Page 136 - Beyond Methods

124 Facilitating negotiated interaction capacities, and share their individual experiences. Here are a couple
of microstrategies that illustrate such a possibility.
Microstrategy 5.1: Holiday Shopping
5.1.0 The primary objective of this microstrategy is to promote nego- tiated interaction through a cooperative decision-making activity that facilitates talk and topic management on the part of the learners. One possibility is to design a task centering on what people normally do during a national festival season: shopping for a gift. The unpredictable nature of interaction required by the activity and the challenges of cooperative decision making will possibly force the learners to exploit their linguistic, communicative, and cognitive resources to the maxi- mum. Here are some possible steps, and, as usual, you might wish to adapt this microstrategy to meet your particular setting.
5.1.1 First, explain the activity: learners are to form small groups and decide which items to buy as a holiday gift for their beloved teacher (!) or for any other individual they jointly choose. To avoid misunder- standing, tell them that this is only a pretend game.
5.1.2 Explain the rules. Rule 1: Together, they can spend a total of one hundred dollars (or any specified amount of local currency) in- cluding sales tax, if any. Rule 2: They have to buy at least three items for the total amount. Rule 3: The decision has to be unanimous, that is, all the members of the group have to agree on the gift items. Rule 4: They can choose the gifts only from a published department store cat- alog. In several Western countries, large department stores publish cat- alogs listing items and their suggested price, and distribute them free of charge. In places where a catalog is not available, the teacher or a student volunteer can get a price list from a local department store, and make copies for students.
Yet another possible rule relates to the use of first language. This is a decision you have to make. Most established L2 teaching methods discourage the use of L1 in class. In a setting where the students share a common L1, I do not see any reason why L1 cannot be used in a ju- dicious fashion (see Chapter 11 for more details). Of course, the mean- ing of “judicious” may vary from teacher to teacher. For instance, in this particular task, you may decide to allow the use of L1 (probably a code-mixing of L1 and L2) for conversations within small groups but insist on the group report and the ensuing class discussion being in L2. Whatever you decide, make the rules clear to your students. You may, of course, modify these rules or add new ones.