Page 184 - Beyond Methods

172 Fostering language awareness
7.1.1 Imagine a couple of scenarios where people normally tender an apology, one in a formal context and another in an informal context— such as, a job-seeker apologizing to a potential employer for being late for a job interview, or a teenager apologizing to parents for returning home very late after a date on a Saturday night. Or, think of other sce- narios that are suitable to your learning and teaching context.
7.1.2 Make a brief lesson plan about what the scenarios will be and how you will implement your plan.
7.1.3 Think about how you will introduce the scenarios. Would it be appropriate to start with a set of pre-activity questions to elicit from your students their own idea of an apology? If yes, what might be the actual questions?
7.1.4 Anticipate some possible student responses. What would be a good transitional strategy that can relate student responses to the two scenarios you have planned to use in class?
7.1.5 Think about the best way of carrying out the activity—through group work? Pair work? Role play? What would be the justification for your choice?
7.1.6 What are the ideas and issues you expect your learners to come up with during class discussion? And, how would you relate them to your objective of creating language awareness?
7.1.7 What are the ways in which you can explicitly draw your learn- ers’ attention to how English usage varies between formal and informal contexts for apologizing?
7.1.8 What are the ways in which you can help learners consciously think and talk about probable variations in the realization of apology as a speech act in L1 and L2 speech communities?
7.1.9 Think about difficulties—linguistic, conceptual, or communica- tive—you may have to anticipate and deal with in order to achieve your classroom objectives.
7.1.10 Finally, design an appropriate take-home writing assignment on linguistic and cultural variations in tendering a personal apology.
Project 7.2: The Language of Political Apologies
7.2.0 The objective of this part of the project is to design a classroom activity to make learners explore the language of political apology be- tween nations or within a nation between various groups of people.