Page 202 - Beyond Methods

190 Activating intuitive heuristics ers in such a way that the information contained in the data has
to be shared or whether each learner has access to all data). (Ellis, 1997, p. 161)
The learner operations that can be performed on the data in- clude:
• Identification (the learners are invited to identify incidents of a specific feature in the data by, for example, underlining it).
• Judgment (the learners are invited to judge the correctness or ap- propriateness of features in the data).
• Completion (the learners are invited to complete a text, for ex- ample, by filling in blanks as in a cloze passage or by selecting from choices supplied).
• Modification (the learners are invited to modify a text in some way, for example, by replacing one item with another, by reorder- ing elements in the text, by inserting some additional item into the text, or by rewriting part of it).
• Sorting (the learners are invited to classify specific items present in the data by sorting them into defined categories).
• Matching (the learners are invited to match two sets of data ac- cording to some stated principle).
• Rule provision (in the case of inductive tasks learners may or may not be asked to give a rule to account for the phenomena they have investigated; the rule can be presented verbally or non- verbally).
(Ellis, 1997, p. 161)
A close reading of these data options and learner operations clearly indicates that they can be used in teacher-directed classes as well as in pair or group interactive settings.
Reproduced in Figure 8.1 is a task designed by Fotos and Ellis taken from Ellis (1999, pp. 207 – 8), which illustrates how to activate the learners’ intuitive heuristics about an aspect of L2 grammar. It focuses on the use of dative verbs in English. Designed as a pair or small group work, it consists of (1) task cards (Appendix A in the original text) with a list of grammatical and ungrammatical sen- tences illustrating the use of dative verbs, specifying which are cor- rect and which are incorrect; and (2) a task sheet (Appendix B in the original text) with some grammatical information about dative verbs