Page 211 - Beyond Methods
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Activating intuitive heuristics 199
Exploratory Projects
With some basic exploratory research projects, teachers should be able to design microstrategies like the ones illustrated above. I pres- ent below two such projects, one dealing predominantly with focus on formS and the other predominantly with focus on form, but both attempt to activate the learner’s intuitive heuristics.
Project 8.1: Focus on FormS
8.1.0 The purpose of this project is to help you explore how to plan for teaching a grammatical subsystem keeping in mind the overall ob- jective of activating the learner’s intuitive heuristics. Luckily, you do not have to reinvent grammar; all you need to do is to consult the re- sources that are already available (see above for a sample list of four books) and make use of them for designing grammar tasks. For the purpose of illustrating a doable project, I focus on a deceptively simple grammatical item in English: present progressive (also called present continuous). You may do this project individually or with another col- league.
8.1.1 A common textbook explanation for present progressive is that it is used to describe an action in progress. Taking this explanation at the face value, write down a couple of sentences to exemplify present progressive.
8.1.2 Study the following six different uses for the present progres- sive and write down at least one example for each.
1. To describe events/situations in progress at the moment of speaking
2. To describe temporary situations in the present, though not nec- essarily at the moment of speaking
3. To describe changing or developing situations in the present
4. Todescriberepeatedeventsorsituations(withalways,constantly, forever, etc.)
5. To describe the background to an event in the present
6. To describe a present arrangement for a future event
(Data source: Thornbury, 1997, p. 80)
8.1.3 Keeping in mind the proficiency level of your students, select one or a combination of these six uses and think of possible ways of in- troducing them to your students in such a way as to prompt them to guess the general rules governing their use.
