the correct dishes to the customers. Don't make Gordon angry!

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

• How would you describe the activity you just completed?

• What did you have to do? 

• How did you interact?

• What language did you use?

• Two weeks ago you heard about Task Based Language Teaching but what do we mean by "task"?

• Definition: In regular life, a task is...
• Definition: In language teaching, a task is...

• What are the characteristics of a communicative task? Well, Scott Thornbury says there are six characteristics that all communicative activities should fullfill. Let's see if you can match them.

Click to View Full Sized Image.

Theoretical Support for Tasks

Interaction based approaches accept that comprehensible input is a requirement for language acquisition and they go a step further by claiming that interaction among students that requires both listening and speaking is optimal. The Comprehensible Output hypothesis states the following.

• Students learn when they notice a "gap" in their ability to express their ideas.
• Students become aware of the gap when they try to say something and their partner does not understand.
• Students then seek information that will help them close that gap and this makes them more attentive to features of the input they are exposed to.

The related Interaction Hypothesis highlights the connection between listening and speaking. 

• Input made more comprehensible through interaction adjustments.
• Negative feedback indicates possible production errors.
• Opportunities for pushed output, being required to try out new structures and phrases in a social context.
• Opportunties for negotiation of meaning. 

Communicative Tasks for Interaction

Communicative tasks are one of the primary strategies for encouraging meaningful interaction among students. All communicatives tasks involve some form of gap in order to require interaction.

• Information Gap: Students have access to different sets of information and must communicate to share their information in order to accomplish the task.
• Sample: Spot the Differences - CLICK HERE
• Practice: Schedule a Meeting - CLICK HERE

• Opinion Gap: Like the information gap task, in opinion gap activities students have access to different information but this time it is not information provided by the teacher. Instead, it is their own thoughts and opinions which they must share with their partners to negotiate some kind of agreement.
• Sample: Vehicle Differences - CLICK HERE
• Practice: Health Consultants - CLICK HERE

• Reasoning Gap: In a reasoning gap task there is a problem to be solved and students need to communicate with each other to share their ideas in order to find a solution.
• Sample: Chef's Activity - CLICK HERE
• Sample: Sport's Agent - CLICK HERE 

• Creative Tasks: A final category that combines elements of Opinion Gap and Reasoning Gap tasks is to give students the task of engaging in creative thinking. Here are some examples.
• Create a Product (Text/Media): Students create a story, dialogue, advertisement, image, etc. 
• Sample: CLICK HERE or CLICK HERE
• Improvisation: Students are given a scenario and must act in response to it.
• Sample: CLICK HERE

Your Turn!

Instructions: Now work with your partners to brainstorm a task that would work for one of the topics you taught this week or will be teaching soon.

• What is the topic?
• What language is involved?
• What are communicative scenarios in real life when this language is used?
• What kind of gap can we exploit?
• Does the task provide the 6 characteristics of communicative activities?
• Purposeful, Reciprocal, Negotiated Meaning, Unpredictable, Heterogeneous, Synchronous?